How do I include level of effort type activities in Project?

[Diane]

Some of our resources have level of effort tasks in addition to their fixed
work type tasks. We would like to actively show those level of effort tasks
in the schedule, instead of just decreasing that resources total available
units. For example, Jane has one level of effort task, estimated to take 20%
of her time on average throughout the year. She also performs fixed work
tasks. I believe the only way for me to show the level of effort tasks is to
treat them as a reoccuring task, reoccuring say on a weekly basis for 8 hrs
per week (20%). Is there another way to do this?

Thanks!

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Diane --

The alternative is to create a special project to capture level of effort
tasks. Create these level of effort tasks and set the Duration of these
tasks to a long period of time, such as the one year time period you
mention. Then assign each resource at a Units value respresenting the
amount of time they spend on average each week on the task, such as 20% for
the resource you mention. Do know this, however: if someone works an
average of 20% each week on a leve of effort task, this means they are only
available to work on fixed work tasks an average of 80% per week, and
therefore, you should assign them to a total of no more than 80% total units
across all tasks in the fixed work projects. The total Units expended
across all projects for a resource in each time period should not exceed
100% Units, otherwise you will create an overallocation on that resource.
Just a thought. Perhaps the others will have some ideas, too.

 

[Diane]

Dale,

Thank you for the quick response.

I think I want to have my cake and eat it too.

Project takes those level of effort hours and distributes them equally
across all days - which I understand. I'm using filtering to find available
resources for new task assignment, and these level of effort people aren't
showing up in the filter results - because they aren't available for 100%
allocation on that particular task day. These resources with level of effort
tasks need to be available for 100% allocation on any given day, with the
"missing" level of effort "effort" to be made up on another day. Instead,
they show up as over-allocated on those days.

Anyone with a fork?

Diane