Hi,

I have a question from oen of my Blog readers:

“Every time I allocate the whole work hours to overtime hours the Duration column turns into 0 and the start and finish dates and time are the same. Why?”

OK! I have to explain how MS PROJECT 2016

and I will create John, as Resource, and I will assign him to the Task:

and:

Now I will switch to the Task Usage View, and I will show Task Form, as well.

As you can see, John is supposed to work 40 hours, 8 hours per day, during 5 days of Duration. Now, suppose, that John will work more than 8 hours per day, and you want to put those hours as Overtime work. Suppose that 20 hours will be overtime work:

After I click on OK button I will get:

As you can see, Duration is 2,5 days now. Why? MS Project calculates Duration according to next formula:

DURATION = (Work – Overtime Work) / Hours per day. In this case it is: DUARTION = (40-20)/8 = 20/ 8 = 2,5 days.

Now suppose that all 40 hours are overtime work:

As you can see, Duration is 0 days, according to formula Duration = (40-40) / 8 = 0 Days. This make no sense but you should consider that Overtime work is something like “off the Calendar). If you consider this option you should ask yourself: “Do I understand overtime work?” Overtime work has to be smaller than total work (Work field). Overtime work is something like: “How many hours of regular work, will be over it?”. If overtime work is same as regular work, than it is regular work, not overtime!

Hope this helps!