Hi,

again I have a question from my Blog Reader:

“Can you advise me how to handle a closed task that has a resource assigned, but the resource will eventually spend 0 hours. So it is in fact a 100 % complete task and actual hours are 0. Can this be displayed, keeping the (planned-) ‘work’ hours as planned on, let’s say 4 hours ???”

I’ll show you that in MS PROJECT 2013!

First of all, to repeat the Magic Formula: DURATION * UNITS = WORK

I will create single Task in my Project:

Now I will use Work Table:

and I will get:

As you can see Work = 0 hours! Why? I put 5 days to the Duration field!

Duration * Units = Work –> 5 days (5*8 hours per day) = 40 hours duration. 40 hours duration * 0% Units (because Units are from Resources) = 0 hours of work!

Now I am going to assign John to Task 1:

and:

Now look at the Work Table:

Duration * Units = Work –> 5 days (5*8 hours per day) = 40 hours duration. 40 hours duration * 1000% Units (because Units are from Resources) = 40 hours of work!

I will now save the Baseline, because I want to save my Plan:

and I’ll get:

Now I will mark Task 1as 100 % finished:

and I will get:

But, as my Reader asked, what if the Task is finished, but actual work was 0 hours! If I put 0 hours in Actual field it will put the Task 1 back to 0% completed what I do not want:

What can I do! Bask to picture:

The only thing I can do is to Remove Resource from the Task:

Now If I mark Task 1 as 100% finished, and take a look at the Work Table I’ll get:

As you can see, Baseline (the Plan) is 40 hours. %Work completed is 100%. Actual hours is 0, because the Task is finished without any Resource! And the Variance is –40 hours because it is calculated as Actual – Baseline = 0 – 40 = –40 hours!

This is the only way to solve this “issue”. Save the Baseline with Resources on the Task, and then Remove Resources from the Task and mark it as completed!

Regards.