Need leveling advice...

[K Major]

I need some leveling advice…

I am responsible for managing the budget and timeline on my project. I have
many resources and many tasks. Over-allocation is a concern of course. To
manage this, I use leveling. But I always feel like I’m putting a quarter in
a slot machine when I level and wondering/hoping how it will come out.

Then I spend a good deal of time investigating what it did and guessing why
it did that. I have a pretty traditional MSP set-up. Fixed unit (non-effort
driven) tasks, linked tasks, limited resources (50%), resource calendars, etc.

Am I missing something? Am I making this too hard? Should I take a
different approach? I think in some ways I’m asking a MSP question and a
project management question at the same time. Are there any articles you
could refer me to better understand the balance of MSP leveling and just good
old PM?

Thanks, Kevin

 

[JulieD]

Hi

have you been using the Levelling Gantt (view / more views) view to see what
project has done each time you level (... i remove all resource names from
the bars and the link lines .. which makes it easier to see the changes -
along with the levelling delay column).

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hello K,

I'm a big fan of leveling.
Generally I have no problem seeing what leveling does and why it has done
so.
Onething to avoid is to work with different allocation percentages of
resopruces.
Your resources have max units id of 50%? OK then when you use a resource on
a task always assign it 50%, not 25, 10 or 30.
Explicitly use the priority field making sufficient differnce between
priority levels (300, 400, 500 etc rather than 501, 502 etc.) and of course
put leveling order to priority, standard.
Do not assign resources to summary tasks ("not" meaning "never ever")
Between two leveling runs, explicitly run clear leveling.
Contrary to Julie's advice (sorry Julie) don't focus on leveling delay but
on preleveled start; if necessary define a custom field showing the
ProjDateDiff between Start and Preleveled Start.

Having a clean and feasible schedule IS good Project Management!

Hope this helps,

 

[JulieD]

Hi Jan

interesting ...

Contrary to Julie's advice (sorry Julie) don't focus on leveling delay but
on preleveled start; if necessary define a custom field showing the
ProjDateDiff between Start and Preleveled Start.

..... my advice was mainly to use the levelling gantt

... however, i am very interested in your suggestion here as i must admit
the idea of using a custom column to calc the difference between start &
preleveled start never occured to me..... thanks ...

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

It's my standard exercice on formule in the courses I give.

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

I've never looked into it in depth but isn't the Leveling Delay the same
thing as the difference between the Pre-leveled Start and the Start fields,
except that it is in elapsed units rather than duration units?

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Steve,

I wanted to avoid this discussion because it's a bit lengthy but here it
goes
Task A has a FS link to Task B
Task A gets postponed for 2 days by leveling
Task B (postponed by the link) then fits into the resource loads
Leveling delay: A 2 days, B zero.
Difference between preleveled start and start: A 2 days, B 2 days.
HTH

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

Thanks - I had just looked at the task that had the overallocated resource
and hadn't considered downline successors


--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
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