Demystifying the Basic Work Formula
Most Project users expect it to act like a spreadsheet and are often surprised to find that Project appears to have a mind of its own. This is because Project operates within an elegant framework of rules, algorithms, and solid project management techniques. The key to understanding this framework is a simple formula, which we will call the Basic Work Formula. Starting from complete basics, let's now proceed to understand this formula and see how it drives complex scheduling behavior.
There are three key parameters associated with every task to be executed in a schedule:
- work is the effort required to finish a task, usually measured in person-hours.
- duration is the span of working time required to finish a task, usually measured in working days.
- Unit is the measure of resources allocated to a specific task, measured by percentage in Project.
These three parameters are related by the Basic Work Formula of Microsoft...
