Be careful, overallocation DOES NOT mean they're working more than 8 hours
per day. Here's an example ... Bob works an 8 hour day and is avaiable a
maximum of 100%. On Monday he's assigned to two tasks, Task A that is a 2
hour task and Task B that is a 4 hour task so he's working a total of 6
hours. Now 6 hours out of 8 sure sounds like 75% to me yet Project is
showing him overallocated at 200%. How is that possible? A vital piece of
information is missing. Task A is scheduled to run from 8am to 10am while
Task B is scheduled to run from 8am to 12 noon. While his TOTAL hours are
perfectly fine, between 8am and 12am he's expected to be in two places at
once, somehow getting 4 man-hours of work done in only 2 hours of time,
meaning during that time period he is allocated at 200%.
Why would you assign him to 10 concurrent tasks? Arrange them sequentially
if possible and as Larry the Cable Guy would say, git'er done! If the task
requires 3 hours of work, create a 3 hour duration task, assign him to it
100%, and expect him to work on it exclusively for 3 hours and finish it
before he starts on the next one of the 10 tasks he has to do. Someone
needs the output from that 3-hour task so he can start his part of the
project ... don't make him wait any longer than necessary, get it to him
ASAP.
Note that resource leveling does not distribute the hours across concurrent
tasks - it too will shift the tasks so they get worked on in sequence, not
concurrently.
--
Steve House
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
jp said:
Good morning Steve,
I use the word "troubleshoot" to find where the resource is
over-allocated.
If I have 10 tasks where this resource is being used concurrently
(parallel)
that's also another situation where I need to go into "troubleshoot" mode.
If indeed the resource is being over-used (more than 8 hours) per day,
then I
have to see where I can place that task (where there is space) and where
there is time to squeze the task or perhaps do it in parallel with other
tasks and prioritize one task over the other, meansing allocating a bigger
percentage of the 8 hours a day and less for the other task. For example
task 24 will get 5 hours and task 25 will get 3 hours and no more.
By the way, thank you for the [ALT+F5], I'm going to use it right now to
review it.
-jp
;-)
Steve House said:
What are you looking for when you "troubleshoot" and what does
printing/print format have to do with it? If you're looking for WHO is
overallocated, their name turns red in the resource list when they are.
If
you're looking for WHEN they're overbooked, the red hours in the Resource
Usage view tells you and [ALT][F5] helps locates each incdent.
--
Steve House
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Hi Mike,
Oh ok. I printed 6 11x17 pages and thought there would've been a cool
way to troubleshoot graphically. I guess the level resource would
have
to do its magic right?
-jp
:
hi jp,
Overallocations don't require troubleshooting. Just select Resource
Levelling from the Tools/Level Resource menu. Then scan through to
check
whether the resulting schedule is acceptable. Then you start
investigating where it's unacceptable, otherwise go for it.
Mike Glen
Project MVP
See
http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc for my free Project Tutorials
Hi,
I just printed 11x17 paper of my Gantt chart to try to visually see
how
to
best
troubleshoot overallocations. What's the best way to troubleshoot?
I
know
mine is probably not the best way! Also, if there are
over-allocations
can
the resource be limited to, lets say, 10 hrs per day?
-JP
.
.
