How to take care interruption to a task?

[Peter]

I have start date, finish date, and duration in my project. When a task is
interrupted due to other higher priority task, how should I maintain the
duration constant but the start and finish date are changed. For example, a
task is originally entered with Start 07/01/05 and Finish 07/03/05 so the
duration is 3 days Due to some interruptions, the task get finished at
07/05/05 and duration became 5 days even the allocated resource has actually
worked on the task for 3 days.

Thanks.

 

[Renke Holert [MVP]]

Hi,

the easiest way is to enter the work in the Task Usage view. Simply type in
0 h during the interruption and type 8 h for the second part.

Kind regards,
Renke

--
Renke Holert

Allocatus - Linking MS Project with Outlook and Notes
http://www.allocatus.com

Project - Das Profibuch
http://www.holert.com/project/profibuch

 

[Peter]

Hi Renke,

Do you mean that I still the change the finish date but then go to Task
Usage View to enter the hours?

Thanks,

Peter

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

Work and duration are totally different measures even though both are
counted using the same units. Duration is *defined* as the total possible
working time between when the task starts and when it finished, regardless
of whether work is actually taking place continuously thoroughout that time
or not. Therefore you can't change the finish date and have the duration
not change for the same reason that you can't say 7 minus 4 equals 2, it's
simply not mathematically correct. On the other hand, work is the portion
of that time actually being converted into useful output. So if your finish
date changes, the duration MUST change because that's simply what duration
IS, the time between start and finish but Work can remain constant even as
the finish date changes. The resource is just working on that task at a
lower average rate with the new finish date. In your example, the task
duration started out as three days and the resource was working at 100%,
doing 3 day's work over the course of 3 days duration. Now the finish date
is pushed back by 2 days because the resource's work on it is interrupted.
He's still generating the same 3 days worth of output. So now he's doing 3
days of work over 5 days of duration for an effective effort units
percentage of 60%

HTH