Best practice on what the minimum "Planned Hours" unit should be on tasks?

[MartynRa]

Hi All, What does the community believe is an acceptable/best practice for a minimum number of planned hours for any task? It has been suggested to me that when I plan, all the tasks should have a minimum of 7 (1 working day) planned hours, even if I know the task will only take 1 hour or less. The given reason for this minimum is that the assigned task resource has less filling out to do on their time sheet. To my mind this is excessive and will over inflate the cost and duration of the project. My preference and experience is to have 2 hours, with 3.5 hours as a fall back. I look forward to peoples responses. Martyn Rattray Portfolio Planning Lead.

[VicAl]

Ah we've debated this here before. I think you'll find a lot of different preferences. It comes down to what works best for you. For me, I was taught (and like) the rule of thumb of no task greater than 40 hours effort and no task less than 1 hour. The idea being less than an hour and you get too finite. More than 40 makes the task increasingly difficult to manage and track. Also has the benefit of better estimates when you break it down that far. Of course it's a rule of thumb and there are exceptions. But that's my goal on projects. Let the philosophical games begin :) Vic Alejandro, PMP, CSM | Senior IT Project Manager Denver Water | t: 303-628-7262 | c: 303-319-6473 Http://www.denverwater.org Sent via mobile phone

[AnthonyIm]

I would normally say there doesn't need to be a minimum requirement (and definitely not a whole day) for a task. Although I will say that Vic's idea of 1 hour is interesting to make sure you aren't putting in something that doesn't need to be its own task. So I think I might adopt that philosophy. Now I will say that we do have the minimum of one day for duration (so we don't get too messed up with start and end times for tasks), but the planned hours is the max amount of time someone should spend on a task. If it is a lean project (i.e. client is being cheap), they might only have an hour or two to get the revisions done. Yes, they have until the end of the day, but they can't spend all day on it. Anthony Imgrund FCB