How To Track Estimated Time but Create A Window Of Time to Do It

[Na Tanya]

I’m new to Project and I thought that someone here might help me with a
question. I am trying to track how long all of my tasks take, i.e. 30
minutes, not 1 day. Ultimately, I want to assign it to a week or a 2-day
window when I will do the task. What keeps happening is that I set the
duration for 30 minutes, but when I put a start and end date then it adds 2
days to my 30 minute task. Case in point, a task would be a 30-minute phone
call but I’m not sure when I can actually make the call but I know it will
happen somewhere on Tuesday or Wednesday. So the duration will and should be
30 minutes, BUT I don’t want the start and finish time to be 3/13/06-3/13/06.
Instead, I would like the start and finish date to reflect on the two days
that I could make this 30 minute call. I’ve looked through this forum,
glanced through Project 2003 For Dummies and I’ve done basic tutorials but
I’m still uncertain if the ‘window of time’ is doable. I hope this is clear.
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

 

[Rick Roszko]

You need to use Work and Duration.

Set Work = .5h and set Duration = 2d

Insert column "Work", "Actual Work" and "Remaining Work" and see how that
goes in the Gantt Chart.

Use "view" "Resource Usage" to see Actual Work, Work and Duration (insert
the columns you want to see). In the right panel, right click in the area
and choose "Work" and "Actual Work".

"Work" is what is assigned. "Actual Work" is what is done. Play the
columns to see how that goes.

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

There are several ways one could handle your scenario. Duration, first of
all, is the time that elapses between when work is first done on the task
and when it is complete. It is NOT the "window" in which you might do the
task. Duration is always a period of observable physical activity. In the
case of your phone call, whenever you make that call you're not going to be
doing anything else at the same time and you're not going to keep the other
party on the phone for 2 days. You're going to make the call, talk for 30
minutes, and then you're done. That's a 30 minute duration task with you
working on it 100%, doing .5 man-hours of work. If you have in hand all the
information you need to carry out the conversation on Monday morning you
could make the call as early as Monday 8am. You need to have done it
sometime before the end of the day on Tuesday. My preferred way of handling
that would be to show the call as a 30 minute duration task, perhaps with a
Start No Earlier Than contraint of Monday 8am, and a finish Deadline of
Tuesday 5pm. The only time I'd show it as a 2 day duration task would be if
I intended to have it done in little bits and pieces spread out over the two
days with the first little piece starting Monday at 8am and the last bit
finishing Tuesday at 5pm. If the nature of the work was such that you could
spread it out over two days, it started on Monday at 8am and you finished it
Tuesday at 5pm, doing it so the work actually did spread out over the two
days, it would be a 2 day duration (16 hours) task with 0.5 hours of work
and you would be working on it at a rate of little over 3%.

HTH