Calculate project duration microsoft project

I have the same question 0. Report abuse. Details required :. Cancel Submit. John - Project Volunteer Moderator. What is your Project calendar? How satisfied are you with this reply? Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site. Based on that definition, one would think that calculating a task duration would be rather simple: the number of business days between the task Start date and the task Finish date inclusive. Tasks 1 through 5 and Task 8 are all eight-hour tasks with one assigned resource allocated at 50 percent.

Looking at the Duration column values, the task Durations for those tasks range from two days to 10 days. Tasks 6 and 7 are three and four Work hours with 0. Project uses two duration calculation formulas, one for Fixed Duration tasks and another for Fixed Units and Fixed Work tasks. Looking at Tasks 1 and 2 above, both are Fixed Duration with a project manager-entered duration value of 10 days.

Task 1 is a Flat work contour default value which simply means Work value is equally distributed across the entire Duration. In this example, the timescale data confirms this, showing there are 0. Task2 is slightly different. In this case, the PM decided that the eight hours of work would be done by working four hours on day four and the final four hours on day eight.

Note that all other days show zero planned hours and the final two days show no value whatsoever. In both these Fixed Duration examples, the Duration is 10 days simply because the PM entered that value. How the work is distributed across those 10 days is irrelevant.

Starting simply, duration only includes any day on which work is planned. Restated from another perspective, duration does NOT include any day on which planned work is zero. Task 8 below illustrates this concept. The first step in understanding work distribution is to understand how Project divides the work across the days. Assignment Units, Work Contour and Work fields all play a part in this determination.

In this case, the result is a two-day duration. Task 4 follows the same work distribution process, albeit slightly more circuitously. The result is a four-day load pattern highlighted below. But wait! The key to understanding this aspect rests within how Project physically distributes the time. The second step to understanding work distribution is being aware of how Project divides the work day. Each day is 24 hours. Each hour is comprised of 60 one-minute segments.

This is a basic but important concept in understanding Project. The following screenshot shows a daily timescale segmented into hours 12 a. The sample below shows an hour within a day segmented into 10 six-minute segments starting at 0, 6, 12, 18, etc. Without grouping, each hour would show 60 one-minute segments. When the workday is displayed as one-hour segments, the timescale data below reveals what Project is really doing. If you recall, our Task 5 example showed that Project calculated four hours per day.

The result, as highlighted below, is that each hour segment contains 0. Each of the eight one-hour time segments contains planned work. And because each of the daily time segments contains work, Project sees this as a full day of Duration.

As a result, the four hours of work counts as a full day of Duration. Looking back to our Task 4 example, the Work Contour Front Loaded algorithm calculated a four-day task duration with daily work allocations as shown below. Clear instructions. Easy to follow. No jargon. Pictures helped.

Didn't match my screen. Incorrect instructions. Too technical. You can change both the Effort Driven and Estimated property for a task by adding a column or using the Task Information dialog box double-clicking on a task. But, to make this easier, you may want to just set an option and have these things happen by default. You can set both these defaults by going to Options in the File tab, navigating to the Schedule tab, then looking under Scheduling options for this project. Remember, if you are a MicroKnowledge customer and have a software question to ask, feel free to contact us at any time by using our Support link at the top of the site.