Resource Allocation & Skill Levels

[tommcbrny]

Hi, I have a two-part question about resources in MS Project:

1) Resources on my project spend ~10% of their time each day on support,
which takes them away from project work. I understand that I can simply
allocate each resource to be available only 90% of the day. I would rather
have this 10% support allocation show up in a graphical resource view such as
the Resource Graph, however. Is this possible (perhaps 10% of the time
shaded in yellow, project allocation time in blue, overallocation in red)?

2) Resources on my project have different skill levels. Work estimated for
a task is estimated on the assumption that a Level 1 resource (highest skill
level) will do the work. If a level 2 resource is assigned, however, it will
take them twice as long. Is it possible to create weighting for resources so
that their work and duration for tasks matches their skill level?

Thank you!
Tom

 

[Rod Gill]

Hi,

For 1) the answer is no. You need to set Max Units to reflect the total
hours per day or week available to your project. So, 4h for support, 5h for
Admin, 1h for ad hoc work leaves 30h per week for project work. Lets say you
have only 20h of this per week for your project, so max units should be 50%.
You can add an availability line on the resource graphs I think.

--

Rod Gill
Project MVP

NEW!! Project VBA Book, for details visit: http://www.projectvbabook.com

 

[Jim Aksel]

If you wish the Level of Effort Support work to show up somewhere, consider
making a project task "Support" for the duration of your program. Then
assign all your resources to it at 10% units. This is not recommended, but
possible. You could make it a hammock task, see
http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm and read FAQ#19.

It is not possible to reformat the resource smoke stacks on the resource
graph in the manner you describe. Try right clicking on a graph and select
"Bar Styles" or "Grid Lines' which are your only choices. You can add lines
for availability or unavailability which will give you some measure of what
additional workload a resource can accept.

2. Project cannot determine how smart or efficeint a resource is. What you
may want to try is setting the avilability factor for the Skill2 at 50%; this
will adjust his schedule to take twice as long in duration as Skill1.
However, this does not consider cost (the number of manhours required to do
the job).

You want a way to say: "If Skill1 does the job, it is 40 hours over 1 week @
$125/hr. If Skill2 does the job, it is 80 hours over two weeks at $86/hr"
Project has no way to make that determination.