Working Hours Change Mid Project

[Michael Challoner]

How do I account for working hours changing after a project has started? If I create a project with a custom calendar and have 6 days a week 10 hours each day and then this changes to 5 days and 8 hours a week....or the reverse of this.

[#2]

@Michael Challoner 

There are a few different ways to handle your scenario. The best method to use depends on the status of your plan. For example, were some tasks complete based on the extended work week, while some tasks are in progress and need a work week shift midway through and perhaps yet other tasks that haven't started but will need to do so under a normal 8-5 work week?

Here are a few of the methods you might consider.

1. If your plan is mostly done with the extended work week and only a limited number of tasks will be on the new work week, you may consider adding exceptions to your custom calendar to basically timescale the new work week

2. For in-progress tasks that need to switch, break the task into two parts with the first part of the task on the extended work week and the new part on the new work week

3. Tasks that have not yet started can use the 8-5 work week calendar (Standard) as their Task Calendar.

Those are a few ideas, maybe others will jump in with their thoughts.

John

[#3]

@John-project 

John, I like all three of your suggestions. 

The hours we estimate originally and use to create our plan/schedule can (and often do) change mid projects. This is either a result of us being ahead or behind on a task or the customers schedule changing which could cause our schedule to change. 

[#4]

Michael Challoner,
I'm a little confused. I though the issue was a change in the work calendar but now it sounds like it's about the amount of estimated effort (work) to do the tasks. Two different parts of a given plan.

Work estimates do often change during the execution of a plan and that's why updating a plan is best accomplished via actual work and remaining work. Baseline work captures the original estimate for comparison.

Now it sounds like you want to vary the work calendar periodically (e.g. one week extended hours, the next week on normal hours, etc.) to try to capture a dynamic plan. If that's true then I recommend against that approach - you will drive yourself nuts and the plan will get lost in the chaos. I recommend you pick a calendar that best represents your plan overall. Then manage the extra work times and hours via a combination of resource calendars, if appropriate, overtime and tracking work actuals as I noted above.

If however, your reason for switching calendars is due to a major shift in how your company operates (i.e. permanent shift from extended work week to standard work week), then you might consider one of the approaches I mentioned in my original post. Keep in mind, Project only provides for one definition of a "day" so if you shift from a 10 hour day to an 8 hour day then I recommend you NOT use "day" as the units for entry into the Duration field - use "hours" instead.

John