Leveling issues

[kimg]

I have a project of 600 tasks with 20 + resources. When I level, these are
the options set: Manual, Clear Leveling, Date Range, Level by ID, Leveling
can Adjust individual assignments on tasks and leveling can split.

1) I have project A and project B. I need to enter actual work for a task
so I go to the Task Usage Screen. For project A, I enter 8 hours for two
days. Project fills in 0's in the work field for the next day. For project
B, I enter the same 8 hours in on the same days, but Project fills in 8's in
the work fields for the next day. After leveling both projects, project A
finishe on 8/2. Project B finishes up on 7/26. Why the diference in end
days when the same process was applied to each project?

2) I have a task , task C that is 70 hours that has 3 resources working
part time. It should take approx 6 days for each of the resources to finish
up this task. There are two other tasks, task A and task D that the same
resources are assigned to. I level the project. Task A finishes up prior to
Task C. Task C splits 4 times and spans over 30+ days to finish. Task D is
incorporated into one of the splits of Task C, but why would this be when I
am leveling by ID? Shouldn't C finish before D? No dependencies. And, why
so many splits in the C task plus the huge gap in finishing this task?

3) I enter in actual work to the project plan. I level. I make two other
changes, minor changes to actual work, I level. I make no changes. I level.
Project recaculates my end date and all Milestones each time I level by a
few days. When there has not been that much actual work entered, why is
Project reshuffling dates and extending them each time I level. If there are
no changes in tasks 1 - 300, why does Project keep changing the dates of
those tasks everytime I level?

Thanks for the help.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

1. Nothing to do with Leveling.
B had a Work value that was bigger than 2 d so the 16 hours do not make up
the whole for the task and the remainder is reschedulesd as remeining work.
2. Impossible to explain when one doesn't see ALL the tasks and asignments.
To better understand, take into account that Project will handle Task C as 3
totally independent tasks (since it can split individual assignments.)
3. Are you sure that clear leveling before is on?
To make sure, clear leveling explicitly before leveling.

If that may help you, the leveling algorithm is perfectly predictable, it
does not have a randomizer in )
But in a large file, it is close to impossible to explain each "Why"
especially without having the file on hand. For instance, using % assignment
units other that the resource's max units can sometimes give results
difficult to swallow.

If you really want to know, I'll have to see the file. My address is on my
website.

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

FYI - the "work" row in the usage views is the scheduled work. When you
enter actual work in the usage voew, DO NOT just type it into the work row -
be sure to add the Actual Work row to the view and enter the actuals there.
Entering a value of XX hours in the actual row will update the work row to
read the same but entering XX directly into the work row DOES NOT have the
same consequences to the plan.

Q2 -- "Task C takes 70 hours" Is that duration or work? If it's duration
and the resources are assigned 100%, you're saying that a resource is able
to work 70 man-hours in 6 days???? That means he's working 12 hours a day,
every day. Are you sure??? That's work conditions that border on the
horrific. Allocation is the work expended over a period of time compared to
the time itself. The calendar says how many hours a resource works when.
If the resource's calendar is the standard 8 hour per day and you've
scheduled him to do 12 hours of work in a day without explicitly saying part
of it is overtime off the calendar, you've said he is doing 12 man-hours of
work in 8 hours of time for an allocation of 150%, a physical impossibility.
This sort of overallocation is not one that leveling can fix since leveling
never adjusts the assignment percentages for you.

 

[nan]

If my estimated work is 80 hours and I take 40 hours to complete the work.
My project is being tracked using '% complete'. If I put my %complete as
100%, my actual work is automatically populated as 80, but if I put my actual
hours as 40, my %complete changes to 50%. What am I missing? Is there any
way to record both my actual work and %complete at the same time?

Thanks for your help

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

The schedule says the task will require 80 hours. If you mark it 100%
complete that means all 80 hours have been worked and there's no more to do.
If you mark that you've done 40 hours without informing project explicitly
that something other than 80 is actually required - the 80 was in error, in
other words - it says 40 done out of 80 required means its 50% done. If
you've done 40 and are actually finished, you need to explicitly state that
the Actual Work is 40 hours and the Remaining Work is 0 (zero) hours. That
will tell Project to revise the total required to 40 AND that all 40 of them
have been done.

One caution..."% Complete" refers to duration, not work. There is a
separate field for % Work Complete. They are usually the same number but
not always - there is a check box in the Options settings that can sever the
link when you need to record separate values for work and duration.
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi All,

The poster sent me a mail with his file attached, but as the reply bounces,
this is the only communication channel working:

- The sender maintains that two identical entries in identical files give
different results. Obviously, I can't believe that for not having seen it
over the past 10 years of using Project. there must be a difference but it
is impossible from here to tell what.
My guess is that once he enters Actual Work, in the other one Work

- As for the leveling problems, with a higher priority task ending after a
lower priority task:
Even after clear leveling the higher priority task has a split in 2 of the
resources' work of 11days. This means that the work of the same resources on
the lower priority task starts first and ends first.
Why complain the task ends late when there is a split in the resources' work
in the first place? Why that split? Somebody must have introduced it since
clear leveling sdoesn't remove it!
(You can remove it by putting the contour in assignment information to Flat)

As for question 3, again I do not have such experience although the leveling
process, with many resources over many tasks,
can give different results because of any small change anywhere. In thsi
case, it may well be that the first 300 tasks haven't been updated but any
resource working on any task in the top 300 may have been updated in the
other tasks, and we are dealing with Resource leveling, not task leveling...

Hope this helps