Project Auto Assigns 6h instead of 8h per day

[Mike I]

When I assign a 2 day duration for a resource to a task, Project is spacing that resource over two tasks hours per day over 3 days (Task1, Day1 is 6h, Task1 Day2 is 2h, Task2 Day2 is 6h, Task2 Day3 is 2h and so on). Why is Project not assigning the resource to simply finish the 2 day task in 2 days? I’ve tried everything I can think of (adjusting levelling parameters, removing levelling and linking tasks – nothing seems to work!

[Thomas Boyle]

Mike,
Not guaranteeing this is your issue, but you are describing a fairly classic symptom of a 2-hour offset in a resource calendar compared to the default project time assumptions. I can get exactly the symptoms you describe by creating a default project, adding two tasks in series, and assigning a resource whose working time is 06:00 to 15:00 rather than the default 08:00 to 17:00. You need to set your options to show clock time to see this.

When I first create the project, the software sets the project “Start date” to 08:00 today. Any changes that I make to the schedule settings (e.g. changing the standard start-finish times from 8-17 to 6-15, etc.) do not apply retroactively to this project field. Consequently, my resources can’t start working until 08:00 on the first day, go home at 15:00, then come back at 06:00 the following morning to finish the last two hours of their first “day’s” work. This 2-hour offset cascades through the schedule. Once I manually correct the project “Start date” to 06:00 today, 8-hour workdays are restored.

[Daryl Deffler]

Mike,
Also look at your defaults in the File > Options. These are options that project uses to convert daily/weekly/monthly duration entries into hours estimates. In the options window, you enter a default hours per day and default days per month. So for example, you’ll enter 8 hours in a day. Then, if you enter a duration value as 2D (days), Project uses this option to convert that into an hours estimate and you end up with a 16 hour estimate, regardless of the resource calendar availability.

[Mike I]

The times are set correctly – I tried what you suggested by changing the start/finish but to no avail. It still shows a 2 day duration split 6h,8h,2h over three days. I tried deleting the task and starting over – same results! I’ve also tried to switch the task type (fixed units, duration, work) – same issue. The “Peak” field shows 133% when the “Work” field shows 16h in the Resource Usage table. The workers availability is 8h/day, so this doesn’t quite add up. Resource availability is set to 100%, but if I type in 8h, it shows the resource as over-allocated (red).

[Mike I]

Daryl,

All of those parameters are set-up correctly in the options settings.

[Mike I]

I’m also getting some interesting hours for other tasks – this time a 3 day task split into three 3 days, however odd hours – 12.45h day1, 9.55h day2, 1.33h day3. 24h total, yet project does not want to break it up into three 8 hour days.

[Daryl Deffler]

Mike
quick question. Are you changing task work contours? The default work contour is FLAT. Which means 24 hours of work would be loaded as 8 8 8. However, if you start changing these to Bell, Front Loaded, or any other of the 7-8 values, you start getting goofy work load patterns such as those you are seeing.

[Mike I]

Daryl,

I did not changed those parameters at all, but I checked – they are FLAT.

[Mike I]

I’m convinced that this must be caused by some glitch in Project 2013. I’ve checked that the hours for a resource are distributed evenly (8 hours each day for 2 days). I let Project Level this resource. I changed the predecessor of another task with a different resource – the schedule updates, obviously. When I go back to the resource usage table, the first resource’s task is now spread out over 3 days (6h for the first day, 8 for the second, 2 for the third). When I undo this, the hours revert back the two day 8h per day.

Unfortunately, every time I level a resource I need to check to see that the days are messed up again, but this appears to happen randomly.

[Mike I]

I’m still having this issue – if anyone has anymore suggestions it would be greatly appreciated. As I mentioned in the previous post, this odd assignment of hours appears to be random – it occurs on some tasks but not on others.

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