Question on scheduling with parttime availability

[sankar9999]

I am using Project 2003 and new to the product. Here's my situation.

I have setup a plan for my new project. Several of my resources have
other regular support tasks as well [Level of effort tasks]
Out of the 40 hrs per week, they have 15 hrs to take care of support
and another 5 hrs on other admin. That leaves me with the remaning 20
hrs per person for my new project.

Estimated hours for one of my tasks is 60 hrs. When I assign this
resource to the project task, it allocates 8 hours for the resource
each day. When I changed the percentage availability to 50%, it
changes the work hours to 30. I was expecting to see the work hours to
be kept at 60 and duration changed appropriately.

I am doing something wrong and could use your help. Appreciated.

Sanka

 

[Jim Aksel]

there is a relationship between work, duration, and units. Units are the
number of resources assigned ....100% is one unit (or person). The default
in Project is fixed units. Changing one variable (work, duration, units)
will alter the remaining two depending on the task type (fixed work, fixed
duration, fixed units).

Also, you can change the units assigned to a task in one of two places. If
you originally assigned Bob to task1 and then later changed his max units to
50% on the resource sheet, he will still remain at 100% on the task... but he
will be overloaded.
Try going back and reducing his units% on the specific tasks in question. I
did it here and it doubles the duration as expected.

 

[Siva]

I tried your suggestion. It worked. Thanks.

Two other questions,

1) Is there any way I can assign a resource and %Available at the
group level? If so, will it trickle down to the lower level tasks?

2) What is the best practice / recommendation on support LOE tasks. Do
you recommend me to create all these LOE tasks also on the same
project plan and allocate 50% to those tasks?

I understand that Project Server 2003 would be the best alternative
for resource load analysis. As we don't have the product, I was
wondering whether we can use Project Standard to store all support
tasks as well.

Again, thanks in advance