Leveling splits tasks into very small pieces

[jrichardson]

One of the project plans I am working on appears to
resouce level correctly (resources are leveled at 40hr/wk
and the end dates for the phases are acceptable).
However, the individual tasks within the plan have been
broken up into very small pieces (i.e. .02 hrs/week) and
spread across the entire duration of the phase (up to 3
months). Tasks with higher priorities will get split out
far enough that lower priority tasks (same resource) will
finish sooner.

This is not just 1 or 2 tasks but the majority of them.
I've leveled plans before and I've seen this issue
previously caused by predisessors/successors linked at the
phase level. I removed the dependancies between tasks and
created milestones to link them to instead - no
difference.

All tasks are fixed work, effort driven, ASAP. Work,
resources, and priorities (rangeing from 800-500) are the
only information manually entered (duration and
start/finish dates were calculated by Project). This is
not a complex plan there are less than 1000 lines and many
of those are phase levels or milestones.

Any ideas?
Thanks,
John Richardson

 

[Dale Howard]

John --

I believe your resource leveling woes come from two settings in your
Resource Leveling dialog box. These settings are:

1. Leveling can adjust individual assignments on a task. This setting is
applicable when two or more resources are assigned to the task, but some of
the resources are not overallocated. When this setting is applied to a
situation like this, sometimes it results in a split task. Generally
speaking, I select this option is resources can work separately on their
task work, and I deselect it if resources need to work together on their
tasks. This setting may be the first source of your problem.

2. Leveling can create splits in remaining work. This setting is used to
split a task into time slices when a resource is overallocated across
multiple tasks which do not start and end at the same time. For example, I
am assigned at 100% Units on a 5-day task from Monday through Friday and
this task has a priority of 500. I am also assigned at 100% Units on a
2-day task on Wednesday and Thursday of the same week, and this task has a
priority of 800. If this option is selected, Project will split the lower
priority task into a segment on Monday and Tuesday, and delay the remaining
three days of the task from Friday of this week until Tuesday of next week.
The higher priority task will remain unchanged and unsplit. If this option
is not selected, then the first task would be delayed in its entirety and
would start on Friday. I believe this setting could be the second source of
your problem.

Personally, I recommend as a best practice to all of my clients that they DO
NOT level in any task view, because in doing so they will lose control over
the leveling process and won't be able to comprehend how and why Project
leveled the way it did. Instead, I recommend leveling in the Resource Usage
view, and leveling one overallocated resource at a time, beginning with the
most mission-critical resource. After you level the first overallocated
resource, you can open a second window with the Leveling Gantt view applied
and examine the results of the leveling on that resource. If the leveling
is acceptable, then you can level the next overallocated resource. If the
leveling is not acceptable, clear leveling on impacted tasks and use another
method of leveling, such as substituting available resources for
overallocated resources.

To make my best practice methodology work, you will need to deselect the
Clear leveling values before leveling. Just some ideas for you to chew on.
Hope this helps.