Project Management

Please login or join to subscribe to this thread

Team Resource Allocation

linkedin twitter facebook   Estimating  
avatar
lorin unger New York, Ny, United States
File attached 
Sorry for the length of the post.

Can anyone offer suggestion on an efficient way to use MS Project (or another tool) to manage resources on a team level? I need to estimate my teams resource allocation through the coming year. I don't yet have enough information to estimate project phases or anything at the level of a typical project plan. My initial implementation had a single MS Plan with the project names as the roll-up task and a subtask for each month. Then I could assign resources and allocation on a month by month basis for each project. The main benefit of this approach for me is that I can move resources around very easily and also adjust when the project is going to be done very easily - if I scheduled a 8 week project for December and January and wanted to move it to later in the year I can simply delete the resources from Jan/Feb and put them in April/May and then adjust for overallocation.) (in the attached screenshot the months with resources are when I actually plan to do the work. The blank months are placeholders so I can easily move things around without having to create new tasks, dependencies, etc.) The downside to this is that the estimate covers the whole month so when I get closer to the project or get more detailed information I can't tweak down to a more granular level (e.g. when i realize that the project will actually finish in the 3rd week of May instead of the end of the month). The other downside is that this approach just seems wrong and kinda boneheaded. I'm in the process of setting up the work in the more typical Gantt chart fashion - the project as the roll-up and separate consecutive tasks for when I want the allocation of a resource to change over time during the project, but this seems off too (I haven't used this model yet so I can't comment on the ease of updating/adding/maintaining). Can anyone offer any suggestions in how to set up MS Project to accomplish this (or recommend a more appropriate tool). Thanks!
Sort By:
avatar
lorin unger New York, Ny, United States
There was a typo above. The line should read:

"...if I scheduled a 8 week project for *January and February* and wanted to move it to later in the year I can simply delete the resources from Jan/Feb and put them in April/May and then adjust for overallocation."

Sorry for the confusion.
avatar
Evan Sanders Project Manager| Health Catalyst Ut, United States
File attached 
Rather than using MS Project, you may want create a simpler MS Excel spreadsheet. You could use one row per project or sub-project and one column per week. Then fill in the individual cells to indicate the estimated resource usage on a per-project per-week basis. This would provide you with a quick way of seeing the planned projects for a period of time, and you would easily be able to shift the estimates by a period of weeks as schedules change. Once your projects become more clearly defined, you would want to use MS Project or a similar tool to plan and track in detail. I've included a sample file, which should give a clearer picture of my idea. Good luck!
...
1 reply by Annapurna Kolluri
May 31, 2017 9:46 PM
Annapurna Kolluri
...
Hi Evan, Can you please share the file? I am also looking for resource levelling tool. Thank yo for your help in advance.
avatar
lorin unger New York, Ny, United States
Hi Evan...

Thanks for the tip and the sample. I never tried Excel because I thought wouldn't provide enough functionality (also prolly some undeserved backlash from me because of all the folks I've seen create semi-useless project plans in Excel because they didn't want to learn to use MS Project [grim smile]), but in truth I never really explored the possibilities. I'll take a look at/fool around with your sample and post any questions or comments...

Thanks...

L-
avatar
Annapurna Kolluri Project Manager| McAfee Frisco, Tx, United States
Oct 29, 2007 12:18 PM
Replying to Evan Sanders
...
Rather than using MS Project, you may want create a simpler MS Excel spreadsheet. You could use one row per project or sub-project and one column per week. Then fill in the individual cells to indicate the estimated resource usage on a per-project per-week basis. This would provide you with a quick way of seeing the planned projects for a period of time, and you would easily be able to shift the estimates by a period of weeks as schedules change. Once your projects become more clearly defined, you would want to use MS Project or a similar tool to plan and track in detail. I've included a sample file, which should give a clearer picture of my idea. Good luck!
Hi Evan, Can you please share the file? I am also looking for resource levelling tool. Thank yo for your help in advance.

Please login or join to reply

Content ID:
ADVERTISEMENTS

"You must be the change you want to see in the world."

- Mahatma Gandhi

ADVERTISEMENT

Sponsors







Vendor Events

See all Vendor Events

Newsletters

Jun 3: The Career Problem Facing New PMs
May 20: Your PM Career as a Project Life Cycle
May 13: The Big Lie After Layoffs

See all newsletters