Fundamentally Project is intended to take the parameters of what will be
required to complete your project in the shortest possible time and tell
you when to schedule the various activities that are required. Its job
is to tell you when to schedule your employees, *NOT* the other way
around where you tell it the schedule you have devised for your people.
That ten hour task you mention - what is driving it to Jan 1? Could the
resource begin work sooner? If he could, why wait until January? If
it's only 10 man-hours of work, why give him 3 months to get it done?
Just have him do it in the first two days or so and get it done with so
whatever follows on can begin.
Duration is not the amount of time you're going to allow for the task to
be completed. It's an estimate of the length of time it actually WILL
take between when the task begins and when it ends. Think of it as the
time you'll actually see physical activity taking place. You guy may
have until 31 Mar to finish the 10 man-hour task, but if he is expected
to work on it full time once he gets around to starting it, the duration
is 10 hours. If his other duties only allow him to work on this task
half of his work day its duration is 20 hours, etc etc. Assuming it's a
10 man-hour task that is impossible to start until 02 Jan (01 Jan is a
holiday and most people aren't working, remember, so it probably can't
start on that date), your resource works an 8 hour work day, and he
needs to have it done by the end of March, Project should show it as a
10 hour duration task starting Fri 02 Jan, ending Mon 05 Jan (at about
10 am), and with a completion deadline of 31 Mar. The 02 Jan start will
be determined either by dependency links from earlier tasks that drive
it there or the resource calendar showing he's not available to work on
it before that date. In rare instances you might set a "Start No
Earlier Than" constraint to force the start to that date but I'm of the
opinion that constraints like that should be used extremely sparingly,
only when driven by external factors such as for instance some essential
tool required for this task won't be delivered before that date (but
building the tool is outside the purview of the project).
Hope this helps ....
--
Steve House
MS Project MVP
Visit
http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs
nathan said:
hi. i am desperately searching for a way to accomplish this
objective: i manage a workgroup of people and set target date ranges
for work to be completed, e.g. Task=Newsletter, Date Range=1/1/04 to
3/31/04. is there a way to "apply" work hours to a Date Range? i am
pulling my hair out on this one. basically all i want to say is this
resource will spend 10 hours on the project during the first quarter.
am i shadow boxing here with ms project? is it only for very, very
precise project plans?
right now i am "tricking" the start/finish settings by using
constraint parameter of "Finish No Earlier Than". So fixed unit
resource would complete 10h estimated work b/w Jan 1, 2004 to Mar 31,
04.
