Why can't I display the "Duration" field in "Resource Usage" view?

[Peter Rooney]

The Subject says it all, really, I can display "Start", "Finish", "Work" and
"% Complete", but I can't find "Duration", only "Duration1" to "Duration10"
in the drop down field list.
Can anyone suggest a workaround, please?

Cheers

Pete

 

[JulieS]

Hi Pete,

The duration field is a task field, The Resource Usage view displays
Resource fields and assignment fields(represented by the task name), but not
task fields.

What is it you are trying to show? Would the Task Usage view work? In the
task usage view you can display duration.

Hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Pete,

Since I can't customize assignment foelds, I think you'll have to use VBA:

Sub AssDur
dim Job as Task
dim Myjob as assignment
for each job in activeproject.tasks
if not job is nothing then
for each myjob in job.assignments
myjob.duration1=application.datadifference(myjob.start, myjob.finish)
next myjob
end if
next job
end sub

HTH

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

Amplifying Julie's answer just a bit. The start and finish fields you see
in the resource usage view are when that particular resource begins and ends
his involvement on the task. If more than one resource is on the task, the
starts and finishes might be different. The duration of the task is from
when the earliest starting resource begins on the task until the last
finishing resource ends on the task. Since the resource usage view is
showing information about each individual resource in a vacuum as it were,
the concept of "duration" is meaningless in that context.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

I beg to disagree.
I fail to see why an assignment could not have a duration (time between
start and finish).
In fact, I agree that this is a weakness of Project.

Greetings,

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

Hiya:

I suppose it could but I wonder what it would mean in terms of the project
metrics. Does knowing that Joe's duration is 3 days and Bill's duration is
5 help me meet the schedule requirements? Certainly it impacts the resource
work load and hence the cost but the usage views already include the work
and cost data so it seems redundent.
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

 

[Peter Rooney]

Wow, I seem to have opened a can of worms, here - a veritable MVP fight!
The only reason I want to show duration on the "Resource Usage" view is to
produce a management report for people who can't be bothered to subtract
start date from finish date to work out the duration.

I've just gone through a process of making sure that there aren't any tasks
allocated to more than one person - if there are, I simply add another task
and assign the appropriate task to the appropriate resource.

Whilst I understand what's being said, I too can't see why if I can show the
start date, end date, work value and percentage complete for a group of
tasks, that I can't show duration.

Oh well, can't have everything, I suppose, but thanks one and all for your
observations and willingness to help!

Cheers

Pete

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

There are a couple of background concepts that can help understand this.

First of all is the fact that "duration" has a precise technical definition
in project management that is much more restrictive than the everyday
meaning of the word. What you are describing - finish minus start - is
actually not duration at all even though that's the time period most people
usually have in mind when they use the word in day-to-day conversation.
What you have descibed is actually "elapsed time." In project managment,
"duration" is defined as the "number of working time units as defined by the
calendar governing the task between when work is first performed and when it
ends." That's why, when using the default calendar, a task that starts
Monday at 8am and finishes Tuesday at 5pm has 16 hours duration, not 33
hours. The hours in the time periods Mon 12n-1pm, Mon 5pm-Tue 8am, and Tue
12n-1pm don't count towards the duration. The non-working minutes are
deducted from the elapsed time to compute the duration.

Now lets look at what a resource assigned 100% is doing on that same Mon 8am
to Tue 5pm task. The number of time units he's working is also 16 hours
because he's not working lunches or overnight. What does the 16 hours
represent for him? That's his Work, except we use the units man-hours to
distinguish them from duration time units. 100% units means the resource
work and the task duration are equal and the "duration" of his assignment is
16 hours.

What if he's assigned 50%? The task duration is 16 hours but the work is 8
hours. That implies that out of those 16 hours when he could have been
working, for that resource 8 hours of them were non-working minutes. But
according to our definition of duration, non-working time is always deducted
from the elapsed time to produce the duration value. Now for the 50%
resource, the duration is the time btween Mon 8am and Tue 5pm, MINUS Mon
12n-1pm, Mon 5pm-Tue 8am, Tue 12n-1pm AND ALSO 8 more hours that he didn't
do productive work on the task during the overall timeframe - we don't know
which minutes were non-productive but we know they exist, otherwise we would
have more work output from him. In other words, his "duration" is still the
same as his Work.

So when you display the Work field in the Resource Usage view, you are, in
fact, displaying the duration of that assignment, elapsed time minus
non-working time. Again, be very careful not to confuse that number with
the task duration


--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

 

[Peter Rooney]

Steve,

Thanks very much for taking the time to go through this with me - it really
is appreciated. I'll leave the duration field out (not that I could het it in
anyway) but at least I now know why)

Have a nice weekend

Pete