[cdharch]

Good day-

I've looked at a few different types of these programs and am needing something to schedule out our design projects. I have gone through the videos and downloaded the trial, but I am not sure how to account for some aspects of the work that we do.

Most of these programs seem to assume that a single task is going to be done from start to finish in a single session- so a 6 hour task will be about 3/4 of a day, or a 14 hour task is 1 day and 6 hours- all continuous- in other words, the program assumes that you are doing nothing else for that time period.

The reality of our small office means, however, that I am RARELY working on a single task from start to finish. a 6 hour task might get interrupted, or I may have another client meeting for another project in the middle of that task that takes 2 hours, then I go back to the task I started earlier.

So, while a task may take multiple days to complete, that ACTUAL number of hours may be less than the 8 hour day- but there is still office work being done.

One thought may be to "break the task into smaller items"- but that really isn't an option for the work we do- some of these task just take several hours to complete. I could break the task into multiple, adjacent and identical tasks of different times maybe.

I supposed I could go in and manipulate the work work to show only the hours I worked on the project, but that seems overly- complicated.

I wanted to see if this concept had been thought through. Or perhaps there is some other sort of program that I need to be looking at to handle this? Surely this concept has been addressed before now?

Thanks in advance!

[Esparza]

I am struggeling with the same issue, so can someone help on how to tackle this?

Thanx!

[cdharch]

Originally Posted by zohahunt

Hey, I am not going to say that tracking down the issue will solve the problem but after the continuously task done should be optimized.

Huh? I can't even make sense of this sentence. Sounds like a robot is replying to my question.....

[whpalmer4]

What exactly do you need to track? You've got a bunch of tasks to do, some dependencies between them (must finish A before starting B, etc.) and probably some constraints (C cannot start before some date, D must finish by some other date). You have some resources to assign to those tasks. Build up your plan, assign resources, level. Now start working on things. As you work, set the completion percentage on the tasks you work to reflect your progress. Each morning, you use the Reschedule button followed by the Level button to update the plan.

Getting back to the question of "what do you need to track?" this approach will not help you fill out reports showing that on Monday you worked on tasks A, B, and C for 2, 3.7, and 2.3 hours respectively. It should, however, keep your eye on the ball for what needs to get done, what is being blocked by other tasks not yet done, who is busy and who is not, etc.

[jlharmon]

I too am looking for flexibility between effort and duration. I have a team that works about 25% of their time on projects, when I use duration to actually cover the time/duration it will take to get the task done, hour will populate automatically. What this means is that I want to complete a 4 hour task in three days, however to keep this task duration realistic for my delivery time line my resource shows being allocated at the 25% or 2 hrs a day or 6 hours for the task. This means that if they work on another task in the same time frame (duration) they will be over allocated in the resource view. This defeats the purpose of a quick resource view (green/red) visual indicators.