New to MS Project 02. How do you schedule vacation time.

[TomSch]

I am new to MS Project 02. How do you schedule vacation time.
For example: A developer has 192 hours of vacation time. This time could
be taken over the course of a year Jan. 01 to Dec. 31 but the duration would
be 192. No matter what I do in project the duration is 2080 hours or the
start and finish is off. We have other tasks that are spread out over year
like vacation time. Is there a better way to do this.

Thanks
Tom

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

I would schedule something like 2 days every month (say the 15th and the
30th)
You may argue that this is not true, but a few minutes of vacation a day
isn't either.
HTH

 

[TomSch]

I could schedule it all at the end of the year. We were using a product
called Project WorkBench, which allowed us to spread it out over the year.

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

In Project duration is the time period between when something first happens
and when it ends regardless of whether it runs continuously in between those
times or not. So if Joe took a day of vacation early in January, some more
at various intervals throughout the year, and the remainder sometime in
December, the duration (if you represented it as a task) would be close to
one year while the "work" might well be 192 hours. Some of my compatriots
disagree but frankly, I wouldn't put it in the Gantt chart at all. I don't
like to see anything in the project plan that is not directly related to
creating the project's deliverables - vacation and administrative
obligations don't do that and so IMHO shouldn't be in the task list. Tasks
always involve resources doing work driving the project forward while
vacation, by definition, is someone not working <grin>. The task list is
specific to the project work only and is often only a subset of everything
the resources are doing. Enter the vacation days he's due as non-working
time in his calendar when you know when he'll take them. Tasks in the
project he's scheduled on for those days will move in response to the fact
that he won't be there to do the work on those dates.