What a neat circular arguement.
I need to know the best way for presenting the over allocation dates
and which resources are over allocated to management so they can
reprioritize the projects.
I could never get the report you ask for to be of any enduring value. And I spent a mountain of time on it
It was doable if I remember but I scrapped the whole concept as a diseased thing, solving the wrong problem.
If you levelled all resources they would see missed deadlines which is a pretty powerful
portrayal of capacity. In other words you say you are "booked", they say well we need Project X done first
You reschedule and then they see Project Y way late, and bump it up and then Project Z is not even on the map
anymore.
The overallocations report is a tough one to get a correct presentation on because it dosen't really make sense.
As you are modelling a physical impossibility. It makes more sense to display late plans then bring
additional capacity to bear on the system in a "what if" scenerio to meet the deadlines (or change the deadlines.).
From what you said the priotrities will be related to the projects, (that's global). So your need to see how to
benefit the projects and looking at a levelled set of plans is the best way to do that.
Consider the conversation
"Why is task A delayed so long?"
"Because we don't have anybody to work on it."
"You mean if we could get that worked on earlier both Projects would meet deadline?"
"Yes"
"But we only have a single capable resource?"
"Yes"
"hmm, seems a shame that the whole company is hinging on that one resource(simplified)"
"Yep"
That is a true bottleneck analysis, and saves a whole lot of other resource overallocation management
effort that may just have a way of disappearing.
So when confronted with this
Deadlines "Can't" change, Resources scarce.?
Now it becomes about people.
Can you make a committment to the bottleneck resources of the Projects that they will be allowed absolute
uninterupted focus on one task at a time? If you can stick to that one commitment you will probably greatly increase
their capacity. (And they are no longer the bottleneck, try it in your own personnal life task list first).
The committment must be total on both sides management and resource. Most common answer is "Well, we can't do that"
You can't do it yet? Focus is a learned skill, lack of focus is a common pattern of behaviour that many people elevate to the level
of a desirable
skill because it can be demonstrated as appropriate by false optimizations at the local level or political posturing.
This is simply a way to use a tool in support of a thought process, but it eliminates the need of a report I thought at one time
would be a valuable thing. Once I understood the problem better the report wasn't needed.
