Imagine this situation: you have a task with one resource, and duration is 5 days. The task is on track, and it is 50% completed. Suddenly, your resource get sick, and will be able to continue with work after few days. What do you have to do? You can Split Task , or you can use the Resume Field. I’ll show how to do this in PROJECT 2013, but you can also do this in Project 2010.

First I’m going to create a new Project with 1 Task:

Next, I’m going to create one Resource:

Finally, I’m going to assign the Resource to the task:

I will now add %Completed, and Resume fields in the Gantt Chart View:

As you can see, the Resume Field is N/A, and that is because there is no progress on that task yet.

I will now mark a task as 40% completed:

The Resume Field is now Wednesday, May 5th. Task is 40% completed, meaning that he worked Monday and Tuesday (16 hours out of the 40 total hours).

Now suppose that Resource get sick, and he or she will be back at Monday, May 12th. I will put this date in Resume Field, and I’ll get:

As you can see the Finish Date is Wednesday, May 14th and the Task has a Split!

It is very easy, and very, very visible!