Am I missing an MS Project resoutce trick ?

Peter Ellis Croydon, United Kingdom

Apologies if this is not the appropriate forum to raise this question..but here goes anyway...!

Am I going around the houses when allocating partial resources ? To explain....

I have a resource that can be allocated to my project for 56% of their time - no problem; I enter their maximum allocation as 56% in the resource sheet.

Now I want to allocate them to a series of tasks at 100% of their *available* time - MS project complains if I use 100% - and instead insists I apply 56% as a practical maximum value...ho hum, I can live with that I guess.

If I suddenly find that their availability to the project goes up or down, I then have to manually amend each and every task accordingly.

Like I say - am I missing a trick here ?

Posted: Nov 17, 2004 10:26 AM

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David Kester PMP Bothell, Wa, United States

The automated way to do this is "leveling." I find that that the leveling algorythms are pretty complicated and take some effort to understand and use. Frankly, unless you have a really big schedule, manual adjustment is the way to do. You can work through 10-20 tasks and adjust a resource in just a few minues. As apposed to the leveling not doing what you think it should have and fixing up a bunch of tasks that it "fixed up."

Here is the process I use.

1. Assign the work to the person and don't worry about the %. It will assume you want 100%.

2. In all other ways make sure your happy with your schedule. Dependencies, work effots, etc...

3. Level the project. NOTE: I never turn auto leveling.

Hope this helps.

Dave

Posted: Nov 18, 2004 12:11 PM

Andy Jordan President| Roffensian Consulting S.A. Cherry Grove, AB, Canada

MS Project leveling is a nightmare, but there are a few tips to make life easier.

1) Change the resources working time and then allocate 100% of their time

2) If you select multiple tasks and then hold down Shift and press F2 you can edit certain fields across multiple tasks - including resource allocation. It saves you having to do it manually taks by task.

Just a word of warning - be very careful about changing % allocation of a resource (or changing number of resources) on a partially complete task - it can introduce some 'interesting' results - specifics tend to depend on the type of task.

Posted: Nov 18, 2004 2:34 PM

Peter Ellis Croydon, United Kingdom

Dave/Andy,

thanks for your ideas - Leveling is indeed not an activity to take lightly , esp. in MS Project (PMW seemed a little more forgiving in this area). I had thought about reducing the resource's daily hours but is seemed a little hit/miss and more trouble to get the %age right. You have both confirmed that there is no 'silver bullet', as I'd guessed, but had to ask all the same.

Thanks for the warnings about changing the %age on partially complete tasks !

Pete

Posted: Nov 19, 2004 3:50 AM

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Am I missing an MS Project resoutce trick ?

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