Ahhhh - it's making sense now. The % allocation that triggers an
overallocation indicator is NOT "hours booked" versus "hours allowed."
Overallocation is a minute by minute thing and if two 100% tasks overlap by
even one minute the resource is overallocated at a 200% allocation level.
We have resource Suzie who works an 8 hour workday. Her maximum allocation
is 100% according to the resource sheet. Monday she is assigned 100% each
to two separate tasks, Task 1 that is 4 hours duration and Task 2 that is 2
hours duration. She's booked a total of 6 hours and she's allowed to work
all 8. On the surface it seems she's booked at 75% but yet her name is
shown in red and when you look at her allocation reports she's booked at
200%! What gives? I left out a vital piece of information - the times of
the tasks. Task 1 starts at 8am and finishes at 12 noon. Task 2 is a staff
meeting that starts at 8am and is scheduled to go to 10am. While her total
hours are well under the maximum she's allowed, between 8am and 10am she's
required to be in two places at once, an impossibility. She's expected to
do a total of 4 man-hours of work during the course of only 2 hours on the
clock. Leveling will move one of those tasks to resolve the double
booking - if the meeting is the higher priority Task 1 gets moved to start
at 10am and end at 2pm. How might that shed any light on your situation?
Instead of just 4 hours Task 1 is 40 hours, a 5 day, 8 hours per day task
starting Monday at 8am, ending Fri at 5pm. Task 2, the meeting, is a 2 hour
task happening Wednesday morning at 8am. Her name is red because she's
double booked between 8am and 10am Wednesday. Leveling will split Task 1,
not for the full day but for the two hours required to make room for the
meeting. Looking at the task usage view for task 1 you'll now see the hours
as 8,8,6,8,8,2 with the duration extended to now end it on Monday at 10am.
What APPEARS to be a contour is really the result of a split of less than a
full workday duration. If there were other tasks that week as well you
could see some strange hour patterns emerge as things split and shift to
make room for higher priority tasks.
HTH
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit
http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm for the FAQs
Seann said:
This isn't really what's happening. I do understand and allow splits to
happen.
But I think I've at least figured out how to contain the problem... If you
have a task that all has the same priority (say 500) and you level by
priority, at times Project will introduce a "Contour" on the task. You can
verify this by going to the resource usage and double clicking a task that
looks overallocated (e.g. red text) even though the hours are within the
available hours for the day. Double clicke the task name and in the
assignment information box it will say "Contoured" for the Work Contour
field. I have found this to be bad.
If you update the priority so that none (for that resource) are of the
same
value, it will NOT introduce the contour when you level by priority. To
further simplify the leveling process I have also removed the check box
for
allowing project to create splits for now.
So far so good.
Steve House said:
I'm wondering just what sort of contour you mean. "Contour" can mean
that a
resource does 1 hour one day, 5 hours the next, 2 hours the next, and so
on
but I've never seen leveling do that sort of thing. I'm wondering if by
"contour" you're meaning that the task in question splits? Leveling will
do
that - imagine we have a resource on 5 day task starting Monday,
currently
ending Friday. There's another, higher priority, task for that same
resource scheduled for Wednesday so that the resource is double booked
for
that one day. He can't do both. So leveling will stop the first task on
Tuesday and split it, allowing the resource to be free to work the higher
priority task on Wednesday. After it's done, the first task will pick up
again on Thursday. But the split task still requires 5 days of work so
its
interruption on Wednesday requires that its finish be moved to Monday to
make up for the lost day - it really can't be anything else.
If this isn't what's happening give us the concrete example and we'll
give
it another go.
HTH
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit
http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm for the FAQs
Seann said:
My schedule seems to be forcing a contour on tasks when I don't want
it,
when
I level it. It's causing multiple issues.
I'm leaving by priority,standard. After leaving some tasks will have a
contour that causes problems like a 40 hour task taking several weeks
(which
is what a contour should do, problem is I DONT want a contour). If I
open
the
task and change the contour back to "flat" the taks looks good again.
However
there is still a lingering gap between that task and the next because
of
the
previous contour. When I level, the contour comes right back on the
task.
Is there a way to prevent MS from automatically contouring my tasks?
Does
anyone know why leveling is doing this? I've been looking around and it
seems
related to actual work being done, but this is happening on tasks that
have
had NO actual work done on them.
