Assignments and Fixed Duration - 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.

With fixed-duration, effort-driven tasks, the resource allocation units change as team members are assigned or removed from the task.

Impact to Fixed Duration effort driven tasks due to assignments:

Assigning more team members to a fixed duration effort-driven task reduces the resource allocation units for the assignees.
For each team member assigned, the allocation is divided evenly among the assignees.
Removing team members from a fixed duration effort-driven task increases the resource allocation units for the remaining assignees

Example: A fixed duration, effort driven task has 16 hours of planned work and one assignee. With an 8-hour workday, the task will require 100% resource allocation for the assignee for 2 days. If a second team member is assigned to the task, 50% resource allocation is required from each assignee to produce the 16 hours of task work over 2 days. As assignees are added, the percentage allocation is spread evenly across the resources.

Note: 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.

In PPM, a task can be marked as effort-driven when it is first added to the project in the Add Task wizard or edited in the Task Details screen. For more information, see Adding a Task and Editing a Task in the Gantt Chart.

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