PLEASE HELP!! NEW TO PROJECT

[wrgodsend]

I own a custom home theater company and I'm trying to organize our projects through a work breakdown structure. Anyway, I'm having problems with the finish date. I enter in the work hours in the "Work" column as well as the duration in "duration" column. However, when I enter in the duration, for example 1 day, the start date will reflect 7/17 which is correct but the finish date reflects 7/18. Because the task duration is 1 day, I want the finish date to show 7/17 not 7/18. The finish date is making my project end 1 day later than it's supposed to.
This is my first WBS I've done on Project and I can't seem to find any answers for my question. Thank you so much, any advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[IRstuff]

You could make your working days 1 minute longer.

TTFN

 

[SomeYahoo]

I am also semi-new to project, but I have found that the work v. duration as related to finish date is frequently associated to the resources assigned to the project. If a resource is not assigned, work and duration are not related and you can input what you would like. If you have a resource assigned, the resource(s) will drive the duration.

I would suggest that you try assigning resources with the appropriate working schedule and see if that helps.

 

[PCISylvain]

Hi wrgodsend,

I found out that working with both the duration and work columnat the same time often confuses the system for unknown reasons. As a matter of fact, when I tried to reproduce you problem on my MS Project, the start date and end date were both 7/7/2006. So We can assume that under soome circumstance, MS project should be doing this right if we do not push it too much.

What I propose is to you is that you work with either the work of duration column. The reason is that once you entered a value in a field, MS Project consider your input as absolute truth and will do everything not to touch the value. Since work and duration and tighly link together, the system is going to have to make choices which may appear to be random since it will be based on the order you entered the data.

So back to my proposal, enter the level of effort using the work column and assign resource to the task. This assignment of resource is what will define the duration and hopefully get this right.

One other possibility: Since my version seems ok and I just went through my office update (MS Project 2003 with its SP2), You may want to try this as well. Just make a search in google for office Update

Hope this helps as being a home theater fan myself, I do want you to succeed your projects!

Bye,

 

[jblack34]

To understand MS Project's scheduling formula a little better, try visiting this link:

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1031576.html#

Hope this helps!

JBlack

http://www.pmconnection.com