Options / Duration vs. Work

[JR Winder]

Hi,

I was recently able to watch a CBT series of videos for MS Project. The
instructor within the videos made some interesting recomendations in regards
to changing some of the default options Project comes with and also the way
in which work/duration for tasks is entered. I'm interested in feedback
from the MVP's of this forum as to if these recomendations make sense or are
even needed.

One of the option chnages was to change the 'Default task type" from 'Fixed
Units' to 'Fixed Work'. He said it was his opinion that MS got this wrong
when they released Project. I've done some reading but haven't really been
able to understand how 'Fixed Work' impacts the project schedule differently
than 'Fixed Units'. Does this recomendation make sense?

The other recomendation he made that I'm confused about is he suggested
adding the 'Work' field column to the Gnatt Chart view and use it rather
than 'Duration' to enter task time estimates. Does this tie into the 'Fixed
Work' task type recomendation above. Is there any benifit to entering a
tasks time into the 'Work' field rather than the 'Duration' field?

Thanks for you time and assistance.

JR

 

[Gérard Ducouret]

JR,

All these recommendations apply to IT Projects, where tasks are defined more
by their workload than by their duration.
Hope this helps,

Gérard Ducouret

 

[JR Winder]

Interesting. I'm a softward dev PM...using these recomendations I assume
would make sense for me. Is there a 'best practices' guide/web site/etc for
Project regarding usage for IT projects

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

Regarding your technical question - which difference there is in the
behaviour.
That is only when you yourself change duration.
Then with FW Units will change and with FU Work will change.
And that is exactly why I think MS was perfectlly right in setting FU as a
default.
I can never allow a tool to tell me somebody is now scheduled @ 125%, of for
that matter, more than what his management has decided as Max Units.

Greetings,

 

[Gérard Ducouret]

JR,

Have a look at Mike's site :
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=320
This will help, for sure.

Gérard Ducouret

 

[Steve House]

IMHO, fixed units makes sense because if you have someone full time on your
project you would normally use him 100%, that is, when you tell him to do
something you expect him to devote his full attention to it until it is done
and then move on to something else. So assigned units becomes the "hinge
point" that remains fixed and revisions to estimated duration means the work
required should be recalculated while inputting revisions to work required
means that duration should updated.

As for the other, I think it depends on what you trust that you are most
accurately able to estimate, man-hours of work or hours of duration. If I'm
look at a room and trying to figure out how much time to allow for its
painting in my project plan, I'm likely to look at previous history and see
how long it took us in the past to paint similarly sized rooms. So I look
back and find in previous refurbishments, a room like this one took on
average about 3 days to paint. But that's duration - I can say that's 24
man-hours of work but I don't REALLY have too good an idea of just how much
of those three days was spent actually applying paint. I can call it 24
man-hours, we paid for 24, but is that really how much work the task per se
required? Could we have done it for 20 man-hours or 18? That's harder to
say. So if I'm going to put it into my new plan today, I think I can more
reliably say the task will require 3 days than to say it will require XX
man-hours. I think one of the problems with estimating man-hours is that it
leads to the notion that the work requirements of the task are something
that can be decided by management rather than something implicit in the work
itself.