Days per month

Hi Trevor & Rafael.



I currently putting together a disruption cost calculation for a delayed office fit out.



WORK hours are those that are recovered from the Contract Sum.

EFFORT hours are those that are paid for to do the work.



Best regards



Mike Testro

I couldn’t agree more with most of what you say here.



But your last sentence seems a bit scrambled.

In MSP, and as far as I know to everyone else, and I am happy enough to go along with this definition, WORK is Man-Hours (or person-hours or crane-hours) and vice versa, end of story.



Whether Work is expended or consumed in achieving a Task or not is another issue.

Obviously, consuming Work is no more a measure of progress than is consuming money, although if you rack up 25,000 hours of Work and it costs $1.25M you probably got something done, so there is loose connection.



Also, in my experience, the reason that Work gets done and money gets consumed and yet nothing much gets done, is because the planning, management, coordination and deployment is generally woeful, not because the workers are lazy.



And of course this was already said by Frederick Taylor more than 100 years ago, but hardly anyone in present day management knows who he was, or has read what he said, so the same old shambles gets repeated generation after generation.

Trevor Rabey,



No matter my opinion MS Project, whether I like it or not, it is and for many years to come will be the most widely used CPM software in the world. Therefore I better try to understand it and share the very few things I know about it.



"Also hours of work can exist without having done any work at all." How? Just hire a few lazy workers and you will see many man-hours wasted and no physical work done. I have seen people using budgeted man-hours as a measure of progress when in reality it cannot be, unless man-hors is the product in itself. I have seen this concept being commonly used in Pharmaceutical Plant jobs.



Man-hours represent effort but not work, and productivity is the link in between both. Productivity will yield the required level of effort for a required production rate.



Best regards,

Rafael

I suspected that it was a quote from the MSP Help.

So it’s a mistake in the documentation, perhaps because the people who write the documentation don’t understand the program as well as the people who write the code. They might work for MS but they are still human.



But MSP isn’t rubbish, I use it all the time, you’re missing out.

I don’t understand why you bother to correspond about it if you don’t like it.



I am not sure I understand what you mean by this:

"Also hours of work can exist without having done any work at all." How?

Trevor Rabey



I am not surprised at all, it is a direct quote from Microsoft Project 2007 Help, by clicking Help Button under Tools/Option/Calendar. Yes MS Project is rubbish, I don’t use it.



Can you please be specific as to the pharagraph and posting number, I don’t remember mixing duration and work in my postings?



Also hours of work can exist without having done any work at all.



Best regards,

Rafael

Rafael,

The last part of your post about so many days of Duration being translated into so many hours of Work, is clearly dead wrong. Days of duration is simply converted to hours of duration. A task can exist and have duration without having any Work at all. Work arises from the assignment of resources to tasks.

In MSP it is possible to type the Work directly into the Work field without assigning resources, but this would only be done by the foolhardy.

Here is a few more hints.

The Days per Month is only used by MSP as a conversion factor for if you type durations in months (eg 3 mo).

MSP will convert



If you never do that, then it never gets used.

Simple answer, try to use only durations in days and decimal days, and the issue never arises (except that the hours per day setting is used. It can be very confusing to have durations in mixed units, some in months, weeks, days etc, so avoid it.



MSP converts all durations to minutes via the days per month and hours per day settings in Tools, Options. Calculations are done internally in minutes and then the result is converted back and displayed in the original units.

Richu,



All what Rafael has written is as such correct with one minor correction which you have to be aware of.



The duration does not translate into hours of work, it translate into hours of duration, e.g. entering a task with duration of 2 days with default settings do not translates into 16 hours of work, but 16 hours of duration. Hours of work do not come into play before you assign resources and then you also need to know if a task is assigned "Fixed Duration", "Fixed Units" or "Fixed Work" before you can compare duration with hours of work.



Regards,



Bo

Richu,



The answer to many of these questions you will find them by using the context help of MS Project. Whenever you are in a screen or dialog bog there is usually a Help Button that will get you directly to the answer.



The amount you plug in under Tools/Options/Calendar will define how many days you will enter if using months, then they will be assigned as per your individual calendars. The default usually is 5 days/week and 20 days/month. If you are using as your main calendar a 6 days week these should be set to 6 days/week and 24 days/month. In order to avoid confusion always enter duration in the units specified under the Tools/Options/Schedule tab.



By clicking Help Button under Tools/Option/Calendar:



Hours per day: Defines the number of hours that you want Office Project 2007 to assign to a task when you enter a duration (duration: The total span of active working time that is required to complete a task. This is generally the amount of working time from the start to finish of a task, as defined by the project and resource calendar of one day. For example, Project assumes by default that you want a duration of one day to equal 8 hours. If you enter a duration of 2 days for a task with the default settings, Project translates this as 16 hours of work. However, if you change the definition of a day to 4 hours, then a 2-day task would be 8 hours of work. If you change the number of hours per day on this tab, it’s a good idea to update the project calendar to match, using the Change Working Time command on the Tools menu. The default setting is 8.00.



Hours per week : Specifies the number of hours that you want Office Project 2007 to assign to a task when you enter a duration of one week. For example, Project assumes by default that you want a duration of 1 week to equal 40 hours. If you enter a duration of 2 weeks for a task with the default settings, Project translates this as 80 hours of work. However, if you change the definition of a week to 30 hours, then a 2-week task would be 60 hours of work. If you change the number of hours per week on this tab, it’s a good idea to update the project calendar to match, using the Change Working Time command on the Tools menu. The default setting is 40.00.



Days per month: Defines the number of days that you want Office Project 2007 to assign to a task when you enter a duration of a month. For example, by default Project assumes that you want a duration of one month to equal 20 days. If you enter a duration of two months for a task, with the default settings, Project assumes a duration of 40 days. This setting also works with the Hours per day setting. For example, if a month is equal to 20 days and a day is equal to 8 hours, then Project assumes that a task that requires two months to complete has a duration of 320 hours. The default setting is 20.



Best regards,

Rafael

Hi Richu



Whatever software you are using the Calendar with the attached work pattern will tell you:



1. The days worked in any month

2. The calendat days for any task across weekend and holidays.



Even MSP will do this in spite of all its other limitations.



Get to know your software and all will be revealed.



Best regards



Mike Testro