Merging availability from generic and individual resources

[John Bridgman]

We're looking to set up our first generic resources -- nothing fancy, just a
way to identify "this team is gonna be doing the work" in the early stages of
the project before we know which individual will execute on the activity.
Each individual resource would map onto only one generic resource, ie we are
not doing "multi skill" management.

The most obvious output from this exercise would be a report or chart (or
portfolio analyzer view) comparing total allocation (individual + generic) to
total availability (half the real total, since each individual resource can
also be allocated as a generic resource.

If I had 22 people in one team, corresponding to a single generic resource,
I assume each individual would have availability set to 100% and the generic
resource would be set to 2200%.

Rolling up the allocated work is no problem if we use an outline code to tie
generic + individual resources together, but I'm less sure how to roll up the
availability without counting everyone twice -- once as a generic resource
and once as an individual resource. It might be as simple as jimmying the
report calculations to take 50% of the availability (since everyone is
counted twice) but that seems pretty crude to me. Ideas ?

I think I'm going to have to dig deeper into defining views, mostly
wondering if I am missing anything. This seems like the most obvious
application of generic resources.

Thanks,
JB

 

[Gary L. Chefetz \(MVP\)]

John:

In a system with both Generic and Human resources, you should track
availability by counting only active human resources. Use Generic resources
to track unassigned work loads.

--

Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
"We wrote the books on Project Server"
http://www.msprojectexperts.com

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