Resource Error - Level Based Day by Day

[Irene M Kraus]

My first post in this newsgroup. I've been using MS Project as a stand-
alone product for about 2 months to help me in creating estimates for
web development. One of the things that is often occurring as I build my
task list, assign resources, and link tasks is that one or more of the
resources will turn read with the message, "Resource should be level-
based on a day by day setting." Can someone explain what this means to
me in plain English?

I've searched this newsgroup, and the suggested FAQ at:
http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs_pc.htm with no help in understanding
what this means. (No way to search the FAQs that I could see.) Have also
tried searching Project's help, but I can't figure out what track I
should be following.

I realize I still have a lot to learn about using Project. Thanks for
mentioning those FAQs, as I'm sure I will be reading through several of
them. I want to figure out how to publish progress reports to HTML pages
to document project progress for customers, for example. Some things
won't work in my version, I know.

Thanks in advance for some direction here!

<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>
Irene M. Kraus a.k.a. The Computer Lady!
Graphic & Web Page Design www.design-comp.com
President/News Ed/Webmaster CEBUG www.cebug.org

 

[Steve House]

When you define your resoures, one of the fields in the table is "maximum
availability." This is the amount of the resource's working calendar that
is available for you to use in your project. If you have someone who works
an 8 hour shift and you can have him full-time, the max avail is 100%. If
his boss will only release him to the project a maximum of 4 hours a day,
his max avail is 50%. If you have 5 custodians who aren't differentiated by
name and you can use up to all 5 as needed, it's a resource "custodial
staff" with a max avail of 500%.

When you assign resources to tasks, you specify the percentage the resource
is assigned. If it's a one day task and the resource will work on it all
day, he's assigned 100%. If he has one day to do it but it's really only
about 4 hours of work if full time, he's assigned 50%. That means that over
the course of an 8 hour workday he will put in 4 man-hours of work on this
particular activity.

A resource is "overallocated" if at any point he is scheduled to work more
hours than he's allowed as given by the max avail. He's allowed 100%. But
you have him scheduled on Monday to spend 8 hours waxing widgets AND ALSO 8
hours washing wombats. So he's scheduled somehow to do 16 hours worth of
work in a single 8 hour time frame. He can do 4 hours worth of work in an 8
hour time period by working at less than full speed but there's no way he
can do more than 8 hours work in 8 hours time. He is booked at a total of
200% on Monday - two tasks at 100% each - and he just can't do it.

Resource leveling is the built in tool to help you resolve those
overallocations in your schedule and the message you are getting indicates
that you have one or more people double booked like that in your plan as it
stands right now. The "day by day" refers to the shortest time frame the
leveling engine will worry about and the message is saying that your
overallocations are on a more than 1 day long period. When you level,
Project will look for conflicting bookings and will delay one or more tasks
so as to resolve the overallocation. Note that ANY amount of overlap, even 5
minutes, will cause project to consider the reource overallocated. Also
note that the only thing leveling does is delay work - it won't change the
allocation percentages or the durations of a resource's work. The setting
of day by day, hour by hour, etc, tells project how picky you need to be
about it. A full day or more double booked almost always needs to be
resolved, 15 minutes overlap probably doesn't but you can do it if needed in
your situation. You find Resource Leveling on the Tools menu.

Hope this helps you get started...

 

[Irene M Kraus]

When you define your resoures, one of the fields in the table is "maximum
availability." This is the amount of the resource's working calendar that
is available for you to use in your project. If you have someone who works
an 8 hour shift and you can have him full-time, the max avail is 100%. If
his boss will only release him to the project a maximum of 4 hours a day,
his max avail is 50%. If you have 5 custodians who aren't differentiated by
name and you can use up to all 5 as needed, it's a resource "custodial
staff" with a max avail of 500%.

(snip)

Okay, let me restate this in my own words so you can tell me if I'm
understanding this correctly. In my case, I work alone, and there are
times when I'm working on 2 or 3 different projects. So, what I need to
do to more accurately predict timelines is assign my availability at 50%
(if working on 2), or 33% (if working on 3) projects. That makes sense,
but I wasn't sure how to do that. That should help me resolve those
problems of not meeting deadline when promised! Thanks...

Resource leveling is the built in tool to help you resolve those
overallocations in your schedule and the message you are getting indicates
that you have one or more people double booked like that in your plan as it
stands right now. The "day by day" refers to the shortest time frame the
leveling engine will worry about and the message is saying that your
overallocations are on a more than 1 day long period. When you level,
Project will look for conflicting bookings and will delay one or more tasks
so as to resolve the overallocation. Note that ANY amount of overlap, even 5
minutes, will cause project to consider the reource overallocated. Also
note that the only thing leveling does is delay work - it won't change the
allocation percentages or the durations of a resource's work. The setting
of day by day, hour by hour, etc, tells project how picky you need to be
about it. A full day or more double booked almost always needs to be
resolved, 15 minutes overlap probably doesn't but you can do it if needed in
your situation. You find Resource Leveling on the Tools menu.

Hope this helps you get started...

YES! It helps a lot. Took me a bit of searching, and I found my mistake.
I had split one task up into several subtasks, and assigned them all to
myself. Project was seeing those, and the original task (now a summary)
as still being assigned to me and this caused the error. Once I removed
myself from the new summary task, the error went away. I just couldn't
figure out where to start looking for the mistake!

I know I haven't been using Project long, but I can tell it will be an
immense help to me the longer I use it. Like most freelancers, I've only
got one chance to estimate my charges. If I underestimate the length of
time it takes me to do something, then I'm eating that cost. (Something
I seem to do a lot of, I see!) I went back to school several months ago
so I could learn more about how these things should be done, and fill in
the wholes in the area of IT that I work in. (It will be great to have
that BSIT degree!)

To help me document my time, I've been using Outlook's Journal tool to
time myself as I work. But, Project goes one step further and lets me
match that actual time up to estimated time. If I stick with this
documentation, eventually I should be able to write more accurate
Estimates. May mean more time now, but it will lead to more money in my
pocket down the road.

Thanks again, Steve!

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their
dreams. - Eleanor Roosevelt

<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>-<>
Irene M. Kraus a.k.a. The Computer Lady!
Graphic Design & Web Developmtent www.design-comp.com
President/News Ed/Webmaster CEBUG www.cebug.org

Remove 'nospam' from domain name to reach me.

 

[Steve House]

Glad I could help. One important point - there are two percentages to
consider - the Maximum Availability is part of the resource information
and it reflects the maximum percentage of your work calendar that can be
spent on all project related tasks taken together. The other is the
percentage you're assigned to an individual task. If your availability
is 100% and you're working on three projects at once, on a given day you
might be working 100% on tasks in P1 and nothing in P2 or P3, 50% in P1
and 25% each in P2 and P3, or any other mix you can think of. As long
as your TOTAL allocation on all simultaneous tasks doesn't go over 100%
you're golden. It's really simple when you're looking at tasks in one
project. It gets a little more complicated with multiple projects. You
*could* have totally isolated files and say to yourself ahead of time
that you'll spend 50% on each of two or 33% on each of three and make
those the maximum in each . Or a better way is to use something called
a "resource pool" where there's one file with the resource information
showing your overall maximum and the each project file links to the pool
to draw its resources from the common bank. That way you get more
flexibility as the resource's available time can be apportioned between
tasks in the different projects as needed, with one day P1 getting 100%
of the time, the next day P1 and P2 splitting it equally to each get
50%, and the next day yet another mix.