Hi, this is me Perri…

Sometimes I feel like being one of the characters in this film. I have to keep in mind that “work” is not the same as “duration”. Surely they are both time spans and entered in the same unit, but duration, I mean the effective time span for getting an activity done, can be longer.

When I am planning a theater play for example and have the activity of painting the stage in mind…. Panting the stage may take 2 days of work, but this activity is not done until the stage gets dry (duration: painting + drying time).

This means I can enter in Merlin 2 days of work and 2,5 days of duration. If I don’t care that much about the work, I can enter only the duration of 2,5 days.

Another thing about duration is that Merlin can calculate the expected duration, when it knows how much work is planed and how many resources are assigned to it.

So lets say I plan 2 days for my stage painting and assign an additional person to this activity. Merlin will calculate a new expected duration of only one day.

I am applying only one resource which has shorter working hours than my activity? Merlin will calculate a longer expected duration. This makes sense. Such resources need more working days to finish up their work.

Come to think of it, maybe I am not that lost after all 🙂