The total work is the dependent variable and doubles from 80-hours to 160-hours, Figure 6. In this scenario the effort or units of each resource is constant. This Common Laborer resource assignment adds another resource that has an 80-hour work unit. In Figure 5 we assign an additional Common Laborer to task A. The duration type is Fixed Units and Effort driven is no. Task A: Figure 4 displays the first task (task A) and its initial resource assignment. Now that our views are set let’s proceed and examine the effect of the Effort drivensetting on each duration type. We continue and highlight the site foreman resource, right click, and select Work from the popup menu, Figure 3. How does Microsoft Project behave in each scenario when we add an additional resource? To help us investigate, in Figure 2, we select details to display the resource assignments for each task. This is because we have one site foreman resource available and scheduled to work on five different parallel tasks). (You may also observe that our tasks are all over allocated. Observe that each task is assigned a site foreman resource. There are five possible combinations, as the Fixed Work duration type is always Effort driven. In Figure 1 we have a schedule displaying tasks and all the differing duration type and Effort driven combinations. This article demonstrates how the Effort driven tasks setting affects work equation calculations in Microsoft Project.
Microsoft Project and Effort Driven Tasks This work equation also computes differently depending on whether your task is Effort driven or not. (Note that units in the work equation is the effort). In the work equation you can choose any term as the constant, change either of the two remaining variables as the independent variable, and calculate the third term as the dependent variable. To clarify this just a little, the term ‘Work’ in Microsoft Project is referring to the number of hours a labor resource will work on an activity. And it effects how the dependent variable in the work equation is calculated. But how exactly does this effect your Microsoft Project schedule?Įffort driven calculations only apply after resources are initially assigned to a task. Click in the Task Name field and enter a project summary task name.In Microsoft Project you can specify Effort driven tasks. Check the Show project summary task box.Click the View tab in the Options dialogue box.It already exists and just needs to be made visible. This task is not created by indenting other tasks. The project summary task provides high level information about the project as a whole. In Project 2010 the Indent Task and Outdent Task buttons can be found in the Schedule group of the Task tab
A plus sign will then appear making it possible to expand the list again. The minus signs next to the summary tasks enable you to collapse the group of tasks. The summary tasks appear in bold with the subtasks indented beneath them. You can indent and outdent tasks many times to get the outline you require. The Outdent button can also be used to create summary tasks