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Task duration for a few hours possible?

Former Member
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Hi,

Is it possible to set a task duration to less than 1 day?

We are currently using Microsoft Project for some of our project managements and are shifting over to SAP cProjects 4.0. The problem is that many of the tasks in our projects take less than 1 day to complete, and they build up 70% of the WBS, and in cProjects we are unable to set a tasks duration to less than 1 day, giving us a completly overgrown project schedule (month's instead of days).

Thanks!

Accepted Solutions (1)

Accepted Solutions (1)

Konstantin
Participant
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Hello.

Unfortunately, the time unit for the duration of project elements is Day.

In any unit you can enter only the work you have planned for the completion of the task. For example, you can choose Hours.

Regards,

Konstantin

Answers (2)

Answers (2)

Former Member
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Ok, it seems that cProjects really is unable to work with task durations less than 1 day. This means I can't, for example, schedule a meeting with a client in the morning (half day) and a subsequent report-development in the evening based on the meetings information (another half day) with a relationship of finish-start between these tasks.

I have to make them parallel tasks of 1 day in duration each, and here I lose precedence relationship between them. When I work in a project with 2 to 4 tasks a day, this becomes a major problem for scheduling and task relationship management. I have to know how many less-than-1-day tasks I can squeeze inside 1 day and group them as parallel tasks so I can keep them at the same calendar-day and get a realistic project schedule.

Just as an example. In picture 1 we see a 9 day project with 9 tasks, which I found at Wikipedia. In cProjects I get a 11 day project if I keep the precedence relationship between the tasks because I can't get tasks smaller than 1 day in duration, as seen in picture 2. To get a realistic schedule, one would have to loosen the relationships to squeeze tasks into the same calendar-day, as seen in picture 3.

Picture 1: [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/65/Screengrab_-_Microsoft_Project_9.0.2000.0224_-_%28simple_Gantt_chart%29_.png]

Picture 2: [http://69.60.122.62/~mutex/Wikipedia_cProjects1.JPG]

Picture 3: [http://69.60.122.62/~mutex/Wikipedia_cProjects3.JPG]

The process of loosen relationships to squeeze tasks into its correct time frame can get complicated when you have a project with some 400 tasks and an estimated execution time of 6 month. But if you don't do so, you probably will get a larger project schedule than needed.

In my oppinion this is a major design flaw. I wonder why SAP hasn't changed that in the upcomming cProjects 4.5. Maybe I am the only one having real trouble with that.

Thanks you all for the help!

Former Member
0 Kudos

Hi Konstantin Melnik,

In fact I was already aware of this because I read the documentation of cProjects 3.1, and I quote

The time unit for the duration of project elements is Day.

Link: [http://help.sap.com/saphelp_cpro31/helpdata/en/8d/6cc73c3d91995be10000000a114084/frameset.htm]

But I had hopes that somehow it could be possible to inform 0.5 days for example (which gives me an error message if I do so), or that the statement in the 3.1 documentation wasn't valid anymore for 4.0 and higher.

Does anyone else confirm this for version 4.0 and upcoming 4.5?

Thanks,

Former Member
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Hi,

In cProjects 4.0, I tried setting up the task duration as 0.5, but the system does not seem to accept it.

The minimum duration is 1 Day.

Regards,

Vivek Pandey

Konstantin
Participant
0 Kudos

Hi!

Regarding documentation cProjects 4.5:

The time unit for the duration of project elements is Day.

[link|http://help.sap.com/saphelp_ppm450/helpdata/en/8d/6cc73c3d91995be10000000a114084/frameset.htm]

Regards,

Konstantin Melnik