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Customizing Effort in a New Project Plan

Jason Carroll Updated by Jason Carroll

Customizing Effort Distributions in a New Project Plan

Effort is a task attribute that represents how much time is projected to complete a task. For example, a task can span multiple weeks or days but maybe only requires a few hours of work per day from each assignee.

This article explores how to adjust default effort values, tweak the distribution of effort between multiple assignees on one task, and maintain effort allocation when reassigning tasks.

Not all tasks have effort. Examples include tasks that are done by resources that we don't track capacity for (i.e. Faculty or contractors) or milestone buckets of tasks that aren't directly actionable (i.e. "1. Non-Video Assets") .
Effort can be easily confused with duration, which indicates the period within which an assignee should complete the task.

There are three types of effort in Wrike: Basic, Daily, and Flexible.

Basic: When the Basic type is selected:

  • Effort is spread evenly among duration and all task assignees.

Daily: Use this type to allocate a certain amount of effort per day for each task assignee in hours per day or the percentages of users' daily capacity.

Flexible: Use this type to gain complete control over effort allocation.

Please visit the Wrike Help Center article on Types of Effort for more details.

How to adjust default effort values

Many course development tasks will contain default effort hours in the new Wrike project template, which can be adjusted. This article focuses on multiple ways to change the default hours: Table or Gantt view, Task view, or workload view.

Adjust effort from the Table or Gantt view
  1. Open the project containing the task you'd like to adjust effort for in the table or gantt view.
  2. Click the gear in the upper left corner of the table to adjust the fields visible in your table.
  3. If it's not already enabled, check the "Effort" box under the Schedule section.
  4. The Effort column should now appear in your view, and you can simply edit the effort associated with the task by editing the cell in that column corresponding to the task you'd like to adjust effort for.
The distribution of effort between assignees (i.e. the ID has 4 hours of effort on this task, and the IDA has 7 hours of effort) on tasks with multiple assignees that use the "Flexible" type of effort can't be adjusted in the Table or Gantt view - only the total effort for the task can be. Task view or workload view must be used to adjust the distribution of effort between assignees on those tasks.
Adjust effort from the Task view
  1. Open the Task view of the task you'd like to adjust the effort for.
  2. Click the date section at the top of Task view.
  3. Click the Effort toggle in the lower-right corner of the date picker.
  4. Change the effort type if necessary.
  5. Enter how much time the task should take in the Effort field. If there are multiple assignees and you selected the Flexible effort type, you can specify the exact amount of effort for each assignee in the fields next to the assignees' names. 
  6. Click Save. 
Edit Effort from the Workload chart

You can enable and edit task effort on Workload charts. To begin, navigate to the relevant Workload chart.

Visit the Workload chart knowledge base article if you're new to the Wrike feature.
  1. Click the task effort of which you want to change. If the task doesn't have effort enabled, click the three-dot menu button on the task preview and click Enable effort.
  2. In the tooltip that appears, you can:
    • Enter how much time a task should take. 
    • Change the effort type. 
  3. If you select the Flexible effort type, you'll see how many hours you've allocated along with the total effort in the Effort field.
  4. To specify the number of hours applicable to each working day.
    Click the cell that appears on the taskbar. 
    • Enter the number of hours the assignee should spend on the task for this particular day.
    • Repeat these steps for each day and task assignee until the allocated hours and total effort are equal.

How to edit task effort distribution between assignees

Basic effort type

When a task is set to the Basic effort type, it will evenly distribute the effort hours between each assignee. In the following example, viewing effort from Task view, two assignees are allocated for 3 hours each due to 6 hours of total effort.

The user changes the effort to 3 hours. Notice how the effort hours are set to 1h 30 min for each user.

When an assignee is removed from a task, the effort will automatically update to assign the total effort hours to the remaining assignees.

Flexible effort type

For complete control of effort allocation between assignees, use the Flexible effort type. You can specify the number of hours independently for each assignee and each working day. In the following screenshot, the flexible effort task is selected. The Wrike user sets the number of hours independently for each assignee.

The effort will not automatically reallocate, as seen below. Note the red value in the 'Effort' field (The allocated hours). You'll always know the number of hours yet to be allotted.

If you need to reassign tasks while maintaining the effort distributions (for example one ID was changed to another on a task), you can do this by going to the List view, clicking the "Mass Edit" button, selecting the task/s you'd like to reassign, and selecting "Switch Assignees" in the right panel that pops up.
 If you need to specify the exact hours of effort per day for each user, you need to do that on Workload charts.

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