Durations

A duration is how long one task or activity is expected to take. You give every piece of work a duration so the workplan shows how long each part of the project will take.

Durations turn a list of jobs into a schedule. Without them you would know what needs doing but not when it could finish or whether the deadline is realistic. Adding up durations shows how long a section of the project takes, and it helps you book the right people, hardware and software for the right amount of time.

For example, imagine a task to record a two-minute radio advert for a school charity. You allow 25 minutes to set up the microphone and check levels, 15 minutes to record and 20 minutes to save and label the audio files. The task duration is 60 minutes. If the recording needs a second voice, you would add that time too.

Durations must be realistic and based on the brief: a short social media clip will take less time than a full photo shoot. Good durations also make progress easier to monitor, because you can compare the time used so far with the time planned.