I have a Gantt that has been created from scratch. When getting information from individuals within the company, the duration of a task was given - NOT work required. My tasks are therfore Fixed Duration. I assign my resources, at 100%, and of course they are all overallocated.
My question is: If 1 person is performing 5 tasks at the same time, and the tasks all take 5 days to complete (remember duration NOT work), how do I automatically balance the resources accross the tasks within the project?
i.e. 20% effort over 5 days for all 5 tasks. Does this have to be done by hand - or does MS Project do it automatically????
Any help would be appreciated. Saving Changes...
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Darren KosaPlanning & Controls ContractorHampshire, United Kingdom
My initial question would be are you using MS Project to update and track hours?
If you are, then you should assign resources based on the estimated effort you received from the individuals and then look at resource levelling, rather than the 100% carte blanche approach.
If you just want to assign ownership and you’re not worried about the amount of effort it will take to complete the task, it would probably be easier to use a text field (Text1/2/3 etc.) and add the individual(s) there.
When you assign resources in the manner you describe below, you then have to contend with the Duration/Work/Units equation and whether the task is effort driven or not.
It will make your life a heck of a lot easier if you don’t need to use the resource assignment functionality... don’t even think about using the MS Project automatic resource levelling unless you want to spend the next week or so trying to figure out what it did to your schedule!! :)
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As Darren says, there is no automatic way to do what you are describing. Perhaps it would be possible to create a macro to do it in Visual Basic, but I would not recommend it. The suggestion to use a text field for assignments is an excellent one.
If you do decide to use the full duration/work/units features of MS Project, take a look at my articles on MS Project:
http://www.alexsbrown.com/tag/ms-project Particularly look at the "take back control" article at the bottom. It will help you get control over the duration, work, and units measures.
In a project that is overallocated like yours, the "auto resource leveling" feature will keep the work amounts and percentages the same, but reschedule all of the tasks. It sounds like you want to do the opposite: keep the schedule the same and adjust the percentages so that the work is level. To do that, try using one of the "Resource Leveling" views in MS Project, and fix the percentage units assigned to each task by hand. It will be a cumbersome process, but iit will keep your schedule intact.
Even better is Darren's text-field suggestion, assuming you do not need to track work hours on the plan. Saving Changes...
Ramakrishna CH PMPDelivery Manager| Value MomentumHackensack, Nj, United States
Here is the little incide story with MS project. Hope this helps to figure out your puzzle.
MS project uses the equation
Duration * Units(resource) = Work(effort)
So, for a Fixed duration task, this really boils down to what you give and what MS project calculates. If you provide the resource units, (namely the 20% for each taks OR for that matter 100% for each taks) MS project will ultimately determine how much effort will go into the task. But given that you don't anticipate that much of work for a full time resource on the project (100%) you can figure out what makes more sense and hence keep reducing the untis (uptill 20% or any meaningful value) until one find a reasonable effort (man hours / man days) for the task. Remember more work, more cost to the project. So, you don't want to simple leave the assignments at 100% even though the task doesn't warrant for a full time resource working for full 5 days on the task.
Others, please share your thoughts... Saving Changes...
I use the following analogy to teach the equation D * U = W:
Imagine a trough full of water (or wine). The trough has square sides and is the same width on its full length. Imagine you can adjust the sides to make it shorter or longer, though.
If you change the length of the trough and do not add any water or wine, the level of the water will go up or down. Likewise, if you want the trough to be longer, but with the same height of water, you must add water to keep the level the same.
The Duration is the length of the trough. The Units is the height of the water. Work is the volume of water in the trough.
Somehow visualizing this helps some students grasp the basic relationships better than just the mathematical formula.
Double the duration, keep work constant, what happens to units? Falls in half, just like the level of water in the trough.
Halve the duration, keep the units the same, what happens to work? It is cut in half. You must remove half the water from the trough to keep the level in the trough even. Saving Changes...
