Assign a Variable to a Duration

Question

I am trying to set up a project for a typical product development, but want to be able to make specific durations a variable that I can easily change once to apply to many different tasks at once and see the impact on end date.

As an example, if a product has a bunch of fabrication steps that follow design of various components, I want to quickly do a what-if analysis on the fabrication duration to see how it impacts different handoffs and dates impacting integration. Doing a simple summary and critical analysis is not sufficient due to significant dependencies, and understanding the impacts in the middle of the project is critical.

I know I could do something like resource loading and mess with the availability, but that is pretty clunky and roundabout when I really do want to just change a duration without doing extra math or deal with tasks overlapping that are not actually resource constrained.

Answer 1

Here's a suggestion. Create a filter to isolate those task that you want to do a mass edit of the Duration field. Apply the filter and select all tasks. Right click to bring up the Task Information window, General tab. Set the desired duration and hit "OK".

Another method would be to use VBA.

Answer 2

Suppose you have one existing set of durations in your plan, and you want to see the result of changes to the durations. I would use some of the spare custom duration fields to store altenative sets of durations. Then one by one copy/paste each new set into the duration column.