Christine.
Welcome to the fun world of Project.
It sounds like the duration of your task is not driven by how many resources work on it. In that case you should add the Type field as a column in the Gantt Chart view and set the task to Fixed Duration. Then enter 8 weeks into the Duration field. The other
important parameter for the task is how much work is required to complete it. In Project, duration and work are two different things. Let's assume for the moment that the total work content is full time, so the 8 week task is estimated to take 320 hours of
Work. Add the Work field to the Gantt Chart view and enter 320 hours.
The next part depends on how the resources will be assigned. Is the intent to have the first resource work on the task for the first week, then resource two takes over the next week and works on it for three weeks, etc. or is the intent to have each of the
resources start work on the task the first day but the first resource only works on it for the first week, the second resource works on it for the first three weeks, etc.
Let's take the second case where all resources start working on the task from the beginning and each "drops off" after their work time. Click on the Resource Names field of the Gantt Chart view. You will see all resources listed with a little box
next to them. Select as many resources as you want and then hit enter. Now go to the Resource Usage view and add the Work field to the view. On the left side you will see that each resource shows an assignment level of that is equally divided among all resources
and is spread over the full 8 weeks. Edit the work value for the assignment row for each resource (the assignment row is the indented row under each resource's name). For example, for the first resource you would enter 40h, the second resource 120h and so
on until all the assignments add up to the original 320h.
Now let's look at the first case, where each resource works in sequence to cover the full 8 week duration. Assign the resources as above but this time instead of editing the Work field of the assignment row on the left side of the Resource Usage view, edit
the work timescaled data of each assignment row on the right side of the view. Since you are working with weeks, it might be more convenient to set the timescale to show weeks. Now for each resource's assignment timescaled data, edit their work. For
example, for the first resource enter 40h for the first week and 0h for the next 7 weeks. For the second resource, enter 0h for the first week and 40h for the next three weeks, with 0h hours for the remaining 4 weeks. Continue that process for each resource's
assignment row.
There you go. Wasn't that fun?
Hope this helps.
John
