Changing Working Time

[Steve]

My company has cut back the number of hours our employees work in a day from
9 to 8. I wanted to change my schedule to reflect this, but if I do, all the
durations change. I know I can add a new calendar to any new project, but
what of those projects which started during the 9 hour days and are as of yet
incomplete and will continue into the 8 hour days. When I change the hours
per day option, any 9 hour day duration adjusts the entire task to the new 8
hour day from the begining. Is there another way around this?

Project 2007 Sp2 if that helps.

 

[JulieS]

Hi Steve,

If your employees are working fewer hours per day but their amount
of work has not decreased, then the duration should increase as they
can accomplish less work per day. Either you will need to allow the
durations to increase or you'll need to allow Project to increase
assignment units, and overallocate the resources.

If all of your resources are now going to work 8 hours per day, not
9, I'd suggest changing the resources' base calendars through Tools

Change Working Time and dropping the hours back to a total of 8

hours per day. Again, that will increase the task duration.

See FAQ 5 at http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm

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

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Steve --

You will need to make the change in two places. One of the two you have
correctly identified is in the Options dialog, changing the Hours Per Day
option on the Calendar page. You will also need to edit the working
schedule Standard calendar in your project (Tools - Change Working Time) to
reflect the 8-hour working day, assuming that is the calendar used as your
Project Calendar and as the Base Calendar for your resources.

Once you have made these changes, the Duration for every task will be
recalculated, based on an 8-hour working day. This will happen for every
task, even those tasks in the past that are completed or in-progress. The
Hours Per Day option is used to calculate the Duration of EVERY task in the
project, so you will need to live with that. On the other hand, by changing
the Standard calendar, all in-progress and unstarted tasks will have their
Remaining Work rescheduled to an 8-hour working day, giving you an accurate
project schedule. The schedule of completed tasks will remain unchanged.

Hope this helps.

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

Just adding a note of explanation to the other two replys to this post ...
Project always measures duration in minutes, regardless of the units you
input or display. If you work a 9 hour day and a task has 3 days duration,
in the only units Project actually understands the duration is 3*9*60 or
1620 minutes. If you now change the workday to 8 hours per day, the
duration of the task itself remains exactly the same - 1620 minutes - but it
will now take 1620/480 or 3.375 standard workdays to accomplish the same
amount of work. Then the working time calendar comes into play to tell how
many actual civil calendar days will be required to burnup the minutes in
that number of standard "workdays."

HTH

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Steve --

I really like your follow up explanation. Thanks for sharing!

Just adding a note of explanation to the other two replys to this post ...
Project always measures duration in minutes, regardless of the units you
input or display. If you work a 9 hour day and a task has 3 days
duration, in the only units Project actually understands the duration is
3*9*60 or 1620 minutes. If you now change the workday to 8 hours per day,
the duration of the task itself remains exactly the same - 1620 minutes -
but it will now take 1620/480 or 3.375 standard workdays to accomplish the
same amount of work. Then the working time calendar comes into play to
tell how many actual civil calendar days will be required to burnup the
minutes in that number of standard "workdays."

HTH


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

My company has cut back the number of hours our employees work in a day
from
9 to 8. I wanted to change my schedule to reflect this, but if I do, all
the
durations change. I know I can add a new calendar to any new project, but
what of those projects which started during the 9 hour days and are as of
yet
incomplete and will continue into the 8 hour days. When I change the
hours
per day option, any 9 hour day duration adjusts the entire task to the
new 8
hour day from the begining. Is there another way around this?

Project 2007 Sp2 if that helps.