J
Jeff C
Our office uses MS-Project 2003 for scheduling development that is human
resource (effort) intensive, like software development. We're trying to find
the best way to handle staff vacations, which are of course when an
individual resource is unavailable. We manually resource level because each
person has a differing skill set and productivity against a given type of
task.
Method A would be to modify the working/non-working time in the calendar for
each resource, and I believe is the recommended approach. However, we have
at least one manager complaining of (unspecified) instability when doing
this, and it makes the vacation not very visible as we work extensively in
Gantt views. I know how to format the Gantt chart to show the non-working
time for one individual, but the team has many members each with a separate
vacation schedule. With a modified resource calendar, a task can appear
longer than it really is, and we don't wish to have people looking at a
large, complex schedule and saying "Task 697 isn't 15 days, it's 5 days work"
and mistakenly shortening the task when it was really including a vacation of
10 days.
Method B is to explicitly schedule a vacation task, such as "Jane's
Vacation" with a fixed duration and a start-no-earlier-than constraint to
place it on the scheduled start date. We then manually schedule work around
vacations - for example Task 438 becomes a successor to Jane's Vacation, and
we'll try to have her complete Task 437 before going away on vacation.
However, if 437 slips past the start of vacation, it requires some manual
work to split it around the vacation, or re-assign work to other people
especially if it's on the critical path.
So, are our concerns about Method A generally valid?
Is there a way to make Method B less painful?
Is there a better way yet to handle this in an environment like ours?
Thanks!
resource (effort) intensive, like software development. We're trying to find
the best way to handle staff vacations, which are of course when an
individual resource is unavailable. We manually resource level because each
person has a differing skill set and productivity against a given type of
task.
Method A would be to modify the working/non-working time in the calendar for
each resource, and I believe is the recommended approach. However, we have
at least one manager complaining of (unspecified) instability when doing
this, and it makes the vacation not very visible as we work extensively in
Gantt views. I know how to format the Gantt chart to show the non-working
time for one individual, but the team has many members each with a separate
vacation schedule. With a modified resource calendar, a task can appear
longer than it really is, and we don't wish to have people looking at a
large, complex schedule and saying "Task 697 isn't 15 days, it's 5 days work"
and mistakenly shortening the task when it was really including a vacation of
10 days.
Method B is to explicitly schedule a vacation task, such as "Jane's
Vacation" with a fixed duration and a start-no-earlier-than constraint to
place it on the scheduled start date. We then manually schedule work around
vacations - for example Task 438 becomes a successor to Jane's Vacation, and
we'll try to have her complete Task 437 before going away on vacation.
However, if 437 slips past the start of vacation, it requires some manual
work to split it around the vacation, or re-assign work to other people
especially if it's on the critical path.
So, are our concerns about Method A generally valid?
Is there a way to make Method B less painful?
Is there a better way yet to handle this in an environment like ours?
Thanks!