Assigning resources without changing durations?

[dumbemailjunk]

I'm sure there's an answer to this somewhere but I haven't been lucky
enough to find it here yet. I'll keep looking. In the meantime, I'm
hoping there's a quick response to this situation I'm trying to plan
out.

In my project, I have 6 engineers. Those engineers have access to 4
testbeds. The testbeds can be shared between engineers (sometimes). I
need to be sure that I'm not overly scheduling the testbeds but when I
do, it affects duration times.

For instance, my project is set up like this:

- Feature
Execute feature tests 10 days ......... ..........
Alice

That's fine. Now I want to tie TestBed1 to Alice. It's a resource, I
need to know when it's being used and why but if I do this:

- Feature
Execute feature tests 5 days ....... ........ Alice, TestBed1.

Because I added TestBed1, it reduced the time of the task to 5 days
which is not correct.


I tried adding TestBed1 with a percentange of 0, that keeps the
duration but now I can't see conflicts or usage on the testbed. Not
seeing conflicts I understand but I would need to see how long a
testbed is scheduled for.


Thoughts? Suggestions?

Thanks.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

In Task Information, Advanced, set Effort Driven Off.
Then adding the test bed will not change duration.
HTH

 

[Jim Aksel]

If you make the testbed resource a resource of type "work" then when you add
it to your task it is just like adding another person. It will also increase
the number of hours required to do the work because this resource is a "work"
resource.

The task duration decreases if the task is of type "fixed units." You added
another unit (the testbed) so Project held the work constant (40 hours) and
when you added the testbed resource the 40 hours was divided amongst the two
fixed units equally.

You can make the task of type "fixed duration" which will hold that value
constant. Now, when you add the Testbed resource, total work will increase
from 40 horus to 80 hours.

When you create this testbed resource, you may assign it a cost of $0/hr so
the cost will not accrue against you (if you are tracking costs in Project).
However, it will still produce a demand on hours for work.

If you make the Testbed resource of type "Material" you can avoid these
problems but create others. One is that you cannot fix the maximum units for
the task -- it will assume you may specify as many testbeds as you want. You
also assign 1 unit of "Material Testbed" to a 5 day task and it gives you a
utilization of 20% per day. If you pay for the testbed as $50/day, then the
best project will do is let you accrue this cost at the beginning, end, or
prorated. So if the test takes a partial day, then project is going to
accrue cost as a fractional day which may not be what your contract requires.
But I digress and hopefully this is not important.

I would leave it as a "work" resouce at zero cost.

Now the overallocation problem: Select View/Resource Graph and you will see
when the resources may be overallocated. Remember you can only control
overallocation of work resources. If you want to resolve overallocation
issue, select Tools/Level Resources... Since you fixed the units for the
testbed at 100% (1 testbed) you can adjust the tasks via leveling. The help
system is pretty good on "Resource Leveling". Project is not going to know
what you mean by engineers can share the testbed "sometimes" becuase those
are business rules, not project scheduling rules.

To handle the "share sometimes" issue, you can selectively apply the
resource leveling to only selected tasks.

 

[dumbemailjunk]

Hi,

In Task Information, Advanced, set Effort Driven Off.
Then adding the test bed will not change duration.
HTH

Thanks. I'll try that.

The only thing I have to be careful of there is if I actually add
another person to the task. If I do that, with the expectation that it
will reduce times, turning 'Effort Driven' off will not reflect that
change correctly.

 

[dumbemailjunk]

If you make the testbed resource a resource of type "work" then when you add
it to your task it is just like adding another person. It will also increase
the number of hours required to do the work because this resource is a "work"
resource.

The task duration decreases if the task is of type "fixed units." You added
another unit (the testbed) so Project held the work constant (40 hours) and
when you added the testbed resource the 40 hours was divided amongst the two
fixed units equally.

You can make the task of type "fixed duration" which will hold that value
constant. Now, when you add the Testbed resource, total work will increase
from 40 horus to 80 hours.

When you create this testbed resource, you may assign it a cost of $0/hr so
the cost will not accrue against you (if you are tracking costs in Project).
However, it will still produce a demand on hours for work.

If you make the Testbed resource of type "Material" you can avoid these
problems but create others. One is that you cannot fix the maximum units for
the task -- it will assume you may specify as many testbeds as you want. You
also assign 1 unit of "Material Testbed" to a 5 day task and it gives you a
utilization of 20% per day. If you pay for the testbed as $50/day, then the
best project will do is let you accrue this cost at the beginning, end, or
prorated. So if the test takes a partial day, then project is going to
accrue cost as a fractional day which may not be what your contract requires.
But I digress and hopefully this is not important.

Cost is not important and all resources are set to $0.

I would leave it as a "work" resouce at zero cost.

Now the overallocation problem: Select View/Resource Graph and you will see
when the resources may be overallocated. Remember you can only control
overallocation of work resources. If you want to resolve overallocation
issue, select Tools/Level Resources... Since you fixed the units for the
testbed at 100% (1 testbed) you can adjust the tasks via leveling. The help
system is pretty good on "Resource Leveling". Project is not going to know
what you mean by engineers can share the testbed "sometimes" becuase those
are business rules, not project scheduling rules.

So the suggestion is then to change the task to 'fixed duration'?

 

[Jim Aksel]

Fixed duration is ok.
You can add as many resources as necessary and then re-estimate your
duration. For example, 1 person may take 10 days. 2 People full time may
only bring you down to a duration of 7 days .... project cannot model that
type of scenario as it will assume 2 people full time takes 50% of the time
of 1 person full time. So, just key a new duration.