I can't make hammock tasks work

[scabHead]

I am trying to have tasks that span sub tasks. I am going to assign
resources to these spanning tasks. I need the following features and I
cannot make Project deliver. Please help, this is killing me!

Here is what I want to do:

Have a task X ith a left endpoint date defined by task Y and a right
endpoint date defined by task Z. I want to assign resources to the task X so
that a resource pool can reflect my usage to other project managers. I don't
want Project to do ANYTHING concerning calculations of work, units, or
whatever. In other words, I want Project to assume that the two endpoints
defined are gospel and that my resource list is accurate. In my work, I
provide rooms and equipment to customers. If they tell me that they need two
more desks, I will give them to them and want to be able to tweak the
resource count in Project without Project trying to change durations or
something because I assigned more resources.

I have tried assigning resources to group tasks but that doesn't work
because the resource usage views don't display group tasks correctly.

I have tried assigning resources to hammock tasks but it isn't stable as
changes to one or more of the endpoints or resource list cause Microsoft to
start grinding on the work equation and producing weird results. What do I
mean by weird results? Well if I have a task that has 10 different resources
(of varying quantities) assigned, it might not show all resources being used
for the duration of the task. So if my resources are phones, desks, and
chairs, and rooms, I might have a room being used but the phones are only
used for half the time. I need to lock all resources up for the full span in
other words but it is requiring brute force right now. Am I the only one
struggling with this type of stuff? I have tried all sorts of combinations
of Fixed Duration or Fixed Work or Effort Driven and none render the hammock
task bullet-proof against the problem I am experiencing.

I suppose I could forego the hammock task approach but that way seems
inelegant.

 

[John]

I am trying to have tasks that span sub tasks. I am going to assign
resources to these spanning tasks. I need the following features and I
cannot make Project deliver. Please help, this is killing me!

Here is what I want to do:

Have a task X ith a left endpoint date defined by task Y and a right
endpoint date defined by task Z. I want to assign resources to the task X so
that a resource pool can reflect my usage to other project managers. I don't
want Project to do ANYTHING concerning calculations of work, units, or
whatever. In other words, I want Project to assume that the two endpoints
defined are gospel and that my resource list is accurate. In my work, I
provide rooms and equipment to customers. If they tell me that they need two
more desks, I will give them to them and want to be able to tweak the
resource count in Project without Project trying to change durations or
something because I assigned more resources.

I have tried assigning resources to group tasks but that doesn't work
because the resource usage views don't display group tasks correctly.

I have tried assigning resources to hammock tasks but it isn't stable as
changes to one or more of the endpoints or resource list cause Microsoft to
start grinding on the work equation and producing weird results. What do I
mean by weird results? Well if I have a task that has 10 different resources
(of varying quantities) assigned, it might not show all resources being used
for the duration of the task. So if my resources are phones, desks, and
chairs, and rooms, I might have a room being used but the phones are only
used for half the time. I need to lock all resources up for the full span in
other words but it is requiring brute force right now. Am I the only one
struggling with this type of stuff? I have tried all sorts of combinations
of Fixed Duration or Fixed Work or Effort Driven and none render the hammock
task bullet-proof against the problem I am experiencing.

I suppose I could forego the hammock task approach but that way seems
inelegant.

scabhead,
Hmmmmm, "inelegant", a new word. Just for reference, the elegance (or
lack thereof) is pretty irrelevant when it comes to function. The best
approach is one that works.

First of all, if you assign labor resources to a task, there is no way
to prevent Project from calculation the work equation for that isolated
task - it just doesn't work that way.

Second and perhaps more importantly, it sounds like you are trying to
use a work type resource when you should be using a material type
resource. Rooms and equipment are material, not labor. Here is what I
suggest. First, go ahead and set up the task as a hammock if you want it
to vary in duration based on other tasks. Then create as many different
material type resources as needed on the resource pool Resource Sheet
(the type of resource is designated in the Type field on the Resource
Sheet). Finally, assign the number of material resources to the hammock
task. The quantity will be fixed regardless of how long the task takes.

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP

 

[scabHead]

John I will give that a look as the resources I am trying to track are
virtually all material items. I suppose I had been misinformed. When I read
documentation about what are termed material items in Project, I was led to
believe they were for consumables rather than for durable items.
Consequently I went with the work approach. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[John]

John I will give that a look as the resources I am trying to track are
virtually all material items. I suppose I had been misinformed. When I read
documentation about what are termed material items in Project, I was led to
believe they were for consumables rather than for durable items.
Consequently I went with the work approach. Thanks for the suggestion.

scabhead,
You're welcome and thanks for the feedback.

Project has two basic resource types, work and material. Work type
resources are for labor, that is, resources that accrue cost based on
hours of effort. All non-labor resources are material, whether or not
they are used up during the execution of the project. They may be
consumable (e.g. Gas, paint, cement, lumber, etc.) or non-consumable
(e.g. travel, desks, rented equipment, etc.). Unfortunately, the Project
help file is not very explicit on explaining this unless you dig deep
into help.

At any rate, it looks like we've pointed you in the right direction, but
watch out..... don't trip over that box of nails ;-)

John

 

[Steve House]

John and I will have to disagree here. IMHO you are correct and material
resources are consumables - either used up in the course of a task or items
that are incorporated into the final deliverables - while rooms, tools, etc
are work resources. If a task requires a room and you have 3 rooms, you can
schedule up to 3 tasks at once but not 4. That's the behaviour of work
resources, not material resources. If you do not want adding rooms etc to
effect the task durations, mark the task non-effort driven before assigning
the resources. HOWEVER, if you have 3 rooms and try to assign a room at
100% to each of 4 concurrent tasks, you'll find it marks them overallocated
and leveling will cause one of those tasks to shift in time. To prevent it
from increasing the number of desk required when the start and end points
change, mark the task Fixed Units (which is the default). Now if the task
gets longer, the "man-hours" that the existing desks are used increases
rather than the number of desks needed.

For the task behaviour you say you need, it sounds like Fixed Units,
Non-effort Driven hammock tasks will be the way to go.

You can't turn off calculations of work, duration, units, etc because doing
those calculations is why Project was created. It's not intended to
document a schedule you have already created, it's designed to tell you the
best schedule you can expect to achieve given what needs to be done and the
assets you have at your disposal with which to do it. If its calculations
produce results different from what you expect, that's your cue for a
reality check.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

 

[Steve House]

As I mentioned in my reply to scabhead just now, I have to disagree with you
here. Material resources are considered infinite in supply and always
available. They are either incorporated into the project deliverables or
consumed during the work - fuel for a generator, bricks for a wall, etc.
Equipment that is in limited supply and whose availability affects the
schedule is a work resource, even though it's inanimate. A bulldozer would
be a work resource while its fuel would be a material. With one bulldozer
in the pool, we can grade only one place at a time and we can only do it
when the bulldozer's calendar says it's available.

The bulldozer also behaves like a work resource with regard to costs. If we
use it in just one task in this project, we don't discard it at the end of
the task (unless you're the Federal government). After it's done here, it
can move on to other things in other projects. Thus the cost to the project
is not the full purchase cost of the bulldozer (unlike the cost, say, of 10
tons of fill dirt that we use). Its cost to us is the hourly depreciation
accrued for the hours that we use it. Other tasks not related to this
project that our firm may use it for pay for other portions of the
depreciation. So in that sense, its cost to employ in a task is computed
exactly like the hourly wage of a human resource similarly employed.

One of the problems is that Project simply doesn't presently have the tools
to really handle overheads and facilities costs well. But then again, since
it's not an accounting package so there's really no reason it needs to.

--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

 

[John]

As I mentioned in my reply to scabhead just now, I have to disagree with you
here. Material resources are considered infinite in supply and always
available. They are either incorporated into the project deliverables or
consumed during the work - fuel for a generator, bricks for a wall, etc.
Equipment that is in limited supply and whose availability affects the
schedule is a work resource, even though it's inanimate. A bulldozer would
be a work resource while its fuel would be a material. With one bulldozer
in the pool, we can grade only one place at a time and we can only do it
when the bulldozer's calendar says it's available.

The bulldozer also behaves like a work resource with regard to costs. If we
use it in just one task in this project, we don't discard it at the end of
the task (unless you're the Federal government). After it's done here, it
can move on to other things in other projects. Thus the cost to the project
is not the full purchase cost of the bulldozer (unlike the cost, say, of 10
tons of fill dirt that we use). Its cost to us is the hourly depreciation
accrued for the hours that we use it. Other tasks not related to this
project that our firm may use it for pay for other portions of the
depreciation. So in that sense, its cost to employ in a task is computed
exactly like the hourly wage of a human resource similarly employed.

One of the problems is that Project simply doesn't presently have the tools
to really handle overheads and facilities costs well. But then again, since
it's not an accounting package so there's really no reason it needs to.

Steve,
I agree with you and your explanation is certainly more thorough then
mine. It just sounded to me like scabhead is a supplier who has a large
supply of equipment and he only wanted to keep a count of the usage. But
you are correct in that at some point his supply of resources could be
maxed out and since Project does not limit material resources he
wouldn't know he was overcommitted unless he either actively managed the
quantity, (which he should do anyway), or perhaps used an event macro is
to raise a flag.

John

 

[scabHead]

Thanks for all of the info from you and John (on this and the other similar
thread). I even liked the jab at the Feddle Gummint since I am in fact a
fed. I enjoyed the irony of being accused of misusing Project because I was
trying to avoid all of the calculations when I am the only one of my peers
who is even trying to get to this level of of professional management. Ha ha.

Based upon what I read then, I should keep my resources as work resources.
One of the main purposes for me doing what I am doing is to determine where
our inventory of resources is inadequate to support the combination of
projects we have to support. So I want to know if I need 4 forklifts when I
only have 3 available. The need to rent/procure a fourth forklift would
become a significant item to be flagged. The postings on effort-driven vs.
non-effort driven have been informative. I am not at work now but I thought
I had been working with non-effort driven tasks all along because that was
what was recommended in the FAQ file that explained what a hammock task was
in the first place. I will have to double check.

I understand that Project is designed to really help you compute costs and
work and it looks like it is awesome for that. I am just surprised that it
is not a bit simpler for the quick-and-dirty crowd. I will figure out the
workarounds eventually. But just about every other Office package seems to
work for dummies. In Word, you don't need to use paragraph styles in order
to write a document. In PowerPoint, you never have to touch the style master
to be produce a presentation. In Excel you can just start typing in numbers
and away you go. Of course, there is more power there should the user decide
to learn it. But the basic utility is there without having to try and cheat
the software. Even Access isn't rough in this regard. I am just surprised
at how much the user of Project has to shape his head in order to use it.

That said, I suppose that other software packages might be out there that
would better do what I am targeting since I am scheduling rather than
computing work/cost. However, given that my spacecraft customers mostly use
Project and I use their files as a starting point for my work, it helps to
have commonality.

Thanks again though fellas.

John and I will have to disagree here. IMHO you are correct and material
resources are consumables - either used up in the course of a task or items
that are incorporated into the final deliverables - while rooms, tools, etc
are work resources. If a task requires a room and you have 3 rooms, you can
schedule up to 3 tasks at once but not 4. That's the behaviour of work
resources, not material resources. If you do not want adding rooms etc to
effect the task durations, mark the task non-effort driven before assigning
the resources. HOWEVER, if you have 3 rooms and try to assign a room at
100% to each of 4 concurrent tasks, you'll find it marks them overallocated
and leveling will cause one of those tasks to shift in time. To prevent it
from increasing the number of desk required when the start and end points
change, mark the task Fixed Units (which is the default). Now if the task
gets longer, the "man-hours" that the existing desks are used increases
rather than the number of desks needed.

For the task behaviour you say you need, it sounds like Fixed Units,
Non-effort Driven hammock tasks will be the way to go.

You can't turn off calculations of work, duration, units, etc because doing
those calculations is why Project was created. It's not intended to
document a schedule you have already created, it's designed to tell you the
best schedule you can expect to achieve given what needs to be done and the
assets you have at your disposal with which to do it. If its calculations
produce results different from what you expect, that's your cue for a
reality check.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

John I will give that a look as the resources I am trying to track are
virtually all material items. I suppose I had been misinformed. When I
read
documentation about what are termed material items in Project, I was led
to
believe they were for consumables rather than for durable items.
Consequently I went with the work approach. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi scabhead,

Interesting comment that I certainly agree with regarding the main Office
Suite. However, as an analagy, you won't be successful in using Excel if
you haven't been taught the underlying principles of arithmetic, and even
dummies have been taught something of these principles. With Project, you
need to know the underlying principles of Critical Path Analysis on which
Project is based, and, unfortunately, CPA is not taught in schools!
Prospective users thus have to learn it from scratch, and apply project
management techniques for which they haven't been trained. This applies to
all project management programmes and not just Microsoft Project. Learn the
techniques and Project becomes much more obvious, though it could be more
user friendly in a number of areas Finally, Project is primarily a
scheduelling package that computes the dates for you. Put in resources and
costs and the costs will also be calculated, but it is primarily a
scheduelling program.

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP
See http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc for Project Tutorials

 

[scabHead]

Pithy rejoinder vis-a-vis Excel but I believe my analogy is sound. Anyway,
scheduling is all that I am doing really. My gripe was concerned with
Project "re-scheduling". I will be more careful with the sequence of edits.
When you put in a task and assign a bunch of resources to it, it is a bit
disconcerting to see that Project will reassign resources according to its
own whims.

I am obviously a newbie at Project and I am sure I will get better over time
but I have put it at least some effort. I read the whole Using Project
doorstop book for example.

My application does not have anything to do with Earned-Value or Cost
management (insert govt joke here) or any of the complicated stuff. In
reality, the comment one of the other MVP types made was a relevant one
wherein he said that Project is not used to enter a schedule, it is used to
create/manage one (paraphrasing). In my business I do not have the luxury of
"creating" the schedule, I am using Project to consolidate the schedules of
3-4 organizations (companies, govt agencies, etc) and insert the additional
tasks that my organization needs to do in order to support those others.

As such, I am using Project as an organization tool for simplified tracking.
Get the whole thing on one sheet of paper so to speak. It has been great
for that so far. I have just had some struggles as I have attempted to add
more functionality and track resource availability. It has gotten
frustrating as I have gotten so close to the finish line only to have the
quirky work equation thing bite my hand. I will get it figured out
eventually.

 

[Steve House]

See embedded below

--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs
----------------

Pithy rejoinder vis-a-vis Excel but I believe my analogy is sound.
Anyway,
scheduling is all that I am doing really. My gripe was concerned with
Project "re-scheduling". I will be more careful with the sequence of
edits.
When you put in a task and assign a bunch of resources to it, it is a bit
disconcerting to see that Project will reassign resources according to its
own whims...

I like to put it to my students that you don't need the talent and skills of
a professional writer to thoroughly know and use all of the features of MS
Word but MS Project is just a glorified date calculator and you have to
bring some knowledge of formal project management to the table to use it
properly.

Project NEVER reassigns resources and for the life of me I can't figure out
what you're seeing when you say it has. If I put a resource on a task,
whether it's Joe or the desk he's sitting at, Project never takes it off
that task and assigns it to another. But if you realize that Units is not a
body-count, it is actually a rate value that describes the amount of work
output will be generated over a given period of time, then it starts to make
sense. The principal is easier if you think in physical terms but the
following logic applies to virtually any task and IF you remember that tasks
are not merely a record of the time a resource is occupied - a valid task
ALWAYS creates some sort of deliverable, whether physical or intangible, at
its conclusion - in other words, something in the Universe always changes by
the action of every task. Joe has to make 100 widgets and when working at
capacity he makes 10 per hour. 1 man-hour of work = 10 widgets. 100 widgets
= 10 hr @ 10/hr @ 100% so the duration is 10 hours. Even if I now change
the duration to 20 hours he still has to make 100 widgets since that's the
number our contract calls for us to deliver, no more and no less. So if I
give him 20 hours to do it, he'll only have to work at half speed, 50%.
(Fixed Work task type) Or perhaps we're trying to calculate how many widgets
we can generate over a given period of time. I change the duration to show
that I have Joe for 30 hours. At 100% how many widgets will he make? 30hr
@ 10 widgets/hr @100% = 300 widgets. (Fixed Units task type) Could this be
what you're seeing when you say it reassigns resources?

My application does not have anything to do with Earned-Value or Cost
management (insert govt joke here) or any of the complicated stuff. In
reality, the comment one of the other MVP types made was a relevant one
wherein he said that Project is not used to enter a schedule, it is used
to
create/manage one (paraphrasing). In my business I do not have the luxury
of
"creating" the schedule, I am using Project to consolidate the schedules
of
3-4 organizations (companies, govt agencies, etc) and insert the
additional
tasks that my organization needs to do in order to support those others.

A "Schedule" is not a calendar of event deadlines and requirements - it is a
detailed plan of the organization of a group of assets so that they will
achieve their objectives according to the deadlines you've been given. So
you actually DO have the "luxury" (actually, "necessity") of creating
schedules because it's up to you to figure out how the work must be
organized so that X number of resources will be able to achieve Y results by
Z date. That where Project comes in - you input a proposed structure and
resource assignments and it tells you what date you'll hit if you organize
things like that. If that meets your objectives, great! If not, and at
first try it's not very likely to, you go back to the drawing board and try
another way of organizationing the plan - "let's see, this schedule says
we'll finish 3 weeks later than the contract calls for, but if I take Joe
off this and put him on that task, that will shorten this stuff so we can
start this other thing sooner and Project tells me if I do that I can move
my Project finish date up 2 days, now who else can I put in here to make it
even shorter?" kind of thing. That's creating the schedule. The statement
"the Shuttle will next fly Nov 10th and we must be ready for the mission by
then" is not a schedule, it is a statment of objectives that you're building
the schedule in an attempt to meet. Some of the possible schedules you
might create will meet it and others won't ... Project's job is to tell you
which is which. IF you've already been handed a detailed list of what
occurs when and for how long and you can't juggle resources etc, then
Project's job is more to be a reality check predicting whether that
predefined schedule is going to work or not or whether you could be better
served spending your time updating your resume <grin> for the aftermath of
when that unworkable schedule you were mandated to follow fails and you get
the blame.

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi scabHead ,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

You might like to have a look at my series on Microsoft Project in the
TechTrax ezine, particularly #11 on Task Types, at this site:
http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc or this:
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMFrame.asp?CMD=ArticleSearch&AUTH=23
(Perhaps you'd care to rate the article before leaving the site,
Thanks.)

FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information can be seen at
this web address: <http://www.mvps.org/project/>

Hope this helps - please let us know how you get on

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP

 

[scabHead]

I regret my clumsy language. I should not have used the verb "reassigns" as
that led to confusion. Perhaps "reschedule" is a more precise term. I was
getting at my original complaint that if I assign 50 resources to a task and
all of the resources are need for the duration of the task, how can i keep
Project from showing some resources as assigned for the full duration of the
task and the others from say just the last third of the task. Things haven't
been stable as the task duration ebbs and flows (which it will). They can
look great for a while and then I do some edits, pull up a task usage view
and find things are broken again. I suppose if I do a
design-of-experiments type of exercise I can find which sequence of events
break things. Sometimes I get the little diamond exclamation point asking me
how to interpret my edit, sometimes I don't.

I hope I did not getting you guys all p***ed off with my newbie-ness. As
for formal project management training, I of course don't have any. Our
discussion has become circular so we can probably just stop the thread. I
must be fat-fingering something. I thought I unchecked Effort-Driven which
was supposed to keep Project from recalculating durations when I add or
delete resources. I did not see that result.

See embedded below

--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs
----------------

Pithy rejoinder vis-a-vis Excel but I believe my analogy is sound.
Anyway,
scheduling is all that I am doing really. My gripe was concerned with
Project "re-scheduling". I will be more careful with the sequence of
edits.
When you put in a task and assign a bunch of resources to it, it is a bit
disconcerting to see that Project will reassign resources according to its
own whims...

I like to put it to my students that you don't need the talent and skills of
a professional writer to thoroughly know and use all of the features of MS
Word but MS Project is just a glorified date calculator and you have to
bring some knowledge of formal project management to the table to use it
properly.

Project NEVER reassigns resources and for the life of me I can't figure out
what you're seeing when you say it has. If I put a resource on a task,
whether it's Joe or the desk he's sitting at, Project never takes it off
that task and assigns it to another. But if you realize that Units is not a
body-count, it is actually a rate value that describes the amount of work
output will be generated over a given period of time, then it starts to make
sense. The principal is easier if you think in physical terms but the
following logic applies to virtually any task and IF you remember that tasks
are not merely a record of the time a resource is occupied - a valid task
ALWAYS creates some sort of deliverable, whether physical or intangible, at
its conclusion - in other words, something in the Universe always changes by
the action of every task. Joe has to make 100 widgets and when working at
capacity he makes 10 per hour. 1 man-hour of work = 10 widgets. 100 widgets
= 10 hr @ 10/hr @ 100% so the duration is 10 hours. Even if I now change
the duration to 20 hours he still has to make 100 widgets since that's the
number our contract calls for us to deliver, no more and no less. So if I
give him 20 hours to do it, he'll only have to work at half speed, 50%.
(Fixed Work task type) Or perhaps we're trying to calculate how many widgets
we can generate over a given period of time. I change the duration to show
that I have Joe for 30 hours. At 100% how many widgets will he make? 30hr
@ 10 widgets/hr @100% = 300 widgets. (Fixed Units task type) Could this be
what you're seeing when you say it reassigns resources?

My application does not have anything to do with Earned-Value or Cost
management (insert govt joke here) or any of the complicated stuff. In
reality, the comment one of the other MVP types made was a relevant one
wherein he said that Project is not used to enter a schedule, it is used
to
create/manage one (paraphrasing). In my business I do not have the luxury
of
"creating" the schedule, I am using Project to consolidate the schedules
of
3-4 organizations (companies, govt agencies, etc) and insert the
additional
tasks that my organization needs to do in order to support those others.

A "Schedule" is not a calendar of event deadlines and requirements - it is a
detailed plan of the organization of a group of assets so that they will
achieve their objectives according to the deadlines you've been given. So
you actually DO have the "luxury" (actually, "necessity") of creating
schedules because it's up to you to figure out how the work must be
organized so that X number of resources will be able to achieve Y results by
Z date. That where Project comes in - you input a proposed structure and
resource assignments and it tells you what date you'll hit if you organize
things like that. If that meets your objectives, great! If not, and at
first try it's not very likely to, you go back to the drawing board and try
another way of organizationing the plan - "let's see, this schedule says
we'll finish 3 weeks later than the contract calls for, but if I take Joe
off this and put him on that task, that will shorten this stuff so we can
start this other thing sooner and Project tells me if I do that I can move
my Project finish date up 2 days, now who else can I put in here to make it
even shorter?" kind of thing. That's creating the schedule. The statement
"the Shuttle will next fly Nov 10th and we must be ready for the mission by
then" is not a schedule, it is a statment of objectives that you're building
the schedule in an attempt to meet. Some of the possible schedules you
might create will meet it and others won't ... Project's job is to tell you
which is which. IF you've already been handed a detailed list of what
occurs when and for how long and you can't juggle resources etc, then
Project's job is more to be a reality check predicting whether that
predefined schedule is going to work or not or whether you could be better
served spending your time updating your resume <grin> for the aftermath of
when that unworkable schedule you were mandated to follow fails and you get
the blame.

As such, I am using Project as an organization tool for simplified
tracking.
Get the whole thing on one sheet of paper so to speak. It has been great
for that so far. I have just had some struggles as I have attempted to
add
more functionality and track resource availability. It has gotten
frustrating as I have gotten so close to the finish line only to have the
quirky work equation thing bite my hand. I will get it figured out
eventually.

 

[Steve House]

Absolutely NOT getting PO'd at your newness or your questions, perish the
thought!

I wonder what it is you're seeing when you say it's changing duration when
you add resources. It could be related to exactly how you are adding and
adjusting the resources. Perhaps something like this might be what's going
on ... this may seem counter intuitive but if I have Joe assigned to a task
and add Fred, that is adding a resource and what happens to duration is
controlled by the Effort Driven property. But if I have "Carpenters"
assigned to the task at 200% (meaning 2 carpenters) and I edit the units to
300% (meaning I've added a carpenter), as far as Project is concerned I
haven't really added a resource. Instead I have changed how fast Mr
Carpenter is working and the calculation is handled in the same way as if it
was a single person who's assignment has been changed from 50% to 100%. And
of course since the duration of a 40 man-hour task depends on how hard the
resource works, whether the resource gets 4 hours or 8 hours of work on it
done in a workday, the Effort Driven and Non-effort Driven doesn't control
and the Task Type setting kicks in.

As for them not being there in the first part of the task but appearing in
the latter, that's a bit unusual. I'd actually expect the opposite, to see
them on the start of the task but perhaps not on the end. If Joe has 24
hours of work @100%, Bill has 32 @100%, and Fred has 40 @100%, the normal
pattern would be to see all three of them for the first three days, then Joe
drops off while Bill and Fred work together one more day, then Bill also
goes away and Fred works by himself for the last day - total duration, 5
days. Do you by any chance have it set to schedule from project end date
forward?

I think your basic setting should be Non-effort Driven, Fixed Units. Fixed
Units because the hammock behavior is changing the duration and it makes
sense that when it does, the work estimated for each resource should be what
changes instead of the percentage they're assigned to the task. But keep in
mind that when you edit the units of a resource in a Fixed Units task
(perhaps also counter-intuitive - fixed should mean you can't change it,
right? - but perfectly permissable - Project won't change it but you can) it
behaves as if it were a Fixed Work task, holds the work constant, and
changes the duration. Now couple that with the fact that the W=D*U equation
is calculated independently for each resource in the list. So let's say you
have Carpenters @ 300% and Electricians @ 300% each assigned on a Task that
is 5 days duration. That's 120 man-hours of work for each the carpenters
and electricians. Now I add another carpenter by raising the units to 400%.
The carpenters will still be doing 120 man-hours of work but they're doing
it 33% faster. Their duration will drop to 3.75 days but the electricans
will still be there for 5 days. The task duration will show 5 days -
duration being the time between when the earliest resource starts and the
latest resource ends, but the Resource Usage view will show the carpenters
leaving before the end of Day 4. The solution? Make the task Fixed
Duration before changing the Carpenter's units so that when you make the
change their estimated work is what will be recalculated, make the edit,
then change it back to Fixed Units. The task type settings, like the effort
driven settings, are definitely NOT a set-and-forget property established
once and left alone. You have to think about them each and every time you
make an edit and make sure they're set appropriately for the purpose of that
specifc edit. Next edit to the same resource and same task might require a
different setting, depending on just why you're doing it. Project
calculates exactly how you tell it to but it's up to you to tell it the
right thing to do.

Hope this helps

--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

I regret my clumsy language. I should not have used the verb "reassigns"
as
that led to confusion. Perhaps "reschedule" is a more precise term. I
was
getting at my original complaint that if I assign 50 resources to a task
and
all of the resources are need for the duration of the task, how can i keep
Project from showing some resources as assigned for the full duration of
the
task and the others from say just the last third of the task. Things
haven't
been stable as the task duration ebbs and flows (which it will). They can
look great for a while and then I do some edits, pull up a task usage view
and find things are broken again. I suppose if I do a
design-of-experiments type of exercise I can find which sequence of events
break things. Sometimes I get the little diamond exclamation point asking
me
how to interpret my edit, sometimes I don't.

I hope I did not getting you guys all p***ed off with my newbie-ness. As
for formal project management training, I of course don't have any. Our
discussion has become circular so we can probably just stop the thread. I
must be fat-fingering something. I thought I unchecked Effort-Driven
which
was supposed to keep Project from recalculating durations when I add or
delete resources. I did not see that result.

See embedded below

--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs
----------------

Pithy rejoinder vis-a-vis Excel but I believe my analogy is sound.
Anyway,
scheduling is all that I am doing really. My gripe was concerned with
Project "re-scheduling". I will be more careful with the sequence of
edits.
When you put in a task and assign a bunch of resources to it, it is a
bit
disconcerting to see that Project will reassign resources according to
its
own whims...

I like to put it to my students that you don't need the talent and skills
of
a professional writer to thoroughly know and use all of the features of
MS
Word but MS Project is just a glorified date calculator and you have to
bring some knowledge of formal project management to the table to use it
properly.

Project NEVER reassigns resources and for the life of me I can't figure
out
what you're seeing when you say it has. If I put a resource on a task,
whether it's Joe or the desk he's sitting at, Project never takes it off
that task and assigns it to another. But if you realize that Units is
not a
body-count, it is actually a rate value that describes the amount of work
output will be generated over a given period of time, then it starts to
make
sense. The principal is easier if you think in physical terms but the
following logic applies to virtually any task and IF you remember that
tasks
are not merely a record of the time a resource is occupied - a valid task
ALWAYS creates some sort of deliverable, whether physical or intangible,
at
its conclusion - in other words, something in the Universe always changes
by
the action of every task. Joe has to make 100 widgets and when working
at
capacity he makes 10 per hour. 1 man-hour of work = 10 widgets. 100
widgets
= 10 hr @ 10/hr @ 100% so the duration is 10 hours. Even if I now change
the duration to 20 hours he still has to make 100 widgets since that's
the
number our contract calls for us to deliver, no more and no less. So if
I
give him 20 hours to do it, he'll only have to work at half speed, 50%.
(Fixed Work task type) Or perhaps we're trying to calculate how many
widgets
we can generate over a given period of time. I change the duration to
show
that I have Joe for 30 hours. At 100% how many widgets will he make?
30hr
@ 10 widgets/hr @100% = 300 widgets. (Fixed Units task type) Could this
be
what you're seeing when you say it reassigns resources?

My application does not have anything to do with Earned-Value or Cost
management (insert govt joke here) or any of the complicated stuff. In
reality, the comment one of the other MVP types made was a relevant one
wherein he said that Project is not used to enter a schedule, it is
used
to
create/manage one (paraphrasing). In my business I do not have the
luxury
of
"creating" the schedule, I am using Project to consolidate the
schedules
of
3-4 organizations (companies, govt agencies, etc) and insert the
additional
tasks that my organization needs to do in order to support those
others.

A "Schedule" is not a calendar of event deadlines and requirements - it
is a
detailed plan of the organization of a group of assets so that they will
achieve their objectives according to the deadlines you've been given.
So
you actually DO have the "luxury" (actually, "necessity") of creating
schedules because it's up to you to figure out how the work must be
organized so that X number of resources will be able to achieve Y results
by
Z date. That where Project comes in - you input a proposed structure and
resource assignments and it tells you what date you'll hit if you
organize
things like that. If that meets your objectives, great! If not, and at
first try it's not very likely to, you go back to the drawing board and
try
another way of organizationing the plan - "let's see, this schedule says
we'll finish 3 weeks later than the contract calls for, but if I take Joe
off this and put him on that task, that will shorten this stuff so we can
start this other thing sooner and Project tells me if I do that I can
move
my Project finish date up 2 days, now who else can I put in here to make
it
even shorter?" kind of thing. That's creating the schedule. The
statement
"the Shuttle will next fly Nov 10th and we must be ready for the mission
by
then" is not a schedule, it is a statment of objectives that you're
building
the schedule in an attempt to meet. Some of the possible schedules you
might create will meet it and others won't ... Project's job is to tell
you
which is which. IF you've already been handed a detailed list of what
occurs when and for how long and you can't juggle resources etc, then
Project's job is more to be a reality check predicting whether that
predefined schedule is going to work or not or whether you could be
better
served spending your time updating your resume <grin> for the aftermath
of
when that unworkable schedule you were mandated to follow fails and you
get
the blame.

As such, I am using Project as an organization tool for simplified
tracking.
Get the whole thing on one sheet of paper so to speak. It has been
great
for that so far. I have just had some struggles as I have attempted to
add
more functionality and track resource availability. It has gotten
frustrating as I have gotten so close to the finish line only to have
the
quirky work equation thing bite my hand. I will get it figured out
eventually.

 

[St Dilbert]

Hi scabHead,

keep going in your explorations! I started using project with Version
98 and it has been a learning curve that is still going on. One thing I
keep being reminded of when I scan this newsgroup: after a while
everyone develops a "personal" usage style of MSP that fits one's needs
and environement. This "personalization" with MSP is much more
differentiated than with other parts of the office suite... When you're
ready to go further in your explorations you might want to take a look
at switching off some of the leveling options: menu "Tools/Level
resources..." and then set it to "manual" instead of "automatic" and
also DEselect "Leveling can adjust individual assignments on a task"
(This is a quote of the screen dialog label, so even MS themselves are
ambiguous in their wording: MSP "adjusts" really only by rescheduling
the assignments on tasks; this might take care of your "phones
available half the time"). Good luck - I'm sure you will eventually
find a configuration you can live with!

In a wider context: I would interpret your role less as that of a
"scheduler" and more like that of a "staffer". Academically in the
critical-path-gospel one might argue that a schedule is not complete
until the "schedule has been fully resource loaded and levelled for
availybility". But in the real world PM's have their hands full when
trying to get work-breakdown, logical network, estimates, skills
inventory and calculated vs. contracted budget up and running. Quite
frankly, I myself was always a bit "tired" when it came to the
logistics part of scheduling "so what real-life resources are available
in the pool when?". So at the "receiving end" of my scheduling sat our
staffer, trying to make "database specialist" available exactly between
today+two weeks for six weeks - of course there were limits ;-)...

Our staffer also received all those project files and was never happy
with MSP's resource-pool-and-link-project-files functionality. He ended
up building an "ecosystem" of Excel/Access and some macros for himself
but his most important tools were the telephone and his diplomatic
skills (that's why eMail wasn't his main tool ;-)...)

I've seen "staffer" applications in logistics modules of Enterprise
Software like SAP (MM) and Navision - but I'm not aware of any
lightweight desktop standard software. Anyone out there with a
software?

Even though I'm more in the role of creating (nowadays analyzing)
project schedules I share your gripe about MSP not really lending
itself to "multi-role" groupware-type work e.g. between "scheduler" and
"staffer". In the end I always end up having one mastermind user
integrating all information from all sources into the one "holy"
project file. Never let others (not even team leads) touch the file
without clear instructions on what to enter in what sequence.
Alternative: when it's taking too much time to administer the schedule
away from teh PM, scale back on tracking an dupdating quality (sad but
happens all the time to me)
I haven't seen the server (I know this is another newsgroup) alleviate
this situation apart from the actuals collection part.

I regret my clumsy language. I should not have used the verb "reassigns" as
that led to confusion. Perhaps "reschedule" is a more precise term. I was
getting at my original complaint that if I assign 50 resources to a task and
all of the resources are need for the duration of the task, how can i keep
Project from showing some resources as assigned for the full duration of the
task and the others from say just the last third of the task. Things haven't
been stable as the task duration ebbs and flows (which it will). They can
look great for a while and then I do some edits, pull up a task usage view
and find things are broken again. I suppose if I do a
design-of-experiments type of exercise I can find which sequence of events
break things. Sometimes I get the little diamond exclamation point asking me
how to interpret my edit, sometimes I don't.

I hope I did not getting you guys all p***ed off with my newbie-ness. As
for formal project management training, I of course don't have any. Our
discussion has become circular so we can probably just stop the thread. I
must be fat-fingering something. I thought I unchecked Effort-Driven which
was supposed to keep Project from recalculating durations when I add or
delete resources. I did not see that result.

See embedded below

--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs
----------------

Pithy rejoinder vis-a-vis Excel but I believe my analogy is sound.
Anyway,
scheduling is all that I am doing really. My gripe was concerned with
Project "re-scheduling". I will be more careful with the sequence of
edits.
When you put in a task and assign a bunch of resources to it, it is a bit
disconcerting to see that Project will reassign resources according to its
own whims...

I like to put it to my students that you don't need the talent and skills of
a professional writer to thoroughly know and use all of the features of MS
Word but MS Project is just a glorified date calculator and you have to
bring some knowledge of formal project management to the table to use it
properly.

Project NEVER reassigns resources and for the life of me I can't figure out
what you're seeing when you say it has. If I put a resource on a task,
whether it's Joe or the desk he's sitting at, Project never takes it off
that task and assigns it to another. But if you realize that Units is not a
body-count, it is actually a rate value that describes the amount of work
output will be generated over a given period of time, then it starts to make
sense. The principal is easier if you think in physical terms but the
following logic applies to virtually any task and IF you remember that tasks
are not merely a record of the time a resource is occupied - a valid task
ALWAYS creates some sort of deliverable, whether physical or intangible, at
its conclusion - in other words, something in the Universe always changes by
the action of every task. Joe has to make 100 widgets and when working at
capacity he makes 10 per hour. 1 man-hour of work = 10 widgets. 100 widgets
= 10 hr @ 10/hr @ 100% so the duration is 10 hours. Even if I now change
the duration to 20 hours he still has to make 100 widgets since that's the
number our contract calls for us to deliver, no more and no less. So if I
give him 20 hours to do it, he'll only have to work at half speed, 50%.
(Fixed Work task type) Or perhaps we're trying to calculate how many widgets
we can generate over a given period of time. I change the duration to show
that I have Joe for 30 hours. At 100% how many widgets will he make? 30hr
@ 10 widgets/hr @100% = 300 widgets. (Fixed Units task type) Could this be
what you're seeing when you say it reassigns resources?

My application does not have anything to do with Earned-Value or Cost
management (insert govt joke here) or any of the complicated stuff. In
reality, the comment one of the other MVP types made was a relevant one
wherein he said that Project is not used to enter a schedule, it is used
to
create/manage one (paraphrasing). In my business I do not have the luxury
of
"creating" the schedule, I am using Project to consolidate the schedules
of
3-4 organizations (companies, govt agencies, etc) and insert the
additional
tasks that my organization needs to do in order to support those others.

A "Schedule" is not a calendar of event deadlines and requirements - it is a
detailed plan of the organization of a group of assets so that they will
achieve their objectives according to the deadlines you've been given. So
you actually DO have the "luxury" (actually, "necessity") of creating
schedules because it's up to you to figure out how the work must be
organized so that X number of resources will be able to achieve Y results by
Z date. That where Project comes in - you input a proposed structure and
resource assignments and it tells you what date you'll hit if you organize
things like that. If that meets your objectives, great! If not, and at
first try it's not very likely to, you go back to the drawing board and try
another way of organizationing the plan - "let's see, this schedule says
we'll finish 3 weeks later than the contract calls for, but if I take Joe
off this and put him on that task, that will shorten this stuff so we can
start this other thing sooner and Project tells me if I do that I can move
my Project finish date up 2 days, now who else can I put in here to make it
even shorter?" kind of thing. That's creating the schedule. The statement
"the Shuttle will next fly Nov 10th and we must be ready for the mission by
then" is not a schedule, it is a statment of objectives that you're building
the schedule in an attempt to meet. Some of the possible schedules you
might create will meet it and others won't ... Project's job is to tell you
which is which. IF you've already been handed a detailed list of what
occurs when and for how long and you can't juggle resources etc, then
Project's job is more to be a reality check predicting whether that
predefined schedule is going to work or not or whether you could be better
served spending your time updating your resume <grin> for the aftermath of
when that unworkable schedule you were mandated to follow fails and you get
the blame.

As such, I am using Project as an organization tool for simplified
tracking.
Get the whole thing on one sheet of paper so to speak. It has been great
for that so far. I have just had some struggles as I have attempted to
add
more functionality and track resource availability. It has gotten
frustrating as I have gotten so close to the finish line only to have the
quirky work equation thing bite my hand. I will get it figured out
eventually.

 

[Steve House]

I can only reiterate, Project is a planning tool primarily designed to be
used as a forecasting tool by those who have the responsibility for making
the tactical deployment decisions in the project planning process, assisting
in that decision process by calculating the results that are likely to
obtain upon exercising the various options they may have. It is less useful
as a documenting tool to be be used by those in support roles to illustrate
the decisions that others have already made. What's the staff assistant,
who does not have the authority to change the work breakdown and the
resource assignments, to do if the boss has handed down a schedule that's
unworkable? Project's job is to tell them that it IS unworkable by refusing
to accept the entries as the boss has defined they must be. That's not
Project's fault - it's the manager's fault for not thinking things through
and insisting on a schedule that is based more on desire and and a mistaken
impression of what will be required to meet the business goals and less on
the harsh, cold, physical facts of goals to be achieved constrained by the
availability of the assets with which to achieve them. It's the boss that
needs to be using Project, not the Staffer.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Hi scabHead,

keep going in your explorations! I started using project with Version
98 and it has been a learning curve that is still going on. One thing I
keep being reminded of when I scan this newsgroup: after a while
everyone develops a "personal" usage style of MSP that fits one's needs
and environement. This "personalization" with MSP is much more
differentiated than with other parts of the office suite... When you're
ready to go further in your explorations you might want to take a look
at switching off some of the leveling options: menu "Tools/Level
resources..." and then set it to "manual" instead of "automatic" and
also DEselect "Leveling can adjust individual assignments on a task"
(This is a quote of the screen dialog label, so even MS themselves are
ambiguous in their wording: MSP "adjusts" really only by rescheduling
the assignments on tasks; this might take care of your "phones
available half the time"). Good luck - I'm sure you will eventually
find a configuration you can live with!

In a wider context: I would interpret your role less as that of a
"scheduler" and more like that of a "staffer". Academically in the
critical-path-gospel one might argue that a schedule is not complete
until the "schedule has been fully resource loaded and levelled for
availybility". But in the real world PM's have their hands full when
trying to get work-breakdown, logical network, estimates, skills
inventory and calculated vs. contracted budget up and running. Quite
frankly, I myself was always a bit "tired" when it came to the
logistics part of scheduling "so what real-life resources are available
in the pool when?". So at the "receiving end" of my scheduling sat our
staffer, trying to make "database specialist" available exactly between
today+two weeks for six weeks - of course there were limits ;-)...

Our staffer also received all those project files and was never happy
with MSP's resource-pool-and-link-project-files functionality. He ended
up building an "ecosystem" of Excel/Access and some macros for himself
but his most important tools were the telephone and his diplomatic
skills (that's why eMail wasn't his main tool ;-)...)

I've seen "staffer" applications in logistics modules of Enterprise
Software like SAP (MM) and Navision - but I'm not aware of any
lightweight desktop standard software. Anyone out there with a
software?

Even though I'm more in the role of creating (nowadays analyzing)
project schedules I share your gripe about MSP not really lending
itself to "multi-role" groupware-type work e.g. between "scheduler" and
"staffer". In the end I always end up having one mastermind user
integrating all information from all sources into the one "holy"
project file. Never let others (not even team leads) touch the file
without clear instructions on what to enter in what sequence.
Alternative: when it's taking too much time to administer the schedule
away from teh PM, scale back on tracking an dupdating quality (sad but
happens all the time to me)
I haven't seen the server (I know this is another newsgroup) alleviate
this situation apart from the actuals collection part.

I regret my clumsy language. I should not have used the verb "reassigns"
as
that led to confusion. Perhaps "reschedule" is a more precise term. I
was
getting at my original complaint that if I assign 50 resources to a task
and
all of the resources are need for the duration of the task, how can i
keep
Project from showing some resources as assigned for the full duration of
the
task and the others from say just the last third of the task. Things
haven't
been stable as the task duration ebbs and flows (which it will). They
can
look great for a while and then I do some edits, pull up a task usage
view
and find things are broken again. I suppose if I do a
design-of-experiments type of exercise I can find which sequence of
events
break things. Sometimes I get the little diamond exclamation point
asking me
how to interpret my edit, sometimes I don't.

I hope I did not getting you guys all p***ed off with my newbie-ness. As
for formal project management training, I of course don't have any. Our
discussion has become circular so we can probably just stop the thread.
I
must be fat-fingering something. I thought I unchecked Effort-Driven
which
was supposed to keep Project from recalculating durations when I add or
delete resources. I did not see that result.

See embedded below

--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs
----------------

Pithy rejoinder vis-a-vis Excel but I believe my analogy is sound.
Anyway,
scheduling is all that I am doing really. My gripe was concerned
with
Project "re-scheduling". I will be more careful with the sequence of
edits.
When you put in a task and assign a bunch of resources to it, it is a
bit
disconcerting to see that Project will reassign resources according
to its
own whims...

I like to put it to my students that you don't need the talent and
skills of
a professional writer to thoroughly know and use all of the features of
MS
Word but MS Project is just a glorified date calculator and you have to
bring some knowledge of formal project management to the table to use
it
properly.

Project NEVER reassigns resources and for the life of me I can't figure
out
what you're seeing when you say it has. If I put a resource on a task,
whether it's Joe or the desk he's sitting at, Project never takes it
off
that task and assigns it to another. But if you realize that Units is
not a
body-count, it is actually a rate value that describes the amount of
work
output will be generated over a given period of time, then it starts to
make
sense. The principal is easier if you think in physical terms but the
following logic applies to virtually any task and IF you remember that
tasks
are not merely a record of the time a resource is occupied - a valid
task
ALWAYS creates some sort of deliverable, whether physical or
intangible, at
its conclusion - in other words, something in the Universe always
changes by
the action of every task. Joe has to make 100 widgets and when working
at
capacity he makes 10 per hour. 1 man-hour of work = 10 widgets. 100
widgets
= 10 hr @ 10/hr @ 100% so the duration is 10 hours. Even if I now
change
the duration to 20 hours he still has to make 100 widgets since that's
the
number our contract calls for us to deliver, no more and no less. So
if I
give him 20 hours to do it, he'll only have to work at half speed, 50%.
(Fixed Work task type) Or perhaps we're trying to calculate how many
widgets
we can generate over a given period of time. I change the duration to
show
that I have Joe for 30 hours. At 100% how many widgets will he make?
30hr
@ 10 widgets/hr @100% = 300 widgets. (Fixed Units task type) Could
this be
what you're seeing when you say it reassigns resources?



My application does not have anything to do with Earned-Value or Cost
management (insert govt joke here) or any of the complicated stuff.
In
reality, the comment one of the other MVP types made was a relevant
one
wherein he said that Project is not used to enter a schedule, it is
used
to
create/manage one (paraphrasing). In my business I do not have the
luxury
of
"creating" the schedule, I am using Project to consolidate the
schedules
of
3-4 organizations (companies, govt agencies, etc) and insert the
additional
tasks that my organization needs to do in order to support those
others.

A "Schedule" is not a calendar of event deadlines and requirements - it
is a
detailed plan of the organization of a group of assets so that they
will
achieve their objectives according to the deadlines you've been given.
So
you actually DO have the "luxury" (actually, "necessity") of creating
schedules because it's up to you to figure out how the work must be
organized so that X number of resources will be able to achieve Y
results by
Z date. That where Project comes in - you input a proposed structure
and
resource assignments and it tells you what date you'll hit if you
organize
things like that. If that meets your objectives, great! If not, and
at
first try it's not very likely to, you go back to the drawing board and
try
another way of organizationing the plan - "let's see, this schedule
says
we'll finish 3 weeks later than the contract calls for, but if I take
Joe
off this and put him on that task, that will shorten this stuff so we
can
start this other thing sooner and Project tells me if I do that I can
move
my Project finish date up 2 days, now who else can I put in here to
make it
even shorter?" kind of thing. That's creating the schedule. The
statement
"the Shuttle will next fly Nov 10th and we must be ready for the
mission by
then" is not a schedule, it is a statment of objectives that you're
building
the schedule in an attempt to meet. Some of the possible schedules you
might create will meet it and others won't ... Project's job is to tell
you
which is which. IF you've already been handed a detailed list of what
occurs when and for how long and you can't juggle resources etc, then
Project's job is more to be a reality check predicting whether that
predefined schedule is going to work or not or whether you could be
better
served spending your time updating your resume <grin> for the aftermath
of
when that unworkable schedule you were mandated to follow fails and you
get
the blame.


As such, I am using Project as an organization tool for simplified
tracking.
Get the whole thing on one sheet of paper so to speak. It has been
great
for that so far. I have just had some struggles as I have attempted
to
add
more functionality and track resource availability. It has gotten
frustrating as I have gotten so close to the finish line only to have
the
quirky work equation thing bite my hand. I will get it figured out
eventually.

 

[St Dilbert]

In a multi-project environment it's not a simple "ignorant boss vs.
poor staffer" situation. Say all PMs do their job responsibly and
Project helps them by producing a workable schedule. It does this
mainly by taking the work breakdown and network and given
availabilities and then timing (if necessary delaying) the work.

Now all projects want resources from a pool where a "staffer" is trying
to optimize assignment to the different projects. IMHO MSP's
functionality to support that role (optimizing distribution of
available resources for a proposed sequence of work) is poor - both
with the resource pool/master project and project server options.

For me this should be an iterative process: make assumptions about team
and arrange work accordingly (that's what MSP is good at). Next: take
assumption about sequence of work and optimize utilization (i.e. change
assignments - that's what MSP is no good at or won't do at all). Go
back to step one until work and utilization are both happy.

I can only reiterate, Project is a planning tool primarily designed to be
used as a forecasting tool by those who have the responsibility for making
the tactical deployment decisions in the project planning process, assisting
in that decision process by calculating the results that are likely to
obtain upon exercising the various options they may have. It is less useful
as a documenting tool to be be used by those in support roles to illustrate
the decisions that others have already made. What's the staff assistant,
who does not have the authority to change the work breakdown and the
resource assignments, to do if the boss has handed down a schedule that's
unworkable? Project's job is to tell them that it IS unworkable by refusing
to accept the entries as the boss has defined they must be. That's not
Project's fault - it's the manager's fault for not thinking things through
and insisting on a schedule that is based more on desire and and a mistaken
impression of what will be required to meet the business goals and less on
the harsh, cold, physical facts of goals to be achieved constrained by the
availability of the assets with which to achieve them. It's the boss that
needs to be using Project, not the Staffer.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Hi scabHead,

keep going in your explorations! I started using project with Version
98 and it has been a learning curve that is still going on. One thing I
keep being reminded of when I scan this newsgroup: after a while
everyone develops a "personal" usage style of MSP that fits one's needs
and environement. This "personalization" with MSP is much more
differentiated than with other parts of the office suite... When you're
ready to go further in your explorations you might want to take a look
at switching off some of the leveling options: menu "Tools/Level
resources..." and then set it to "manual" instead of "automatic" and
also DEselect "Leveling can adjust individual assignments on a task"
(This is a quote of the screen dialog label, so even MS themselves are
ambiguous in their wording: MSP "adjusts" really only by rescheduling
the assignments on tasks; this might take care of your "phones
available half the time"). Good luck - I'm sure you will eventually
find a configuration you can live with!

In a wider context: I would interpret your role less as that of a
"scheduler" and more like that of a "staffer". Academically in the
critical-path-gospel one might argue that a schedule is not complete
until the "schedule has been fully resource loaded and levelled for
availybility". But in the real world PM's have their hands full when
trying to get work-breakdown, logical network, estimates, skills
inventory and calculated vs. contracted budget up and running. Quite
frankly, I myself was always a bit "tired" when it came to the
logistics part of scheduling "so what real-life resources are available
in the pool when?". So at the "receiving end" of my scheduling sat our
staffer, trying to make "database specialist" available exactly between
today+two weeks for six weeks - of course there were limits ;-)...

Our staffer also received all those project files and was never happy
with MSP's resource-pool-and-link-project-files functionality. He ended
up building an "ecosystem" of Excel/Access and some macros for himself
but his most important tools were the telephone and his diplomatic
skills (that's why eMail wasn't his main tool ;-)...)

I've seen "staffer" applications in logistics modules of Enterprise
Software like SAP (MM) and Navision - but I'm not aware of any
lightweight desktop standard software. Anyone out there with a
software?

Even though I'm more in the role of creating (nowadays analyzing)
project schedules I share your gripe about MSP not really lending
itself to "multi-role" groupware-type work e.g. between "scheduler" and
"staffer". In the end I always end up having one mastermind user
integrating all information from all sources into the one "holy"
project file. Never let others (not even team leads) touch the file
without clear instructions on what to enter in what sequence.
Alternative: when it's taking too much time to administer the schedule
away from teh PM, scale back on tracking an dupdating quality (sad but
happens all the time to me)
I haven't seen the server (I know this is another newsgroup) alleviate
this situation apart from the actuals collection part.

I regret my clumsy language. I should not have used the verb "reassigns"
as
that led to confusion. Perhaps "reschedule" is a more precise term. I
was
getting at my original complaint that if I assign 50 resources to a task
and
all of the resources are need for the duration of the task, how can i
keep
Project from showing some resources as assigned for the full duration of
the
task and the others from say just the last third of the task. Things
haven't
been stable as the task duration ebbs and flows (which it will). They
can
look great for a while and then I do some edits, pull up a task usage
view
and find things are broken again. I suppose if I do a
design-of-experiments type of exercise I can find which sequence of
events
break things. Sometimes I get the little diamond exclamation point
asking me
how to interpret my edit, sometimes I don't.

I hope I did not getting you guys all p***ed off with my newbie-ness. As
for formal project management training, I of course don't have any. Our
discussion has become circular so we can probably just stop the thread.
I
must be fat-fingering something. I thought I unchecked Effort-Driven
which
was supposed to keep Project from recalculating durations when I add or
delete resources. I did not see that result.

:

See embedded below

--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs
----------------

Pithy rejoinder vis-a-vis Excel but I believe my analogy is sound.
Anyway,
scheduling is all that I am doing really. My gripe was concerned
with
Project "re-scheduling". I will be more careful with the sequence of
edits.
When you put in a task and assign a bunch of resources to it, it is a
bit
disconcerting to see that Project will reassign resources according
to its
own whims...

I like to put it to my students that you don't need the talent and
skills of
a professional writer to thoroughly know and use all of the features of
MS
Word but MS Project is just a glorified date calculator and you have to
bring some knowledge of formal project management to the table to use
it
properly.

Project NEVER reassigns resources and for the life of me I can't figure
out
what you're seeing when you say it has. If I put a resource on a task,
whether it's Joe or the desk he's sitting at, Project never takes it
off
that task and assigns it to another. But if you realize that Units is
not a
body-count, it is actually a rate value that describes the amount of
work
output will be generated over a given period of time, then it starts to
make
sense. The principal is easier if you think in physical terms but the
following logic applies to virtually any task and IF you remember that
tasks
are not merely a record of the time a resource is occupied - a valid
task
ALWAYS creates some sort of deliverable, whether physical or
intangible, at
its conclusion - in other words, something in the Universe always
changes by
the action of every task. Joe has to make 100 widgets and when working
at
capacity he makes 10 per hour. 1 man-hour of work = 10 widgets. 100
widgets
= 10 hr @ 10/hr @ 100% so the duration is 10 hours. Even if I now
change
the duration to 20 hours he still has to make 100 widgets since that's
the
number our contract calls for us to deliver, no more and no less. So
if I
give him 20 hours to do it, he'll only have to work at half speed, 50%.
(Fixed Work task type) Or perhaps we're trying to calculate how many
widgets
we can generate over a given period of time. I change the duration to
show
that I have Joe for 30 hours. At 100% how many widgets will he make?
30hr
@ 10 widgets/hr @100% = 300 widgets. (Fixed Units task type) Could
this be
what you're seeing when you say it reassigns resources?



My application does not have anything to do with Earned-Value or Cost
management (insert govt joke here) or any of the complicated stuff.
In
reality, the comment one of the other MVP types made was a relevant
one
wherein he said that Project is not used to enter a schedule, it is
used
to
create/manage one (paraphrasing). In my business I do not have the
luxury
of
"creating" the schedule, I am using Project to consolidate the
schedules
of
3-4 organizations (companies, govt agencies, etc) and insert the
additional
tasks that my organization needs to do in order to support those
others.

A "Schedule" is not a calendar of event deadlines and requirements - it
is a
detailed plan of the organization of a group of assets so that they
will
achieve their objectives according to the deadlines you've been given.
So
you actually DO have the "luxury" (actually, "necessity") of creating
schedules because it's up to you to figure out how the work must be
organized so that X number of resources will be able to achieve Y
results by
Z date. That where Project comes in - you input a proposed structure
and
resource assignments and it tells you what date you'll hit if you
organize
things like that. If that meets your objectives, great! If not, and
at
first try it's not very likely to, you go back to the drawing board and
try
another way of organizationing the plan - "let's see, this schedule
says
we'll finish 3 weeks later than the contract calls for, but if I take
Joe
off this and put him on that task, that will shorten this stuff so we
can
start this other thing sooner and Project tells me if I do that I can
move
my Project finish date up 2 days, now who else can I put in here to
make it
even shorter?" kind of thing. That's creating the schedule. The
statement
"the Shuttle will next fly Nov 10th and we must be ready for the
mission by
then" is not a schedule, it is a statment of objectives that you're
building
the schedule in an attempt to meet. Some of the possible schedules you
might create will meet it and others won't ... Project's job is to tell
you
which is which. IF you've already been handed a detailed list of what
occurs when and for how long and you can't juggle resources etc, then
Project's job is more to be a reality check predicting whether that
predefined schedule is going to work or not or whether you could be
better
served spending your time updating your resume <grin> for the aftermath
of
when that unworkable schedule you were mandated to follow fails and you
get
the blame.


As such, I am using Project as an organization tool for simplified
tracking.
Get the whole thing on one sheet of paper so to speak. It has been
great
for that so far. I have just had some struggles as I have attempted
to
add
more functionality and track resource availability. It has gotten
frustrating as I have gotten so close to the finish line only to have
the
quirky work equation thing bite my hand. I will get it figured out
eventually.

 

[scabHead]

Steve,

I am using Project as both a forecasting tool AND a documentation tool. Why
use two tools when one can do the job? It is really working great and has
fundamentally improved my main job of integrating schedules and requirements.
I had a few frustrations with some of the tasking nuances a few weeks ago
but things seem to be pretty stable now. I seriously don't know how I could
ever go back to the pre-Project ways. I say that though I am admittedly only
using the superficial features of Project. All I am using is the ability to
assign resources to tasks in order to generate the resource sheets. I am not
even touching all of that cost stuff. But it is getting the job done.
That's the bottom line.

I can only reiterate, Project is a planning tool primarily designed to be
used as a forecasting tool by those who have the responsibility for making
the tactical deployment decisions in the project planning process, assisting
in that decision process by calculating the results that are likely to
obtain upon exercising the various options they may have. It is less useful
as a documenting tool to be be used by those in support roles to illustrate
the decisions that others have already made. What's the staff assistant,
who does not have the authority to change the work breakdown and the
resource assignments, to do if the boss has handed down a schedule that's
unworkable? Project's job is to tell them that it IS unworkable by refusing
to accept the entries as the boss has defined they must be. That's not
Project's fault - it's the manager's fault for not thinking things through
and insisting on a schedule that is based more on desire and and a mistaken
impression of what will be required to meet the business goals and less on
the harsh, cold, physical facts of goals to be achieved constrained by the
availability of the assets with which to achieve them. It's the boss that
needs to be using Project, not the Staffer.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Hi scabHead,

keep going in your explorations! I started using project with Version
98 and it has been a learning curve that is still going on. One thing I
keep being reminded of when I scan this newsgroup: after a while
everyone develops a "personal" usage style of MSP that fits one's needs
and environement. This "personalization" with MSP is much more
differentiated than with other parts of the office suite... When you're
ready to go further in your explorations you might want to take a look
at switching off some of the leveling options: menu "Tools/Level
resources..." and then set it to "manual" instead of "automatic" and
also DEselect "Leveling can adjust individual assignments on a task"
(This is a quote of the screen dialog label, so even MS themselves are
ambiguous in their wording: MSP "adjusts" really only by rescheduling
the assignments on tasks; this might take care of your "phones
available half the time"). Good luck - I'm sure you will eventually
find a configuration you can live with!

In a wider context: I would interpret your role less as that of a
"scheduler" and more like that of a "staffer". Academically in the
critical-path-gospel one might argue that a schedule is not complete
until the "schedule has been fully resource loaded and levelled for
availybility". But in the real world PM's have their hands full when
trying to get work-breakdown, logical network, estimates, skills
inventory and calculated vs. contracted budget up and running. Quite
frankly, I myself was always a bit "tired" when it came to the
logistics part of scheduling "so what real-life resources are available
in the pool when?". So at the "receiving end" of my scheduling sat our
staffer, trying to make "database specialist" available exactly between
today+two weeks for six weeks - of course there were limits ;-)...

Our staffer also received all those project files and was never happy
with MSP's resource-pool-and-link-project-files functionality. He ended
up building an "ecosystem" of Excel/Access and some macros for himself
but his most important tools were the telephone and his diplomatic
skills (that's why eMail wasn't his main tool ;-)...)

I've seen "staffer" applications in logistics modules of Enterprise
Software like SAP (MM) and Navision - but I'm not aware of any
lightweight desktop standard software. Anyone out there with a
software?

Even though I'm more in the role of creating (nowadays analyzing)
project schedules I share your gripe about MSP not really lending
itself to "multi-role" groupware-type work e.g. between "scheduler" and
"staffer". In the end I always end up having one mastermind user
integrating all information from all sources into the one "holy"
project file. Never let others (not even team leads) touch the file
without clear instructions on what to enter in what sequence.
Alternative: when it's taking too much time to administer the schedule
away from teh PM, scale back on tracking an dupdating quality (sad but
happens all the time to me)
I haven't seen the server (I know this is another newsgroup) alleviate
this situation apart from the actuals collection part.

I regret my clumsy language. I should not have used the verb "reassigns"
as
that led to confusion. Perhaps "reschedule" is a more precise term. I
was
getting at my original complaint that if I assign 50 resources to a task
and
all of the resources are need for the duration of the task, how can i
keep
Project from showing some resources as assigned for the full duration of
the
task and the others from say just the last third of the task. Things
haven't
been stable as the task duration ebbs and flows (which it will). They
can
look great for a while and then I do some edits, pull up a task usage
view
and find things are broken again. I suppose if I do a
design-of-experiments type of exercise I can find which sequence of
events
break things. Sometimes I get the little diamond exclamation point
asking me
how to interpret my edit, sometimes I don't.

I hope I did not getting you guys all p***ed off with my newbie-ness. As
for formal project management training, I of course don't have any. Our
discussion has become circular so we can probably just stop the thread.
I
must be fat-fingering something. I thought I unchecked Effort-Driven
which
was supposed to keep Project from recalculating durations when I add or
delete resources. I did not see that result.

:

See embedded below

--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs
----------------

Pithy rejoinder vis-a-vis Excel but I believe my analogy is sound.
Anyway,
scheduling is all that I am doing really. My gripe was concerned
with
Project "re-scheduling". I will be more careful with the sequence of
edits.
When you put in a task and assign a bunch of resources to it, it is a
bit
disconcerting to see that Project will reassign resources according
to its
own whims...

I like to put it to my students that you don't need the talent and
skills of
a professional writer to thoroughly know and use all of the features of
MS
Word but MS Project is just a glorified date calculator and you have to
bring some knowledge of formal project management to the table to use
it
properly.

Project NEVER reassigns resources and for the life of me I can't figure
out
what you're seeing when you say it has. If I put a resource on a task,
whether it's Joe or the desk he's sitting at, Project never takes it
off
that task and assigns it to another. But if you realize that Units is
not a
body-count, it is actually a rate value that describes the amount of
work
output will be generated over a given period of time, then it starts to
make
sense. The principal is easier if you think in physical terms but the
following logic applies to virtually any task and IF you remember that
tasks
are not merely a record of the time a resource is occupied - a valid
task
ALWAYS creates some sort of deliverable, whether physical or
intangible, at
its conclusion - in other words, something in the Universe always
changes by
the action of every task. Joe has to make 100 widgets and when working
at
capacity he makes 10 per hour. 1 man-hour of work = 10 widgets. 100
widgets
= 10 hr @ 10/hr @ 100% so the duration is 10 hours. Even if I now
change
the duration to 20 hours he still has to make 100 widgets since that's
the
number our contract calls for us to deliver, no more and no less. So
if I
give him 20 hours to do it, he'll only have to work at half speed, 50%.
(Fixed Work task type) Or perhaps we're trying to calculate how many
widgets
we can generate over a given period of time. I change the duration to
show
that I have Joe for 30 hours. At 100% how many widgets will he make?
30hr
@ 10 widgets/hr @100% = 300 widgets. (Fixed Units task type) Could
this be
what you're seeing when you say it reassigns resources?



My application does not have anything to do with Earned-Value or Cost
management (insert govt joke here) or any of the complicated stuff.
In
reality, the comment one of the other MVP types made was a relevant
one
wherein he said that Project is not used to enter a schedule, it is
used
to
create/manage one (paraphrasing). In my business I do not have the
luxury
of
"creating" the schedule, I am using Project to consolidate the
schedules
of
3-4 organizations (companies, govt agencies, etc) and insert the
additional
tasks that my organization needs to do in order to support those
others.

A "Schedule" is not a calendar of event deadlines and requirements - it
is a
detailed plan of the organization of a group of assets so that they
will
achieve their objectives according to the deadlines you've been given.
So
you actually DO have the "luxury" (actually, "necessity") of creating
schedules because it's up to you to figure out how the work must be
organized so that X number of resources will be able to achieve Y
results by
Z date. That where Project comes in - you input a proposed structure
and
resource assignments and it tells you what date you'll hit if you
organize
things like that. If that meets your objectives, great! If not, and
at
first try it's not very likely to, you go back to the drawing board and
try
another way of organizationing the plan - "let's see, this schedule
says
we'll finish 3 weeks later than the contract calls for, but if I take
Joe
off this and put him on that task, that will shorten this stuff so we
can
start this other thing sooner and Project tells me if I do that I can
move
my Project finish date up 2 days, now who else can I put in here to
make it
even shorter?" kind of thing. That's creating the schedule. The
statement
"the Shuttle will next fly Nov 10th and we must be ready for the
mission by
then" is not a schedule, it is a statment of objectives that you're
building
the schedule in an attempt to meet. Some of the possible schedules you
might create will meet it and others won't ... Project's job is to tell
you
which is which. IF you've already been handed a detailed list of what
occurs when and for how long and you can't juggle resources etc, then
Project's job is more to be a reality check predicting whether that
predefined schedule is going to work or not or whether you could be
better
served spending your time updating your resume <grin> for the aftermath
of
when that unworkable schedule you were mandated to follow fails and you
get
the blame.


As such, I am using Project as an organization tool for simplified
tracking.
Get the whole thing on one sheet of paper so to speak. It has been
great
for that so far. I have just had some struggles as I have attempted
to
add
more functionality and track resource availability. It has gotten
frustrating as I have gotten so close to the finish line only to have
the
quirky work equation thing bite my hand. I will get it figured out
eventually.

 

[Steve House]

Well, it does a good job of documenting the schedules you create with it,
true enough. But it's not so good if you're an admin assistant who's boss
hands you schedule he roughed out on a yellow legal pad over lunch and
expects you to input it so you can print impressive looking Gantt charts
without letting Project validate the dates he's determined by some intuitive
seat-of-the-pants methods. That's what I meant by documentation - parroting
a schedule that has been generated elsewhere without validating it. It
don't such a good job of that.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Steve,

I am using Project as both a forecasting tool AND a documentation tool.
Why
use two tools when one can do the job? It is really working great and has
fundamentally improved my main job of integrating schedules and
requirements.
I had a few frustrations with some of the tasking nuances a few weeks ago
but things seem to be pretty stable now. I seriously don't know how I
could
ever go back to the pre-Project ways. I say that though I am admittedly
only
using the superficial features of Project. All I am using is the ability
to
assign resources to tasks in order to generate the resource sheets. I am
not
even touching all of that cost stuff. But it is getting the job done.
That's the bottom line.

I can only reiterate, Project is a planning tool primarily designed to be
used as a forecasting tool by those who have the responsibility for
making
the tactical deployment decisions in the project planning process,
assisting
in that decision process by calculating the results that are likely to
obtain upon exercising the various options they may have. It is less
useful
as a documenting tool to be be used by those in support roles to
illustrate
the decisions that others have already made. What's the staff assistant,
who does not have the authority to change the work breakdown and the
resource assignments, to do if the boss has handed down a schedule that's
unworkable? Project's job is to tell them that it IS unworkable by
refusing
to accept the entries as the boss has defined they must be. That's not
Project's fault - it's the manager's fault for not thinking things
through
and insisting on a schedule that is based more on desire and and a
mistaken
impression of what will be required to meet the business goals and less
on
the harsh, cold, physical facts of goals to be achieved constrained by
the
availability of the assets with which to achieve them. It's the boss
that
needs to be using Project, not the Staffer.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Hi scabHead,

keep going in your explorations! I started using project with Version
98 and it has been a learning curve that is still going on. One thing I
keep being reminded of when I scan this newsgroup: after a while
everyone develops a "personal" usage style of MSP that fits one's needs
and environement. This "personalization" with MSP is much more
differentiated than with other parts of the office suite... When you're
ready to go further in your explorations you might want to take a look
at switching off some of the leveling options: menu "Tools/Level
resources..." and then set it to "manual" instead of "automatic" and
also DEselect "Leveling can adjust individual assignments on a task"
(This is a quote of the screen dialog label, so even MS themselves are
ambiguous in their wording: MSP "adjusts" really only by rescheduling
the assignments on tasks; this might take care of your "phones
available half the time"). Good luck - I'm sure you will eventually
find a configuration you can live with!

In a wider context: I would interpret your role less as that of a
"scheduler" and more like that of a "staffer". Academically in the
critical-path-gospel one might argue that a schedule is not complete
until the "schedule has been fully resource loaded and levelled for
availybility". But in the real world PM's have their hands full when
trying to get work-breakdown, logical network, estimates, skills
inventory and calculated vs. contracted budget up and running. Quite
frankly, I myself was always a bit "tired" when it came to the
logistics part of scheduling "so what real-life resources are available
in the pool when?". So at the "receiving end" of my scheduling sat our
staffer, trying to make "database specialist" available exactly between
today+two weeks for six weeks - of course there were limits ;-)...

Our staffer also received all those project files and was never happy
with MSP's resource-pool-and-link-project-files functionality. He ended
up building an "ecosystem" of Excel/Access and some macros for himself
but his most important tools were the telephone and his diplomatic
skills (that's why eMail wasn't his main tool ;-)...)

I've seen "staffer" applications in logistics modules of Enterprise
Software like SAP (MM) and Navision - but I'm not aware of any
lightweight desktop standard software. Anyone out there with a
software?

Even though I'm more in the role of creating (nowadays analyzing)
project schedules I share your gripe about MSP not really lending
itself to "multi-role" groupware-type work e.g. between "scheduler" and
"staffer". In the end I always end up having one mastermind user
integrating all information from all sources into the one "holy"
project file. Never let others (not even team leads) touch the file
without clear instructions on what to enter in what sequence.
Alternative: when it's taking too much time to administer the schedule
away from teh PM, scale back on tracking an dupdating quality (sad but
happens all the time to me)
I haven't seen the server (I know this is another newsgroup) alleviate
this situation apart from the actuals collection part.


scabHead wrote:
I regret my clumsy language. I should not have used the verb
"reassigns"
as
that led to confusion. Perhaps "reschedule" is a more precise term.
I
was
getting at my original complaint that if I assign 50 resources to a
task
and
all of the resources are need for the duration of the task, how can i
keep
Project from showing some resources as assigned for the full duration
of
the
task and the others from say just the last third of the task. Things
haven't
been stable as the task duration ebbs and flows (which it will). They
can
look great for a while and then I do some edits, pull up a task usage
view
and find things are broken again. I suppose if I do a
design-of-experiments type of exercise I can find which sequence of
events
break things. Sometimes I get the little diamond exclamation point
asking me
how to interpret my edit, sometimes I don't.

I hope I did not getting you guys all p***ed off with my newbie-ness.
As
for formal project management training, I of course don't have any.
Our
discussion has become circular so we can probably just stop the
thread.
I
must be fat-fingering something. I thought I unchecked Effort-Driven
which
was supposed to keep Project from recalculating durations when I add
or
delete resources. I did not see that result.

:

See embedded below

--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs
----------------

Pithy rejoinder vis-a-vis Excel but I believe my analogy is sound.
Anyway,
scheduling is all that I am doing really. My gripe was concerned
with
Project "re-scheduling". I will be more careful with the sequence
of
edits.
When you put in a task and assign a bunch of resources to it, it
is a
bit
disconcerting to see that Project will reassign resources
according
to its
own whims...

I like to put it to my students that you don't need the talent and
skills of
a professional writer to thoroughly know and use all of the features
of
MS
Word but MS Project is just a glorified date calculator and you have
to
bring some knowledge of formal project management to the table to
use
it
properly.

Project NEVER reassigns resources and for the life of me I can't
figure
out
what you're seeing when you say it has. If I put a resource on a
task,
whether it's Joe or the desk he's sitting at, Project never takes it
off
that task and assigns it to another. But if you realize that Units
is
not a
body-count, it is actually a rate value that describes the amount of
work
output will be generated over a given period of time, then it starts
to
make
sense. The principal is easier if you think in physical terms but
the
following logic applies to virtually any task and IF you remember
that
tasks
are not merely a record of the time a resource is occupied - a valid
task
ALWAYS creates some sort of deliverable, whether physical or
intangible, at
its conclusion - in other words, something in the Universe always
changes by
the action of every task. Joe has to make 100 widgets and when
working
at
capacity he makes 10 per hour. 1 man-hour of work = 10 widgets. 100
widgets
= 10 hr @ 10/hr @ 100% so the duration is 10 hours. Even if I now
change
the duration to 20 hours he still has to make 100 widgets since
that's
the
number our contract calls for us to deliver, no more and no less.
So
if I
give him 20 hours to do it, he'll only have to work at half speed,
50%.
(Fixed Work task type) Or perhaps we're trying to calculate how many
widgets
we can generate over a given period of time. I change the duration
to
show
that I have Joe for 30 hours. At 100% how many widgets will he
make?
30hr
@ 10 widgets/hr @100% = 300 widgets. (Fixed Units task type) Could
this be
what you're seeing when you say it reassigns resources?



My application does not have anything to do with Earned-Value or
Cost
management (insert govt joke here) or any of the complicated
stuff.
In
reality, the comment one of the other MVP types made was a
relevant
one
wherein he said that Project is not used to enter a schedule, it
is
used
to
create/manage one (paraphrasing). In my business I do not have
the
luxury
of
"creating" the schedule, I am using Project to consolidate the
schedules
of
3-4 organizations (companies, govt agencies, etc) and insert the
additional
tasks that my organization needs to do in order to support those
others.

A "Schedule" is not a calendar of event deadlines and requirements -
it
is a
detailed plan of the organization of a group of assets so that they
will
achieve their objectives according to the deadlines you've been
given.
So
you actually DO have the "luxury" (actually, "necessity") of
creating
schedules because it's up to you to figure out how the work must be
organized so that X number of resources will be able to achieve Y
results by
Z date. That where Project comes in - you input a proposed
structure
and
resource assignments and it tells you what date you'll hit if you
organize
things like that. If that meets your objectives, great! If not,
and
at
first try it's not very likely to, you go back to the drawing board
and
try
another way of organizationing the plan - "let's see, this schedule
says
we'll finish 3 weeks later than the contract calls for, but if I
take
Joe
off this and put him on that task, that will shorten this stuff so
we
can
start this other thing sooner and Project tells me if I do that I
can
move
my Project finish date up 2 days, now who else can I put in here to
make it
even shorter?" kind of thing. That's creating the schedule. The
statement
"the Shuttle will next fly Nov 10th and we must be ready for the
mission by
then" is not a schedule, it is a statment of objectives that you're
building
the schedule in an attempt to meet. Some of the possible schedules
you
might create will meet it and others won't ... Project's job is to
tell
you
which is which. IF you've already been handed a detailed list of
what
occurs when and for how long and you can't juggle resources etc,
then
Project's job is more to be a reality check predicting whether that
predefined schedule is going to work or not or whether you could be
better
served spending your time updating your resume <grin> for the
aftermath
of
when that unworkable schedule you were mandated to follow fails and
you
get
the blame.


As such, I am using Project as an organization tool for simplified
tracking.
Get the whole thing on one sheet of paper so to speak. It has
been
great
for that so far. I have just had some struggles as I have
attempted
to
add
more functionality and track resource availability. It has gotten
frustrating as I have gotten so close to the finish line only to
have
the
quirky work equation thing bite my hand. I will get it figured
out
eventually.