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Assigning Team Memebers to Task/Duration

Let say you have a task with a set duration, start and end date. The duration was based on 1 person doing the work but if I want to assign it to 4 people so it theoretically goes 4 times faster. Is there a way to say to smartsheet "This task has 4 people working on it" and for smartsheet to then adjust the duration, start and end dates accordingly?

This especailly becomes important if I have durations for different tasks and different amounts of people being assigned to them.

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Greg Gates

This probably isn't as clean a solution as you might like, but you could accomplish it by adding an additional "Actual Duration" column. Have the "Actual Duration" column be equal to a formula that's something like "=[Duration]/[NumberOfPeople]". If it's only one person assigned to the task, this should be equal to the original Duration value.

Now, go into Project Settings and change your "Duration" column under Dependencies to your new "Actual Duration" column. I think that would do the trick!

AlexDS

No dice unfortunatley. The formulas go hay wire for some reason when I change what column the gant chart is supposed to read off of.

Kennedy Stomps

Hi Alex-- We don't currently support formulas in dependency related columns when dependencies are enabled, which is why your formula stops working when you enable dependences. Additionally, we only base duration off the time between the start and end date of a task, there isn't a way to indicate that this length of time should change based on any other factors. I've added your vote to support modifying duration based on number of people assigned to a task to our enhancement request list. We appreciate your input!

AlexDS

Thanks Kennedy,

So currently if I have a wood working task and I have two carpenters. I currently can not go to resource management assign two carpenters and expect the duration time to automatically become 1/2 the time because of the two assigned carpenters? It seems like all the elements are there. I just want to make absolutley sure what I am try to do isn't possible before I look for alternatives.

Thanks again!

J. Craig Williams

First,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month

Also applies to carpentry. To saw more wood, adding people does not help unless they also have saws (mostly - there is always shift-work ...)

I'm hoping Smartsheet eventually relaxes but does not eliminate the 'no formula in dependant columns' rules. Changes / exceptions like this should be allowed but on a case-by-case basis as chosen by the manager, not the system.

One thing I would do is create the Actual Duration as Greg described and then another column to check the differences. Report or filter or conditional format as desired to clue in that there is something to be done (or has been done - as once you address the isse, the Duration will be correct and the Actual Duration will be the wrong one)

The task list / activity list should describe the resource requirements - so a 5 day task that requires 5 people would have that noted.

Craig

AlexDS

Your link has some good insight. If I could really narrow down what we are wanting to use smartsheet for it would be trying to gauge the accuracy of our bids. Often we put in total man hours into the bid but are very bad at tracking if that is how many man hours it acutally took and how long the job actually took as opposed to how long we thought it would.

J. Craig Williams

Alex,

This is a universal problem.

The feedback loop is important to ensure your bids are accurate and competitive.

If you (insert workers here) think the job will take 400 hours and you bid it that way and lose the job -- but it would take 200 hours to really do it ...

I could go on and on.

Careful, I'll start ranting about work breakdowns and activity lists and estimation poker.

In simple terms:

1. create your schedule

2. determine the man hours (duration, number of people, allocation %)

3. make a copy (in the same sheet) of the data and don't touch it. That's the plan

4. use the other columns as the actuals

5. record man-hours expended when the task is complete

- sometimes just the normal calc is good enough (task took 3 days for 2 people - so 48 hours) but if that is not granular enough, you'll want to just have the user enter the data like in a timesheet.

Depends on your situation.

6. and then compare them.

I hope that helps.

Craig