Levelling in one project

N

Neil Ratcliffe

Hi,

We are just in the process of rolling out Project 2002 EPM to a fairly large
number of Porject Managers.

One area of feedback I have had from some of my Project managers (users of
Project 2000 in the past) is that in Porject 2002 they are unable to view
Resource Overallocation just within their project, therefore it makes it
very difficult to balance workload when considering only the project tasks
for that project manager.

Does anyone have a suggestion for how to view this kind of data taking into
account the alloacations for just the current project.


Also is there any way of levelling just a selected group of tasks ?

Thanks

Neil
 
G

Gary Chefetz MVP

Neil:

You can create a single project view of resorce allocation
using the Task Usage view with grouping applied. It should
be noted, however, that what your project managers really
need is training on using project in an enterprise
environment. True resource leveling can't occur unless all
projects are considered. Basically they're asking to keep
their feet firmly planted in a stand-alone project
planning mode.
 
N

Neil Ratcliffe

Hi Gary,

I accept what you are saying but the realities of the project environment
mean that managers typically have responsibility for project teams. They
might have an allocation of resource "given" to them out of the total pool
for that resource. For example I might be "given" 5 design engineers out of
a total of 25 in the Enterprise Resource Pool. The approach we use is one
of a rolling wave so we assign generics initially. It is my responsibility
to get as smooth a loading as possible for those 5 design engineers in MY
project, and I don't care what the loading is for the other 20.

Equally its not possible to assign a generic resource group of 5 design
engineers just for me, because my allocation of engineers may be only for a
given period of time.

It would seem that Microsoft Project cannot support this type of environment
or way of working, which is a shame because in my experience its the way
many companies do in fact operate.

Biazzarely in MSP 2000, you could do this - even with a shared resource
pool, because it was possible to link or unlink from the Pool. You can't
do this in the EPM solution which is where Microsoft may have missed a
trick. I truly believe that there ought to be a swtich which allows a PM to
view local loading or Enterprise loading for any or all resources in a
project. That can't be too hard to do I would have thought !

Unless I have missed something - I'd be only too happy for someone to
enlighten me !

Thanks

Neil
 
G

Gary Chefetz [MVP]

Neil:

I think you may have missed the first sentence in my previous reply. You can
do this. Use the Task Usage view rather than the resource usage view.
 
J

Jesse

Gary,
Great suggestion, I like it.
Flip this around now and say I want to view usage across the enterprise. In
Project 2000, I would simply open the pool. I could stay in the resource
usage view in my project and insert the "project" column to see which tasks
belonged to other projects. Right there in that view I could make work
edits to any project I had open. It was very clear to see when I needed to
make edits because I was looking at "enterprise" wide loadings.

Now, in project 2002, the resource usage view always shows enterprise wide
data, which is fine, and it rolls up into one line those tasks whose
projects I don't have open, which is also fine. What is not fine is I can't
seem to figure out what makes the work values current. Also, I don't see
actual work, only work.

I've tested this with other PM's. They can make a change and save, I don't
see it (in my project usage view; I do see it right away in PWA). They
publish the change, I don't see it. They check in the project and I close
down mine and reopen, I still don't see it. I update availability in the
OLAP cube, still no luck (I'm still talking about the project, not PWA -
everythings shows current there).

Lastly, I've tried opening the other PMs project. Aha, now I see current
info, but as soon as I close the other project, mine is back to showing old
data.

Can you help?
Thanks,
Jesse
 
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