Assignments and Effort-Driven Tasks

Important: Due to the behaviors described below, you should not use effort-driven tasks as "maintenance task." Maintenance tasks are tasks of long duration usually with large numbers of assignees. To create maintenance tasks use non-effort-driven tasks.

In effort-driven tasks, the amount of work remains constant for a task. The duration of the task shrinks or grows as resources are assigned or removed from the task. The amount of effort (work) remains unchanged.

Impact to effort-driven tasks due to assignments:

Assigning more team members decreases the task duration.
Removing team members increases the task duration.

As members are added and removed, planned work remains the same.

Example: An effort-driven project task has 16 hours of planned work and one assignee. With an 8-hour workday specified in the workweek calendar, it will take the assignee 2 days to complete the task, creating a task duration of two days. When the project manager assigns a second team member to the task, the task duration changes to 1 day, as 2 people can complete the work in half the time.

With fixed-duration, effort-driven tasks, the resource allocation units change as team members are assigned or removed from the task. For examples, see Assignments and Fixed Duration - Effort Driven Tasks.

When a task is not effort-driven, assigning an additional team member to the task increases the task's planned work. For example, a project task has 16 hours of planned work, one assignee, and a duration of two days. When the project manager assigns a second team member to the task, planned work increases to 32 hours, and the task duration remains at 2 days.

Note: The duration of an effort-driven task only changes when the number of team members assigned to the task changes.