Review Questions

Name _______

Answer the following questions (use MS Project help if necessary):
1) Define effort-driven?
Effort-driven is when you assign or remove people from a task. This causes the task to either lengthen or shorten the duration basing it on the amount of resources assigned to it. When this is done, it does not affect the total amount of work for a task.

2) Under what circumstances would you turn off effort driven scheduling?
One circumstance would be with complex tasks. These require highly skilled resources or are very complex in general. In this case, adding more tasks would slow down the team rather then speeding it up. Another circumstance is when there is a uncertain or undetermined amount of work for a task.

3) Use a real-world example of when you would make a task as a Fixed Duration type task?
An example of this if you needed to use a painter to paint the bedroom of a house for 4 days, which would be a grand total of 32 hours. The other painter broke his arm and is unable to paint the second bedroom so you need to assign the same painter to room number two. You can assign the task of the second room to the painter as part time (50%), a total of 16 hours.

4) What is the formula for calculating duration?
Duration = work/units

5) What are the eight preset work contours (hint: In the Task Usage view right click on a resource name an open the assignment information box) and what are the procedures in applying them to a resource on a task?
(1) Flat- This is a default contour that has an even distribution of work
(2) Back-loaded- This sets the peak activity to happen at the end of the project.
(3) Front-loaded- This sets the peak activity to happen at the beginning of the project.
(4) Double peak- This sets the project to have two major period of peak activity.
(5) Early peak- This sets a loaded contour with a