When to Select Effort Driven

[Catfish Hunter]

For the past 2 hours I have read all the Q&A's on this subject and must say I
am confused. My question is why & when would you want to select Effort
Driven and not to select? What does Effort Driven do when turned off and
turned on? Simple examples for a simple mind would be good. Thanks

 

[Rod Gill]

Effort driven only affects tasks when adding or removing a second or
subsequent resource. Add your first resource - no effect. Add a second
resource and with effort driven ON the second resource shares the first
resource's work and the task duration reduces. With effort driven off the
second resource gets its own work and the task duration remains unchanged.

I find that typically when I add a second resource they have a different
skill set so I don't want Effort driven on. I force the Options to have
Effort driven off for all new tasks and projects.

 

[Rick Roszko]

Basically, effort driven means if one person can dig a hole in 8 hours, 2
people can dig the same hole in 4 hours.

Not effort driven is one person can watch concrete dry for 8 hours to make
sure no one steps in itand even if you add a second person, the concrete
won't dry any faster.

That was the easy part.

In MS Project, there are 5 settings:

Fixed Duration, Effort Driven
Fixed Duration, Not Effort Driven
Fixed Units, Effort Driven
Fixed Units, Not Effort Driven
Fixed Work

To complicate things, (a) you can set these setting first, then add
resources, (b) add resources then set the settings, (c) add resources and
then set setting and then add more resources and (d) set settings, add
resources, then change settings.

They all act differently!

So, I assume you have MS Project handy. To best understand what happens is
not reading about it but doing it.

(a) Open Project
(b) Insert Column "Work", "Effort Driven" and "Type"
(c) Add task, just call it "aaaaa" or whatever and make duration 2 days or
whatever
(d) Add a resource, just type in "xxx" or whatever in Resource Name
(e) Look at Work, Effort Driven, and Type
(f) Now, add another resource "yyy" see what happens
(g) Change Effort Driven, and Type, see what happens
(i) Do all the combinations above, including switch the order, and create
additonal tasks

NOTE: If the task has a predecessor, or it there is a constraint on the
task, that would also act differently.

Sorry there wasn't an easy answer! Hope this helps...

 

[Catfish Hunter]

I am clear now on how this works, but only on this one thing! Thanks Rod &
Rick.

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

Think of it from the other side. You as the expert should know what will
happen when you add a second person to a task. Is it like a meeting where
adding additional attendees doesn't shorten the time of the meeting? If so,
make tyhe task non-effort driven before adding the new bodies. Or is it
like painting a room where adding a second painter will get it done in half
the time? Then make it effort driven before adding the second body. The
effort driven or non-effort driven setting is not so much as characterisitic
of the task per se as it is a switch you the PM can use to control what
Project does to the task when you add or remove bodies from it. As planning
is an iterative process where you might change resource assignments on a
given task many times, you need to ask yourself what should happen with
*this* edit each time before you make the change to it.