Hi,

I think I have come to the right place for my problem. I have spent countless hours researching the difference between duration and work hours in Project. The way I see it, duration is the timeframe you have to complete something and work is the actual time it takes to complete it. So, if I have one week to complete a task the duration would be 40 hours but if I anticipate the actual doing of the work only taking 2 days, then work would be 16 hours. Is this right?

I always get into trouble with this when I'm building a plan. In my current example the situation is rather simple. It's a short project and I'm the only FTE, so I'm wondering if I should account for both aspects or just one? The problem as I see it is if you use duration to signify how long a task takes the problem is how do you see that within the context of having a window to complete it. Sure, you can start messing around with must complete by, etc. but I try to stay away from this.

In short, I want to be able to look at my WBS at a high level and say for each task, 1) here's how long I'm giving myself to complete the task (e.g, it can be expected within this time frame) and 2) here's how long I expect the actual task to take to complete.

Lastly, when I build my WBS should I do auto or manual based on my statement above.

Thanks,