Effort-Driven Scheduling And Multiple Resources

Effort-driven scheduling is a feature added to the 98 version of Project that tells Project how to treat additional resources assigned to a task. A task that is not effort-driven will have hours added to it for each additional resource. In an effort-driven task, however, the work value will be divided among the new, larger number of resources.

An example of this is a one-day duration task with a 20-hour work estimate. The task is Fixed Units and marked effort-driven.

The first resource assigned to this task is assigned at 250 percent (or 2.5 units) because of the 20-hour work estimate and the one-day duration. When the second resource is assigned, it's assumed Units value is 100 percent. Project assigns this resource to 5.72 hours of work, and the duration is reduced to .71 days.

Project maintains the Units values because it is a Fixed Units task, but because the task is effort-driven, Project is also bound to keep the Work value constant when adding this new resource. Consequently, the duration was reduced and the work split between the two resources according to Units.

When a third resource is added, the same thing happens. Now the task duration is .56 days, the first resource now has 11.12 hours of work, and the other two each have 4.45 hours.

If this same 20-hour, one-day task had not been effort-driven, the first resource would still be assigned at 250 percent and the second at 100 percent, but the first resource would still be assigned the entire 20 hours and the second resource would be assigned eight hours leaving the task as a 28-hour task with a one-day duration.

This is the kind of seemingly complex situation that bears study if you are going to use Project a great deal. It is important to be able to predict what will happen in these kinds of situations. Get in there and play around and see what happens. It will serve you well.

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