Changing resource availability on a task

[prashanth.sharangapani]

Dear Friends,

I have the below scenario. I use MPP 2007.

Task A: Resource R1
Task B: Resource R1

Duing the course of my project execution, I need to make a change. R1
needs to work 100% on Task B just for one week (say Nov 17 - 21);
after that week, he goes back and works both Task A and Task B.

My question - how do I indicate that, on Task B, R1 needs to work 100%
only for a particular duration of time?

Thanks,
Prashanth

 

[Dave]

For a single task the fastest way has to type the amount of work
directly into the task in either the Resource Usage or Task Usage view.

 

[prashanth.sharangapani]

Thanks Dave,

However, the problem with that is - after making the adjustment
manually in the Resource usage view, if I do a 'level', my changes
will be lost, right? Is there a way to indicate the "resource
availability on that task" information to the MPP so that MPP takes
care of it when I do a 'level'?

Prashanth

 

[Dave]

It depends on what the actual problem is.

Is it:
- That the resource has to work 100% on a certain week of a task
irrespective of when that task is actually conducted?
- That there is a given week on which your resource needs to work 100%?

In the first case, the changes won't be lost post-levelling (they may
straddle a week boundary which you may not want.

In the second, you will have to level for periods prior to the interval
you are interested in, adjust the utilisation and then fix the affected
tasks by setting the priority to be 100.

 

[prashanth.sharangapani]

Hello Dave,

The problem is the first case - "That the resource has to work 100% on
a certain week of a task irrespective of when that task is actually
conducted"

I tried to do a manual modification:

Task A, Resource R1, Week Beginning Dec 29, Before manual
modification, the hours were - 7.2, 7.2, 7.2, 7.2, 7.2
Task B, Resource R1, Week Beginning Dec 29, Before manual
modification, the hours were - 0, 0, 0, 0, 0

I reversed the work allocations for R1; i.e. for Task A - 0 and for
Task B: 7.2 hours every day.

I now did leveling and got -
Task A, Resource R1, Week Beginning Dec 29: 5.13h 5.13h 5.13h 3.35h
4.12h
Task B, Resource R1, Week Beginning Dec 29: 0h 0h 0h 2.52h 7.2h

The leveling did change some thing; how do I avoid this.

Another thing - I have atleast 100 tasks for which I need to do the
above sort of change. Doing it manually would be very time consuming.

Is there a way for me to select the tasks and say - "Resources
allocated to this task should work 100% from date 1 to date 2" - or -
is there any other way?

Can I change the priority of tasks for a particular period?

With regards to your second option - "That there is a given week on
which your resource needs to work 100%?"
You said - "In the second, you will have to level for periods prior to
the interval you are interested in, adjust the utilisation and then
fix the affected tasks by setting the priority to be 100."

This seems to be interesting. How do I -
1. "adjust the utilisation"
What did you mean here?

2. "fix the affected tasks by setting the priority to be 100"
What does this mean? I know '100' assigns a low priority to the task,
but what does it do to fix my problem?

Thanks for the help!

Prashanth

 

[Dave]

I don't know what you have done here. There is no way that levelling
would transfer work from resource B to resource A which is what you seem
to be saying here. The application could not possibly know that
resource A had the skills to do the work.

Additionally, the total work prior to your 'levelling' is 36 hours yet
post levelling, my calculations make it 32.58. There is no way that
levelling (leaving aside the issue above) would change the amount of
work on a task.

By levelling, I mean the options under tools/level resources.

There is a typo in my original post. I should have written set the
priority to be 1000. Then in the levelling dialogue box (Tools/level
rexources) you can select to level by priority/standard amongst other
options. Prior to doing this, you will have to add the priority column
to you plan and adjust the priorities.

 

[prashanth.sharangapani]

Dave,

I used the 'leveling' option under Tools -> Level Resources.

You said - "There is no way that levelling would change the amount of
work on a task."

That is true - I did not copy paste the entire data, sorry! The 36
hours of work are allocated by the MPP, they spread over to the next
week. So there is no problem here. It therefore seems once I adjust
the effort manually through the Task Usage or Resource Usage view,
then, after leveling, MPP may override the changes I made. Is it not?
Is there a way to indicate to the MPP not to override these changes?


You said - "There is no way that levelling would transfer work from
resource B to resource A which is what you seem to be saying here"

No, work has not been transfered from Resource B to Resource A. It has
been moved between Task B and Task A; the resource is the same R1.
So, is there a way at all in MPP to indicate Resource availability for
a task for a particular duration?

Prashanth

 

[Dave]

Apologies for completely misreading your post and any resulting confusion.

Levelling simply moves things linearly in time. The only days on which
work might change are at the beginning and end of the assignment.

Try the following to see the effect of this. Create a task and assign a
resource to it at 50% utilisation for example. Now in the Gantt view
insert the levelling delay column. Now if you adjust the figures in
that column you will see the task move in time as if you had levelled
it. You can see the way the resource's hours move in the Task Usage view.

Now if you create delays of fractional days, you will see that the hours
on the first day is reduced accordingly but that the hours on the other
days (apart from the last) remain the same. The last day mops up any
residual hours.

I think that I would assign the work 100% to the particular week in your
task when you want that to happen (as I understand your problem, that
does not have to correspond to any whole calendar week) and then
manually adjust the odd few hours if that is important to you after
levelling.

 

[prashanth.sharangapani]

Dave,

Thanks for the prompt responses!

You said - "I think that I would assign the work 100% to the
particular week in your task "
You are saying that this is to be done manually (Task Usage/Resource
Usage View), right? We cannot tell the MPP to do this, correct?

You said - "as I understand your problem, that does not have to
correspond to any whole calendar week"
I want one particular week - infact the week Nov 23 - Nov 28 is when I
want the resources to work a specific task 100%.

In summary, I understand that "Resource availability for a task for a
particular duration" needs to be done manually. However, I have a lot
of tasks and was hoping that MPP had a way to accommodate this.

Thanks,
Prashanth

 

[Dave]

There is no built in way of automating what you want to do.

I think you will have to do it manually for your nominated tasks after
levelling (you might have to level again after than but make sure you
fix the tasks of interest)

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Prashanth,

I think I would be inclined to re-write each task by dividing each into
three separate tasks. The middle task would be your 100% allocation week,
with a deadline date set at the beginning of the week. Then assign the
first and last at the lower allocation. This would clarify the structure of
your project and allow you simply to change allocations and dates in the
future as things begin to run late (as they always do!!!)

FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information can be seen at
this web address: http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm

Hope this helps - please let us know how you get on

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP
See http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc for my free Project Tutorials

 

[prashanth.sharangapani]

Dave, Mike,

Thanks for the responses.

I had too many tasks to manipulate manually; my project is now a 15 MB
file! I decided to leave the schedule as it is. Hopefully, the tasks
that will be behind this week will pick up pace next week. I decided
to share this fact with the customer so that he is aware.

I still hope Microsoft will provide a way to do this in subsequent
releases. After all, project dynamics need such a feature; MPP needs
to support such key strategic decisions.

Thanks again!

Prashanth

 

[Dave]

The thing is, it can be done already. The difficulty is in making the
application *know* what is required or automating it. Since there is no
underlying algorithmic principle determining this, then it has to be
implemented manually (and there may be a number of ways of achieving it).

 

[Mike Glen]

You're welcome, Prashanth

However, if you're prepared to enter the data as you suggested, you can
prevent Project from levelling that task by making its priority 1000 (which
means "Do not level") task and using Priority,Standard in the leveling
dialog.

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP
See http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc for my free Project Tutorials