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Fixed Duration, Units, Work

4 replies [Last post]
Mon, 2004-11-29 12:17
Gerry Morgan
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Hi There
Does anyone know of a spreadsheet or sample test project or anything else that will help me understand Fixed Duration, Units, and Work both effort driven and non effort driven.
I am new to MS Project and I am finding this a little hard to understand.
Thanks for any help. G
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Replies

Tue, 2004-11-30 11:53
#1
Gerry Morgan
User offline. Last seen 19 years 4 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 26 Nov 2004
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Hi Tony
Thanks alot, I see you are in the North West of England, I am originally from Manchester, now living in Toronto, Canada.
Thanks again for the help, Gerry.
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Tue, 2004-11-30 09:15
#2
Tony McClennon
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Hi Gerry,

Glad that the info was of help.

The information was retrieved from MS Project’s own Help guide and not from their web-site (just to save you a bit of time looking!)

I typed "fixed duration" into the search facility, and it then gives you a selection of related help subjects.

Regards,

Tony
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Tue, 2004-11-30 08:32
#3
Gerry Morgan
User offline. Last seen 19 years 4 weeks ago. Offline
Joined: 26 Nov 2004
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Hi Tony
Thanks for taking the time to reply and explain, it was a big help, I will also check out the Site.
Regards Gerry
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Tue, 2004-11-30 07:56
#4
Tony McClennon
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Joined: 19 Nov 2002
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Hi - MSP Help has some info on this which may be of use. I have also used this to explain the differences, which I have shown below - hope this is of use to you.

Fixed Duration:
The task will remain at whatever duration value has been entered provided effort driven is turned off. If two painters assigned full time for 4 days, duration is 4 days. If additional two painters are assigned, then each painter will be assigned for 50% of their time to keep the duration the same.

Fixed Units:
The allocation (i.e. percentage) of a resource drives the resource requirement. For example, if the task is of 4 days duration and two painters are allocated full time (100%), the painters workload total will be 8 days of work. Again, provided effort driven is turned off, if an additional two painters were assigned, then the total workload would be 4 men x 4 days = 16 days of work, but the duration would remain at 4 days. However, if effort driven is turned on, the duration will be recalculated based on the additional resources assigned to 2 days.

Fixed Work:
As resource assignments are changed, MS project will recalculate the duration e.g. if two painters assigned for 4 days, then two more are assigned to the task, the task duration is reduced to 2 days i.e. the total work content of the task remains constant. Effort driven automatically turned on.
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