Ed said:
Thanks John, much appreciated. Slightly messy, but fulfills the purpose for
now.
I have 3 generic resources that identify a group of skills that can be
utilised on any project at a given time. Each project is just a line item
(task name) with a proposed start and finish date. The duration of each
project ranges from 1 - 3 years into the future. At present there is no
further detail on the projects. They fall into several categories such as,
must do , would like to do etc.
From each department manager, they have supplied me with a single line item
that reflects the information above including an estimate of the resources
they require over the duration of the project.
Eg.
Build Website 01/01/2007 to 12/31/2007 - 200 (mandays) HTML Coders, 150
(mandays) SQL Prog, and so on.
For each task (project) I have used the default Fixed Units effort driven.
In the Resource Usage, I've changed the timescale to years. Is this what you
would recommend?
Many thanks again
Ed
Ed,
It sounds like your plan is at such a high level, (i.e. one line per
project over a one to three year period), that I have to question how
the respective managers are able to "guesstimate" any kind of manpower
loading. and it baffles me how your senior management can make any kind
of decision based on that limited information. There must be some
historical basis and that means there is some level of detail.
Nonetheless, based on your post here is what I recommend. First, it
depends on what you want to show. You indicate that you have the
estimated start and finish for each project so that kind of sounds like
you want the duration to be fixed. However, with fixed units, effort
driven, the assignment level of resources will change the duration (i.e.
effort driven). Project uses the equation:
Duration = Work/Units
and depending on which part of the equation is fixed, Project will
calculate the other values. I suggest you look in the Project Help file
under "task types" for an explanation of the work equation.
If you don't like the Resource Usage view, then try the following.
1. Under each project line create one to three subtasks called, year 1,
year 2 and year 3.
2. Link the three years finish-to-start and enter a duration so the year
start and finish line up with year boundaries. Note this value as it
will change when you assign resources - you can copy the values to a
spare duration field for later use.
3. Select each year task and assign the resources to the unit level you
want. Do this for each project year for each resource.
4. As you make the assignments, you will note that the duration changes.
After all resources have been assigned for a project year, reset the
duration from the stored value.
Using the above process you will get the resource unit level and hours
per year, plus the total hours per project over the full 1 to 3 year
span. If you had given those resources a pay rate, you would also have
the total cost by year and project. That is most often what senior
management want to see.
The above is a pretty simplistic approach but it does lay down the
groundwork for filling in the details when they get firmed up.
John
Project MVP
