Task Duration

Task duration is the amount of working time assigned to a project task from its scheduled start to its scheduled finish. It determines how long the task bar is on the Gantt chart — a 5-day task spans five working days of horizontal space, a 20-day task spans four working weeks. Duration is one of three variables — along with start date and resource working calendar — that the scheduling engine uses to compute a task's finish date.

Calendar Days vs. Working Days

A task set to five days duration does not necessarily finish five calendar days after it starts. If the task begins on a Monday, it finishes the following Friday — seven calendar days later — because two of those days are weekend nonworking time. Professional scheduling tools compute finish dates using working time: they walk forward from the start date, counting only hours defined as available by the resource or project calendar, until the task's duration is consumed.

This distinction matters when communicating deadlines. "Five days" means different things to a scheduler using a Monday-through-Friday calendar and a stakeholder counting calendar days. For precise communication, state whether a duration estimate is in working days or calendar days.

How Maverick Computes Finish Dates

In Maverick, finish date = start date + duration, adjusted for the resource's working schedule. If a resource works eight hours per day, Monday through Friday, a 5-day task starting Monday at 8 AM finishes Friday at 5 PM. Add a public holiday in the middle and the finish shifts one working day later. Assign a part-time resource who works Tuesday and Thursday only, and the same 5-day duration stretches over more than two calendar weeks.

Because Maverick computes dates from the resource schedule, duration and resource assignment together drive the entire downstream schedule. Change a task's duration and every successor task recalculates immediately. For more on how resource working hours interact with task dates, see the guide: Resource Schedules and Working Hours.

Duration in the Gantt Chart

Duration is directly visible as the length of the task bar on the Gantt chart. A longer bar means a longer task. When you change a task's duration in the Properties panel, the bar resizes immediately and all downstream successor dates recascade through the dependency network. Baseline ghost bars — thin bars behind the current task bars — show the original planned duration so you can compare current estimates to the approved baseline at a glance.

Related Terms

Gantt Chart  ·  Project Calendar  ·  Task Dependency  ·  Critical Path  ·  Project Baseline