Hi,



I'm sure I'm like the millionth person to ask this question but I need some expert explaining here on how to effectively use both duration and work in Project. I understand duration to be a function of time, like calendar days. If one resource is working 100% on something then 1 day of 'duration' would be 8 hours. What happens though when you have a window of say 30 days to schedule a bunch of stakeholder meetings. You have 30 calendar days to get the job done but the job itself is super easy, maybe in total taking 2-3 hours of a resource's time. If I make duration 30 days, it thinks that task will take 240 hours. I have a lot of tasks in my current plan where the logic goes, as long as it is finished by this date or around this date. What is my best and simplest option to show this? I have 300 rows so at first I though maybe lag time, but that would be a real pain to do for a lot of rows?

This may or may not the solution you are looking for, but I will try anyway

Personally, I would put these into the programme with the correct duration- if its going to take a day, put it in as a day and resource appropriately. then link it to the preceding activity, so it has a start point, and a successor. If it needs to take place on a certain day (which from your question, it doesnt appear to) then you can use a "must start on or after" constraint. If necessary you can give it a "must finish on or before" constraint it is has to be done by a certain date, although a correct successor would also do that.
this will allow you to allow a correct duration and resourcing (and thus work) to the individual task (the meeting).

I would tend not to over allocate a duration, as this can give rise to more problems ifthe meeting drops back from its earliest point, and leads to other tasks being pushed out. As a rule of thumb I would almost always give a task a correct duration and resource to an activity as this gives a better reflection of its effect on other activities.

You're very close. Duration is the span between the start and finish dates of the task. The duration is always based upon the working calendar - so a 10 day duration task may span longer than 10 calendar days - assuming the project calendar has Saturday and Sunday as non-working days.

Work is the amount of effort expended by resources over the duration. It may be more than duration or less. For example: a one day duration task may have 24 hours of work if there are 3 resources assigned, each at 100%. Conversely, a week duration task may only have 10 hours of work if the resource is assigned at 25%.

One way of working with a scenario like yours is to enter the duration and set the task as Fixed Duration (Task Information - Advanced tab). Then assign the resource(s) and enter their work. I'd use the Task Form (split from a Gantt chart view) to be able to enter work for each resource you add.

To echo Guloluseus, if you allow a much longer duration, your resources will delay until the end of the duration. Better to set tighter durations and then use deadlines to monitor progress.