Change Work field default to change hours, not duration?

[kmbrly]

When you change the Work field, a drop-down list will appear with the option
to Decrease/Increase the number of work hours but keeps the task duration the
same. I'm in IT so very few resources have a 100% allocation to one project.
An 8 hour activity may take 2 peopel 4 days.

I'm not about to try to calculate resource % allocations per every task to
eventually come up with the duration AND work hours I need. My scheduling
effort would increase 3 fold.

I've been told that there is a way to change to default so that, when you
update the Work field, it will not recaluculate the Duration field. We can't
figure out how to get that done. Does anyone else know?

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

Selmect teh task(s) you want to have this behaviour
Click the Task Information button on the toolbar
Advanced tab
Change task type to fixed duration.

To have it defoualt for new tasks:
Tools, Options, Schedule: select Fixed duration as default task type, click
Set as default.
HTH

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
+32 495 300 620
For availability check:
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/Calendar.pdf

 

[salgud]

When you change the Work field, a drop-down list will appear with the option
to Decrease/Increase the number of work hours but keeps the task duration the
same. I'm in IT so very few resources have a 100% allocation to one project.
An 8 hour activity may take 2 peopel 4 days.

I'm not about to try to calculate resource % allocations per every task to
eventually come up with the duration AND work hours I need. My scheduling
effort would increase 3 fold.

I've been told that there is a way to change to default so that, when you
update the Work field, it will not recaluculate the Duration field. We can't
figure out how to get that done. Does anyone else know?

Try double clicking on the task in question, then to go the Advanced tab in
the Task Information box. Change the Task Type to "Fixed Duration" and
click "OK". That should to it.
If you have a lot of these to change, select them all by Control clicking.
Then click on the "Task Information" icon in the Standard Toolbar. Change
them all to "Fixed Duration".
Finally, if you're adding more of these tasks, change the default Task Type
to "Fixed Duration" under "Tools, Options" (can't remember which tab right
now. Maybe "Scheduling"?).
Hope this helps in your world.

 

[Steve House]

Jan and salgud gave you the answer how but I'd like to add a note of caution
about using Fixed Duration in general. Work is the amount of effort the
task requires, expressed as man-hours. Duration is the time that will
elapse between the moment when work on the task begins and when it ends.
Allocation is the rate at which the resource accomplishes work over time.
With fixed duration tasks and manually adjusting hours it's all too easy to
end up with resource allocations >100%, which are a physical impossibility,
at least for a single individual. There is simply no way that one person
can do 12 man-hours of work over the course of an 8 hour workday, for
example, which showing an allocation percentage of 150% would promise. As
you juggle your hours, keep an eye on the allocations to make sure the
resources don't get overallocated, thus promising senior management progress
that you can't deliver.

Another caution with your approcah ... tasks require a discrete deliverable,
no more and no less. Your task is to install upgrades to 100 workstations.
It takes 1 hour for 1 tech to upgrade 1 workstation and that is engraved in
granite by the physical nature of the process. The required work for that
task is 100 man-hours and it simply can't be anything else - it's not a
number you get to arbitrarily choose. You cannot schedule less because you
won't get all workstations upgraded. You shouldn't schedule more because
why waste a tech sitting in front of a workstation doing nothing. So what
are the variables? The rate at which the resource can work and the time it
will take to do all the upgrades. He can do 1 per day, allocation 12%, and
it will take 100 days or he can do 8 per day, work on it 100%, and it will
take 12 days. But if you want it in 8 days it can't be done without finding
another tech somewhere. You can choose allocation and duration it will take
will follow or you can choose duration and the allocation you must use will
follow, but you have no flexibility when it comes to work, you MUST schedule
no less than 100 man-hours or you don't get the project done, and you SHOULD
schedule no more than 100 hours or you go over budget. That's why most
tasks are Fixed Work and generally should be left that way.

Just something to keep in mind as you decide how to proceed.

 

[JahJahBinks]

I have a scenario where I know the amount of man hours to complete an
activity but the man hours and the duration will be different as the
activity involves up to 24 hours of cure time (time to dry). In this
scenario the duration will be greater than the actual man hours. Is
there a way for me to reflect this on the schedule? Each time I add a
resource for an activity it changes the duration (days) to match the
man hours. What I want is to reflect the duration of the task as well
as the man hours to complete the task.

 

[John]

I have a scenario where I know the amount of man hours to complete an
activity but the man hours and the duration will be different as the
activity involves up to 24 hours of cure time (time to dry). In this
scenario the duration will be greater than the actual man hours. Is
there a way for me to reflect this on the schedule? Each time I add a
resource for an activity it changes the duration (days) to match the
man hours. What I want is to reflect the duration of the task as well
as the man hours to complete the task.

JahJahBinks,
There are a couple of ways to handle your scenario. One is to use a
fixed duration type task (Project/Task Information/Advanced tab and
select fixed duration as the task type). However, since you indicate
that you have a fixed cure time, I suggest you show that as a separate
task and not include it as part of the performance task that leads up to
the cure time.

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP

 

[JahJahBinks]

JahJahBinks,
There are a couple of ways to handle your scenario. One is to use a
fixed duration type task (Project/Task Information/Advanced tab and
select fixed duration as the task type). However, since you indicate
that you have a fixed cure time, I suggest you show that as a separate
task and not include it as part of the performance task that leads up
to
the cure time.

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP

John:

I attempted the first solution of using a fixed duration and that
solved part of my problem (duration is no longer affected), however
whenever I add more than one resource my man hours are being
increased.

As for the second scenario, how would I implement the cure time as a
separate task when it will take part (for the most part) on non working
hours (hours not indicated on my schedule)?

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi JahJahBinks,

Set the Duration of the curing task in elapsed time by putting an e in front
of the time, eg 48eh will ignore all non-working time and give you what
you're after.


Mike Glen
Project MVP

 

[John]

John:

I attempted the first solution of using a fixed duration and that
solved part of my problem (duration is no longer affected), however
whenever I add more than one resource my man hours are being
increased.

As for the second scenario, how would I implement the cure time as a
separate task when it will take part (for the most part) on non working
hours (hours not indicated on my schedule)?

JahJahBinks,
When you add an additional resource to a fixed duration task, Project
will automatically assume you are increasing the work content. You will
need to go back and adjust the hours in the Work field after you add the
second resource. That should put you back on track.

With regard to the separate task for cure time. I forgot to mention that
you should enter the duration for that task as elapsed hours (e.g.
8ehrs).

Another way to handle the cure time is by inserting a lag in the
predecessor between performance tasks. For example, let's say the
preparation task takes 4 hours. That is followed by a cure time of 8
hours. That is followed by the post-cure task. Assuming the prep task is
ID 1, the predecessor for the post-cure task would be:
1FS+8ehrs.

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP

 

[JahJahBinks]

Mike & John thanks alot for your help. Your solution works great.

 

[Mike Glen]

You're welcome,

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP
See http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc for my Project Tutorials

 

[Steve House]

My own preference is for a task to always represent physical activity
performed by a resource. Curing time is waiting time where there is no
activity by the resource taking place. Handled that way, "cure time" is not
a task at all but rather a lag time, representing a delay between whatever
resource action takes place to initiate curing and his activity that will
commence after curing is complete. Let's say this is making a part cast
from epoxy resin. We would have two tasks, "Cast Widget" and "Polish
Widget." They would be linked as predecessor and successor. If the part
has to cure for 24 hours between casting and polishing, the link between the
two tasks would have a lag time of 24 elapsed hours added to it.

 

[John]

Mike & John thanks alot for your help. Your solution works great.--
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JahJahBinks,
You're welcome and thanks for the feedback.
John

 

[weased]

The above explanations were VERY helpful - thanks.

I’m scheduling a project where I want Work to equal Duratio
because I don't want to create 'down-time' for employees: an 8 hou
Task, in an 8 hour day, should be finished in 1 day.

Becaue of this, and because each of my tasks are better measured i
hours, i want to change Duration to be stored in Hours (not Days).
Should i do this? Or should i use both the Work and the Duration field
(and make them the same value)?

Is this the correct approach?

If I don’t do this, I find that once the Project Timelines ar
published, everybody ignores the Hours and focusses on the fact that th
project is 'technically' On Schedule (and budgets are blown).

Some guidance (and explanations of fields) would be much appreciated

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

You cannot decide to yes or no use any field - they're there, and Project
will make its calculations with it.
All Duration and Work fields are calculated in MINUTES, that is not an
option.
In Project Professioanl or Standard you can SHOW these values as hours or
days, but that doesn't change the calculations by any means.

In Tools, Options, Schedule, you can change the representation of Work and
Durtaion. However, durations already entered will still be shown in the
units they were entered in. To change them all Tools, Macro, Macros,
Format_Duration, Run.

Hope this helps,

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
+32 495 300 620
For availability check:
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/Calendar.pdf

 

[Steve House]

To have work=duration all you need to do is assign only one resource to each
task and assign all resources at 100% making sure each task is the default
Fixed Units so the units are held constant on subsequent edits. The
equation W=D*U is an identity that Project will *always* keep true. If U
(units) are always 100% (unity), W=D by defintion.

Don't confuse duration and elapsed time. Elapsed time is the sort of time
your watch and the calendar on your wall keep track of. Duration is the
number of working time minutes, according to the task's governing calendar,
between when the task starts and when it ends. Thus D<=Et in all cases.
That's why a task that starts at 8am and ends at 5pm has an 8 hour duration,
not 9 hours, when using the default calendar - lunch is non-working and
doesn't count toward duration. Likewise, a task that starts Mon 8am and
ends Fri 5pm has an Elapsed Time of 105 hours but its duration is only 40
hours because none of the hours of the day outside of the time intervals
8am-12n and 1pm-5pm count towards duration.

 

[mlv]

I have the opposite issue where default settings for calculating th
schedule not working. I have a task that is fixed Work, but somehow th
scheduled finish date is not adjusting properly according to my defaul
Standard Calendar.
However when I assign a resource, the finish date schedules correctly.
I'm using Project 2007.

Can someone please help me figure this one out?
Regards
ml

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

As long as you haven't assigned (a) resource(s) to the task, there is no
relationship whatsoever between Work and Duration; and it is Duration that
schedules the task's finish vs its start.

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
+32 495 300 620
For availability check:
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/Calendar.pdf

 

[mlv]

Hi Jan,
Thanks for your feedback.
So even if I have the task as Fixed Work, it will not adjust the
Schedule finish date based on the default working calendar set in your
project options.
According to MS link
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project/HA102130271033.aspx

Scroll down to question: What are the default settings for calculating
the schedule?

Project calculates the duration of tasks based on the definitions of
the duration units on the Calendar tab of the Options dialog box (Tools
menu). Just like a normal monthly calendar, the year begins in January
and each week begins on Sunday or Monday. By default, when Project
calculates duration units, one day equals 8 hours, one week equals 40
hours, and one month equals 20 working days. If you enter start and
finish dates for tasks and don't enter start and finish times, Project
uses 8:00 A.M. as the default start time and 5:00 P.M. as the default
end time.


With this information, I expected the Finish date to adjust according
to the work hours entered for the task? Or am I misinterpreting this?

Thank you
mlv (Mollie)

 

[JulieS]

Hello Mollie,

What you are missing is that in Project, unless resources are
assigned to the task, there is no relationship between the work
field and the duration field. If you create a new task and enter
duration then insert the Work field, you note the work field is
zero. Change the work field to *any* value, duration will not
adjust. Change the duration value, work will not adjust. **Only**
when resources are assigned, does the relationship between work and
duration become meaningful through the formula:
Work = Duration * Resource assignment units

I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie
Project MVP

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for the FAQs and additional
information about Microsoft Project