Newbie struggling with dates

[Linda]

I've inherited a Project schedule with some tasks
scheduled to take .5 days. I entered scheduled durations
and let Project calculate all dates but the first task's
start date. When I enter actual dates, I'm getting changes
in duration, even when the dates I enter are the same as
the scheduled dates. All .5 days change to 1 day. I still
get problems when I test changing the scheduled durations
to 1 day. I have a 1 day task with actual start and end on
July 12. But since it's really a half day task, the next
task's actual start is also July 12, and the actual finish
is July 13. Project is saying this is 2 days' duration,
and showing a 1 day variance. I would have thought it
would consider this task to take less, not more, time than
scheduled. What do I need to change to make .5 days work,
and avoid that change to 2 days' duration?

 

[Steve House]

First of all, make sure that you're entering the actuals in the Actual
Duration, Actual Start or Actual Finish fields and not just updating the
plain Duration, Start, or Finish fields. Secondly, go to the Tools Options
menu, View tab and set a date format that lets you see both date and time in
your date entries. That can make a lot of things clearer. BTW, don't even
enter the first task's start date. That will be picked up automatically
from the Project Start Date entry in the Project Information page (which you
should set manually to the date the project, ie the first task, will begin).

Without actually seeing your plan it's hard to say exactly why the things
you're describing are happening but this should get you started in figuring
it out.

 

[Linda]

Thank you very much for your help. The times do help
clarify things. I was already making sure to add the
actual dates rather than plain start, etc. I can't let the
first task start date come from the project date, because
the schedule consists of a number of languages, all with
separate start times.
The dilemma I face is that we tend to have some small
tasks that can all be done in one day, and only take an
hour or so. But one of our managers insists that we can
only enter a minimum schedule time of .5 days. So we end
up with three .5 day tasks in a row, with actual dates
that start and end within one day. I thought Project would
simply see this as being ahead of schedule, but it does
odd things to the dates, such as starting the third task
at 8AM that day, when the previous task ended at 5PM the
same day. I tried making the actual dates .25 days and
leaving the scheduled dates .5 days, but this doesn't seem
to adjust the start time of the next task.
Do you have any further suggestions to help me with this,
or are we trying to do something Project wasn't meant to
handle?

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Linda
If time of day matters, enter actual dates INCLUDING time of day such as
(European notation)
dd/mm/yy hh:mm or 31/12/04 18:57
HTH

 

[Steve House]

The schedule consists of a number of languages????? 'Scuse me for being
thick, but what does the language have to do with when a task starts?

When you enter the actuals, are you entering it in the Actual Start field
typing the date AND time it began, are you just selecting the date it
started by clicking on it in the field's pulldown calendar, or are you using
the "update project" tools from the menu or toolbar?

When you enter actuals, Project takes you at your word. So if I have a task
sequence A->B->C I can enter that B & C started at the same time even though
they were originally planned to be sequential and Project will dutifully
record my entry as being fact. If you simply enter that task B started on
Sept 1st by typing in the date without typing exactly what time, it will use
whatever the start time of work is listed as the "Default Start Time" on the
Tools, Options, Calendar page. If you select the start date from the
pulldown menu, it will use whatever the start time of the workday it is that
is listed in the work hours of the project calendar. If you simply mark the
task as complete, it will set the start and end date and time to whatever
the plan is presently saying it is scheduled for, just checking it off means
it happened exactly according to the current plan.


--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer/Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

 

[linda]

The schedule tracks the translation of software into
various languages, by different translators. That's the
languages bit.
I've got it working (sort of) after reading about entering
times as well as dates. That lets me enter less than .5
days and so I can enter the correct finish date for three
tasks scheduled for .5 days, that all ended on the same
day.
It's a bit kludgy, because we know for a fact none of
these tasks really takes .5 days, and we get variances for
things that we know ended when we thought they would. It's
just a manager's demand that we not schedule less than
that. What's really needed is to schedule the .5 days, but
not as the resource's full-time occupation. It may take
him 1 hour of real time, but for scheduling purposes, we
need to say it starts at the beginning of the day and ends
halfway through the day. So in real life, we end up with
scenarios like three half day tasks in a row that we know,
because they each take an hour of dedicated time, will
likely all finish on the same day. I can well understand
if Project can't accept the same day actual finish date
for all those tasks, without me entering faked times that
amount to less than a half day each. Of course, if you
think of anything, I'm all ears.

-----Original Message-----
The schedule consists of a number of

languages????? 'Scuse me for being

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Linda,

- You schedule half day tasks, and when you want to assign a resource you
can assign it less than 100% of the time (for instance through the Resource
Assignment window)
- When the task is finished you enter Actual Finish (including time of day).
Is there any problem with that?

HTH

 

[linda]

I don't think assigning, say, 50% time for a resource is
changing anything. I tried that with one set of tasks,
then reentered the dates/times I had before, and got the
same durations and duration variances. Which I guess makes
sense - I'm entering a certain number of hours, and that
creates things like .63 days or .38 days. The percent of
time spent by a resource doesn't seem to factor into that.
But it might be useful for me to add, anyway, just because
it's a little closer to the truth, should we want to get
into tracking resources' overallocations.