resource assignments on summary rows

[Jon Smith]

I had someone ask me a question today about why you shouldn't assign
resources on a summary row. I've never done it, but I've forgotten what
sorts of little "gotcha's" one can incur by doing this technique.

It seems to me you would have issues with custom groupings working correctly
with the Summary Box option as one problem.

Any others people can remind me of would be useful.

Thanks

r/Jon

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

There are a few I can think of.

The most problematic is that you can run into problems when using resource
leveling.
When a resource is assigned to both a summary task and one of the subtasks,
and the sum of assignment units exceeds the max units of the resource,
leveling cannot solve the overallocation and when you skip the error
message, said subtask will be scheduled Dec 31 2049 - which makes lots of
people doubt the sanity of Project (whereas they asked for the impossible
themselves)

The second reason I can think of is that people forget about it and then
start complaining Project "doesn't calculate correctly". Indeed, once you
assign a resource to the summary task, Work and Cost on that summary task
are no linger the total of the subtask - and you often get the cryout for
"another bug!!-

In the same area of perception, lots of people think that assigning a
resource to a summary task is equivalent to assigning it to each of the
subtasks - and it isn't, it will produce work according to the duration of
the summary task and we all know that is not necessarily equal to the sum of
the durations of the subtasks

In short, it works. If you feel you need it, do it. But if you don't
understand the full consequence of it, please don't come tell me Project is
wrong.

Hope this helps,