Re: wrestling with Percent
- From: "davegb" <davegb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 3 Apr 2006 15:33:10 -0700
Larry wrote:
I've created a simple plan with dependencies, durations, resources and costs.
Task 5 takes four days and Ben and Jennifer each work 50% throughout this
task.
Let's say I decide the task needs to take five days. How do I keep from
having Project change my 50% values?
Also, if I want to change Ben and Jennifer's load to 75%, I would expect the
end of the task to happen sooner. But if I decide I still want the project
to show the end date I gave it originally (if other words, I only want the
load for this task to change), I shouldn't have to change the load %, the fix
the end date, then change the load % again. Right? In there a project plan
default I should set to have my decisions override?
Here's a suggestion. If you double click on any task, you'll see the
Task Information box appear. Near the top of the page, you'll see "Task
Type", with 3 choices. Those are "Fixed Units" (the default default
type), Fixed Duration, and Fixed Work. Next to this pull-down box,
you'll see a check box labeled "Effort Driven". These 3 types and the
adjacent option determines what Project does when you add or delete
resources from that task.
Note: You can change the default type by going to "Tools, Options" and
selecting the Schedule tab.
Basically, if a task is Fixed Units, the software tries to hold the
Units of the resource constant when other parameters, such as work and
duration, are changed. So if you have a Fixed Units task, and you
change duration, the software will adjust the work accordingly.
It uses a simple formula to do this:
Work = Duration x Units
This formula applies as is if work and duration are in the same units,
say Days. If they are in different units, then a coversion factor is
needed. If you are using default settings for Duration and work, they
will be in days and hours respectively. So the formula becomes:
Work = Duration x Units x 8
since there are 8 hrs in a working day (default settings asssumed here)
Once you know the above formula, the best way to learn how Project
assigns resources to tasks is to play with different settings by
entering different information and watching what happens. When I did
this, I set up a little chart in Excel, set up the fixed variable, then
changed each varible in turn to see that happened, including the
"fixed" variable. I know, sounds strange to mess with a "fixed"
variable, but Project allows it so you need to know what it does when
the "fixed" variable varies.
An hour or so will help you with these settings. Usually, you'll find
that one or two combinations will do most of what you want to happen in
Project.
Also, keep in mind that when you make changes to resource assignments,
what happens is very order dependent. Setting a task to Fixed Duration,
then changing the units of a resource will give a very different result
than changing the units and then setting it to Fixed Duration.
Hope this helps in your world.
.
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