Work Effort overview

Last update: June 12, 2024

CREATED FOR:

  • User

As a project manager, you can decide how you want to estimate the amount of work needed for tasks to complete in a project. Estimate the amount of work needed to complete tasks using one of the following indicators:

  • This field is available only for tasks with a Simple Duration Type.
  • You can enable the use of this label and define the percentage of working time associated with it at the project level.
Planned Hours

A manual numeric entry or a Adobe Workfront calculation that displays the number of hours that it would take for the resources assigned to a task to complete it.

Consider the following about Planned Hours:

  • This is the default method.
  • You can manually update Planned Hours only for tasks with a Duration Type of Calculated Assignment or Simple.

For information about Planned Hours, see Planned Hours overview.

Work Effort

This article describes what Work Effort is and how you should use it when estimating the amount of work for your tasks.

NOTE
Planned Hours and Work Effort influence each other. Updating the Planned Hours can update the Work Effort and updating the Work Effort can update the Planned Hours of the task.

Access requirements

Expand to view access requirements for the functionality in this article.

You must have the following access to perform the steps in this article:

Adobe Workfront planAny
Adobe Workfront license*

Current: Plan

Or

New: Standard

Access level configurationEdit access to Projects and Tasks
Object permissionsManage permissions to a project and its tasks

*To find out what plan, license type, or access you have, contact your Workfront administrator. For more information, see Access requirements in Workfront documentation.

Considerations for using Work Effort

  • When the project tasks have 0 Planned Hours and you enable the Use Work Effort to automatically calculate task Planned Hours setting on the project, the default level of Work Effort associated with them will be Medium. The Planned Hours automatically update for Simple Duration Type tasks. For more information, see the section Levels of Work Effort in this article.
  • When the project tasks have Planned Hours that are more than 0 and you enable the Use Work Effort to automatically calculate task Planned Hours setting on the project, the level of Work Effort updates according to the amount of Planned Hours without changing the amount of the Planned Hours for Simple Duration Type tasks. For more information, see the section How Workfront calculates Work Effort based on Planned Hours in this article.
  • When the project tasks have 0 Planned Hours and you enable the Use Work Effort to automatically calculate task Planned Hours setting on the project, then update the level of Work Effort from Medium to Small or Large, the Planned Hours also update. For more information, see the section How Workfront calculates Planned Hours based on Work Effort in this article.
  • When you inline edit tasks and modify both the Planned Hours and Work Effort field for task at the same time, the Planned Hours will be updated with the value you specify, whereas the Work Effort value is calculated based on your updated Planned Hours.
  • When you update the Work Effort value of a task, the Duration no longer auto-calculates based on the Planned Hours. For more information about how Duration calculates for Simple Duration tasks, see Duration Type overview: Simple.
  • When you change the Duration Type of a task from Simple to any other type, the Work Effort field is hidden on the task. The Planned Hours remain unchanged.
  • You cannot update the Work Effort level on a parent task. The Work Effort level for a parent task is automatically calculated based on the number of Planned Hours for the tasks which is a rollup of all the children tasks. For information about parent tasks, see Create subtasks.

Enable using Work Effort instead of Planned Hours

  1. Go to a project and click the More menu , then click Edit.

  2. Click Task Settings, then select the option Use Work Effort to automatically calculate task Planned hours. This is deselected by default.

    For more information about enabling the use of Work Effort on a project, see the “Tasks Settings” section in the Edit projects article.

  3. Click Tasks on the left panel , then click the name of a task to access it.

  4. Click the More menu , then click Edit. Ensure the task has a Simple Duration Type.

    TIP
    You can update the Work Effort for a task in the Task Details section as well.

  5. In the Overview area, click the Work Effort drop-down menu to correct the amount of effort needed to complete the task.

    For more information about updating the Work Effort field on a task, see the following articles:

Levels of Work Effort

As a project manager, you can identify three levels of Work Effort for your projects. Each level of effort equates with a percentage of daily time that users need to complete the task.

When setting up the level of Work Effort you have to ask yourself the question: “How much time should a user assigned to this task spend on it daily to get it done in time?”

The following table illustrates the possible levels of Work Effort and their default corresponding percentages. As a project manager, you can update the percentages to suit the needs of your organization. You do this as you edit a project. For information about editing projects, see Edit projects.

As a Workfront administrator, you define the Typical hours per work day in the Project Preferences area of Setup. This is the daily amount of time considered as working time. For information about configuring Project Preferences for your instance of Workfront, see Configure system-wide project preferences.

NOTE
In the examples below, we assume that the Workfront administrator has set the Typical hours per work day amount to 8 hours.
Level of Work EffortPercentage values
SmallA Small level of effort for completing a task is set to 25% of the Typical hours per work day. This means that a task assigned this level of Work Effort should take up to 2 hours a day to complete in one day. (0.25*8=2)
Medium

A Medium level of effort for completing a task is set to 50% of the Typical hours per work day. This means that a task assigned this level of Work Effort should take more than 2 and less than 6 hours to complete in one day. (0.50*80=4)

Note: When the Use Work Effort to automatically calculate task Planned Hours setting is enabled on the project this is the default setting for a task, if the task had 0 Planned Hours before this setting was enabled. This causes the task Planned Hours to update to 4 hours.

LargeA Large level of effort for completing a task is set to 75% of the Typical hours per work day. This means that a task assigned this level of Work Effort should take 6 hours or more to complete in one day. (0.75*8=6)

How Workfront calculates Planned Hours based on Work Effort

When you enable the Use Work Effort to automatically calculate task Planned Hours setting on a project, Workfront calculates the number of Planned Hours for a task with a Simple Duration Type using the following formula:

Task Planned Hours = Number of days in task Duration * Work Effort percentage * Typical hours per work day

For example, a task with a Duration of 3 days and a Work Effort of Medium has 12 Planned Hours:

Planned Hours = 3*4=12

where the Typical hours per work day value is 8 hours.

TIP
When a task is assigned to multiple resources, the Planned Hours are evenly distributed to each resource for each day of the task’s duration.

How Workfront calculates Work Effort based on Planned Hours

When you enable the Use Work Effort to automatically calculate task Planned Hours setting on a project and you already have Planned Hours on the task or you edit the number of Planned Hours on the task, Workfront updates the Work Effort value.

Workfront uses the following formula to update the level of Work Effort according to the Planned Hours:

Work Effort level = Task Planned Hours / Duration / Typical hours per work day

For example, if you have a task with a Duration of 2 days and you update the Planned Hours from 8 to 20 hours, the Work Effort for the task updates from Medium to Large:

Work Effort level = 20 / 2 / 8 = 125 % = Large

Locate Work Effort for tasks and projects

Work Effort for projects

You can locate the Work Effort section on a project in the following area:

  • The Task Settings area in the Edit Project box

Work Effort for tasks

You can locate the Work Effort field for a task in the following areas:

  • The Overview area in the Edit Task box
  • The Overview area of the Task Details section, in the Working time area
  • A task list or report

More help on this topic

Previous pagePlanned Hours overview
Next pageTask Progress Status overview

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