Estimating timeline when subtask duration is entered in HOURS

[Sud Tiwari]

I am creating a timeline for a research project. It was not a continuous project so I have not established any dependencies. However, I have TASKS and SUBTASKS within it. My issues is that the main task does not give me an accurate estimate of total hours. Ideally it should be the sum of hours of all subtasks within in.

Here’s what I am doing:-

1. Conceptualization 167 hrs
1.1 Requirement Analysis 6 hrs
1.2 Requirement Analysis 2 hrs
1.3 Requirement Analysis 8 hrs
1.4 Requirement Analysis 5 hrs
1.5 Idea Generation 4 hrs
1.6 Idea Generation 8 hrs
1.7 Idea Generation 7 hrs

Any possible help to fix this will be much appreciated.

[Larry Christofaro]

Suggestions: Check for other sub tasks beyond what is evident. Check for manually scheduled tasks. Check for a resource assigned to the summary task. Let me know if that helps at all. Thanks…

[Daryl Deffler]

Adding to what Larry indicated, the auto sum/roll up is disabled when the summary task is manually scheduled. Try making sure its auto scheduled.

[Sud Tiwari]

Thanks Larry and Daryl. All the tasks are manually scheduled and there are no relationships established. Reason being that this project wasn’t a continuous project and dependencies aren’t very clear. But I still wanted to have a basic timeline.

I was still hoping that the sum of duration of subtasks will be summed up to the duration of main task. I am wondering if I should manually enter the duration of tasks.

[Daryl Deffler]

Sud,
You only need to change the Summary Task to auto schedule. Detailed tasks can stay manual. If a summary task is Manual, it will not auto roll up all it’s sub-tasks. When Auto, it will auto roll up hours, dates, durations, etc. regardless of the task type, configuration, etc.

[Sud Tiwari]

Daryl,
I have summary task in auto schedule and subtasks are manually scheduled. start and finish dates are rolled up to the summary tasks properly, but the only issue I still have is the total hours is not rolled up as a sum of individual hours of subtasks. please note that I have durations in hours. summary task is showing start date of July 2, 2014 and end date as Jul 31. 2014 which is correct BUT the total duration is 170 hours now, whereas I want it to show 40 hrs (i.e. sum of all subtasks hrs). Thanks for any possible help.

[Daryl Deffler]

Sud
Looking at your earlier note, I agree, the total Work hours should be 40. The only thing I can think of that would cause this number to jump up to 170 would be a resource directly assigned to the summary task with an estimate of 130 hours. If that’s the case, remove that resource assignment from the summary task.

[Graham McHardy]

Sud, I think Daryl gives the clue as to what may be going on here. He mentions Work Hours. In your question you refer to Duration. The auto vs manually scheduled setting is something of a red herring – what matters is the fields you’re looking at.
Work hours will sum up from the detailed tasks to the summary tasks (even if they’re all manually scheduled). The Summary task duration will be based on the earliest start and latest finish dates of the detailed tasks. The summary task duration will not be automatically calculated if the summary task is manually scheduled. The duration of the summary task depends only on the detailed task dates – take two examples:
Summary – Start 5/19/17; Finish 5/25/17; Duration 5 days; Work 24 hours
Detailed Task 1 – Start 5/19/17; Finish 5/19/17; Duration 1 day; Work 8 hours
Detailed Task 2 – Start 5/24/17; Finish 5/25/17; Duration 2 days; Work 16 hours

vs

Summary – Start 5/19/17; Finish 5/23/17; Duration 3 days; Work 32 hours
Detailed Task 1 – Start 5/19/17; Finish 5/22/17; Duration 2 day; Work 16 hours
Detailed Task 2 – Start 5/22/17; Finish 5/23/17; Duration 2 days; Work 16 hours

Graham

[Sud Tiwari]

Hi Graham,

That worked fine. Thanks very much. I missed Daryl’s comment about Work hrs column. When I replaced the ‘duration’ column with ‘work hrs’ column, it just worked absolutely fine. I was struggling with this for over a month.

Thanks again,
Sud

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