Fixed duration task type - When should you use it?

The default task type in MS Project is fixed units. However, this isn’t always the best choice, especially if your organization is in a functional structure (meaning your project team reports to their respective functional managers and not to the project manager).

For example, you assigned a 2 day task to Michael. Michael does not report to you and your primary concern is that he does his work within those 2 days. Since you are not managing his full workload, you really don’t need to track how much time he is spending on that particular task; it could be 2 hours of effort or 16 hours of effort. If that looks like your situation, then you want fixed duration, not fixed units.

Many project managers already know that they can change each task’s task type to ‘Fixed Duration’ by accessing its Task Information. But did you know that you can also set MS Project to use fixed duration as the task type every time in the future?

Simply go to Tools > Options > Schedule tab and change the Default task type to ‘Fixed Duration’. This task type will apply to all new tasks for every project moving forward.