Overprotective prompt (newbie)

[Rex Eastbourne]

Hi,

Whenever I enter or modify a task in my Gantt chart, I get the "This
overallocation cannot be resolved" prompt, for which I always have to
answer "skip all." This cannot be the way Microsoft intended it. Does
anyone know what I am doing wrong?

Thanks!

Rex

 

[John]

Hi,

Whenever I enter or modify a task in my Gantt chart, I get the "This
overallocation cannot be resolved" prompt, for which I always have to
answer "skip all." This cannot be the way Microsoft intended it. Does
anyone know what I am doing wrong?

Thanks!

Rex

Rex,
Project is trying to tell you that one or more resources are
overallocated (i.e. Joe is working on too many tasks simultaneously). If
you care about having your resources overallocated, you need to review
your tasks and the resources assigned to them and then either move tasks
in time so resources are "only" working full-time, or assign more
resources so Joe is freed up and the tasks can be accomplished in the
necessary time.

On the other hand, if you don't care about overallocation (and sometimes
you may not), you can shut off the alert by going to
Tools/Options/General tab and turn off one or more of the options for
Planning Wizard advice and/or you can also turn off scheduling message
under the Schedule tab.

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVO

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

Tools, Resource Leveling (or in some versions Level Resources), put to
Manual instead of Automatic.
HTH

 

[Rex Eastbourne]

Thanks for the replies.

I use Project for my own projects. The behavior I'd expect, though, is
for Project to level my tasks automatically, without asking me if I'd
like to level it. When I enter a new task, I don't say anything about
when it should be done. Thus, shouldn't Project automatically put it in
the first free spot?

It seems to me as if Project thinks I'd like the same resource to cover
two things simultaneously. I never request this. In fact, after I enter
a new task, even before I specify the resource, it says that I have an
overallocation problem. How is this possible?

Thanks again,

Rex

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

The cannot resolve overallocation message is usually due to one of two
causes. All resource leveling ever does is delay work to resolve
overbookings. The first cause of that message is when you have assigned
someone to a single task at more than their maximum allowed rate. If I have
Joe with a max allocation of 100% and I assign him to a task on Monday at a
level of 200%, there's no way Project can slip that task later as a block
that will reduce the allocation down to under 100%. True, I could double
the duration and reduce the assignment that way but thta's a manual
process - Project's leveling engine NEVER, un der any circumstance, changes
the assignment level. You probably never knowingly assign someone more than
100% but sometimes the same sort of thing can happen when you have someone
assigned to some tasks at, say, 100%, and then go in and edit the resource
sheet to reduce their maximum allowed allocation to something less than
that.

The other time this usually happens is when you have Joe assigned to more
than one task at the same time and the total assignment is greater than his
maximum allocation. You have him on task X on Monday for 8 hours at 100%
AND ALSO on task Y on Monday for 8 hours at 100%. What that says is somehow
you expect him to magically do 16 hours of work over the course of a single
8 hour day. Not possible. When you resource level, Project wants to move
one of those tasks to Tuesday, which it will do UNLESS you have "level only
within available slack" turned on. Available slack means to level only so
far as it can without delaying the project finish and then stop. Since your
little two-task project's finish is starting out set at the end of the day
Monday, it can't slip a task to Tuesday without delaying the finish to
Tuesday. But the "level only within available slack" is a direct order not
to do that, hence it aborts telling you "can't fix it."