assigning resources to ongoing "task"

[Prairie Smoke]

I would like to assign the department resources to a task called "Admin" and
allocate each person's percent admin time per month to the Admin "task" over
a year's time. The Admin task would be 1 month fixed duration (actual
available work hours) for each month of the year. Their leftover time would
be allocated to actual tasks so that I can do resource leveling with them.

Of course, if I assign each resource's percent admin time to the task, I get
more hours than there are in the month. Do I create an "Admin" task for each
person (a hassle) or is there some way to have one Admin task cover everyone?
Would this do something to foul up the resource leveling?

 

[Jim Aksel]

Set the task type to Fixed Work. From the Task Information dialog box pull
the advanced tab.

Assign a fixed amount of work to the task in the [work] column such as 160
hours. You can key a [duration] as necessary. Now, as you alter resource
assignments to the task, you will see their units% will change as the number
of resources increases.
In All Cases:
Work=Units x Duration
So, hold one constant and alter the remaining two to acheive the desired
result.
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim
It''s software; it''s not allowed to win.

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

 

[Prairie Smoke]

Thank you, you answered exactly what I asked. I think I did not give you all
the parameters, though. I am trying to set up Project so that the percent of
admin time for each resource is off the table when scheduling projects. In
actuality, each resource has all the working hours in the month (152 for
example); they aren't really working on one task called Admin. So it seems
that to keep 3 resources' admin time accurate in both % (Work?) and # of
hours (Units?), I would either need to have an admin task for each resource
or have a month with 3 X 152 hours (which would skew the Duration). I think I
am wanting to set all three parameters, and to manage with only one Admin
task I will have to pick one to let slide unless you know of some other way
to set it up.

Thanks for your suggestions. I really appreciate that y'all (plural) are
willing to spend your time puzzling through this stuff.

Set the task type to Fixed Work. From the Task Information dialog box pull
the advanced tab.

Assign a fixed amount of work to the task in the [work] column such as 160
hours. You can key a [duration] as necessary. Now, as you alter resource
assignments to the task, you will see their units% will change as the number
of resources increases.
In All Cases:
Work=Units x Duration
So, hold one constant and alter the remaining two to acheive the desired
result.
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim
It''s software; it''s not allowed to win.

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

I would like to assign the department resources to a task called "Admin" and
allocate each person's percent admin time per month to the Admin "task" over
a year's time. The Admin task would be 1 month fixed duration (actual
available work hours) for each month of the year. Their leftover time would
be allocated to actual tasks so that I can do resource leveling with them.

Of course, if I assign each resource's percent admin time to the task, I get
more hours than there are in the month. Do I create an "Admin" task for each
person (a hassle) or is there some way to have one Admin task cover everyone?
Would this do something to foul up the resource leveling?

 

[Jim Aksel]

Work=Units x Duration.
Pick one to lock as a task type, pick one to change. The others get
calculated.
Sorry, that's the way it works. I have a PPT slide that tells you what will
change
depending on what you pick. For example, you can actually change the one
you chose to lock then what happens? I can e-mail the slide, jeaksel at
yahoo dot com.

You can do this, however. Make the task fixed work. Enter the work 3x152.
Enter resources (apparently 3), then key in the duration as 152/8=19 days
(or whatever that month holds). You will see your resource percentage units
drop as the duration expands back to where you originally had it.

Another option is to make the task Fixed Duration/Effort Driven. Key in the
work. Then assign your resources. The resource percentages will divide
evenly.

The way I understand your problem, I think you have 3 admins who work tasks.
In addition they perform Level of Effort Administrative Tasks which consumes
the rest of their time for the day. So, they are working Admin for 25% of
the day (example) and then working a combination of other (real) tasks that
does not consume more than a total of 75% of their time.

The way we deal with that is to manually cut the LOE % to avoid an overload.
On some other programs, we exclude LOE from the schedule. Instead we have
a separate schedule the contains all the LOE activities and resource loading.
It does not matter what you load into the LOE file as you are going to take
BCWP on it anyway regardless of actuals... the overload will not count.
However, overstating the LOE and getting a lot of BCWP will not do you any
good if your actuals are too low ... you will have a cost variance to
explain. Hopefully I did not confuse you.
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim
It's software; it's not allowed to win.

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

Thank you, you answered exactly what I asked. I think I did not give you all
the parameters, though. I am trying to set up Project so that the percent of
admin time for each resource is off the table when scheduling projects. In
actuality, each resource has all the working hours in the month (152 for
example); they aren't really working on one task called Admin. So it seems
that to keep 3 resources' admin time accurate in both % (Work?) and # of
hours (Units?), I would either need to have an admin task for each resource
or have a month with 3 X 152 hours (which would skew the Duration). I think I
am wanting to set all three parameters, and to manage with only one Admin
task I will have to pick one to let slide unless you know of some other way
to set it up.

Thanks for your suggestions. I really appreciate that y'all (plural) are
willing to spend your time puzzling through this stuff.

Set the task type to Fixed Work. From the Task Information dialog box pull
the advanced tab.

Assign a fixed amount of work to the task in the [work] column such as 160
hours. You can key a [duration] as necessary. Now, as you alter resource
assignments to the task, you will see their units% will change as the number
of resources increases.
In All Cases:
Work=Units x Duration
So, hold one constant and alter the remaining two to acheive the desired
result.
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim
It''s software; it''s not allowed to win.

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

I would like to assign the department resources to a task called "Admin" and
allocate each person's percent admin time per month to the Admin "task" over
a year's time. The Admin task would be 1 month fixed duration (actual
available work hours) for each month of the year. Their leftover time would
be allocated to actual tasks so that I can do resource leveling with them.

Of course, if I assign each resource's percent admin time to the task, I get
more hours than there are in the month. Do I create an "Admin" task for each
person (a hassle) or is there some way to have one Admin task cover everyone?
Would this do something to foul up the resource leveling?