FYI, the assignment percentages don't mean quite what you may think they
mean. If a resource is assigned X percentage to a task of Y duration, it
does NOT mean he's only working on the task for that portion of the
duration. If you assign the SME to a 6 hour task at 33.3%, it means he's
physically working on the task over the course of all 6 of those hours but
he's also doing other things at the same time and so is only producing what
he'd get done in 2 hours if he was giving it his full attention. A similar
reasoning applies for the DEV. If you assign both the SME at 33.3% and
the DEV at 66.7% to a 6 hour hour task and then look at the resource usage
view with the timescale expanded to show the hours though the day, you will
not see the SME working 2 hours and the DEV working 4. You'll see them both
working side by side for all 6hours but the SME will be generating 20
minutes of work for each hour on the task (.33 hr) and the DEV generating 40
minutes.
If you really want to show the SME puts in 2 hours and then goes away while
the DEV comes on-board at that point and continues on for 4 more hours, you
need to show it in one of two ways. You can show it with the lesson is a
summary task with one 2-hour subtask under it with the SME assigned at 100%
and a second 4-hour subtask with DEV assigned 100% to it and the two tasks
linked FS. Or you can show the lesson as a single 6-hour task and then use
the split screen to enter the assignments in the bottom Task Form window,
Resource Work formatting, entering the SME assigned 100% and 2 hours of work
and the DEV assigned 100% with 4 hours work AND a 2-hour delay for his work
entered manually as well. This means the SME starts at the beginning of the
task and devotes full attention to it for 2 hours, then the DEV comes on and
devotes full attention to it for the remaining 4. Either of these two
methods will distribute the work correctly, but in choosing which one to use
I'd personally prefer the former. The work itself of the SME and the DEV is
quite different and the SME's work is producing a unique deliverable that is
then handed off the the DEV as input for his work. The DEV's output is
quite different from the SME's output. This quality of the difference in
the nature of the work itself and the uniquness of the deliverables produced
by each resource indicates they are two separate and clearly distinct tasks
and theoretically they could even be done at separate times (the SME writing
up a set of notes and then sending them to the DEV who writes the lesson
later).
As I write the above it occurs to be that I'd expect the DEV to actually
devote all 6 hours of the task's duration to it, an assignment of 100% to a
6-hour task producing 6 man-hours of labour. Whenever I have been
personally been involved in or observed similar work activities, the writer
and the subject matter expert work together at the start of the task to
determine the lesson content, then the SME goes away and the DEV then writes
up the lesson document itself based on the notes he kept during the
conversation with the SME. IF that's the case for you, the most accurate
model of all is to show the lesson as a summary task, with the SME's work a
2-hour subtask and the DEV's work a 6 hour-subtask, both resources assigned
100% to their respective tasks and the two tasks linked SS so they start at
the same time. The summary task's duration will be 6 hours since the two
subtasks occur in parallel and the lesson will require a total of 8
man-hours of work.
As an aside, I'm curious how you can determine in advance the amount of work
each lesson will require and say they are all equal? Have you actually
determined experientially that it requires 6 to 8 man-hours of effort to
write a lesson or is it based on "managment by objective" logic like "We can
only afford for them to take 6 hours to write a lesson and so that's what
they'll have to do it in"? Basing it on historical duration - "In past
projects Joe Writer has produced on average a lesson a day" - seems more
reliable. I'm always leery of precise advance work estimates as opposed to
duration estimates when the output is an intangible (and in your case, while
the typed up lesson is a tangible output, the content of the lesson - the
substance of the work effort itself - is not). And estimates of either work
OR duration for creative endeavors such as writing are never very tidy -
some modules may fly out requiring only a couple of hours to knock off while
others may fester for days before the creative "Ah HAH, that's the way to do
it!" moment occurs.
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit
http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs
fxs said:
Laurence & Jan:
Thanks for attempting to answer my question. As mentioned in the beginning
of my earlier post, I have condensed the project description down to make
easier reading. But I see that in doing that, I may have oversimplified
the job at hand. Ideally, the entire project has about 32 curricula - 60%
of curricula have about 3 courses, and the rest range from anywhere
between 7 to 14 courses, with each course containing about 2 to 6 lessons.
One other thing - I've been calling it curriculum development, but really
the project is about making revisions to a pre-existing curricula that has
been in use for the last three years. Certain policies have changed, and
it would take anywhere between 2-10 hours to revise.
Finally, I want to clarify that since each LESSON sub-deliverable can
produced in under a day, I'm not breaking them down into smaller tasks.
Jan, if I broke them down into tasks -- then yes, the tasks would look
like: Review Lesson (Assigned to SME) and Revise Lesson (Assigned to DEV).
But I want to leave this at the LESSON level, and want to be able to
assign an SME and a DEV to it. Can that be done? And if so, then I would
need to ensure assigning an SME and DEV would allocate only 2 hrs of the
SME and about 4-6 hrs of the DEV. Get it?
Hopefully, that answers your comments about "using NASA resources on a
kite-flying project", "incorrect estimates", and "DEV working on something
before getting input from SME". My mistake - I should've avoided
condensing the requirement. As regards your comment about what the WBS
contains, my top level deliverable is ONE curriculum in its own MPP File,
then levels underneath them are the courses, adn then the lessons. Each PM
has his/her own MPP file with all the curriclum they are responsible for.
Then, there's one final Master Schedule that puts all of this together.
The resources are in their own MPP file.
Having clarified all of that, I need to re-state my question: it's not
about whether my project management practice is right or wrong, it's not
about whether i should be using MSP or some other tool ....it's simply
this:
If I assign an SME and DEV to a LESSON that is of 6 hrs in duration, how
do I tell MSP that the SME needs to be allocated for 33.33% (2 hours) and
the DEV for the remainder (67.7%). What I don't want to do is go to the
task form and enter specific hours per resource. Can I just do this:
- Make each LESSON a fixed work task,
- Enter the total person hours (SME + DEV) in the duration column (in this
case 6 hrs)
- If I enter SME[33%], DEV[67%] in the Resources column, what MSP does is
assign SME at 33% of his 8-hour day. But, what I need is him to be
assigned to 33% of the task duration (which is 6 hrs). See my dilemma?
thanks,
Fx
Laurence said:
Hi fxs,
interesting post;
- each lesson may take between 2 to 10 hrs to produce - lets say an
average 7 hrs (=1 day approx.)
- each course has between 2 to 6 lessons, lets say an average 4
- there are three courses
- this means your plan is something like 1 day per lesson x 4 lessons
per course x 3 courses = 12 days in total?
To be frank I don't think you should be considering using MS-Project
levelling for a 12-day project, it's a bit like employing a full NASA
launch team for a Sunday afternoon kite-flying session in the park....,
maybe someone is pointing you in the wrong direction here.
I think you would probably be better off in this case with a simple
to-do list and maybe some kind of manually-drawn gantt chart picture to
help communicate the tasks and dependencies.
A few other hopefully helpful suggestions;
- your top-level WBS is probably actually 'the curriculum' and your
three courses are the next level down, but have you considered the
product based planning approach as an alternative to just a WBS? It
helps to concentrate the mind on making your project goal-oriented from
the start, try
www.p2msp.com as a start-point
- how long is the expected running duration of each lesson? My
experience is that creating a successful 1 day lesson from scratch
would require probably at least 2 weeks effort, so a lesson that only
needs 2 hrs to create would probably last only 10-15 minutes - is that
right? I would seriously question these estimates if I were you, of
course the fine detail of your subject matter and sources may prove me
wrong but I doubt it...
- I would suggest that there should be some commonality and F-S
dependencies, for instance if you want a consistent approach across
lessons you need to define that first as a deliverable (lesson format,
room format, no. of students, pre-requisites e.g. reading etc. - a
lesson plan or course description), also maybe you want a common
end-of-lesson feedback on the content, the instructor etc. - another
deliverable.
I think your questions are diving into the detail of MS-Project
functionality for this project whereas in fact you may do better by
researching more on the basics of project management principles and
maybe getting some training there.
Hope that helps,
Laurence.
)