Help with understanding leveling... MS Project 2003

[jeremy]

Hi

I am sure there is something very simple here but I am unable to find
it.

In essence I have created a project with a number of start-finish
tasks and these are allocated to resources (people). I have allocated
(on the resource details window) 20% and 25% availability as these
guiys have to work on other things concurrently.

I didn't add any date constraints such as "must complete before" and
thought that MS project would simply extend the duration of tasks to
enable the required resources to work on them. But oh no - instead the
tool seems intent on overcommitting all the resources by 300 even
400%.

So I must be doing something fundamentally wrong - why won't project
just extend the duration of the tasks?

I entered my estimates for the work to be done in the "Work" column.
Should this actually be entered into the "Duration" column?

Appreciate any tips.

 

[Roland]

Check to see if your tasks are "Fixed Duration". If this is the case
project will increase units rather than push the tasks out longer.

RC

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Jeremy,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

Once you've entered all the data you need to level the project via
Tools/Level resources... and select to Level now. Have a look at my
tutorials on levelling.

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 Project Tutorials

 

[jeremy]

Hi Jeremy,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

Once you've entered all the data you need to level the project via
Tools/Level resources... and select to Level now. Have a look at my
tutorials on levelling.

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

Hi Mike

thanks for the help. I am still struggling to understand how this
scheduling is working. I have set e.g. myself at 20% availabiltiy and
then allocated myself to various tasks. Instead of extending the time
it will take to complete a task and delaying the start of dependent
successor tasks, it seems to insist on overallocating my time and
showing e.g. 245% peak usage.

The tasks in the project do not have fixed start or end dates.

It's frustrating to pick up a tool to use 'cos you think it's going to
save time only to find that yoyu spend hours trying to understand it!
Not a complaint about the product....more of me.

 

[Mike Glen]

Have you tried levelling?

Mike Glen
Project MVP

Hi Mike

thanks for the help. I am still struggling to understand how this
scheduling is working. I have set e.g. myself at 20% availabiltiy and
then allocated myself to various tasks. Instead of extending the time
it will take to complete a task and delaying the start of dependent
successor tasks, it seems to insist on overallocating my time and
showing e.g. 245% peak usage.

The tasks in the project do not have fixed start or end dates.

It's frustrating to pick up a tool to use 'cos you think it's going to
save time only to find that yoyu spend hours trying to understand it!
Not a complaint about the product....more of me.

 

[salgud]

Hi Mike

thanks for the help. I am still struggling to understand how this
scheduling is working. I have set e.g. myself at 20% availabiltiy and
then allocated myself to various tasks. Instead of extending the time
it will take to complete a task and delaying the start of dependent
successor tasks, it seems to insist on overallocating my time and
showing e.g. 245% peak usage.

The tasks in the project do not have fixed start or end dates.

It's frustrating to pick up a tool to use 'cos you think it's going to
save time only to find that yoyu spend hours trying to understand it!
Not a complaint about the product....more of me.

It's a common experience. Scheduling is not as simple as most people think
it is. When you start doing Critical Path Method scheduling, which is what
Project does, behind the scenes, it gets more complicated.
Having taught Project for 16 yrs, I can tell you that it helps to have an
understanding of CPM. As one of my students put it, "it feels like Project
is doing it for you rather than to you". There are lots of good resources
for learning scheduling and CPM. Mike Glen, who is a regular contributor in
these forums has some online tutorials that might help.
The best way to get up to speed quickly is to take a class. Caution: there
are far more "pushbutton" Project instructors than knowledgeable ones.
Before you sign up, make sure you've talke with the instructor and the s/he
is knowledgeable in CPM as well as Project Management. You'll get 10 times
more value out of the course if you get the right instructor.
Hope this helps in your world.

 

[AClancy]

What classes would you recommend? I live in the Nashville Metro area and
would love to find a good class where MS Project is taught and these aspects
of scheduling.

Thanks, A Clancy

 

[salgud]

What classes would you recommend? I live in the Nashville Metro area and
would love to find a good class where MS Project is taught and these aspects
of scheduling.

Thanks, A Clancy

Don't know anyone else out here that teaches Project this way, much less
back there. But if you start googling and then calling, I imagine you can
find someone who has some knowledge of scheduling, PM and Project. Anyone
who has a PMP will know enough to do a better job than pushbutton, although
I wouldn't exclude anyone on that basis, since I dont' have a PMP and I
know how to teach it.
Best of luck!

 

[jeremy]

Have you tried levelling?

Looking back over my posts it appears I omitted to state this
fundamental piece of information - yes I have used the leveling and
that's what seems to lead me to the situation I am in

 

[Mike Glen]

In that case, have a look at FAQ #28 - Resource Levelling Does Not Remove
Overallocation
and/or #34 - Overallocation Occurring In Less Than One Day.

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
Project MVP

 

[Steve House]

It's sounds like your problem is basically expecting Project to do something
for you that it actually leaves up to you. It's not overallocating your
time, you are. You have a task that would require will require 8 man-hours
of work to accomplish, that is, one day for the resource to do if they
didn't have anything else on their plate to do at the same time. So you
enter that task as having 1 day duration. But Joe isn't 100% available -
because he has other things on his plate he's only available a maximum of
25%. When you assign him to that task at 25% you're expecting Project to
change the duration and spread it out over 4 days. But Project doesn't do
that - as I like to think of it, when you come up with that 1-day duration
estimate Project assumes you know ahead of time that Joe will be on it 25%
and so that when you enter "1-day" it thinks that means that means "1-day at
25%" and it doesn't mess with it when you enter the resource assignment. To
be more precise, you're thinking of that task requiring 8 man-hours while
Project is working on the assumption that it requires 2 man-hours. What you
need to do is, since you already know Joe will only be available 25%,
estimate the duration accordingly and put it in as 4 days, not 1 day, right
from the start. To get the behaviour you want, you have to take it in two
steps. First, estimate the duration based on a full-time commitment from
the resources and enter it, assigning the resources 100%. Second, then EDIT
the resource assignment to reduce it from 100% down to what they really will
be able to devote to it. In that way, Project will recalculate the duration
for you. Of course, even better is to follow Larry the Cable Guy's
admonition to "Git 'er done!" and free up the resources from their other
duties when possible so you can use them 100%.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm for the FAQs



....>

 

[Qythyx]

I hope I'm not hijacking this thread with my question, but it seems quite
related. BTW, I'm using Project 2007.

I'm also having leveling problems, but my scenario is slightly different.
I'm working on a software development project with many tasks. Each task has
been estimated for the amount of time it will take to get done. Each task is
also prioritized.

What I would like MS Project to do is to set the Start and Finish dates for
each task in accordance with the priorities and amount of work values. It
seems to do this a little when I apply leveling, but then says it can't
resolve the over allocation. What I don't understand is why it simply can't
continue to push out the start dates of tasks until everything is scheduled.

I've tried setting the task estimates via both Duration and Work. I've tried
various leveling setting, but can't seem to find the magic combination. I
should note that none of the tasks have any date settings and are all set to
ASAP. I should also mention that at some point some of these tasks will have
Predecessors, but I haven't set any yet.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Steve House]

Make sure "level within available slack" is turned off. Make sure no
resource is assigned to any single task with an assignment level greater
than their Maximum amount. Make sure the level order is set to "priority,
standard" Duration is time and work is effort, they measure different
things and are not interchangeable. Don't mix them up in the task
estimates - ie, don't try to interchange duration and work in the duration
field.

 

[Qythyx]

Thanks for the quick reply. I've tried all your suggestions and I'm still
having problems.

First, one question I have is which Task Type I should be using. I recognize
that Duration and Work measure different things, but in my case I will only
ever be assigning 1 resoure (at 100%) to a single task. Because of this,
don't these two values become equivalent? Given that, which is more
appropriate, Fixed Work or Fixed Duration? I've tried both and neither seems
to do what I'm looking for.

At this point, what is confusing me is the "cannot resolve overallocation"
help page. It says, "One of the tasks might be scheduled so that its dates
cannot be changed. Try changing the constraint on one of the tasks to As Soon
As Possible or, for projects that are scheduled from the project finish date,
As Late As Possible."
But, all of my tasks are set to ASAP and there are no date constraints, so
why can't Project adjust the start/end dates? Actually, for a few tasks it
does, then it can't on some later tasks and shows the leveling failed window.

Any other ideas?

 

[Steve House]

W=D*U, a basic linear equation where one term is a constant (Fixed XXX), a
second term is an independent variable, and the third term is the dependent
variable. Fixed Work means if you change units duration is recalculated and
if you change duration, units are recalculated. Same sort of thing for
Fixed Duration but substitute work for duration in the previous sentence.
That's really all they mean and don't try to read greater signifigance into
them. I like to think of them as a switch you use when editing in order to
insure Project's calculations conform to physical reality as you edit your
resource assignments and without knowing the exact REASON for the edit
there's no way of knowing the appropriate task type.

 

[Qythyx]

Thanks again for continuing to help.

I should start by saying that I, somewhat, figured out my problem. I
realized that even very simple work assignments were not being leveled in my
existing Project file. What was strange was that if I copied the exact same
tasks to a new project then the leveling worked perfectly. I tried comparing
all of the settings on the bad file with the good one, but could not figure
out what was breaking it.


Going forward I'm still not quite sure of the best way to set up my project,
so let me explain a bit more about what I'm hoping to get out of Project.

As I said earlier, I'm using to do track software development work. This
work is broken down into tasks each of which has been priortized and
estimated. The estimate is how much time we think it will take a single
developer to complete.

For now I'm happy to assume 1) only one developer will work on one task and
2) a developer will work on only one task at a time. Both of these might end
up not being true in the future, but I'd like to start with these assumptions
for now for simplicity sake.

One last thing about our tasks is that they all start out unassigned and as
a developer finishes one task they are assigned another.

What I'd like Project to be able to show me is a projection of when all of
the tasks will get done. The way I'm thinking of doing this is, initially,
assigning each task to a dummy resource at reduced max rate that a multiple
of how many developers there are. That is, if I have 4 developers then the
dummy resource would be set to work at 400%. This should allow Project to
show when all of the tasks would get done. After that, I would change the
resource assignment to the actual developer resource as the tasks are
assigned.

The final thing I'm hoping Project can help to show is the change in
initialy estimated work and actual work.

If you could give me a few tips on getting this scenario working I'd
appreciate it.

 

[Qythyx]

Following up on my comment about my Project file becoming broken. I've
figured out part of the problem. Apparently Project does get into a broken
state. Fortuantely, saving the file, closing it, and then reopening it seems
to fix it. All seems well now.