Handling Fixed Manhours...

Nadar Vinod,
welcome on board!
1. you would create the task by entering its name and duration (50 days ?); DO NOT enter start and end date as MS Project would create a schedule constraint on the last date entered
2. double-click the task name to open the Task Information dialog and go to Advanced; then change the Task Type value to Fixed Duration and click OK
3. with the Gantt Chart on screen, click Window, Split to display the Task Form at the bottom of the screen; right-click the Form and select Resource Work in the pop-up menu
4. Enter the 70 hours in the Work column; MS Project will calculate that the resource is only working 20% of his time to complete 70h in 50d.
Hope it helps
Cheers,
Alexandre

Thanks Alexandre. Your sugesstion helps me in ensuring that the Manhours are trackable.

But I am facing another problems:
1. The Gantt Chart is not showing the start and end date.
2. If say I split the resources ’Mr. ABC’( with 50 manhours) & ’Mr.XYZ’( with 20 manhours), and these are supervisors for the activity starting from Dec 29, 2006 to Mar 8, 2007.

What I feel is that the MS project screenm should show:
1. The work column as : 70 hrs
2. Start Date as : 29.12.06
3. End Date as : 8.03.07
The bar extending in the bar chart,
and resources column as ’ABC[xx%];XYZ[xx%].

Am I missing something?

Nadar,
you should look at the Help features!
1. Go to View, Table:(name of the current tabe), More tables
2. Click Copy to make a copy of the current table and then edit it
3. In the dropdown list, select the fields you want

To display the data on the Gantt chart itself,
1. Format, Bar styles
2. Select the appropriate bar style (i.e. Critical, Non critical, ...)
3. Click Text at the bottom of the dialog,
4. In the dropdown lists, select the fields you want

Have a good day

Nadar,

Just a word of advice: When the system shows the resoruce % time(UNITS) on a task, it shows the PEAK (maximum achieved)% time - and not what is "currently scheduled". SO, lets say that Mr. XYZ was originally scheduled at 20% - and during execution of the work he actually worked twice as many hours (even if it was just on one day), then the UNITS value will show 40%. To the best of my knowledge this PEAK value will not change (in MSP 2000).

Considering the above, you now have the problem of trying to determine the following:

1. Should XYZ reduce the remainder of his daily hours in order to comply with the requirement of completing only the contractual hours by the task end-date? If so, then a Fixed-Duration task-type is perfectly OK. This will give you the maximum number of hours-per-day that he can work.

2. Should he continue working at 20% until all his contractual hours are used? ....which means that he will have used ALL his hours before the original end-date (assuming that at some earlier point he worked more than 20% in any period). Then you should use a FIXED WORK task-type. This is fine if the quantity of HOURS is enough to complete the task, regardless of the contractual end-date.

3. If his work is governed by external factors, such as other companies doing sub-contract work, then should XYZ continue working at 20% all the way to the contrctual end-date in March? If so, then you would use a FIXED UNIT task-type ....and this will tell you how much he will overspend.

As you can see, it can become somewhat complicated - as there is rarely just one absolute governing factor ie. HOURS or DATE or TASK completion. This is why the task-type can often be almost useless. Then, you have the added complication of having to re-profile the hours - as people very, very rarely work in accordance with the profile of the scheduled hours.

Hope this doesn’t depress you too much.

James.