Leveling makes 23hr of work take 44 years!

[Keith Loewen]

I have a project in MS Project 2002 with 40 tasks, using 4 resources at 70%
to 80%. All tasks are fixed work. I did not link all tasks as some do not
have dependencies. I did link some as finish-to-finish. When I leveled
resources (or should I say, attempted to), Project gave a task with 23 hours
of work and a 4.1 day duration a start date of 7/15/05 and a finish date of
12/31/49. That drove all of the tasks with a finish to finish relationship
out to 2049, but the start date for those tasks then seems reasonible given
that finish date. The task in question is part of a summary task that is
linked to the other tasks as finish to finish. (The task in question is not
linked to its own summary task) I tried deleting the task with the big date
spread, but then Project did the same thing with the remaining task that is
part of the summary task with the finish to finish relationships. HELP!

 

[Reid McTaggart]

Remove links from summary tasks.

To paraphrase Karen M's comment back in April, linking summary tasks will
FUBAR the leveling engine.

Plus, there are other reasons not to link summary tasks, so you may as well
get that issue fixed now.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

Leveling pushes tasks to end of 2049 (which BTW is the end of the calendar)
when the data you put in do not allow fror proper leveling. It will
continuously warn you, but I know, the temptation to click Skip All is
great... and then the result is what you see.

The 2 most common reasons for this are the following:

1. A resource is asigned to a task and to its summary task, and the two
assignments add up to more than the Max Units; since leveling cannot change
assignment units, this cannot be soplved sinde delaying the task will
automatically stretch teh summary task;

2. A resource has a profiled availability (i.e. its availability falls to 0
percent after a certain date) and leveling pushes a task beyongd that fatal
darta: leveling will go on looking for an availablity later, but it never
comes so the task is delayed till end of time.

I've also seen some difficult-to-explain situations with links SF or FF but
if this is the reaon I have to see concretely what's up.

HTH

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

I beg to disagree.
There are lots of reasons not to use links to summary tasks but leveling
isn't one of them.
Greetings,

 

[Rod Gill]

Wherever you want to link to a group of tasks, link to their summary task.
That is much neater than linking to all sub-tasks individually as can be
needed.

I never use automatic leveling so can't comment on what it does to leveling,
but leveling is very limited anyway in the solutions it can create.

 

[Reid McTaggart]

I will defer to Jan on his assertion that linked summary tasks do not affect
the leveling engine.

However, I do think that there are at least two very good reasons not to
link summary tasks: First, it can cause miscalculation of the Critical Path.
And second, if you subsequently move a task then you can inadvertently
change your schedule logic.

 

[davegb]

There is some disagreement amongst the "experts" here on whether or not
it is a good practice to link summary tasks. Rather than go through all
that again, I suggest you search this group for "link summary". You'll
find both sides of the argument and the reasons pro and con. However,
the majority of us believe it is a bad practice that, sooner or later,
will cause problems in your scheduling.
Best of luck!

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

This time I fullheartedly agree.
Greetings,

 

[Keith Loewen]

Thanks to all of you for your help! I removed the dependencies to the
summary tasks, which took care of the 2049 issue, but now there are some
tasks that Project will not level. Do I have to put in dependencies for all
tasks, even if there really aren't any?

Also, I have changed the work estimates on some tasks and noticed that those
tasks are appearing several times on the Resource Usage view, and hours are
being distributed across the row with the old estimates instead of the new
one.

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

No, links in Project should be required dependencies IMHO. If you have
tasks that aren't leveling there could be several causes. One of the most
common is that the overallocation is for a shorter time period than the
leveling engine is looking at. For example, imagine you have someone who
works an 8 hour day and has a maximum allocation of 100%. You've booked
them on two tasks on Friday, one of them a 4 hour task and the other a 2
hour meeting. That totals 6 hours but lo and behold their name is in red
indicating they're overallocated. Allowed 8, booked for 6 but
overallocated? The reason is that the 4 hour task runs from 1 to 5pm while
the meeting goes from 1 until 3pm and even though their total hours are
within acceptable limits, between 1 and 3 pm they're double booked. So you
resource level but after leveling they're still overallocated ... why? The
default setting for the leveling engine is "day-by-day" (top of the leveling
dialog box) and so it ignores overbookings less than a full day in length.
Switch it to "hour-by-hour" and relevel and it will get resolved (put the
meeting at a higher priority than the other task so it isn't the task that
gets moved - that usually is the case at any rate).

Another very common cause is that the assignment on a single task is for an
allocation that is more than the maximum allowed for that resource. I have
a 1 day task and assign Joe to it 100%. Then at some later time I reduce
his maximum allocation to 75% in the resource sheet. That doesn't change
his existing bookings so now he's booked on that task 100%, only allowed 75%
and thus overallocated. Leveling only delays work as a block and never,
under any circumstances, changes the assigned effort units. Delaying the 1
day task from Monday to Tuesday doesn't change the fact that Joe is still
assigned 100%, in fact, there is no place in the schedule that leveling
could possibly place intact Joe's 1 day task while keeping it a 1 day task
that would change the 100% to 75% - no matter how much it is delayed it
stays at 100%. Only by EXTENDING the task duration could it reduce Joe's
100% allocation to something lower, taking longer so he can work slower and
still get all the same required work done, but that's not something leveling
ever does. That fix requires manual intervention on your part.

HTH

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Keith,

Leveling cannot handle tasks with asignment units larger than max units
(because delaying them would not solve the problem). That probably is what
you experience.

As for the second problem, you must have made an error when introducing data
but I fail to see which one, sorry :-(

 

[Keith Loewen]

Thanks again for the advice and I apologize that I am still missing
something. All of my tasks are fixed work, and all of the work is entered in
hours so I am entering the work hours and letting Project calculate the
duration. I do not have any meetings scheduled so am not (intentionally at
least) booking people for specific time frames. When I level day-by-day, I
get 7 over allocation warnings, when I change it to hour-to-hour, I get 9 and
the over allocations still exist. (I did not adjust priorities as you
mentioned in your meeting example.)

In your second example, you suggest extending the duration. Does that mean
I need to override what Project calculated? If so, are there ramifications
with future changes?

Thanks again for your help - I really appreciate it!
--
Keith Loewen, MBA, PMP

No, links in Project should be required dependencies IMHO. If you have
tasks that aren't leveling there could be several causes. One of the most
common is that the overallocation is for a shorter time period than the
leveling engine is looking at. For example, imagine you have someone who
works an 8 hour day and has a maximum allocation of 100%. You've booked
them on two tasks on Friday, one of them a 4 hour task and the other a 2
hour meeting. That totals 6 hours but lo and behold their name is in red
indicating they're overallocated. Allowed 8, booked for 6 but
overallocated? The reason is that the 4 hour task runs from 1 to 5pm while
the meeting goes from 1 until 3pm and even though their total hours are
within acceptable limits, between 1 and 3 pm they're double booked. So you
resource level but after leveling they're still overallocated ... why? The
default setting for the leveling engine is "day-by-day" (top of the leveling
dialog box) and so it ignores overbookings less than a full day in length.
Switch it to "hour-by-hour" and relevel and it will get resolved (put the
meeting at a higher priority than the other task so it isn't the task that
gets moved - that usually is the case at any rate).

Another very common cause is that the assignment on a single task is for an
allocation that is more than the maximum allowed for that resource. I have
a 1 day task and assign Joe to it 100%. Then at some later time I reduce
his maximum allocation to 75% in the resource sheet. That doesn't change
his existing bookings so now he's booked on that task 100%, only allowed 75%
and thus overallocated. Leveling only delays work as a block and never,
under any circumstances, changes the assigned effort units. Delaying the 1
day task from Monday to Tuesday doesn't change the fact that Joe is still
assigned 100%, in fact, there is no place in the schedule that leveling
could possibly place intact Joe's 1 day task while keeping it a 1 day task
that would change the 100% to 75% - no matter how much it is delayed it
stays at 100%. Only by EXTENDING the task duration could it reduce Joe's
100% allocation to something lower, taking longer so he can work slower and
still get all the same required work done, but that's not something leveling
ever does. That fix requires manual intervention on your part.

HTH


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

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

Resource leveling never recalculates the duration. If Joe is showing
overallocated because he is booked at, say, 125% on a single task, leveling
won't fix it and you'll need to edit the assignment, reducing him to 100%
and letting Project extend the duration accordingly. An allocation of 125%
means that you are expecting him to somehow be able to do 10 man-hours of
work over the course of an 8 hour workday and that's obviously impossible
for 1 man to do. He can do 8 hours of work in 10 hours of time or 10 hours
of work in 10 hours of time but there's no way he can do 10 hours of work in
8 hours of time.

Where are you entering the work hours? Are you putting them in the Work
field or the Duration field?

I just used meeting as an example of the principles involved.