Leveling with linked projects

[TCO]

I’m having problems resource leveling among linked projects using a resource
pool.

I have two projects and one resource pool. I linked several tasks from
project A to project B. I leveled project A and it worked fine. I then
leveled project B, at a lower priority and it is having the following effect.
Any resource working on both projects seems to be excluded from being
available to project B during the time frame the resource is being used for
project A. This is the case even if the resource is not fully allocated. So
in my case, the resources are allocated 10% of their time to a task on
project A. That means they should be available the remainder of their time
for tasks on project B. However, they are only being released to work on
project B once the task in project A is completely finished. They should be
able to work tasks in both projects at the same time.

After I leveled project A I set the priority for it to 1000 because I did
not want any of its activities to move while I leveled project B. I thought
this may be the problem but then I set the priority for project A to 900 and
tried leveling project B but the results were the same.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks,

 

[Steve]

Are you leveling on an hour-by-hour basis? You'll need to do so if you are
allocating less than 100% on a resource, according to Project 2007. I'm not
sure if this will fix your problem but it definitely affects how Project
allocates time across two projects.

Also, I think that you wouldn't see any difference between a priority of 900
and 1000 on Project A, as the default priority on Project B is probably set
to 500.

HTH.

 

[Dennin Smith]

The resource will be seen to be over allocated when their assigned work
exceeds 8hrs of a day(if that is your calendar setting). If they work for
7hrs on one task and 2 hrs on another task at the same time they will be seen
to be over allocated. When you Level it prevents over allocating the resource
and moves them until they are available. If your leveling settinig is on day
by day it wont try and "squeeze" work in to make up an 8 hour day. Try the
hour by hour setting, and also try the leveling can create splits in
remaining work.

 

[Steve House]

Remember that leveling does not adjust resource assignment percentages. If
you have assigned Joe to task A 10% and Task B to 100%, thus overallocating
him, leveling will not adjust those percentages or otherwise attempt to
distribute the resource's time between them. If A is the higher priority,
leveling will NOT reduce the assignment on B to 90% while A is underway with
a corresponding increase in duration for B. All it does is slip task B en
masse, delaying B's start until A is completed and the resource free. The
fact that the tasks in question are in two different projects in your
situation actually isn't making any difference - it works the same way if
your conflicting tasks are in the same project as well. If you want him to
be on A at 1 hour a day and B at 7 hours a day until A is done and then
increase his commitment on B to a full 8 hours until it's done, you have to
do that manually - leveling never behaves that way. All leveling ever does
is delay tasks. Priorities etc only influence which one of a pair in
conflict is going to be delayed.

Assume an 8-hour workday and you can have Joe for 2 hours of each day. Part
of the confusion is the belief that if I assign Joe at 25% on a 1-day task,
I am using him for those 2 hours. That's only partially true. I'm getting
2 man-hours of work done, true. BUT the time it's taking to do it is still
the full 8-hour workday. The task DOES NOT start at 8 and end at 10. It
physically starts at 8 and doesn't end until 5. He COULD have gotten it
done by 10 if he hadn't had any distractions but that wasn't the case. The
25% assignment meant he had other things on his plate so that "2 hour" task
actually has him actually working on it for a full 8 hours according to the
clock on the office wall. If you want him to start the task at 8am and
finish it at 10am, you need to make it a 2 hour duration task and assign him
to it 100%. If you can only use him in your project 2 hours a day and he
has to be somewhere else for the other 6, as far as his resource calendar is
concerned he only works a 2 hour workday with a maximum usage of 100%, not
an 8-hour workday with a maximum usage of 25%. The other 6 hours might as
well not even exist.

In short, resource leveling is NOT resource optimizing.

 

[TCO]

Are you leveling on an hour-by-hour basis? You'll need to do so if you are
allocating less than 100% on a resource, according to Project 2007. I'm not
sure if this will fix your problem but it definitely affects how Project
allocates time across two projects.

Also, I think that you wouldn't see any difference between a priority of 900
and 1000 on Project A, as the default priority on Project B is probably set
to 500.

HTH.





Steve,

I am leveling day-by-day so I will try hour-by-hour and see if that helps.

Thank you,

 

[TCO]

Dennis,

Thank you for your help. I will level hour by hour and see if that works.

 

[TCO]

Remember that leveling does not adjust resource assignment percentages. If
you have assigned Joe to task A 10% and Task B to 100%, thus overallocating
him, leveling will not adjust those percentages or otherwise attempt to
distribute the resource's time between them. If A is the higher priority,
leveling will NOT reduce the assignment on B to 90% while A is underway with
a corresponding increase in duration for B. All it does is slip task B en
masse, delaying B's start until A is completed and the resource free. The
fact that the tasks in question are in two different projects in your
situation actually isn't making any difference - it works the same way if
your conflicting tasks are in the same project as well. If you want him to
be on A at 1 hour a day and B at 7 hours a day until A is done and then
increase his commitment on B to a full 8 hours until it's done, you have to
do that manually - leveling never behaves that way. All leveling ever does
is delay tasks. Priorities etc only influence which one of a pair in
conflict is going to be delayed.

Assume an 8-hour workday and you can have Joe for 2 hours of each day. Part
of the confusion is the belief that if I assign Joe at 25% on a 1-day task,
I am using him for those 2 hours. That's only partially true. I'm getting
2 man-hours of work done, true. BUT the time it's taking to do it is still
the full 8-hour workday. The task DOES NOT start at 8 and end at 10. It
physically starts at 8 and doesn't end until 5. He COULD have gotten it
done by 10 if he hadn't had any distractions but that wasn't the case. The
25% assignment meant he had other things on his plate so that "2 hour" task
actually has him actually working on it for a full 8 hours according to the
clock on the office wall. If you want him to start the task at 8am and
finish it at 10am, you need to make it a 2 hour duration task and assign him
to it 100%. If you can only use him in your project 2 hours a day and he
has to be somewhere else for the other 6, as far as his resource calendar is
concerned he only works a 2 hour workday with a maximum usage of 100%, not
an 8-hour workday with a maximum usage of 25%. The other 6 hours might as
well not even exist.

In short, resource leveling is NOT resource optimizing.


--
Steve House
MS Project Trainer & Consultant





Steve House,

Thank you for the detailed explanation. I don't have access to the project
right now so I will have to wait until Tuesday to try and fix the problem.

The task is a fixed duration 30 day task. Does it matter if the task is set
to fixed duration?

Thanks

TCO

 

[Steve House]

Nope, leveling does not change durations anyway, at least not for the
individual resource assignments. You'll get the same result with Fixed Work
or Fixed Units.
--
Steve House
MS Project Trainer & Consultant


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