Enterprise Project Calendars

[CarharttRandy]

We are currently using MS Project 2003 and PWA 2003. We currently have 12-15
Project Managers with about 40+ projects publushed out to the server. Our
base calendar (that we created) uses 7.5 hour work days (which coincides with
our work day of 8-4:30 with an hour break). To make it easier on PMs, we
want to change our "Base Calendar" back to 8 hour days. My question is:
What ramifications will making this change have on the 40+ projects that are
already openend and published? Thanks!

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Randy --

At the very least, you will see at least the following consequences in every
enterprise project:

1. All uncompleted tasks will be rescheduled to finish earlier than their
original schedule, based on the longer work day.
2. All Durations will be recalculated and reduced accordingly, based on the
longer work day.

I am assuming on consequence #2 above that your PM's made the following
Options changes in every one of their enterprise projects based on the 7.5
hour working day:

1. Clicked Tools - Options - Calendar
2. Changed the Default end time value to 4:30 PM
3. Changed the Hours per day value to 7.5 hours
4. Changed the Hours per week value to 37.5 hours
5. Clicked OK

If each of your PM's did the above five steps in each of their enterprise
projects, they will need to reverse those changes after you reset the
Standard calendar to show 8 hours of work per day. Specifically, they will
need to change the Default end time to 5:00 PM, the Hours per day to 8h, and
the Hours per week value to 40h for every project they manage. Hope this
helps.

 

[CarharttRandy]

Thanks Dale. As for your assumption, what we did was create an enterprise
calendar and called it "Carhartt Base Calendar". This calendar held the
default of 8:00 - 4:30 and a 7.5 hour work day. So when PM's created a
project and saved it tot he server, they simply chose this calendar as their
default. In short, "no" - they did not go through those five steps. They
were done at an Enterprise level.

Still, I am assuming the two consequences still hold valid, correct?

Thanks,
Randy

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Randy --

Given your response, I'm not exactly sure what the consequences will be.
Could you answer these followup questions for me:

1. When you created the Carhartt Base Calendar, did you also assign this as
the Base Calendar for each resource in the Enterprise Resource Pool? Or did
you simply leave every resource using the Standard calendar as the Base
Calendar?

2. When you say that your PM's did not go through those five steps and that
they were done at the enterprise level, where exactly did you perform these
five steps? If you made those settings in the Enterprise Global file, that
was a mistake on your part, as this would have absolutely NO impact
whatsoever on the schedule of the individual enterprise projects. Or did
you perform these five steps in the enterprise project template from which
each PM created his/her individual enterprise projects? If not, then these
changes should have been done in each individual enterprise project.

Depending on the answers you give me, there might be no change whatsoever in
the individual projects, or they may be changed as I stated in my last
message. Let us know what you did regarding the questions in #1 and #2
above? Thanks!

 

[CarharttRandy]

Dale -

It looks like you bring up a good point that I wasn't aware of. That is -
it doesn't matter what enterprise calendar is assigned to the project. It
only appears to go with what calendar the Resources is assigned to within the
ERP. To answer your questions:

1. We assigned each resource to the Carhartt Base Calendar. We did not
simply leave them using the standard calendar.

2. I performed those five steps at the Enterprise level while creating the
Carhart Base Calendar (within the enterpise global).

I notice that it seems to be working the way I had originally intended.
That is, currently when I assign a task a 7.5h duration - it shows at one
complete day. If I choose a 16h duration - it shows up as MORE than two
days. So that part seems to be in place (which is because I assigned each
resource to the Carhartt Base Calendar).

So I am guessing - if we want to go BACK to 8 hour days - all I need to do
is change the Carhartt Base Calendar to 8 hour days & 40 weeks. But what I
fear is that all projects will artificially inflate by 1/2 hour for every 8
hours of task time. Correct?

Thanks,
Randy

 

[Mike]

Randy

Project will store durations as an absolute value (minutes or
thousandths of a minute - anyway a small unit). The impact of that
unit in terms of dates is clearly a function of the calendar, a shorter
day will give you a longer elapsed time. The display of the duration is
determined by the local options setting, equally the duration value
itself is impacted by this setting - entering a 1 month duration will
equate to 8 x 20 hours (or whatever the local options are set to). So
bottom line it depends what the planner intended when he estimated that
5 day duration.

regards

Mike

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Randy --

Assuming you change the Hours per day value in each project to 8 hours, and
assuming you change the Carhartt Base Calendar to show 8 hours per day, then
I think that one of the main consequences would be that every tasks's
Duration would shorten accordingly. In the future, this would impact the
Work calculations when project managers plan new projects. For example,
under your old system, if I set the Duration of a task to 5 days and then
assigned a resource at 100% Units, the software would calculate that the
task would have 37.5 hours of Work. Under your new system, the software
would calculate that the task would have 40 hours of Work. Just some
thoughts. Mike's comments are good as well.