Project Management - Planned Duration Roll-up

[courtney_knitte]

I'm new to the Project Management application. I have set up a series of tasks but the read-only planned duration field is not operating as I expected.

From the documentation: Planned duration and planned effort: the sum of all planned duration and planned effort values for all child tasks.

My parent task has a planned duration of 6 hours, however, this is just the max of the longest child task duration. I have 4 child tasks: 4, 4, 4, & 6 hrs (=18 hrs planned duration). All the child tasks are assigned to the same user, so it truly needs to be a sum.

Is there something that needs to be enabled for planned duration to calculate as a sum? We are on Eureka and v3 for Project Management. From what I'm reading, it should be a sum by default.

Thanks!

[amullendarby]

Here is something that I send out to similar questions in the PPM training class. Let me know if you think that this does a better job of explaining it. Might be too wordy, a common problem for me.

Planned duration:

                      From the lowest level task (non rollup child task) - This field is calculated from the planned start and end dates taking the Schedule into account. It can also be edited directly which will then change the Planned end date. Planned end date and Planned duration change each other when one is modified.

                                              Example: The default schedule is an 8 hour workday starting at 8am and ending at 5pm (with a 1 hour lunch break). So, using that schedule, if the Planned start date is 2014-11-17 08:00:00 (Monday) and the Planned end date is 2014-11-19 17:00:00 (Wednesday), then your Planned duration will be 3 days.

                                              Example: Using the above example, if you changed Planned duration from 3 days to 4 days then the Planned end date would change to 2014-11-19 17:00:00 (Wednesday).

                      From the parent task or project (rollup parent task) — This field, which is read only, represents the total Planned duration of any predecessor — successor relationship child tasks that are still active (not closed) or the longest duration of any non dependent child task that is still active (not closed). Which ever is longer will be the Planned duration for the parent task / project. When all child tasks are closed then the Planned duration becomes the Actual duration for the project.

                                              Example: You have a parent project with the following child tasks.

                                                                      1. A non dependent (no predecessor — successor relationship) child task with a Planned duration of 10 days.

                                                                      2. 3 dependent predecessor — successor child tasks, each with a Planned duration of 5 days, giving you a total planned duration of 15 days for these 3 tasks.

                                                                      3. While the tasks were active, the Planned duration on the parent project would be 15 days, because the non dependent child task would be active while the 3 dependent tasks were active.

                                              Example Scenario 1 — Close the non dependent child task and the parent project Planned duration remains at 15 days because the 3 dependent tasks are still active.

                                              Example Scenario 2 — Close the 3 dependent child tasks and the parent project Planned duration would change to 10 days because the only active task remaining would be the non dependent task.

                                              Example Scenario 3 — Close all the child tasks and then the Planned duration = Actual duration for the child tasks.

Planned effort:

From the lowest level task (non rollup child task) :   This is just a field that allows you to enter the expected time that resources will take to complete the task. This can be based on a meeting that you have with those resources or any other way that is calculated outside of the Project application.

From the parent task or project (rollup parent task): This field is read only at the parent project or task level. It is a combination of all the child tasks' Planned effort fields. It does not change unless the child task's Planned effort changes.

                      Example: The tasks mentioned above have the following Planned efforts.

                                              1. Non dependent child task Planned effort = 40 hours

                                              2. Dependent child task #1 Planned effort = 20 hours

                                              3. Dependent child task #2 Planned effort = 20 hours

                                              4. Dependent child task #3 Planned effort = 20 hours

                      Example Scenario: No matter what State (active or closed) the child tasks are in, the Planned effort for the parent project or task will be 100 hours.

[courtney_knitte]

This is very helpful! Thanks!