Re: 20 hour work day?

Yep - I can see that as an option. My reasoning is based on the idea that the project calendar is what applies to a task prior to assigning resources (or to tasks that won't have resources assigned in the plan for whatever reason). Since a task is done by a person, whether you actually know who that person is or not, the timings you get before assigning the resources should be reasonably close to the timings you'll have after assigning the resources. We may not know if task X is going to be done by Joe Dayshift or Bill Swingshift when we first put it into the plan, but we know that it will probably be done by a single individual or team working as an individual unit and work will start and stop in time to their work-hour pattern. When we enter a 20 hour task into the list, I suggest its elapsed time should show when the person doing it will have worked on it 20 hours taking into account when he's there and when he's not, not when our business has been open for 20 hours. I want to see timings that are at least within a first approximation of where it will end up after we decide who will do it. Hence my contention that the Project calendar should really be a generic resource calendar describing the work hours of a "typical" resource. Our firm may operate 24 hours a day and various tasks may be done by each of the shifts but it will be a rare individual task in the project where work on it will proceed 24/7. I'm looking for consistency here, where "5 day" duration really means "5 working shifts" duration.

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


"Brian Kennemer" <brian[period]kennemer[the at symbol]microsoft[period]com> wrote in message news:SsCdnbEZ0-M2kR7ZnZ2dnUVZ_vadnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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: 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: Multiple Work Calendars and Duration
    ... The base unit of duration is the minute. ... according to the conversion factor on the Tools Options Calendar ... will take one person 24 hours to do so you're putting 1 day shift, ... Use the split screen to assign the resources. ...
    (microsoft.public.project)
  • Re: Multiple shifts and resource usage
    ... "Trevor Rabey" wrote: ... used the Standard Calendar to start the project at 08:00 on Day 1. ... You need a day shift resource and an afternoon shift resource and each ...
    (microsoft.public.project)
  • Re: Change Working Time
    ... My only problem with using the 24 hour calendar as the Project Calendar is the extreme difference in start and finish dates you see for tasks before they are assigned to resources versus the start and finish of the same tasks or tasks with the same duration after they are assigned to resources. ... That's a huge difference and IMHO can easily lead to plans that are extremely misleading when tasks with and tasks without resources are mixed in the same schedule. ... Even if we are not actuall;y assigning the resources to tasks ourselves, they still are going to be worked by somebody and that somebody most definitely does not work 24/7. ...
    (microsoft.public.project)
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