How to set a part-time resource

[veki]

I need to set a part-time time resource (let's call him Jim, working from 8 AM to 12 AM, 50%) in Project 2007. I was wondering which of the following mehods is best:

1) to set a new calendar (8-12 AM from Monday to Friday) and to assign it to Joe;
2) to set Joe availability to 50%

I thought the former is the best choice, but when I assigned Joe a 16-hour work activity, duration was set 2 days! (I expected 4 days)! Using the second method, duration was automatically set to 4 days !

So, what's wrong with the fist method ?

[JulieS]

If Jim really only works from 08:00 - 12:00, I would alter his calendar. No need to create a new one -- just double click his name in any resource view and in the Resource Information dialog change his working time.

As to your comment:

when I assigned Joe a 16-hour work activity, duration was set 2 days! (I expected 4 days)!

Did you assign 16 hours of work? As long as the task was not Fixed Duration, it should have increased the duration to 4 days. If you just assigned Jim to a 2-day duration task, you only have 8 hours of work. Increase the work to 16 and the duration should recalculate.

[veki]

thanks for your reply.

Suppose I have 5 resources working part time, it should be faster and more manageable to set a new calendar. Anyway, I follow your suggestions but nothing change: I did set 16 hour of WORK and the activity was set to FIXED UNITS. To be more precise, the activity bar in the Gantt Chart is 3,5 day long (and this is correct as it takes an elapsed time of 3,5 days to complete the task); anyway the duration field is set to 2 (with the '?' estimated notation), causing misunderstanding !!

Any hints?

[JulieS]

If all 5 resources work part-time then yes, creating a new base calendar and setting that as the resource's base calendar will work fine.

The length of the Gantt bar can be misleading, so I wouldn't read too much into that.

If the task is not manually scheduled and you have a resource with a working calendar where every day is set to 08:00 to 12:00 pm with 16 hours of work, and the resource is the only resource assigned, the task duration must be 4 days.

Are you sure every day in the calendar is 08:00 to 12:00 ?

What version of Project are you using?
Is your calculation set to automatic?

How many resource are assigned?

[veki]

actually the bar in the Gantt chart seems to be correct, what is wrong is the value in the duration field.

I am sure every day in the calendar is 08:00 to 12:00

Project version is 2007, Standard Edition.

Schedule calculation is set to automatic.

For simplicity, I did assign only ONE resource (joe).

Did you try yourself ? Does it work fine to you ?

[JulieS]

Sorry, my mind wasn't working quite right and you are correct. The definition of a "day" is 8 hours so it is still 2 days in duration, but your task should end at 12:00 pm on the fourth day. If the task starts Monday, it should end at 12:00 pm on Thursday.

By setting the resource to 50%, you are allowing 30 minutes of effort for every hour of duration. So it actually takes 32 hours in duration to accomplish 16 hours of effort. The finish date should be Thursday at 5:00 pm.

Sorry for the confusion (mine)