Another assignment units question

[dayzman]

Hi all

I have a rather basic question regarding assignment units.

Say, I have a task to be completed by 1 worker in 1 week's time. He
will spend 50% of his working time on the task on Monday to Thursday
and he will spend 100% on it on Friday. In Task View, if I set the
Assignment Units to 50% and change the work hours to 7.5 on Friday,
the Assignment Units will then change to 100% (assuming 7.5hr working
days). That doesn't seem right because he spends 100% only on Friday
and 50% on other days. What does Project assume to produce such
output? Is there a way to show an average assignment (ie. 60%) over
the whole duration? Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks.

Michael

 

[JulieS]

Hello Michael,

If you are looking at the Assignment Units field in the sheet (left
side) of the view, you will see the highest assignment unit across the
entire assignment. If you add the Peak Units field to the timescaled
(right side) of the Task Usage view you will see the highest unit for
the day -- Monday through Thursday will show 50%, Friday will show 100%.


I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie
Project MVP

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for the FAQs and additional information
about Microsoft Project

 

[John]

Hi all

I have a rather basic question regarding assignment units.

Say, I have a task to be completed by 1 worker in 1 week's time. He
will spend 50% of his working time on the task on Monday to Thursday
and he will spend 100% on it on Friday. In Task View, if I set the
Assignment Units to 50% and change the work hours to 7.5 on Friday,
the Assignment Units will then change to 100% (assuming 7.5hr working
days). That doesn't seem right because he spends 100% only on Friday
and 50% on other days. What does Project assume to produce such
output? Is there a way to show an average assignment (ie. 60%) over
the whole duration? Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks.

Michael

Michael,
What you are basically doing is contouring the resource work. Project
has some built-in contours (e.g. front-loaded, bell shape, etc.) but in
your case you should manually contour the work using the Resource Usage
view and entering the work hours for each day.

As you suggest, you could also assign the resource at an average rate,
or, you could even make the task a fixed duration task and then just
enter the total estimated work hours. In the latter case, it doesn't
matter when during the task duration the resource works on the task.

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP

 

[dayzman]

Hi Julie

I'm more interested in the average "contribution" of a worker for a
given task. Is there a way to show the average assignment unit for the
whole assignment despite how the work is contoured?

Thanks,

Michael

 

[JulieS]

Hello Michael,

You could use a custom field (Text1) with a formula to divide work by
duration to calculate the "average" assignment per task. If there were
multiple resource assigned however, you would see the average for all
assignments, not a specific resource.

As John notes, the other option is to let project calculate the
assignment unit by spreading the total work over the task duration.

I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie
Project MVP

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for the FAQs and additional information
about Microsoft Project

 

[dayzman]

I think I'll use a custom field because I actually have several tasks
overlapping and I think if I assign the total work hours for a
resource on each task, they may become overallocated. Or can I just
leveling?

Actually, suppose I have two tasks that overlap : Task A starts on
1/12, lasts 1 month and requires 100hrs and Task B starts on 10/12,
lasts 1 month and requires 100hrs as well. Can Project find the
solution with the most evenly spread work such that the resource is
not overallocated and the task durations and start dates don't change?
Can leveling achieve this?

Thanks,

Michael

 

[dayzman]

Michael,
What you are basically doing is contouring the resource work. Project
has some built-in contours (e.g. front-loaded, bell shape, etc.) but in
your case you should manually contour the work using the Resource Usage
view and entering the work hours for each day.

As you suggest, you could also assign the resource at an average rate,
or, you could even make the task a fixed duration task and then just
enter the total estimated work hours. In the latter case, it doesn't
matter when during the task duration the resource works on the task.

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP

Thanks, John. I agree that manually contouring the work may work out
better. But if I have several overlapping tasks, can I just leveling
to find a solution such that the daily workloads change to avoid
overallocation but the start and finish dates don't change?

Thanks,

Michael
Michael

 

[JulieS]

Hi Michael,

Resource Leveling will never change resource assignment units -- its
only process is to delay tasks (shifting dates) to solve
overallocations. If you have a 20 day task (approximately 1 calendar
month) with 100 hours of work required, with one resource assigned,
Project will spread the work out to 5 hours per day -- an assignment
unit of 63%. If two tasks overlap for the 20 days and the same resource
is assigned to both tasks s/he would be assigned 10 hours of work per
day. If you attempted to level, Project would just delay one of the
tasks until the first task was finished -- leaving the resource only
assigned at 5 hours per day and a total duration (Task A then task B) of
40 working days.

If you want to minimize the durations, assign the resource at 100% and
have the duration of each task drop to 12.5 days. Then level for a
combined duration of Task A & B of 25 days -- versus a total of 40 days
in the earlier scenario.

I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie
Project MVP

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for the FAQs and additional information
about Microsoft Project

 

[dayzman]

I see.

You mentioned that the average assignment can't be shown using a
custom field if there were multiple resources assigned to the same
task. Besides John's suggestion (it doesn't seem to work in my case
asI have overlapping tasks), are there other ways to display the
average assignment of each resource?

Thanks again,

Michael

 

[John]

I see.

You mentioned that the average assignment can't be shown using a
custom field if there were multiple resources assigned to the same
task. Besides John's suggestion (it doesn't seem to work in my case
asI have overlapping tasks), are there other ways to display the
average assignment of each resource?

Thanks again,

Michael

Michael,
If I may jump back into the discussion (I've been off-line for a few
hours). The answer to your question is yes, but, it will require VBA to
"read" each resource's assignment hours and calculate the average to
dump into a spare field for each resource.

John
Project MVP

 

[dayzman]

Michael,
If I may jump back into the discussion (I've been off-line for a few
hours). The answer to your question is yes, but, it will require VBA to
"read" each resource's assignment hours and calculate the average to
dump into a spare field for each resource.

John
Project MVP

Thanks for that. I'll just leave it since I don't want to spend so
much time on that.

A somewhat different question: can assignment units (the black square
brackets) be hidden in Gantt Chart view?

Thanks,

Michael

 

[JulieS]

Hello Michael,

A common work around: View the Resource Sheet --copy the resource name
field and paste into the Resource Initials field. Then customize the
Gantt chart (Format > Bar Styles) and change the text appearing on the
right of the bar to Resource Initials instead of Resource Names.

I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie
Project MVP

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for the FAQs and additional information
about Microsoft Project