Duration x units formula

[Dianeg]

Hi, i'm new to project and thought I'd got the hang of the work=duration x
units formula but project is not working as I thought it should.

I have a task that is 2 days duration with 2 people working at 100% and
project quite rightly shows 32hours work. When I look at the task usage it
shows Thursday at 4 hours Friday at 8 and Monday at 4 - (for each resource)
surely this is 3 days and not 2? None of the resources are allocated to
other tasks. Why didn't it allocated 8 hours on Thursday and Friday?

The task is effort driven although this shouldn't make a difference unless
I'm adding or emoving a resource yes?

I'd really appreciate an answer, my basic understanding of this is
obviously wrong

Thanks

Diane

 

[Dave]

Hi Diane

I think you understanding is right. You will probably find that your
task doesn't start until midday on Thursday (you can examine start/end
times by choosing the appropriate format from Tools/Options/View/Date
Format).

You are actually confusing the duration of 2 days with the number of
days the activity spans. For example, now it is roughly midday on
Friday so two days from now is midday on Sunday. If I did the same
calculation starting at 00:00 on Friday, then I would only count Friday
and Saturday so would end at midnight on Saturday.

You might also like to look at the Task Usage or Resource Usage views as
that will help you understand where Project has assigned the work (you
may want to adjust the timescale by right-clicking on the header in the
time-phased part of the chart on the right so that it shows hours).

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Diane,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

I guess that the task start at noon on the first day an finishes at noon on
the third day. Try Tools/Options.../View tab and change the Date format to
one that includes the time. The Duration measures the working time between
start and finish of the task, so although it spans 5 calendar days or 3
working days, it is only 16 working hours or 2 days in Duration.

FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information can be seen at
this web address: http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm

Hope this helps - please let us know how you get on

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

 

[Dianeg]

Thanks for the welcome and the response, I've a feeling that you will be
hearing a lot from me!

You were both quite right, the task did start around midday but in reality
wouldn't the task actually start at 0800 the beginning of the next day?
Resources wouldn't necessarily start as soon as the other task has finished.

The example I'm going through is the Microsoft step by step guide (brilliant
by the way) with picking a filming location followed by holding auditions.
The auditions would probably start on the next day not 1300 on the same one.
The point I'm trying to make is that the timings on the project will not be
accurate will they?

i hope this makes sense

Regards

Diane

 

[Dave]

Why would the task naturally start the next day? In your *specific*
example, it may be impractical to go out to site and start filming part
way through a day. However, for the vast majority of tasks, I expect my
resources to pick up the next task as soon as the predecessor is finished.

Normally, auditions/interviews would have to be fixed some way in
advance so can't really be influenced too much be predecessor tasks (or
at last, you have to allow sufficiently much contingency to let you
believe that you have a pretty good chance of hitting those dates). In
other words, you can't just finish the predecessor tasks and then pick
up the phone and start getting people to turn up for auditions
half-an-hour later.

 

[Dianeg]

You're right, thanks again. It all makes so much more sense

regards

Diane

 

[Mike Glen]

You're welcome, Diane

Critical Path Planning (on which Project is based) allows for this situation
in that it tells you what the end result will be if you leave no gaps, thus
finishing the project as soon as possible. If a subsequent task has to
start at 0800, there are planning ways to produce that, but there is no way
Project will know when to start the next task without telling it, how could
it?.

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