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Understanding Fixed Duration: Effort Driven vs Non-Effort Driven in MS Project

Maira Mehtab Sep 28, 2026 868 views

Question details

The user wants to understand the conceptual and practical differences between Fixed Duration, Effort Driven and Fixed Duration, Non-Effort Driven scheduling modes when adding resources.

Product: Microsoft Project
Device & OS: not provided
Scenario: Assigning additional resources to a project task with a fixed duration and monitoring how the work allocation changes.
Observed behavior: Clarification is needed on how Microsoft Project redistributes existing work or adds new assignments depending on the chosen effort-driven setting.

Before you start

Before adjusting your task settings, ensure you have a basic project schedule created and know the original workload hours assigned to your current resources.

Solution 1Recommended

Configure and Compare Task Types in MS Project

Test and observe the difference between Effort Driven and Non-Effort Driven modes by setting up a sample task and analyzing how work values change.

Both settings keep the task duration fixed. With Fixed Duration, Effort Driven, adding a resource redistributes the existing work evenly among the resources. With Fixed Duration, Non-Effort Driven, the original resource keeps the existing work and the added resource receives a brand-new additional assignment.

You can easily observe this behavior by creating a mock task and testing the different available configurations.

Create a sample task

Create a new 10-day task with one resource assigned at 100% units in your Microsoft Project schedule.

Duplicate the task

Copy the sample task five times to test the different combinations of task types and effort-driven settings.

Access Task Information

Double-click one of the copied tasks to open the 'Task Information' dialog box, then navigate to the 'Advanced' tab.

Set task types

Change the 'Task type' dropdown to 'Fixed Duration' and toggle the 'Effort driven' checkbox according to the scenario you want to test.

Add resources and observe

Insert the 'Work' column into your main project table and assign a second resource to the task. Notice that 'Effort Driven' redistributes the hours, while 'Non-Effort Driven' adds more total work hours to the task.

Task Combinations Limitation: There are only five available combinations to test, because setting a task to 'Fixed Work' with 'Effort-driven' disabled is not an available option in Microsoft Project.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What does 'Effort Driven' mean in Microsoft Project?

Effort Driven means that the total amount of work for a task remains constant. When you add or remove resources, the existing workload is redistributed evenly among the assigned resources while the task duration stays the same (if set to Fixed Duration).

Why would I use Fixed Duration, Non-Effort Driven?

This setting is highly useful when you have a strict, set timeframe for a task and want to add more people to perform extra work, without reducing the workload of the originally assigned resources.

Can I turn off effort-driven scheduling for a Fixed Work task?

No, Microsoft Project does not allow you to disable effort-driven scheduling when a task is set to Fixed Work. The software requires Fixed Work tasks to always be effort-driven by default.

Where do I change the task type and effort-driven settings?

You can modify these settings by double-clicking a specific task to open the Task Information dialog box, then clicking on the Advanced tab. Here, you will find both the Task Type drop-down menu and the Effort Driven checkbox.

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