Planning for Vacation / Holiday time

[metimmee]

What is the best way to incorporate vacation time within a project? I
have 5 members of a team that are allowed to take their vacation at
any time during the project, providing the manning doesnt drop below 2
personnel. Initially I added a contingency period to the end of the
project which took into account unallocated vacation. If a slip for a
project phase occured due to absence, I would take that time from the
contingency period, keeping delivery at a constant date.

Management arent happy with this solution. Any advice on how I should
incorporate vacation time?

Thanks.

 

[Dave]

What is the best way to incorporate vacation time within a project? I
have 5 members of a team that are allowed to take their vacation at
any time during the project, providing the manning doesnt drop below 2
personnel. Initially I added a contingency period to the end of the
project which took into account unallocated vacation. If a slip for a
project phase occured due to absence, I would take that time from the
contingency period, keeping delivery at a constant date.

Management arent happy with this solution. Any advice on how I should
incorporate vacation time?

Thanks.

There isn't really any alternative but to use contingency until you know
specific dates. How can you plan more accurately when the only
information that you have is that somebody will/may take time off
sometime between now and the project end?

Once you know the dates, you can adjust the working time for individual
resources and then plan around that. If you have an administrative
project for non working time, you could add leave to that.

 

[DavidC]

Hi,
As Dave has said trying to schedule for something that may happen sometime
in the future is difficult. What I have done is take the approach that the
resource will not be available for a period of time during the course of the
project and 'artificially' set there availability such that they will not be
available for say one week half way through the project. You could then set
this availability to be on sequential weeks for each team member. This then
would show you if the project can be achieved within the time frames with the
resources and their availability. This way you can show that you have
allowed for resources to be unavailable for a period of time, and that the
project can/cannot be achieved in the time frame. Whilst it is an assumption
(and we all know what that can do) at least you can show that you have
considered the impact of resource availability due to their taking leave.

Hope this helps.

Regards

DavidC