Duration Column Doesn't SUM up Correctly

Blessing Ugbo

Hello,

I am using smartsheet for my master project plan and I repeatedly run into one issue, my project Duration count roll up is inaccurate. I have attached a screenshot to provide a better understanding of the issue. 

Mike Wilday

Hi Blessing,

The duration column is looking at the total number of days the project will take to complete. This is based upon the earliest and latest date in the span of dates. Based upon your due dates, everything starts at the same date. So 37d is the duration as that is the length of your longest timespan.

If you want the items to be dependent on each other, then you would need to turn on predecessors and make each task dependent on the next. See this help for more information on predecessors. https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/765727-enabling-dependencies-using-predecessors

MonikkaM

Blessing,

I think Mike already covered this but all of your tasks are completed within the span of the task with a 37 day duration. It is calculated correctly based on the way the information is presented. 

If these tasks are in sequence, this is where you'd need to add in predecessor/dependency relationships.

Monikka

Blessing Ugbo

Hi Monikka,

I am not sure I follow your explanation... There are six deliverable tasks with estimated duration of 1d, 5d, 37d, 15d, 15d,15d all should SUM up to 88d but it shows 37d. Even when I add predecessor/dependency relationships the sum is still not correct. Thanks!

Mike Wilday

Hi, Blessing, the summary is showing the total number of days it will take to complete your project... 

In your project, every task starts on 4/26/17. 

Order network lines is set for 37d and ends on 6/15/17

All of your other tasks are set for less days, but start on the same day. 

Smartsheets looks at your earliest deadline, and your latest deadline, and counts the number of days. If your tasks' start days had dependency relationships then each task wouldn't start till the one before it ended. This would extend the number of days to more than 37d. But because your Order Network Lines has the earliest and latest deadline, then your whole Equipment Procurement will only take 37d. 

 

 

MonikkaM

Hello Blessing,

The issue is that the tasks all have the same start date so even if their total duration is 88 days, without the proper sequencing and dependency relationships, Smartsheet (and any project scheduling software) will show that the longest time it will take to complete the parent task is from the earliest start to the latest finish of all the subordinate children - so for this, since the tasks are explicitly linked, it is taking the early start and the latest finish - and this happens to be for your 37 day task. 

I will try to duplicate your sheet along with adding the dependencies to maybe illustrate this a little better. You can also see the little arrows showing the FS relationship for all the tasks as well. 

Monikka

CanadaJim

Blessing,

The key problem here is that I don't believe you want the duration, you want the total effort.  This is very different.  While the duration is the time between starting the earliest task and finishing the latest task, the effort is the actual amount of work days.

For example, if I work 1 day on Monday, and 1 day on Friday, the DURATION is 5 days (Monday to Friday), but the EFFORT is 2 days (Monday's work plus Friday's work).

Does that clear up the confusion?

You may need to set up a separate field for "Effort" (which may be the same as duration for these tasks but may not if the assignee is not 100% allocated to that task).  Then create a SUM formula for Effort column against the children tasks.

Let us know if that helps.

Jim