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Microsoft Project Task Usage View

What is the Task Usage view in Microsoft Project?  The simple answer is: a daily breakdown of the hours for each employee. You’re probably familiar with the ‘Work’ and ‘Actual work’ columns in the Gantt view, right?  The Task Usage view just breaks those numbers down by day.  The video below illustrates that perfectly.


Standard Time® with MSP Task Usage

So let’s assume you have a task with 100 hours scheduled to you and another employee.  That 100 hours is in the ‘Work’ column in the Gantt view.  (Ignore the ‘Duration’ column for sake of easy explanation for now.  It has a different purpose.)  The ‘Work’ field tells how many hours the resources are supposed to work.  Here’s a picture of how that task looks in the Gantt view and Task usage view.

Gant View with Work Hours

And Task Usage View:

Task Usage View with Work Hours

 

These two screenshots clearly show the 100 hours for our example.  The Gantt view shows the aggregate while the Task usage view shows the daily breakdown.  Now watch what happens when we add ‘Actual work’ to the mix.  The Task usage view lets you enter hours for the exact day they occurred.  And again, the Gantt view shows the aggregate hours.  (The video above shows an automated way to enter those actual work hours.)

Gantt View with Actual Work

Task Usage view with actual work

 

Of course the automated way to enter these actual work hours is a timesheet.  (I like Standard Time® at www.stdtime.com.)  Employees use a variety of tools to enter and check their own timesheets.  Once correct, all the actual work hours from the timesheet are transferred to the Microsoft Project Task usage view in one quick session – all employees, all at once.  Pretty cool, huh?

–newshirt

 

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Define: Preleveled Start

Preleveled Start: The starting dates of all tasks in a project plan before a resource leveling operation was performed.

If you use the resource leveling feature in Microsoft Project, you might consider adding the “Preleveled Start” and “Leveling Delay” columns.  These two columns help explain the effects of a leveling operation in MS Project.  The Preleveled Start field shows the dates that the tasks were before the level, and the Leveling Delay tells the amount of time each task was shifted to avoid over-allocation.

Consider the screenshots below.  They demonstrate the Preleveled Start field and Leveling Delay.

The first screenshot shows the fields before the resource leveling operation.  In this example, we have two tasks that occupy the same calendar date range.  Obviously the resource cannot complete both tasks at the same time.  We must move one, or split the tasks so they both can be completed.  But here you have a decision to make… can the resource multitask or must the second task follow only after the first has been completed?  Certain tasks like “Foundation” and “Framing” and “Roofing” cannot be multitasked.  They must be completed in sequence.  In this case, the normal leveling choices are best.

Preleveled Start before leveling
Preleveled Start is NA before leveling

 

 

In actual life, the resource will probably multitask both project tasks, which has the effect of pushing them both out.  The screenshot below shows the resource working 50% of his time on both tasks.  That doubles the amount of time the tasks take, but allows the resource the luxury to spend whatever time they want on the tasks.  This only works when the tasks are not mutually exclusive.  In other words, the second task can be performed at the same time as the first.  Or, they don’t have to be performed serially.

Resource at 50%Multitasking means working both tasks during the same calendar date range

 

But if you really want to use resource leveling, you’ll find that MS Project pushes one task out past the first one to that it starts when the first one ends.  Use this approach when you cannot work on the second task until the first is completed.  In other words, multitasking is not possible for these two tasks.  The screenshot below illustrates this.

Preleveled Start after leveling
Results of Leveling: Preleveled Start and Leveling Delay

 

Follow these steps to level resources:

  • 1. Choose Tools, Level Resources…
  • 2. Click Level Now

This dialog box is displayed to help choose the leveling options.

Resource Leveling Options 

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Define: Fixed Duration, Fixed Units, Fixed Work

Fixed Duration: The task calendar ‘Duration’ will not change when you change the ‘Work’ or add resources.

Fixed Units: The resource percentage of work will not change when you change the task ‘Duration’ or ‘Work’ hours.
Fixed Work: The ‘Work’ hours will not change when you change the ‘Duration’ or percentage of resource work.

Double-click on a Microsoft Project task to display the dialog box below. The field we’re describing is highlighted below: ‘Task type’.

Task Properties

The default setting for ‘Task type’ is Fixed Units. That means the percentage of resource work (Example: “Buzz[50%]”) doesn’t change when you enter a new number for the work hours. For instance, if Buzz is set to work 50% of his time, changing the amount of work won’t change that. He will still work 50% of his time.

Changing the ‘Task type’ to Fixed Duration causes the Duration field to not change when you enter ‘Work’ hours.

Changing the ‘Task type’ to Fixed Work means that the Work field won’t change when you update the other two fields.

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Hook a Timesheet to MS Project

PMO’s and project managers, have you ever considered hooking a timesheet to your MS Project MPP file? You spend a good deal of time pouring over your MS Project files, scheduling tasks, and assigning hours, but are you ignoring the ‘Actual Work’ field?

Do you have an automated way to input actual work?

Hooking a timesheet to the Actual Work field turns your static project schedule into a living, breathing document. You’re now releasing the beast into the wild, and you might be surprised at what it turns into! What, exactly, does that mean to release the schedule into the wild? It means letting employees enter their own actual work against their own tasks. It means hooking a timesheet to your project schedule. See this timesheet program for an example.

 

Getting actual working hours from employees might completely surprise you. Many project managers are uncertain how long tasks take. They have a good intellectual guess, or even some estimates from the actual engineers on the ground, but actual hours from employees can be a huge eye-opener. They are almost never what you expect. Project tasks often double or triple from their initial baseline estimate. No kidding! And when that begins to happen on a regular basis, panic sets in! You now have to either rein back your initial proposal or force employees to be more efficient.

See what I mean by setting the beast lose in the wild?

When engineers blow past your estimates, or even their own, they have no particular malice in mind. They are just doing their jobs. They may have no idea how those bloated task hours fit into a larger picture, or how they may affect a static project schedule. Again, they are just doing their jobs to the best of their abilities. And if that means a little extra work, then so be it. Problem is, stakeholders and project managers are freaking out as the schedule blows up. I once heard a manager say, “At this rate, we can only do a quarter of what we hoped.” That’s project management panic!

So back to hooking a timesheet to your MPP file… Sure, panic may set in for a while. You may need to rethink your plan. But you’ll be much more educated than if you had left the schedule in an “open loop” system without actual hours from employees. Ignorance is bliss!

A timesheet is the best thing ever invented for a project plan. They are so closely related, they should be in the same package! Fortunately, with this timesheet app, they are. In fact, you don’t even need MS Project. You can create your own project schedules with full hierarchy and project tasks, and then track time to them. You’ll instantly compare estimates with actuals, and avert most of the panic associated with a blown schedule.

Getting “Actual Work” feedback early is the best answer to project management panic!

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Task Drivers

Microsoft Project as a simple method to find out which tasks are driving the ‘Start Date’ for a selected task. These are called “Task Drivers.” In other words, predecessor tasks that affect successor tasks.

Here’s how to find the task driver for a selected task:
    1. Click on any task that has predecessors
    2. Click in the “Track” menu button in the tool bar
    3. Choose “See what is driving the start date of a task”
    4. A panel appears at the left, showing the tasks that drive the selected on

 

 

Here, you can see that “Task 1a” drives “Task 2”, even though “Task 1b” is also a predecessor.  Task 1a is a “Task Driver” to Task 2.

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Define: Work Contour

Work Contour: The distribution (or “shape”) of working hours over the duration of a task.

In Microsoft Project, working hours are not always spread across the duration of a task like peanut butter.  In other words, they don’t have to be evenly distributed.  They can front-loaded so that most of the work is performed at the beginning of the task.  Or, they could be back-loaded, to represent most of the work being performed at the end of the task.  In fact, there are several choices for the Work Contour.

 

Here they are:

  1. Flat
  2. Back-loaded
  3. Front-loaded
  4. Double peak
  5. Early peak
  6. Late peak
  7. Bell
  8. Turtle

 

The images below illustrate how to choose the Work Contour for each resource in each task.

First, choose View, Gantt Chart to create tasks and assign resources to them.  Then set the duration.

 

Next, choose View, Task Usage.  Insert the ‘Work Contour” column.  After choosing various contours for each resource, you will see an icon representing the distribution of hours across the task.  Notice how the front-loaded task has most of the hour distributed in the first few days while the back-loaded contour has them distributed at the final days.  Flat distribution is default.  It simply uses the resource schedule.

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Define: Project Baseline

Project Baseline: A copy of the project tasks as they were at some point in time, which you can refer to at a later date.

Here is an example of two project tasks immediately after setting the project baseline.  Notice that the ‘Baseline 1 Work’ field has been copied from the ‘Work’ field.  As the ‘Work’ field changes throughout the project, the baseline is still available for comparison.  How did we do this?  Easy.  Just choose Tools, Tracking, Set Baseline within Microsoft Project.

Here we see the ‘Work’ field changed and the ‘Baseline’ unchanged.

 

Want an easier solution?
Baselining can be complicated and confusing, so “Sir Ganttalot” (a YouTube celebrity) has come up with an easy alternative.  Click here to see the YouTube video:

 

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7BJ6%5F1pcgc

Essentially, Ganttalot creates a customized field named “Finish Date Changed” to identify tasks that have changed.  Graphical arrow indicators tell whether a finish date has slipped in the future or has tightened up.  These graphical indicators are easier to spot than comparing textual finish dates to baseline finish dates.  It shows you at-a-glance what’s changed from week to week.  Slick, I’d say!

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Define: Task Status

Task Status: In Microsoft Project, the task status field represents the current state of each task.

The illustration below shows all the possible task states: Future Task, Late, On Schedule, and Complete.

 

 

How do tasks get into these states?
    1. Future Task:  When the task ‘Start’ date is in the future.
    2. Late: When the completed hours are less than what they should be by today.
    3. On Schedule: When the completed hours are >= to what they should be today.
    4. Complete: When the percent complete is 100%.

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Define: Timephased

Timephased: Total project task hours distributed over a period of time.

An example from Microsoft Project of this is shown below.  The hours for each project task are distributed over the duration of each task.  The hours per day is the ‘Work’ field divided by ‘Duration’ field.  In other words, the total work is spread evenly over the duration.  Choose the Microsoft Project views below to see these task layouts.

 

Tracking Gantt View:
 

 

Task Usage View:
 

You can see that the 100 hours are timephased over 10 days for the first task, and over 1 day on the second task.

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MS Project Overallocation

Assigning a project resource to a task by percentage alleviates the problem of overallocation.  Below are two project tasks assigned to the same time period.  If they both must be completed, you have an over-allocation problem.  Over-allocation simply means that the person has been assigned too much work to perform in a given time period.  In all likelihood, they will not be able to complete the work.

 

 

Choose View, Resource Graph in MS Project to see the problem  Red bars mean the resource is overallocated for that time period.  In this case, there is double the work that is reasonably expected from the project team member.  So how do you fix that?

 

 

Here’s how to solve it:  Assign the resource to work only 50% of their hours on each task.  Assigning project team members a certain percentage of their hours reflects the likely situation on the ground.  Hald their time goes to one task and half to the other.  Let the resource figure out when to actually perform the work.

 

 

This is the new resulting project resource allocation graph.  It shows that the resource is fully allocated to 100%.

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