Resource Levelling question

T

Tara Finlay

Not using Project Server.
I have 20 projects that I need to schedule based on
resource availability. I created a project and put in the
20 "projects" as tasks. I assigned the appropriate resource
(s) to each task(s). I added priorities although this
seems less important. Then I did level resources. While it
sort of did what I expected, it did not fully. What I
expected was for project to see I had resource a at 100%
on project a and 100% on project b and 100% on project c
and to push out the dates on projects b and c serially. I
did not use predecesors as there is no real predecessory
relationship there. What HAPPENED was it scheduled project
b to overlap with project a (the same two resources were
assigned to it so maybe it was swapping them to overlap
which would make sense, except both resources were also
separate on other tasks further down the list that seemed
to be happening at the same time as project a- and it
didnt push those dates out... And yet when I looked at the
resource allocation it was still 100% for all. I know this
is a long and convoluted post but essentially, I just need
to show a picture - a gantt - of our projects over the
next four months based on resources. Can I do this easily
wihtout using Project Server?

TIA
Tara
 
M

Mike Glen

Hi Tara,

Welcome to the Microsoft Project newsgroup :)

When levelling, Project starts looking at the first minute of your plan,
looks for overallocations, and delays tasks to remove the overallocation.
It then goes to the next minute, etc. Levelling thus does not delay whole
projects, just overallocated tasks. I'm not sure whether this answers your
question, but you should end up with all resources within their 100%, ie not
overallocated.

You can force Project to delay some tasks before others by applying
priorities, but you must select Priority,Standard in the Levelling dialog.

Finally, Project only produces A solution, not THE solution or the BEST or
CHEAPEST or SHORTEST, but just A solution. Bettering that is what you're
paid for to tweak the plan to meet your requirements.

FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information can be seen at
this web address: <http://www.mvps.org/project/>

Hope this helps - please let us know how you get on:)

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP
 
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