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When a task is completed for x%, can it be planned only for the (100-x)%?
I use Microsoft Project Professional 2019 and I have "Task A" (type "Fixed Units", Effort Driven) which has a whole duration of 10 days and at the day of planning is completed at 70%. As far as I can understand, this means that I have another 3 days of work to plan.
When I schedule such a task for the resource "Person A" which has a restriction of max capacity at 50%, I would expect the task to be scheduled with a duration of 6 days. However, I can see that automatic scheduling suggests a duration of 10 days.
Am I missing something?
In light of the alternate scenario (i.e. one resource working the task full time for the first 7 days and then another resource finishing the task working half time), I think the easiest approach is to separate the task into two parts.
1. Set up the first part as the full task of 10 days with 80 hours work and assign the full time resource. Enter 70% into the % Complete (or % Work Complete) field. Make a note of the remaining work, it should be 24 hours.
2. Create the second part (i.e. task b). The duration will default at 1 day. Enter the remaining work from the first part (i.e. 24 hours) into the Work field. Assign the half time resource. The task duration should expand to 6 days.
3. Edit the Work field for task a (the first part) to the existing actual work value (i.e. 56 hours). The Percent Complete should go to 100%. That captures the task effort completed by the first resource.
This process works whether the tasks are set to Fixed Work or Fixed Units and it should give the end result you need.
There are other ways to get this same result but I believe this is the easiest and most straight forward.
John
9 Replies
Why would you expect the remaining duration to be 6 days? You said the resource is only available half time, therefore when you assign that resource the total work content of the 10 day task is 40 hours, not 80 hours. So when the task is updated for 70% complete, the Actual Work shows 28 hours and the Remaining Work over the 3 remaining days of duration is 12 hours.
Hope this helps.
John
Thank you very much for your answer (and your time)
We have two issues here (as far as I can tell).
Issue A: regardless of how much the left work would be, Project should plan for only the left 30% of the work. Am I right to expect that? This does not happen in my case (perhaps I do something wrong) as I can see the task planned for the whole duration of 10 days.
Issue B: I think I agree with your calculation. My mistake is that I should have defined my task type as a "Fixed Work".
I don't quite understand what you mean by, "Project should plan for only the left 30% of the work". If you look at my calculation, the original work content is 40 hours. Claiming 70% completion translates to 28 hours of completed work. That leaves 12 hours of remaining work, or 30%.
This is what it looks like before any progress is reported.
Then when progress is reported at 70%, this is what we get.
No mystery.
John
