relation between work and duration?

[chepe35]

Hello friends,

as a newbie I try to plan as I ever did (on paper): Define resources (persons), estimate work hours of each sub-task and then - expect to see the duration of the task.
But the program only shows me under "Duration" the longest work time of all the related sub-tasks, but not the added work time of all related sub-tasks.

What do I have to do?

 

[IRstuff]

You need to insert another column to view "Work".

Duration is calendar duration of a task

TTFN

 

[BernardErtl]

If by task and sub-tasks you mean that a task is really a summary of distinct tasks, you probably just need to add schedule logic to tie the (sub-)tasks together to get the duration of the (summary) task to reflect the correct time span.

Bernard Ertl
www.interplansystems.com
- eTaskMaker Project Planning Software
- ATC Professional Turnaround Management Software

 

[chepe35]

thanks, folks,
but...I just have inserted the "work" column, and I have put the planned work hours in there. And I marked the pre-defined persons (are able to work no more than 8 hrs daily) in the "resources" column.
Now what I expected was that the work to be done by the distinct resources would give the correct duration. P.ex. Task 1 needs 5 hrs work, task 2 needs 7 hrs and task 3 needs 4 hrs, all done by resource "Mr.A". So the duration should be the added time, i.e. 12 hrs. But the program calculates 7 hrs, as if resource A would do the tasks in a parallel way (or as if I had planned to do the work each by a different resource)

Because I cannot believe that MSproject is not able to handle this - What do I have to preadjust?

There is a way to schedule it using the "predecessors" function, I know, but this should not be the comfortable way.

best regards!

 

[IRstuff]

The default is to assume that all tasks start concurrently, since Project has no clue what you intend to do. How do you expect Project to do this without input from you?


To change that, you need to "link" tasks in a serial chain, using the "Predessors" column.



TTFN

 

[chepe35]

Yes, the predecessors column.
By studying the program I found a way to do as I think to:
Resource leveling hour by hour, looking for overallocations. This seemes to work.

 

[santo2002]

chepe35, MSProject leveled the resources and displaced the tasks so one can start after "Mr. A" finished to do the first ones.

But when you have different resources for each, again will show only the total duration as the longest task. So what should be done is a combination: Logically link the tasks (as IRstuff said), and then, resource leveling.