How to automatically level resolve under-allocations ?

[Marky]

Hi all,

I'm new here but have been a (periodically frustrated) MSP user for some
time now... One thing that we've always tried to do but never managed to
achieve cleanly is schedule a background task (for example maintenance or
support activity for a software project) that can sweep up resource
availability across the project automatically.

For example if we are a team of 4 developing an iteration of a software
product, and we are also expecting 1 FTE worth of effort across the team to
be dedicated to fixing bugs that come through, I'd like to set up a
background task, assign it 4 resources, and have it 'soak up' any spare
availability from the team.

Or to put it another way, automatic resource levelling would allocate
maximum units to formally planned tasks and any spare units to the 'bug
fixing'. The amount of unti allocation would change as I change the formally
planned tasks. Naturally if there were not enough spare units from the formal
plan to support the desired effort required in the bug fixing task, I'd
expect the schedule to expand accordingly.

The reason we need this is that day to day, developers activities change,
and the only way I can see of achieving the above is to block out one
resource to do the bug fixing at 100% allocation. This makes day to day
tracking enourmously fiddly as a day not spent on bug fixing by this resource
has to be manually re-allocated.

I spotted the use of 'Maintenance and Operations Work' here
http://blogs.msdn.com/dieterz/ but this looks like it's in the enterprise web
based interface for server 2007 - not in project itself...

Help ! (appreciated) !

 

[Rod Gill]

Simplest solution is in the View Resource Sheet:
If you have 1 resource with 4 units, reset to 3 units.
If you have 4 different programming resources, reset max units for each to
75%.

No need to schedule background maintenance work.

 

[MArky]

Thanks for the response Rod, however there are a couple of issues with this
approach -

1. If I change resource max units after they have been allocated work, they
then become over-allocated - hurrah ! MSP is not smart enough to re-schedule
based on the change in Max units for a resource. So I have to go through
every single task and change the units allocation accordingly.

2. If realise I need to divert another FTE to soak up more bug work I have
to go through all the resources again and update the max units... and go
through the pain of 1. above ...

It's really a feature request for MS if anything I suppose... I'm surprised
it's not supported as it has always been a common feature of software
development - that ability to plan and track for 'open-ended' tasks that
cannot be easily estimated.

 

[Rod Gill]

Once you reset max units, from now on Project doesn't assign more than the
max units. To change all tasks for a resource, select them then change using
the Assign Resources Tool. Editing max Units is necessary to reflect reality
otherwise you get all sorts of problems you have already detailed!