Realistic Project Resourcing

[Tosh]

I have a project where the useage profile of some resource types have peaks
and troughs throughout the schedule. As it is impractical to send contract
programers away for the days that they are not called for, I have created a
separate Excel sheet where I copy over information from the Resource Usage
view; strip out the "d" (eg. w/c 2nd May comes over as "30d", which I need
to convert to a number 30); and rounds up to the required number of staff
required during that week. I then have another row where I manually enter
the number of staff that I will have on site, taking into account the
planned requirement, but flattening out the troughs to ensure continuity of
the team. This then gives me the actual number of mandays that I will burn
in my project.

I want to improve this system, either by
(i) not having to use Excel to smooth the profile at all, or
(ii) Having the Excel spreadsheet automatically update the Resource Usage as
it changes in the plan.

Has anyone done this before (seems likely) or can anyone help with either of
the above options.

Many thanks.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Tosh,

Why not use Project's leveling tool?
HTH

 

[Tosh]

Jan,
Thanks for the quick response, but its the levelling tool that causes the
troughs when there is no work for that resource type for those days. For
example, programers waiting for the client to run acceptance tests on the
work done before the programer can start on any remedial work that comes out
of the testing. There are many other example like that which lead to the
bumpy profile.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

When the earliest start date of this additional work allows for it leveling
WILL detect it and schedule it through the dips.
Of course if you have scheduled this addi work to be later (be it by a
constraint or by a dependency) leveling will not make it happen earlier.
When you say we cannot majke the roof before the walls, the fact that the
roofmakers are available does not make any change does it?
HTH