Work versus Duration

[Samantha Gore]

a couple of questions:

1) I have always wondered why the 'Work' column is not a standard item in
the 'Entry' table, since it is so fundamental in planning

2) how do people cope with planning for factors causing staff not to work
full time on a task e.g to take account of interruptions during their day,
leave not yet booked, the scope of tehir work being inaccurately estimated. I
am guessing that using PERT may be the way to resolve this and am trying out
some examples, but feedback from others would be appreciated.

Thanks, Samantha

 

[Gérard Ducouret]

Samantha,

1 - You can insert the Work column in any task table such as the table
"Entry". Then you'll copy this table Entry into your Global.mpt file (Tools
/ Organizer) so that the Work column will be available in every project on
your computer.

2 - You can enter the unavailibilty of each resource in the resource
calendar (Tools / Change working time)
Many PM manage these unavailabilities as tasks in "administrative" projects

Hope thids helps

Gérard Ducouret

 

[Samantha Gore]

Hi Gerard, thankyou for the reply.

With regard to my first question, I didn't put it clearly enough. I know how
to insert the column but am intrigued as to why Mircrosoft have never made it
a standard column in the table.

For the second one, I am wrestling with the age old problem of planning one
set of dates for my developers to work to, and presenting another set to my
Director/ customer with contingency in without it being apparent and the
customer stripping out the reality from the project. Increasingly I think
PERT is the way to do it but need to play a bit more with how MSP works, and
especially what is the impact on 'Work' since the PERT calculations all seem
to operate on the 'Duration' fields.

Regards, Samantha
--
Samantha J Gore
Project Manager

Samantha,

1 - You can insert the Work column in any task table such as the table
"Entry". Then you'll copy this table Entry into your Global.mpt file (Tools
/ Organizer) so that the Work column will be available in every project on
your computer.

2 - You can enter the unavailibilty of each resource in the resource
calendar (Tools / Change working time)
Many PM manage these unavailabilities as tasks in "administrative" projects

Hope thids helps

Gérard Ducouret

 

[Gérard Ducouret]

Hi Gerard, thankyou for the reply.

With regard to my first question, I didn't put it clearly enough. I know
how
to insert the column but am intrigued as to why Mircrosoft have never made
it
a standard column in the table.

Usually, Project Managers in IT industry define their task as you do : by
the workload. But in many other industries, users don't ever now the notion
of work. They just use durations (and don't assign any resource...)

For the second one, I am wrestling with the age old problem of planning
one
set of dates for my developers to work to, and presenting another set to
my
Director/ customer with contingency in without it being apparent and the
customer stripping out the reality from the project. Increasingly I think
PERT is the way to do it but need to play a bit more with how MSP works,
and
especially what is the impact on 'Work' since the PERT calculations all
seem
to operate on the 'Duration' fields.

There is no such a feature to introduce a "margin" in each task duration.
You could cobble up this margin (in 2003 version, with the new behavior of
fixed duration in 2007, it doesn't work any longer) but I will not dare to
use it in an industrial project:
- Set a "confortable" duration for the task.
- Set the tasks to Fixed Duration
- Assign a resource
- In the task usage view, remove some workdays on the last days of the task
(set 0s)
- In format / Bars styles : change the end of bars : Early finish instead
of Finish

Gérard

Regards, Samantha

 

[marc.gordon]

Hi Gerard, thankyou for the reply.

With regard to my first question, I didn't put it clearly enough. I know how
to insert the column but am intrigued as to why Mircrosoft have never madeit
a standard column in the table.

For the second one, I am wrestling with the age old problem of planning one
set of dates for my developers to work to, and presenting another set to my
Director/ customer with contingency in without it being apparent and the
customer stripping out the reality from the project. Increasingly I think
PERT is the way to do it but need to play a bit more with how MSP works, and
especially what is the impact on 'Work' since the PERT calculations all seem
to operate on the 'Duration' fields.

Regards, Samantha
--
Samantha J Gore
Project Manager










- Show quoted text -

Hi Samatha,

There are a few ways in which you can hide contingency time that may
not be noticeable to your clients or Director.

1) Overestimate some of your lags -- cost neutral but easily notices
if your client looks at the details
2) Insert extra holiday's in the project calendar -- cost neutral.
Will extend the duration of your tasks
3) Decrease the working hours in the project calendar -- Will extend
the duration of all tasks.
4) Introduce extra revision cycles to produce the product. -- Can
potentially increase cost. eg if you are writing something, you could
add extra tasks to rewrite or edit a second time
5) Create new tasks that only the PM is responsible for -- eg Update
project plan or quality check

Good luck.

Marc Gordon

 

[Steve House]

Adding my two cents to Gerard's comments, I think it is also related to the
estimation process itself. If I have 2 painters available and need to paint
a wall, how do I know how long it will take them? Probably I'm going to
look back at similar tasks in other projects and see how long they took.
Perhaps in the last 5 projects we did, a similarly sized wall took a crew of
two 4 days to complete. But does that really tell me how many actual
man-hours was REALLY required? No, 'cause I don't know how much of that 4
days was spent actively applying paint versus hours spent drinking coffee,
going to the bathroom, talking sports, etc. All I really know with any
reliability it is usually takes a crew of 2 painters XX hours total duration
to paint a wall of YY square feet - the minute-by-minute details of what is
happening during that time are forever lost. So I enter duration, assign
the resources, and let Project calculate the man-hours based on my
assignments so that it can have something to work with for cost estimates
and schedule recalculation when I subsequently edit the assignments. In
terms of scheduling and hitting delivery dates, the work estimates are
really secondary to duration estimates. Frankly I've always found it a
mystery how anyone can say "We're going to allow for YY man-hours to
complete this thing" anyway. It always seems like a bit of hocus-pocus is
involved along with a belief that the work required is somehow something
that can be set by declaration. IMHO, you discover the budget that is
implicit within a deliverable and don't adjust the deliverable to fit a
preconceived notion of what the budget 'ought' to be.

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

Hi Gerard, thankyou for the reply.

With regard to my first question, I didn't put it clearly enough. I know
how
to insert the column but am intrigued as to why Mircrosoft have never made
it
a standard column in the table.

For the second one, I am wrestling with the age old problem of planning
one
set of dates for my developers to work to, and presenting another set to
my
Director/ customer with contingency in without it being apparent and the
customer stripping out the reality from the project. Increasingly I think
PERT is the way to do it but need to play a bit more with how MSP works,
and
especially what is the impact on 'Work' since the PERT calculations all
seem
to operate on the 'Duration' fields.

Regards, Samantha