Now that you know more about how effort-driven scheduling works, it helps to understand how to apply it to tasks and how it affects the calculations the scheduling formula makes.
While effort-driven scheduling may sound like it affects task scheduling in a manner similar to the way the Fixed-work task type does, it operates independently from the task types. It does, however, affect how the scheduling formula calculates (or doesn't calculate) the Work value.
What's the difference?
- Task types determine what happens to the other two variables in the scheduling formula.
- Effort-driven scheduling determines what happens to the duration or resource units for a task when you add or remove resources.
Let's look at how effort-driven scheduling affects the scheduling formula when you apply task types:
Fixed Units If effort-driven scheduling is turned on for the task, Project adjusts the task's duration when you add or remove resources. If you have the means, adding more people is one option for shortening your schedule.
Fixed Duration If effort-driven scheduling is turned on for the task, changing resource assignments changes the amount of effort the resources will put in on the task. You may want to consider this option when scheduling a project if you feel the need to lighten the load on some of your people, or if you need to assign some of them part-time to other tasks.
Fixed Work The Fixed-work task type and effort-driven scheduling both keep the Work value constant and you cannot turn off the effort-driven setting for a task set as Fixed Work.
