Resource allocation

[Gary Wright]

I "PM" a technology group that has multiple projects running at the same
time, for the purposes of this email lets say 20 seperate projects.

First I created a project for my resource pool called Resource Pool (how
clever)

Second I create a Project called Tech Projects and inside of it I have 20
individual projects of various names that are all sub-projects under Tech
Projects. These projects range anywhere from 1 to 10 weeks.

The group that controls the resources tells me how much time each resource
will be able to work on each project each week. For the most part I will
only have one resource per project but very rarely will I have them 100% of
the time.

My goal - If I have a project that has 212 hours and I have a resource that
is available 20 hours week 1, 15 hours week 2, 35 hours week 3,... and so on
how would you set this up? I want to be able to tell which resources are
over allocated, and or availble for other work.

Things that I know
I have a list of all the tasks for the project anlong with project time to
complete the tasks
I have a start date
End date will be determined by resource availability

-Gary

 

[Jim Aksel]

Resource availability can be set up in the ResourcePool.mpp file. From the
resource sheet view, double click a resource and make adjustments on the
General tab if they are available less than 100% on a given day. You can
also change their working time on the "Working Time" tab.

A word of caution. You say a resource is available 20 hours week1, 15 hours
week2, etc. If you mean they are only available 20 hours for Project1 and
can work other projects then I would leave their availability at 100% and
take care of the Project1 20 hour limit manually. The Resource Usage view is
helpful for this purpose.

If, however, they are only available 20 hours for the sum total of work on
all projects, then change their availability to 50%. in ResourcePool.mpp An
example of this type of thing would be an employee who is enrolled in a
training class that meets 4 hours per day that week.

Don't try to schedule all the employee's activities like "attend class...."
it will drive you wild and ends up being out of scope for the schedule you
are trying to put together.
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim

Check out my new blog for more information:
http://www.msprojectblog.com

 

[Gary Wright]

Jim,

You are correct in with you statement in the second paragraph!

But now the follow up question

I have a resource that is available 100% and I have them splitting time
between 2 projects, each project has 100 task items that will take 200 hours
to complete.

For project 1 they have allocated 15 hours for weeks 1 through 4 and 20
hours untill the end. For project 2 they have allocated 20 hours for weeks
1 - 4 and 10 hours per week until complete. There are 100 tasks in each
project and both projects have the same start date, and all of the tasks
have time associated with them, for instance task 1 might be 2 hours and
task 2 might be 12 hours.

You stated that I could manually handle this in each project? Do I have to
manually calculate out each task and divide it by the available hours?

Thanks for your help