Automatically reduce resource allocation during overallocation period

[jm4all]

Hi all.

I've searched everywhere, but can't seem to find it.
I manage a development team and a QA team.

Usually, during QA periods, the development team works 50% on solvin
bugs and 50% on new development for future tasks.

In order to incorporate this, I've created a task for the QA team fo
testings and another task for the development. The development team i
given 50% allocation during this task.

Now, I try to schedule regular development, but I cannot manage to tel
project that during the QA period, resource allocation to th
development task should be 50%.
Note, I can manually create a seconds development task for the sam
duration. In this case, if, due to leveling or new dependency, th
development is moved forward than I get a period of development wher
the team is under-allocated.

Please help!
Fame and fortune to the solver..

 

[Steve House]

To repeat - there is no automated solution for this, the software is simply
not programmed that way. Project never reduces the assignment percentage on
a task during time periods when the resource is assigned to more than the
maximum allocation allowed nor does it increase the assignment level during
time periods where the assignment is less than the maximum allowed. All it
can do is delay work on the lower priority of conflicting tasks to resolve
overallocations. More sophistcated resource optimizing is going to be a
manual process.

You've left out some information needed to suggest a viable solution and
that's how you're estimating the task's effort and durations. Is this close
to the situation, though? Starting Monday your resource (for simplicity of
the numbers the resource is one guy) is going to be doing QA for the week at
50% effort. The QA task is 5 days duration, 50% assignment means the task
requires 20 man-hours of work. He'll also be working on Development
starting Monday, a task that would ordinarily take 10 days at 100% if he
didn't have to do the QA as well. 10 days at 100% means Development is
expected to require 80 man-hours. I create the tasks and assign the
resources accordingly, QA @ 50% and Devel @ 100%. During the first week the
resource is booked for 4 hours a day QA and 8 hours a day Devel, a total of
12 hours s day and this is overallocated. Leveling would just move on of
the tasks so they're done in sequence without overlap so that's out.
Display the Resource Usage view. Manually edit the 8 hours a day for Devel
during the first week down to 4 hours. That resolves the overallocation.
BUT we now have created a work deficit of 20 hours. Edit the total work for
Devel back to the required 80 hours. Project tacks the 20 hours added to
the end of the task, extending its duration from the initial 10 days out now
to 12.5 days, the time required to work 80 hours if he works 50% for the
first week then 100% until it's done. Mission accomplished.

 

[jm4all]

The process described above is basically what I'm doing.
Ideally, I'd like something that I can use to mark a task which I thin
is somewhat lower-priority (in this case, the development task) so tha
the amount of work each resource does every day is only the amount lef
when other tasks are considered.
Since the total amount of work doesn't change, I need to extend th
duration so that the total amount of work remains.

The manual process described is what I currently do, and I would lik
to automate it.
Could anyone suggest a method I could use to do that?

Thanks

 

[Steve House]

Unless you want to write Visual Basic code, there is no way to automate it.
That functionality simply does not exist in the out of the box product.