Assigning resources at the summary level

[Robert]

I am trying to account for project manager time across an entire span of
time. To this end, I have applied a project manager to a summary task at 10%
units to show that 10% of the project managers time will be spent doing PM
work during the tasks under that summary. This seems to work except when it
comes to overallocation. The resource is showing as overallocated even though
they are not over the amount of work hours to warrent an overallocation. Is
it a bug in the system or is MS Project not able to handle resources at the
summary level?

 

[John]

I am trying to account for project manager time across an entire span of
time. To this end, I have applied a project manager to a summary task at 10%
units to show that 10% of the project managers time will be spent doing PM
work during the tasks under that summary. This seems to work except when it
comes to overallocation. The resource is showing as overallocated even though
they are not over the amount of work hours to warrent an overallocation. Is
it a bug in the system or is MS Project not able to handle resources at the
summary level?

Robert,
Generally, assigning resources, even Level of Effort type resources, to
a Summary task is a bad idea. For one thing, a Summary Line isn't really
a task, rather, it is simply a top level summary of the subtasks under
it. Resource assignments on a Summary Line also can cause some
unexpected results. In a way it is similar to linking Summary Lines -
Project will let you do it but it's not a good idea.

See my response to your most recent post for a better method.

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP

 

[Robert]

Thanks for the reply John. I am curious, I have linked summary tasks often
and have not had a problem that I am aware of. Why is that a bad idea?

 

[John]

Thanks for the reply John. I am curious, I have linked summary tasks often
and have not had a problem that I am aware of. Why is that a bad idea?

Robert,
This issue has been brought up many times in this newsgroup. You can do
a search on the subject and get all kinds of opinions. Generally,
linking to Summary Lines is a bad idea because the user needs to be
extremely diligent and careful to avoid two major pitfalls. The first is
creation of circular relationships. The second is unexpected changes in
the schedule (i.e. normal links on performance tasks are fairly easy to
see and predict but Summary Line links can cause some "sneaky" things to
happen). If you are familiar with circuit analysis in electronics,
Summary Line links are like sneak circuit paths.

If you have successfully used links on Summary Lines in the past, you
are either extremely lucky or very cognizant of their quirks.

John
Project MVP