Levelling tasks with multiple resources

[Paul Clements]

Hi,

I have a question relating to resource levelling within Project 2003.

Levelling works fin in my project when I only have one resource assigned to
a task.

However, when I have multiple tasks and multiple resources assigned to each
of the tasks I cannot get it to work.

Task 1-6 last 1 day uses resource X and Y.

There are no dependencies between them so if the resources were available
then they could all start on the same day and all complete at the end of the
day.

However, if it was only that simple, there are only 2 X's and 4 Y's so I
expected with my limited knowledge about levelling that I would get a schedule

Task 1 and 2 start day 1 complete day 1
Task 3 and 4 start day 2 complete day 2
Task 5 and 6 start day 3 and complete day 3

However I get the following schedule
Task 1,2,3 and 4 start day 1 complete day 1
Task 5 and 6 start day 2 and complete day 2

I have set each of the tasks to have different priorities, task 1 being the
greatest and task 6 being the lowest. I am levelling on Priority and
Standard. Each of the resources are 100% allocated to the task

I confess I am a project beginner who is trying to demonstrate to a client
the impact of constraints on their resources (people and computers) and
thought it would be possible this way.

I would appreciate any advice on how or if this can be achieved using
Project 2003.

Thanks in advance and happy to provide any clarification.

Paul

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

With either combination of parameters I can't reproduce your results.
If you set "Leveling can adjust individual assignments" OFF you get exactly
the results you expect.

If you set it ON:
2 tasks start 1 end 1
2 tasks start 1 (Y working) end 2 ( that's X working)
2 tasks start 2 (Y working) end 3 (X working)

What else can you expect?
HTH

 

[Paul Clements]

Jan,

Thanks for responding.

The issue I am trying to get my head around is this

Say I have six applications that I need to install
I have four developers capable of installing the software
I however only have 2 tape drives which I can use to load the software.

For each of the applications I assign a developer and tape and I require
them both for 1d.

Therefore I was hoping that when leveling resources I would get

100% utilisation of the tape drive over 6 days
50% utilisation of my 4 developers

Perhaps I'm just attacking the problem from the wrong angle and I can't do it.

BTW I have defined 2 resources developer with 400% maxunits and tape with
200% max units

Am I trying to do something that can't be done

Thanks for your help in this as I said in my previous mail I am not a
Project expert by any means.

Paul

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

I'm afraid you didn't read my reply or tried it out.
Set the leveling paramater "Leveling can adjust individual assignments" OFF
and it does what you want.
HTH

 

[Paul Clements]

Hi Jan,

I did try it out honest ;-) and all it did was move task 5 and 6 to day 2
and left tasks 1-4 to start and finish on day 1.

I can understand this behaviour as its acting as an 'or' where I think I
want it to act as an 'and' - both resources have to be available for the task
to be complete

I currently have none of the check boxes checked in the 'resolving
overallocations frame'

Once again thanks for your help it is appreciated

Paul

 

[DavidC]

Hi,

I have found one other area where the levelling appears not to work. Try
chaning the setting for the "Look for overallocations" to hour by hour, and
to day by day. That may help solve the problem you are finding.

Regards

DavidC

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Well I got different results, and I have been seeing these results for 10
years now.
Can you send me the little file I'll try to solve the mystery
jandemesATprom-ade.be

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi again,

Just to make sure I tested it in 2007 and it does work allright.
So the question remains "What have you done to stop leveling from working
normally?"
Strong constraints? Actual Start filled in? Some actual work even? Calendars
spreding over 16 hours? 400% capacity for both resources? 50% assignment
units on one of them?

Or, likely as well, leveling period set to week by week?

Can't guess, so that is why I asked you to send the file.
Greetings,

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi all,

Got the file and discovered 2 anomalies - hadn't foreseen either one!
First, and not relevant to the leveling issue, but annoying as well, Paul,
you put the content of a "day" to 7,5 hours but you did not adapt the
working time - it still shows 8 hours per day. So when you sequence 2 tasks,
the second will start the first day at 16:30. That's easy to handle, and for
your penance you will have to read faq5 at
http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm

Second (and I wonder how you did that!) on tasks 3, 4 and 5, "Tape" doesn't
have any work to do (look at any Usage view) so its work isn't levelied. Put
it to 7,5 hrs of work and you will see leveling in all its glory.

Lesson number 2: when assigning more than one resource to a task NEVER LOOK
AT THE GANTT CHART, only use Usage views!!

And specificly to DavidC: Leveling DOES work properly, this illustrates it
obeys all input, even curious ones.

Hope this helps

 

[DavidC]

Jan,

Interesting points you found. However if you read what I said, it was not
that it didn't work, I agree it does and often defend it to others. what I
said was it "appears" in other words when you do the levelling it 'doesn't
work' but it does, it just doesn't look like it worked. I have found this
when using the wrong selection and the levelling is working on too course a
setting. I would goone step further and say that I find the levelling to
work very weel even to the extent that using the priorities as part of the
levelling works as well. Putting priorities against the tasks helps in
sequencing work to better reflect how you want to do the work, when the tasks
are not depenedent on each other. Where I find this a problem and still do,
is the numebr of times I get contractor schedules sent to me with tasks that
are linked because that is the order they want to do the work in and use hard
links between tasks to do the resourcing. This causes problems when they get
behind on a task and it affects unrelated tasks. So back to the issue at
hand, I agree levelling works, it is simply an "appearance that it doesn't
work" which is correct because that is what is seen.
The issue you saw in the file, is also a relatively common problem. I had
one contractor who did not set the calendars and options correctly and
developed a schedule that showed they could do the work in the timeframe
requried, and then fell well short, by around 20% which was the difference
between the calendar hours (10hrs) and the setting for working hours being
the default of (8hrs)

Just thinking about this, perhaps Microsoft could look at a front end set up
screen for project that takes the user through the various settings that need
to be set to create a properly working file.

Just a clarification.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi David,

Sorry for the misunderstanding.
On the two points you make: I couldn't agree more.
The Calendar options problem was one of the very first FAQS thre MVPs wrote,
it may well be THE most frequently asked question.
As for dummy links instead of leveling, this is indeed a catastrophy. When
people afterwards update the plan, and a "later" task in the dummy
relationship chain has been done earlier think of the number of changes they
have to bring in to update that properly.

Greetings,