problem assigning resources

[Andrea Racca]

Project Professional 2003.
I assign 3 resources (R1, R2, R3) to 1 task (t1). Every resources have 200
hours of job. One of this resource (R1) was used for another task (t2) with
more priority, I have to level.
After level t2 is ok. the job for t1 is not ditribuited ok, because every
resource have 200 hours and task finish only when R1 finish the 200 hours..
I like that 600 total hours will be distribuited to 3 resource to end before
possible the activity..!!
ANy helps? thank's

Andrea

 

[JulieD]

Hi Andrea

hope i'm on the right track here, when you level leave the "levelling can
adjust individual assignments on a task" check box ticked. This may then do
what you want. OR you can manually adjust the spread of work hours using
either the resource usage or task usage view.

Cheers
JulieD

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

Sorry, Project's leveling just doesn't work that way. It never
redistributes work between the resources in a task nor does its leveling
behaviour care whether the resources have equal or unequal amounts of work
in the task. When you assign 3 resources and level, Project will treat it
in one of two ways. Either the resources work independently of each other
so you turn on the "leveling can adjust assignments ..." and Project will
adjust the work of the one resource independently of the other, slipping his
work while keeping the others as they were. Duration will then be from when
the earliest starting resource starts work until the latest finishing
resource wraps up his bit. Or the resources have to work together as a
team - in that case, you turn off the check box for "leveling can adjust
assignments ..." and if any single resource has to be slipped to resolve an
overallocation, all of them are slipped together by the required amount.

These two cases should take care of 90% of the situations. For the rest,
such as you're describing, you'll need to go into the task usage view and
manually redistribute the work between the resources at the end of the task.
After leveling you'll see R1 with work hours extending beyond where R2 & R3
are shown finished. See how many days R1 continues on his own after the
other two leave, take 2/3 of the excess off of R1 and give half of that to
R2 and the other half to R3 right after the last day they're currently
scheduled. That way R2 & R3 will be extended equally and R1 will be been
shortened by the same amount to the point their schedules come together and
all three end at the same time. Your total work will still be 600 but it
will no longer be distributed evenly, R2 and R3 doing more and R1 doing
less.

 

[Andrea Racca]

Thank's a lot..
But I'm not very satisfied.. I hoped in a solution different to the two you
proposals..
The first is right, but if I have more than one situations like the one I
described it's hard to manual resolve the problem!
The second is right but results are not optimezed..

You haven't other help??

andrea

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

Sorry but I don't have anything more to offer. No matter what, the ONLY
thing resource leveling does is delay work, either individually or
collectively, and there's no way to get around it. It is emphatically
*not* a resource optimization or load balancing tool. Note also that it
only delays work and never moves it earlier, for that matter. When you
have more than one resource on a task it can be set so that it treats them
as separate entities, adjusting each one's schedule (but not amount of work
they're to do or their allocation to the task) independently of the others,
or it can treat them as a group that must always work together. But that's
it.

One of the reasons it's not likely to become an optimization tool in the
forseeable future is that "optimized" can mean a lot of different things.
Project optimization is ALWAYS the province of the project manager's
intellect - the only thing any pm software ever does is help out with the
arithmetic. Indeed, one of the biggest reasons is that the software has no
way even of knowing if resource A is capable of picking up some of the work
currently scheduled for B and vice versa or not - it's very possible that
they simply cannot be interchanged on the work due to differing skill sets,
regulations from collective bargaining agreements, etc, etc. Only you can
know about those things and make the appropriate decisions.

Project planning and scheduling is an iterative and ongoing process, often
consuming a signifigant portion of the project's time frame and budget,
sometimes even as much as 25 to 30 percent of the total. It may be a pain
to have to resolve those issues by hand but that's what they pay us for
<grin>.
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer/Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs