percentage time resources spent on project

  • Thread starter msnews.microsoft.com
  • Start date
M

msnews.microsoft.com

Is there a way to show the resource % time on the project in the resource
sheet?

i.e. if the project is scheduled for 10 days and he/she spent 1 day = 1%

I can think of several ways...

e.g.

total work in project/total work for resource A
total duration in project/total duration for resource A
project duration/hours assigned/24

cheers,
 
J

John

msnews.microsoft.com said:
Is there a way to show the resource % time on the project in the resource
sheet?

i.e. if the project is scheduled for 10 days and he/she spent 1 day = 1%

I can think of several ways...

e.g.

total work in project/total work for resource A
total duration in project/total duration for resource A
project duration/hours assigned/24

cheers,

Is this a question or a suggestion? If it is a question, I guess the
answer is probably "yes" although I'm not sure I see a whole lot of
value in the answer unless you are giving out awards/bonuses based on
time spend working on a project.

With regard to the suggested approaches, the first is the only valid
one. Tasks have Duration, Resources have effort (expressed as work
hours). Therefore there is no "duration" for resources so the second
suggested formula doesn't compute. A similar argument applies to the
third suggestion. Don't confuse Duration hours with Work hours (many
people do). Duration is simply the time span (Start to Finish) during
which a task will be performed. Work is the effort in hours one or more
resources will spend on the task. If a single resource is assigned at
100% and has the same calendar as the task, then Work hours will equal
Duration hours, and this is often the case but certainly not the general
rule.

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP
 
M

msnews.microsoft.com

I apologise that I have not explained it clearly.

What I meant to say was, is there a way to show the average resource usage
on a project (as a resource) report?

e.g. resource A is always 100% assigned, say a Project Manager may be 50%
assigned.

sorry I lead you up the garden path!

Cheers,
 
J

John

msnews.microsoft.com said:
I apologise that I have not explained it clearly.

What I meant to say was, is there a way to show the average resource usage
on a project (as a resource) report?

e.g. resource A is always 100% assigned, say a Project Manager may be 50%
assigned.

sorry I lead you up the garden path!

Cheers,
I wondered why half the flowers in the garden were dead ;-)

"Average" work is somewhat open to interpretation. First, an average
implies the amount of work at a point in time (i.e. over a fixed set of
samples). Second, is the intent to look at average work planned or
average work accomplished (i.e. estimated Work versus Actual Work)?

Assuming you are interested in estimated Work at project completion,
then the first formula you presented in the original post should give
the answer. At any other point in time, Cumulative Work would need to be
substituted into the formula.

Although the basic formula is simple enough it becomes a little more
complicated because it requires data from two different parts of the
Project database. Total (or cumulative) Work for the project is a task
based field while total (or cumulative) Work for a resource is a
resource based field. To get the end result to appear on a resource
based view (e.g. Resource Sheet or Resource Usage view) a translation of
data is needed. If the project's total work remains constant (not likely
in the real world), a fixed value can be used in a custom field formula
on the Resource Sheet. However, in the more realistic case where the
total project work is dynamic, VBA will be necessary to "pull" the
project work value into the formula for entering the result onto the
Resource Sheet. Not a big deal, the following macro will do it. (Note:
the result is placed into spare Text1 field of the Resource Sheet)

Sub AveResUsage()
For Each R In ActiveProject.Resources
If Not R Is Nothing Then
R.Text1 = Format(R.Work / ActiveProject.ProjectSummaryTask.Work,
"##.0%")
End If
Next R
End Sub

If the average at a point in time is desired, the macro code needs to be
changed to pull timescaled data. Similarly if actual work values are
desired, the appropriate data must be used.

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP
 
J

John B

Thanks for the tips John!


John said:
I wondered why half the flowers in the garden were dead ;-)

"Average" work is somewhat open to interpretation. First, an average
implies the amount of work at a point in time (i.e. over a fixed set of
samples). Second, is the intent to look at average work planned or
average work accomplished (i.e. estimated Work versus Actual Work)?

Assuming you are interested in estimated Work at project completion,
then the first formula you presented in the original post should give
the answer. At any other point in time, Cumulative Work would need to be
substituted into the formula.

Although the basic formula is simple enough it becomes a little more
complicated because it requires data from two different parts of the
Project database. Total (or cumulative) Work for the project is a task
based field while total (or cumulative) Work for a resource is a
resource based field. To get the end result to appear on a resource
based view (e.g. Resource Sheet or Resource Usage view) a translation of
data is needed. If the project's total work remains constant (not likely
in the real world), a fixed value can be used in a custom field formula
on the Resource Sheet. However, in the more realistic case where the
total project work is dynamic, VBA will be necessary to "pull" the
project work value into the formula for entering the result onto the
Resource Sheet. Not a big deal, the following macro will do it. (Note:
the result is placed into spare Text1 field of the Resource Sheet)

Sub AveResUsage()
For Each R In ActiveProject.Resources
If Not R Is Nothing Then
R.Text1 = Format(R.Work / ActiveProject.ProjectSummaryTask.Work,
"##.0%")
End If
Next R
End Sub

If the average at a point in time is desired, the macro code needs to be
changed to pull timescaled data. Similarly if actual work values are
desired, the appropriate data must be used.

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP
 

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