Resource Levelling problem

[Dilip]

Hi All,
I am faced with a problem while resource levelling.
I have a project with many levels of task groupings under
it. After levelling the resources, i find that the tasks
under a group are not being done sequentially one after
the other. Instead, a couple of tasks are done, and then
there is a huge gap during when some other tasks under a
different group are done. There are a lot of such jumping
around. I have set priorities running from 1000 to 100,
with repeating each priority 6 times, to accomodate the
amount of tasks i have( totally about 5300 lines in the
project). Even predecessor- successor relationships are
also set. And i level based on "Priority, Standard"
levelling order.
i am looking for a solution which makes all the tasks
within a group to run sequentially to completion before
the tasks in another group start.
Please help me with your inputs on this. Let me know if
you need more clarity on any information.

Thanks,
Dilip.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

Project's proposed proposal will no doubt have its virtues, but if you as
the user want otherwise, let's look for a solution.
What I would do is the following:
- Give the tasks you want to keep together the same priority
- Try to create a sizable difference in priority between different "groups".

Indeed, even in "priority, Standard" Project will not necessarily schedule a
583 priority task before a 582 one. It calculates some weighted sum of
several factors (they are in the Help, but the formula isn't); hence my
recommendation to try to create a gap of as many priority units as possible
between groups.

If teh requirement to keep groups together is very stringent you might
introduce "phony" links to sequence the groups but I don't like this
solution.
Hope this helps.

 

[Dilip]

Hi ,
I had already kept the priorities of all the tasks
within the group to be the same.
I think the reason for the jump from within a group to
another group of a higher priority, is the completion of
its predecessor task. So, Project stops the execution of
the lower priority task and jumps to the group having thee
higher priority. Both these groups are using the same
resource.
What are the "phony" links that you were talking about ?
Please elaborate on that.

Thanks,
Dilip.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Dilip,

If you absolutely want a group to start after ALL teh tasks of an othe
rgroup are finisg-hed, link the last task of the first group to the first
task of the second group.
Mind you, these are not real links, Group two CAN start before One is
finished, that is why I call then phony.
HTH

 

[Guest]

Unless I ammissing something, you answered your own
question:

"> i am looking for a solution which makes all the tasks

within a group to run sequentially to completion before
the tasks in another group start.

"


put predecessor-successor relationships at the group level-
then all of group a will have to be completed (in some
indeterminate order) before any in group b can be started

 

[Dilip]

Hi Jan,
The problem is that, the execution of these groups of
tasks is dynamic, depending upon the availability of the
resource and the completion of its predecessor task.
let me take an example.
Suppose there is a group with 5 tasks with priority 250.
And there is a group with priority 300. The 300 priority
group could not be started because of its predecessor not
being completed. Meanwhile, the 250 priority group starts
off during this time. But after completing 3 of its 5
tasks, Project finds that the 300 priority group is
ready,because now it sees that its predecessor is
complete. So, Project stops the execution of the 250
priority group and jumps to the 300 priority group.
What i want is that, once a group has started, it should
run to completion before it moves to another group, even
if a higher priority group is ready for execution.
Can such a requirement be accomplished in Project ?
Hope i have made things clear.
Please let me know.
Thanks in advance,
Dilip.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

Not off the shelf, no.
Leveling will rpect your priorities.
You could write a VBA macro that sets a very high priority to all tasks of a
group once the group has started, and execute that before leveling.
That would do the trick.
HTH

 

[John Sitka]

put predecessor-successor relationships at the group level-

then all of group a before any in group b

The poster explained that group b might be started before group a
thus the order of groups a and b is variable.

The problem is that, the execution of these groups of
tasks is dynamic, depending upon the availability of the
resource and the completion of its predecessor task

thus predecessor-successor relationships is dynamic and levelling fails

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

No, he exactly said the opposite: that all of group a had to finish before
the start of group b.

 

[John Sitka]

Yes, if group a starts before group b.....
however group a may not be able to start before group b due to resource
usage limitations.
In that case start all of group b and finish it in succession to complete;
then move on to group a and finish it in
succession to complete.
Hopefully Dilip can confirm, but this is a fairly old post.

J.