Re: 20 hour work day?

Steve House [MVP] wrote:

You've got several problems here. First is conceptual - the Project
calendar does not describe the overall hours of operation of your
firm - it describes the hours of work during which the typical task
in your project will take place and thus the hours of ONE generic
member of the resource team. Remember that tasks should be broken
down to the point each one of them describes a package of work done
by individual resources. Tasks are scheduled according the hours of
work of the people who actually do them. So first and foremost if you
work 2 10-hour shifts a day you need TWO calendars, not just one.
Each shift gets its own individual calendar. The first calendar
would describe the hours people on your first 10-hour shift work,
whatever they are, while the second describes to hours of the other
shift. Imagine you are open from 6am to 12midnight and cover those
hours with some people on a 6am-5pm day shift and other workers on a
1pm to 12 midight swing shift. Your Project Calendar is whichever of
those two calendars are the work hours of the individuals who are
doing most of the tasks in your project. Let's say you pick day
shift because more than half of the individuals tasks will likely be
done by workers on days. I create a task with 20 hours duration.
It'll initially show starting Mon 6am and ending Tues 5pm which is
what it really would do with if I assigned just one dayshift person
to it. I assign Bill Dayshift and the task schedule doesn't change.
But if instead I assign Joe Swingshift, the schedule will shift to
show that task starting Mon 1pm and ending Tue at 12mid, again an
accurate description of reality if Joe is the only one working on it.
But if instead I assign BOTH Bill and Joe to it together, the task
will start Mon at 6am and end Mon at 12mid, again accurately
describing the start and end times when a 20 man-hour task is
performed by 2 10-hour a day workers on overlapping shifts.

You don't need to laboriously go month by month changing the
calendars. When you display a calendar (Tools menu,
ChangeWorkingTime) and click on one of the day of the week headers,
it selects that day in perpetuity. If you clicked on Monday its
column goes dark. Changing the hours of work to read "6am - 12 noon"
and "1pm - 5pm" creates a 10 hour workday with a 1 hour lunch for all
future Mondays to come, not just one day nor for just the displayed
month. So at most you have to change 7 days worth of entries. If
your first shift is 6am-5pm with Sat and Sun off, click the Mon
header, hold down shift and click the Fri header and all the weekdays
will be selected. Set the hours to non-default times of 6am to 11am
and 12noon to 5pm or whatever your shift is (don't neglect to define
lunch otherwise your hours and work calculations will be off) and
you're done.

You hadn't specified the hours so I just made 'em up for discussion
but the logic is the same whether your shifts are overlapping like in
my example or sequential perhaps say 3am to 1pm and 1pm to 12 mid -
two calendars will do it with each calendar describing the work of
one specific shift only. The important point is that each should
describe the actual hours of work and signifigant non-paid,
non-working time (such as lunch) of that group of workers.

HTH

In situations like this I tend to have 3 calendars, the two you
describe and then one that will be the project calendar that
encompasses the hours of the other calendars. More a preference than a
hard requirement really.

--

Brian Kennemer
microsoft consulting services
brian[period]kennemer[the "at" symbol]microsoft[period]com
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: 20 hour work day?
    ... First is conceptual - the Project calendar does not describe the overall hours of operation of your firm - it describes the hours of work during which the typical task in your project will take place and thus the hours of ONE generic member of the resource team. ... The first calendar would describe the hours people on your first 10-hour shift work, whatever they are, while the second describes to hours of the other shift. ... Imagine you are open from 6am to 12midnight and cover those hours with some people on a 6am-5pm day shift and other workers on a 1pm to 12 midight swing shift. ... whatever your shift is (don't neglect to define lunch otherwise your hours and work calculations will be off) and you're done. ...
    (microsoft.public.project)
  • Re: Actual Work moving to future
    ... duration hours have elapsed and vice versa, ... >> What that setting will do is when you post progress it disconnects task ... >> shows a day shift, ...
    (microsoft.public.project)
  • Re: Actual Work moving to future
    ... duration hours have elapsed and vice versa, ... >> What that setting will do is when you post progress it disconnects task ... >> shows a day shift, ...
    (microsoft.public.project)
  • Re: Calculations not making sense
    ... The calendar shows the hours of work that takes place on a given workday. ... You need to have 2 calendars, one for day shift and the other for night shift. ... Remember that the project calendar defines the schedule of tasks when they have not yet had resources assigned or otherwise aren't governed by a resource calendar. ...
    (microsoft.public.project)
  • Re: Change the default Project Calendar
    ... each working a different shift in 24/7 environment. ... different callendar to each resource to reflect thier individual shifts. ... Each shift should get its own calendar - day shift, ... > trying to use the 24 hour calendar as the project calendar. ...
    (microsoft.public.project)