Project Portfolio & Resource Management
By estimated task effort
Entered task-effort hours are spread evenly over eligible working dates. Explicit per-person splits prevent assigning the full estimate to every assignee. Missing dates, estimates or valid splits mean incomplete coverage, not zero work.
Steps to follow
- 1
Use Plan task effort in the schedule. A single linked assignee receives the entered estimate. For multiple assignees, select shared resources and enter each person’s hours; splits must sum to the task estimate and include the primary assignee. Editing the estimate later can invalidate old splits; incomplete tasks are flagged and excluded until corrected.
- 2
Example: 40 hours × 20% = 8 project-capacity hours. A task estimated at 6 hours over five eligible working dates contributes 1.2 hours per date. The full week is 75% of project capacity and 15% of total working time. Explicit splits of 4 hours and 2 hours distribute only those amounts to the two people.
- 3
Future effort appears only in the dates being reported. Overlapping estimated effort is added and can exceed capacity. Effort on eligible dates with zero availability remains demand and is flagged; utilization is unavailable if the period’s capacity is zero. Leave does not silently erase or reschedule entered effort. No eligible working dates means incomplete coverage.
- 4
Project availability is one shared ceiling across ALL projects. A 40-hour week at 20% availability provides 8 project-capacity hours, not 8 hours per project. Utilization of project capacity and utilization of total working time use different denominators.
- 5
Only the active method supplies planned utilization. Separately entered forecast demand stays separate. None of these methods reports actual time worked or changes official project health.
- 6
Task methods use the organization default working calendar and its holidays; without one, Monday–Friday is the disclosed fallback. Weekly hours are divided by configured working weekdays. Holidays remove capacity without redistributing hours. Task calendars can further restrict eligible dates. Approved dated availability exceptions replace the normal percentage; the lowest overlapping approved percentage wins. Dates before a resource’s availability start have no capacity.
- 7
Milestones, parent summary tasks, deleted tasks, completed/cancelled tasks and completed/cancelled projects contribute no task demand. Undated tasks and unlinked assignees are incomplete coverage; no dates, resources or actual hours are invented. Historical periods are recalculated from current records, not historical actuals.
- 8
Administrators preview current and proposed methods for the same period, review missing inputs, then explicitly confirm activation. Tasks, allocations, approvals, baselines and previously saved exports remain unchanged. Switching back is supported. Method history records the actor and timestamp; each newly generated report labels its method.