![]() Both tasks start on 1/2/17 and finish on 1/13/17. In both these Fixed Duration examples, the Duration is 10 days simply because the PM entered that value. Note that all other days show zero planned hours and the final two days show no value whatsoever. In this case, the PM decided that the eight hours of work would be done by working four hours on day four and the final four hours on day eight. While it is also Fixed Duration with eight hours of work, the Work Contour field contains a value of “Contoured,” meaning the project manager manually entered planned work values directly into the timescale data cells. ![]() In this example, the timescale data confirms this, showing there are 0.8 hours of work planned for each of the 10 days. Task 1 is a Flat work contour (default value) which simply means Work value is equally distributed across the entire Duration. Looking at Tasks 1 and 2 above, both are Fixed Duration with a project manager-entered duration value of 10 days. It’s simply the number of business days between the task Start date and the task Finish date (inclusive). Let’s explore each.įixed Duration tasks are the easiest, directly aligning with most people’s initial concept for how duration should be calculated. ![]() Project uses two duration calculation formulas, one for Fixed Duration tasks and another for Fixed Units and Fixed Work tasks. So just how does Project really calculate Duration? Tasks 6 and 7 are three and four Work hours with 0.75 day and one-day durations, respectively. Looking at the Duration column values, the task Durations for those tasks range from two days to 10 days. Tasks 1 through 5 and Task 8 are all eight-hour tasks with one assigned resource allocated at 50 percent. Project defines Duration as the “Total span of working time for a task.”īased on that definition, one would think that calculating a task duration would be rather simple: the number of business days between the task Start date and the task Finish date (inclusive).īut let’s consider the following examples. And that’s what we humans need to understand. As a result, it does things that make sense from an algorithm perspective, but not from a human perspective. ![]() Microsoft’s project management application distributes work allocation based on mathematical algorithms. ![]() Unfortunately, Project doesn’t “think” that way. As humans, our instinct when allocating a resource four hours of work on a day is to allocate the work from 8:00 a.m. The first thing to do is to forget about thinking like a human. I also try to demystify why these seeming inconsistencies are actually accurate.
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