If you are using Microsoft Project 2010, the first step when developing a project plan is to break down the project into individual manageable task in hierarchical structure known as the work breakdown structure (WBS). One of the attribute of a task is the task type that determines the duration of the task and subsequently affects the finish date. A task type can be FIXED Duration, FIXED Unit or FIXED Work.
Work = Duration * Units
A task with task type Fixed Duration would indicate that the task will take the same amount of time not matter how many resources you assign to the task. An example of a task with Fixed Duration is drying a painted wall. If painted wall takes two days to dry then whether you assign one or more resources, it will still take two days to dry.
A task with task type Fixed Unit would indicate that the assigned units [or resources] to the task is a fixed value and any changes to the amount of work or the task’s duration do not affect the task’s units. If you increase the duration of task without changing the number of resources on the task than more work will be completed.
For example, if you assign a full-time resource to work on the task with task type of Fixed Unit to work for 5 days than 40 hours’ worth of work will be completed.
Now, for the same task, if the same resource works for 10 days instead of 5 days then he/she will complete 80 hours’ worth of work.
The Fixed Work is the total amount of person-hours required to complete the task. For example, if a task takes 40 hours to complete, if you assign a full-time resource (8 hours per day) to work on the task, then it will take 5 days to complete the task. Whereas, replacing a full-time resource with a part-time resource (4 hours/day) it will take 10 days to complete the same task.
Or assigning 2 full-time resources instead one full-time resource, it will require half-the-time (2.5 hours) to complete 40 person hour task.
Effort Driven Scheduling
A fixed unit and duration task type, by default, are set as effort driven. In other words, for an effort driven task, the duration of the task will increase or decrease based on the number of resources that are assigned to it, while the total work for the task does will not change.
The effort-driven scheduling can be turned off, when you’re not sure how much work there will be for a task. Turning off effort-driven scheduling for the task can let you change the amount of work based on the resources and duration assigned to the task.
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