Re: 20 hour work day?

Yep - it is a problem to define "typical" - that's why I usually just make the assumption that 8-5 is typical. My problem with using the hours of business as the project calenday is that sort of arrangement is based on the assumption that a task that starts, say, Monday at 8am, will be handed off to workers on one shift after the other with work proceeding continuously until the task is completed. The painters working on the South wall on day shift will go home at the end of their shift but work will be picked up by the swing shift painters where they left off and continue unabated. By all means that is true of some tasks but in general I don't think it's the case in the vast majority of situations. Of course it varies from industry to industry, but in the "typical" office or knowledge work environment today (there's that word again LOL) a task usually will be assigned to just one person or group who work together and work on the task stands-down at the end of their workday and goes "on hold" until they return, NOT being picked up by someone on the next shift wven though workers may well be physically present on the property. For example, if the task was to code a program module it would be impossible for Programmer A to hand off the work to incoming Programmer B at the end of his workday and then pickup where B left off when he comes back in the next morning. Or a day-shift illustrator working on art work for an ad campaign is not able to hand off the half-completed illustration to another artist working evenings when his workday ends. No, either Artist A OR Artist B will be assigned the task and the work on it will start and stop as the one artist assigned comes in to work and goes home - if Artist A is assigned the fact that Artist B is on the payroll on a different shift becomes irrelevent, the two of tham can't hand off the work to each other so it proceeds over both of their shifts. I like the Project calendar to reflect that notion.
--
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:mY6dnTMZi5yl-x7ZnZ2dnUVZ_oidnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Steve House [MVP] wrote:

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.

The trouble comes in trying to define 'typical resource'. Typical day
shift or typical nightshift? I tend to be from the school that says
that until it has a resource assigned the dates showing for a task are
to be ignored completely, esspecially if I am running two shifts and
the task could be done on either of those shifts. Any guesses I make
will be wrong at least half the time and therefore should not be made
at all.

Either way is fine it is just whatever works for your team.

--

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

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Relevant Pages

  • Re: 20 hour work day?
    ... assigning resources (or to tasks that won't have resources assigned ... get before assigning the resources should be reasonably close to the ... Hence my contention that the Project calendar should ... "5 working shifts" duration. ...
    (microsoft.public.project)
  • Re: 20 hour work day?
    ... My reasoning is based on the idea that the project calendar is what applies to a task prior to assigning resources. ... Each shift gets its own individual calendar. ...
    (microsoft.public.project)
  • Re: Creating Calendars, Overlapping shifts, crossing midnight time
    ... The shift calendar applies only to the resources not the tasks. ... So what you need to do is allocate specific calendars to say 'day ... resources working in that period and want to reduce the time required ...
    (microsoft.public.project)
  • Re: No task to finish on the weekend?
    ... I've experimented with the approach you've taken with lumping the 2 -10 hour shift groups into one group and every time I've tried it always runs me up against a wall and produces invalid schedules. ... But I've found it still requires me to split out the resources by shift and I need to know we have 10 day shift welders and 6 night shift welders available for assignment. ... the task in my project schedule will properly adjust its timing to reflect whether a mix of day shift and night shift workers are on it or or only the day shift workers. ...
    (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)