Assigning people part-time to a project

[Eugene Lin]

I have a project where each person is working on it part-time (e.g. Jim is
working 50% of the time on it). So I have their availability (in the resource
sheet) set to "50%" and I assign them to tasks at 50%. Each task has only one
resource assigned, to keep it simple.

What I do often is try out "what if" scenarios such as: "What if Jim spent
only 30% of his time on this project instead?" However, when I change the
resource availability, I then have to manually change each assignment for
that resource to match the new number.

How can I have Project automatically assign a resource to a task for as many
units as the resource has available?

 

[JulieS]

Hi Eugene Lin,

Unfortunately, dropping a resource's maximum units does not change the
resource unit assignments -- you will still need to re-assign the resources
to get the lower (or higher) maximum units. I would save the project file
(perhaps under another name) before making the change. Then, to make the
re-assignments easier:

1) Tools> Options, view tab. Uncheck Show Summary Tasks
2) Filter the project using the Using Resource... filter and select the
resource whose tasks you wish to see.
3) Select all tasks in the filtered view.
4) Click the assign resources button in the Standard toolbar.
5) Click the resource you wish to replace in the Assign Resources dialog
box.
6) Click the Remove button.
7) Select the same resource name.
8) Click the assign button to re-assign the resource with the new maximum
units.

You will need to repeat this for each resource in turn.

9) Tools>Options, view tab. Check Show Summary Tasks to return to the
display of summary tasks.

Hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie

 

[Eugene Lin]

Thanks for the response. Good idea to use the filtering to make things easier.

Another option I thought of was to change the working hours of the resource
to something that represented the portion of the 8-hour day that they
actually worked on the project (e.g. instead of 50% I'd set working hours to
8a-12p). Then I could assign the resource at 100% to any task and just
twiddle the working hours to adjust the "percentage allocated to this
project". Do you see any gotchas with that approach (other than not being
able to easily see the allocated percentage)?

-Euge

 

[JulieS]

Hi Euge,

No immediate "gotchas" come to mind, it is really no more than a preference.
I find it easier for reporting purposes to tell a manager that the
resource's allocation is 50% to the project rather than remembering that I
change one's resource's calendar to 4 hours per day, and changed another
resource's calendar to 6 hours per day, particularly as it is hard (although
possible using VBA) to print a resource's calendar. (You may get other
poster's opinions as well on this particular issue.)

Hope this helps.

Julie

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Eugene,
Contrary to most people, I hate percentages.
So I like this idea far better.
When someone works for me I like it to be 100% of his/her brain )
Greetings,

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

50% assignment doesn't mean they're working half of their day on project
work and the other half on other things. What it means is that whatever
duration a task they're working on might be, only half of that time is
converted to useful work. That's quite different from having someone who
works an 8-hour day available to me for 4 hours each day. If I have someone
for half of their workday, I'd still expect them to devote their full
attention to the work I've assigned them to - their working on a task for
the half-day I have them should result in 4 hours of work output. That
means that the task is a 4 hour task to which they're assigned 100%.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Again, I disagree.
50% asignment DOES mean they work 30 secs every minute on that task, and
that they are abvailable for other tasks the other 30 secs.
HTH

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

You are correct if one remembers we are talking about average levels of
effort over longer time frames. But it requires a lot of mental juggling to
keep it all straight. When you estimate a task duration you have to really
make sure that the numbers you estimate represent the times at the
assignment level you plan to use. If I say it will take 3 days to wax the
widgets, I have to be crystal clear whether I thinking about 3 man-days of
work effort or 3 days of duration for Joe who only is available 4 hours a
day so 3 days represents 1.5 man-day of actual effort. As you know, many
people "mix and match" duration estimates and work estimates. They
shouldn't, but they do.

Unfortunately Project doesn't quite have what I think is the best solution.
What I'd like is to be able to schedule him 100% (as you usually suggest) so
he generates 1 minute of work for each minute spent on the task, have his
calendar reflect his hours "on the property" so I'll know how when he'll be
there able to do the tasks, and yet be able to put a cap on his usage at XX
percentage of his total work day or work week, having project run out the
duration when we assign him so the hours of the task's duration spread to
fill the hours he can work on it. The problem is that project doesn't
change duration on an initial assignment - it would be so much easier if one
could estimate the task duration as full-time equivalents. Then one could
say this task is estimated at 3 days. If I assign Bill who works 8 hours
and is available at 100% the duration will stay at 3 days. But if I assign
Joe who also works 8 hours but is only available for 4 a day, it would be
nice if it automatically adjust to show 6 days duration. But that's not
what happens - not unless we assign Joe at 100% and then resolve the
resulting overallocation by reducing him to 50%. Estimating the task at 3
days and assigning Bill 100% results in a duration of 3 days. But as it
stands estimating the task at 3 days and then assigning Joe at 50% ALSO
results in a duration of 3 days.

But even then, that strategy breaks down if the task is less than a day in
duration. Case in point ... I have a task that requires 4 man-hours of
work. I'm going to assign Joe who is available to me 4 hours a day out of
his 8 hour regular workday but the hours I can have him aren't fixed to any
specifc times, it doesn't matter if I schedule him 08:00 to 12:00, 10:00 to
14:00, or 13:00 to 17:00, as long as I don't use him more than 4 hours a
day. Which is the clearer scheduling situation...

1: Make his calendar 08:00 to 12:00 and assign him 100% to a 4 hour
duration task? Maybe, but what if the task is preceeded by one that is also
4 hours done by another resource who works on it 08:00 to 12:00? Now our
task could start at 13:00 but Joes calendar says he's not available until
08:00 the next day, delaying the start unecessarily. What we should do is
have him organize his day so he gets his other duties out of the way in the
morning so he can pickup our project task at 13:00 and give it his full
attention for his half day on it, starting it ASAP and working on it 100%
for 4 hours.
2: Leave his calendar at 8 hours per day and assign him 50% to an 8 hour
duration task? Well that means his total hour budget will work out okay but
again we have a starting and ending time problem. Instead of a 4 hour
duration task our task now must become 8 hours and when we enter the task
duration, usually long before we do the resource assignment, we have to be
careful to base that number we enter on the time that will be required when
we eventually assign our resource at 50%. It also means Joe can start on it
at 13:00 but our schedule will show it not finishing until noon the next
day, 8 hours later as required to get the 4 man-hours of work in at 50%.
But that's not what we really expect to happen - we expect Joe to work on it
full tilt for the half day we can have him and finish at 17:00 the day he
begins it. And we don't want the next task in line to be pushed to 13:00
the next day when it really could start at 08:00.

If I have a 4 man-hour task and I have Joe available for any arbitrary 4
hours out of his 8 hour workday, what I want is to to be able to show that
task has a 4 hour, NOT 8 hour, duration, consumes Joe 100% from the time it
starts until it's done and yet does NOT show Joe is overallocated and starts
at whatever hour of the day it's predecessor links allow it to start and
runs continuously for 4 hours, into the next day if necessary. But if the
task is an 8 man-hour task I want it to spread over 2 days and show him used
50% of the two day duration. Haven't quite figured out a good way to get
both behaviours.

Steve

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Steve,

There is no ideal way to represnt 50% availability because in reality it is
mostly ill-defined, and there is no way to cleraly represent an ill-defined
reality in a model.

When somebody really isn't available 50% f the time (like in an employment
contratct) the calendar approach seems most appropriate (you dsay there is a
scheduling problem but that is always present when yopu are less than 100%,
as you point out yourself).

When somebody tells you "I have the guy 50% on Project A, 30% on Project B,
and 20% on Project C, that in genreral does not reflect any reality. It's
just a political statement to keep the owner of project C from howling - in
practice chances are that his project does not advance at all.
In these case my recommendation by far is to simply allocate 100% at each
task, and set priorities for Resource leveling to resolve the problem. BTW,
the standard priority of Project has a nice approach to this situation: the
further a task gets delkayed, the higher its priority becomes.
Spending hours to decide how many seconds per minute one may work on which
task is a gigantic loss of time -and BTW, the giuy does the most interseting
pf the different jobs anyhow )

 

[Rod Gill]

Okay, Okay, you've hooked me: I can't resist putting my oar in!! So:

This is where I feel every training course falls into the teach features
trap. Instead lets look at this from a scheduling point of view. Firstly
there are two main scenarios when scheduling resource assignments: time
constrained and resource constrained. The type of confusion this thread has
discussed often comes I find when only one way of assigning resources to
tasks is taught. I teach one way for assigning to a time constrained task
and one way for a resource constrained task.

Firstly I always have effort driven OFF and task type of Fixed Units.

Time Constrained: Here the duration needs to be set because we have
constrained dates. It's fairly easy to manipulate durations and lead times
etc so as to meet the required deadline.
So, lets assume we need to complete a task in 2d. In my book this means we
have 2 working days within which to finish the task. In the assign resources
dialog against the relevant task enter 8h and press enter. Project
calculates units of 50% (but only if effort driven is off).
This should book 8h over that 2 days for this resource. The resource at the
beginning of the week the task starts in should enter into Outlook's
calendar when they are going to squeeze the 8h in. Project is not and should
not be a time management tool. Project just sets the constraints, in this
case 8h of work or effort over the calculated 2d.

Resource Constrained: Here we know the work - 8h but not the duration. Lets
assume we also know that we have 50% availability. In the Assign Resource
dialog enter 8h again and press enter. Project calculates the units based on
the current duration. Overwrite the calculated units with 50% and Project
now calculates a new duration of 2d. Here we are saying that with 8h of work
and 4h per day availability to work on the task, the duration will be 2d.
Again the resource should schedule in Outlook when the 4h will be done.

I like these two methods because you enter just 2 pieces of information and
Project does the rest. Use one method for both scenarios and you end up
doing extra editing and that's where many users get lost.
--

Rod Gill
Project MVP
Visit www.msproject-systems.com for Project Companion Tools and more

 

[John Sitka]

just a political statement to keep the owner of project C from howling

Good one.

But here is MHO on where the problem lies and it is way way common.

I have a project where each person is working on it part-time (e.g. Jim is
working 50% of the time on it). So I have their availability (in the resource
sheet) set to "50%" and I assign them to tasks at 50%. Each task has only one
resource assigned, to keep it simple.

Define how much fulltime work you expect Jim to contribute on a day, a week, an hour and
set the task to that length. Ask him to tell you when he's done or when progress has been made.
There is nothing more that you can expect of Jim, and Jim needs a definite window of opportunity
and focus to accomplish what you ask of him. Why would you leave that ambiguous? Why would you not
want to help Jim fulfill his responsibilites in a low stress, well defined and focused way. Don't build fancy
political fabels. Model a system so you can see where it breaks down or where gains can be made.
And realize there is a human (or robot) behind those Gantt bars. At what point is enough; enough, 10% per task.
That is Jim has ten things on the go at once. Has to field inquiries into his progress from ten stake holders at once.
Has to engage in 10 times the number of "setups" or preparations and "breakdowns"
So one may say
"But it's just 50% so it's just two simultaneous tasks,"
.......well then it's easy then isn't it.
"Define how much fulltime work you expect Jim
to contribute on a day, a week, or an hour" It's worth it.

Hi Steve,

There is no ideal way to represnt 50% availability because in reality it is
mostly ill-defined, and there is no way to cleraly represent an ill-defined
reality in a model.

When somebody really isn't available 50% f the time (like in an employment
contratct) the calendar approach seems most appropriate (you dsay there is a
scheduling problem but that is always present when yopu are less than 100%,
as you point out yourself).

When somebody tells you "I have the guy 50% on Project A, 30% on Project B,
and 20% on Project C, that in genreral does not reflect any reality. It's
just a political statement to keep the owner of project C from howling - in
practice chances are that his project does not advance at all.
In these case my recommendation by far is to simply allocate 100% at each
task, and set priorities for Resource leveling to resolve the problem. BTW,
the standard priority of Project has a nice approach to this situation: the
further a task gets delkayed, the higher its priority becomes.
Spending hours to decide how many seconds per minute one may work on which
task is a gigantic loss of time -and BTW, the giuy does the most interseting
pf the different jobs anyhow )

You are correct if one remembers we are talking about average levels of
effort over longer time frames. But it requires a lot of mental juggling to
keep it all straight. When you estimate a task duration you have to really
make sure that the numbers you estimate represent the times at the
assignment level you plan to use. If I say it will take 3 days to wax the
widgets, I have to be crystal clear whether I thinking about 3 man-days of
work effort or 3 days of duration for Joe who only is available 4 hours a
day so 3 days represents 1.5 man-day of actual effort. As you know, many
people "mix and match" duration estimates and work estimates. They
shouldn't, but they do.

Unfortunately Project doesn't quite have what I think is the best solution.
What I'd like is to be able to schedule him 100% (as you usually suggest) so
he generates 1 minute of work for each minute spent on the task, have his
calendar reflect his hours "on the property" so I'll know how when he'll be
there able to do the tasks, and yet be able to put a cap on his usage at XX
percentage of his total work day or work week, having project run out the
duration when we assign him so the hours of the task's duration spread to
fill the hours he can work on it. The problem is that project doesn't
change duration on an initial assignment - it would be so much easier if one
could estimate the task duration as full-time equivalents. Then one could
say this task is estimated at 3 days. If I assign Bill who works 8 hours
and is available at 100% the duration will stay at 3 days. But if I assign
Joe who also works 8 hours but is only available for 4 a day, it would be
nice if it automatically adjust to show 6 days duration. But that's not
what happens - not unless we assign Joe at 100% and then resolve the
resulting overallocation by reducing him to 50%. Estimating the task at 3
days and assigning Bill 100% results in a duration of 3 days. But as it
stands estimating the task at 3 days and then assigning Joe at 50% ALSO
results in a duration of 3 days.

But even then, that strategy breaks down if the task is less than a day in
duration. Case in point ... I have a task that requires 4 man-hours of
work. I'm going to assign Joe who is available to me 4 hours a day out of
his 8 hour regular workday but the hours I can have him aren't fixed to any
specifc times, it doesn't matter if I schedule him 08:00 to 12:00, 10:00 to
14:00, or 13:00 to 17:00, as long as I don't use him more than 4 hours a
day. Which is the clearer scheduling situation...

1: Make his calendar 08:00 to 12:00 and assign him 100% to a 4 hour
duration task? Maybe, but what if the task is preceeded by one that is also
4 hours done by another resource who works on it 08:00 to 12:00? Now our
task could start at 13:00 but Joes calendar says he's not available until
08:00 the next day, delaying the start unecessarily. What we should do is
have him organize his day so he gets his other duties out of the way in the
morning so he can pickup our project task at 13:00 and give it his full
attention for his half day on it, starting it ASAP and working on it 100%
for 4 hours.
2: Leave his calendar at 8 hours per day and assign him 50% to an 8 hour
duration task? Well that means his total hour budget will work out okay but
again we have a starting and ending time problem. Instead of a 4 hour
duration task our task now must become 8 hours and when we enter the task
duration, usually long before we do the resource assignment, we have to be
careful to base that number we enter on the time that will be required when
we eventually assign our resource at 50%. It also means Joe can start on it
at 13:00 but our schedule will show it not finishing until noon the next
day, 8 hours later as required to get the 4 man-hours of work in at 50%.
But that's not what we really expect to happen - we expect Joe to work on it
full tilt for the half day we can have him and finish at 17:00 the day he
begins it. And we don't want the next task in line to be pushed to 13:00
the next day when it really could start at 08:00.

If I have a 4 man-hour task and I have Joe available for any arbitrary 4
hours out of his 8 hour workday, what I want is to to be able to show that
task has a 4 hour, NOT 8 hour, duration, consumes Joe 100% from the time it
starts until it's done and yet does NOT show Joe is overallocated and starts
at whatever hour of the day it's predecessor links allow it to start and
runs continuously for 4 hours, into the next day if necessary. But if the
task is an 8 man-hour task I want it to spread over 2 days and show him used
50% of the two day duration. Haven't quite figured out a good way to get
both behaviours.

Steve

Again, I disagree.
50% asignment DOES mean they work 30 secs every minute on that task, and
that they are abvailable for other tasks the other 30 secs.
HTH

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/
+32-495-300 620
"Steve House [Project MVP]" <[email protected]>
schreef in bericht 50% assignment doesn't mean they're working half of their day on project
work and the other half on other things. What it means is that whatever
duration a task they're working on might be, only half of that time is
converted to useful work. That's quite different from having someone who
works an 8-hour day available to me for 4 hours each day. If I have
someone
for half of their workday, I'd still expect them to devote their full
attention to the work I've assigned them to - their working on a task for
the half-day I have them should result in 4 hours of work output. That
means that the task is a 4 hour task to which they're assigned 100%.
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

I have a project where each person is working on it part-time (e.g. Jim
is
working 50% of the time on it). So I have their availability (in the
resource
sheet) set to "50%" and I assign them to tasks at 50%. Each task has
only
one
resource assigned, to keep it simple.

What I do often is try out "what if" scenarios such as: "What if Jim
spent
only 30% of his time on this project instead?" However, when I change
the
resource availability, I then have to manually change each assignment
for
that resource to match the new number.

How can I have Project automatically assign a resource to a task for as
many
units as the resource has available?

 

[David Parker]

I think when assigning resources some kind of "use available" option would
be good, unless I'm still totally misunderstanding the whole thing.

Say, I'm at work 9:00 till 17:30. But only a small amount of the day (and it
varies) is available to do project work really, since small tasks that come
up on any one day can take up a large proportion of it).

It'd be good to have a task called "Small tasks" using say 60% of a
resource, and other tasks are allowed to occur at the same time but have
their resource usage reduced (and duration increased) as a result. I can see
selecting all the main project tasks and changing the resource allocation
causing problems if, say, on a particular week these "small tasks" are
taking 20%, or 80%.

Is there any better alternative to reducing the hours available for the
resource in the calendar?

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

A few years ago I wrote a macro for a customer doing that (limiting all
assignments to 100% less teh time estimated for nonproject work)