Resource leveling/scheduling - odd behavior

[matt]

Thanks for all the help earlier on effort vs duration. Now I have a question
on levelling. I have read the Levelling FAQs that I saw referenced in other
posts, but I am curious about this behavior of Project.

After attempting to Level Resources, Project complains that it cannot level
for a set of dates, June 27-July 3. When I looked at what Project had
scheduled for that day, we had one sub-task of a project and a completely
unrelated task, scheduled for the same dates. There was no relationship
between the tasks, other than that both must be completed to meet our
"Complete & Tested" Milestone.

Oddly enough, I also noted that from May 22-Jun 9, Project scheduled NO work
at all for my resource.

So I was wondering, why didnt project move the unrelated task (that has no
predecessors or constraints) for May 22- Jun 9? I manually fixed this by
making the task start on May 22. This also resolved all of my resource
leveling issues.

Any thoughts on this strange behavior?

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Matt,

If Leveling did not schedule any work for the resource over a certain
period, that generally means the the resource has been decklared unavailable
be it trough Tools, Change Working time or through Resource Information,
Resource Availability.

OBTW, you're sure that you are using the resource definitions in your file
aren't you? The file is not connected to Project Server or to a pool - in
which these absebnces maight be defined?

Asfor your other remark, the fact that you use the terms task and subtask
worries me a little. Calling tasks without outline children tasks, and tasks
with outline children summary tasks, do you have assignments to summary
tasks? They are a common source for the impossibility to level.

Furthermore if a task uses a resource for a % that is higher than the Max
Units Leveling cannot level either (because you cannot solve this by
postponing the task which is the one and only action leveling can take)

Have you checked the checkbox "Level only within available slack"? If it is
checked Leveling will not move tasks that are or have become critical.

HTH

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

Your post isn't clear on the pre-leveling situation but it sounds like you
had tasks in conflict during the time frame 27 Jun to 03 Jul and are
wondering why Project didn't advance one of them back to 22 May since the
resource was available then. If that's what's happening, know that leveling
only moves work LATER in the timeframe and will never move it to start
earlier than the pre-leveling date.

I'm also curious how you got the dates to where they were were pre-leveling.
It sounds like you might have been manually entering the desired dates of
tasks in the Start and Finish columns. If that's the case, that can account
for all sorts of scheduling difficulties. If you input a Start date of 27
Jun for a task, that sets a "Start No Earlier Than" constraint on it and
Project will never place it ealier than that date. Usually it will place it
as early as possible but your constraint says it is impossible to start
earlier for some reason so Project treats it as an exception. If at all
possible you should let Project calculate the task's dates for you and
eschew the temptation of trying to help it out by supplying them yourself.