Resource moves to part time.

[Steve House]

We said the same thing using different words regarding the percentages. Is
a resource who works a 4 hour shift who does a task for 4 hours and produces
4 hours of work assigned at 100% or 50%? I think we'd agree it's 100%. Yet
if you say the max units is the percentage of an 8 hour workday he is
available, that 4 hours he's on the property is 50% and our resource is
overallocated if assigned as above. To get it to work out for a 50%
assignment level, you have to say it's an 8 hour duration task. But it's
not. It starts at 0800 and finishes at 1200, not 1700. The ambiguity can
impact the schedule strongly because if our task in question starts Monday
at 0800 and has a successor, showing the part time resource as working at
50% will result in the successor being scheduled to start Tuesday at 0800
when in fact it could have been scheduled to start Monday at 1300.

I'll agree that Project doesn't deal with productivity yet production is
implicit within the concept of work. What is "work" representing, then?
Draw the parallel to an auto trip. We have to go 100 kilometers and the
speed limit is 50 kmph. The trip will take us 2 hours. 100km=50km/hr *
2hr. D=VT just like W=DU. (Or like electrical energy where KwH = Kw * Hr.)
So the distance to be traveled is analgous to the work required, the time
required is the duration of the trip, and the speed traveled is analous to
the assignment level. The distance to be traveled is usually a constant -
we can't just stop after 1 hour and say we've gone far enough. Likewise a
task isn't done until its deliverable is created, irrespective of the time
it takes to do it. The creation of the deliverable defines the task and
man-hours of work is the unit by which it's measured - work always being
proportional to the amount of deliverable required. A worker working at
capacity produces X amount of deliverable per man-hour - always and so the
man-hours required is proportional to the amount of deliverable required.
If capacity is 10 widgets per hour and the task requires production of 100
widgets, the task requires 10 man-hours of work, no more and no less. How
much TIME that amount of work will take depends on what percentage up to
capacity at which the worker is performing. Your claim that work measures
time is simply not true. The time the resource is involved in doing that
task is the duration, not the work. If you prefer to not use the term
productivity, then, how about calling work a measure of sweat, that is, a
measure of the energy being expended by the resource?

Consider a 4 hour task with the worker assigned 50%. We'd agree that the
work he's doing is 2 man-hours. But if productivity doesn't enter into it,
why is that 2 hours of work taking 4 hours of time? Duration is not the
amount of time PERMITTED for the task, it is the amount of time you can
actually observe physical ACTIVITY taking place on the task. If sometime
over the course of a 4 hour morning the resource does 2 hours of continuous
undistracted effort, the task's duration is 2 hours, not 4. The only reason
it could take 4 hours of activity to produce 2 hours of work is if he is
unable to generate as much result as he otherwise would be able to, he has
other things going on at the same time that consumes part of his energy
output and so it takes him longer than 2 hours to do what he otherwise could
have done in 2 hours.

You have said on many occasions that resources should normally be assigned
at 100% and I agree whole-heartedly with that statement. What I'm doing
here is trying to get things to be consistent for both full time and part
time workers and for tasks of any arbitrary duration.


--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Hi Steve,

I know it sounds good, but this idea about percentages not representing a
time part is something not present in the software itself. A 30% units
assignment is translated by Project into 18 seconds of work per minute and
that is it. Project ignores the notion of productivity completely.

And Work is not a measure of result, it is a measure of which time the
resoruce is doing that task.
Greetings,

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project MVP
http://users.online.be/prom-ade

Instead of using the assignment percentage to reflect a part-time worker,
IMHO it is better to use the resource calendar. I have a task that
started last Monday and runs for 10 days, ending next Friday. Joe, who
has been working an 8-hour a day full time calendar was assigned to the
task 100%. Halfway through the task I've learned that Joe will go to a 4
hour per day part-time schedule effective immediately. He will be
working all 4 hours per day of his new 4 hour a day work schedule for the
remainder of the task and it will obviously take him an extra week to
finish all the requred work. This is NOT a 50% resource assignment, this
is a 100% resource assignment of a 4 hour per day resource! I think one
of the most frequently confused concepts with MS Project is the idea that
the resource assignment percentage represents the percentage of the
business day the resource is working on his tasks - it is NOT that except
as an approximation. The assignment percentage is actually a measure of
the RATE at which the resource converts duration time to work man-hours.
100% means you get an hour of work for each hour of time. 50% means he
has other things going on at the same time and only able to give you 30
minutes of actual full-time equivalent work on your task for each hour he
puts in on it. You can get the schedule to reflect his new reality by
simply editing his resource calendar from this point forward, changing
his work hours for all dates into the future starting Monday to show his
new, part-time schedule. When you do, you'll see the elapsed time for
all future tasks double including his remaining time on in-progress tasks
(although the duration and work will remain the same - it takes two
elapsed days for a half-time part-timer to work the same duration as a
full-timer works in one day so for a part-timer tasks, 2 calendar days in
the task's schedule equals 1 day of duration) yet previous work will
remain the same.

HTH
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Hi,

When changing max units for a resource, I have successfully used the
technique you describe with filtering, selecting and removing and
reassigning
a resource. But I encounter problems when a task allready has actual
values?
Removing the resource then means removing actual values? Or should I not
do
the change on activities that are allready in progress?

Thanks in advance!

Peter
--
--------
Peter Sebelius


:

Hi Bryan,

You will have to re-assign the resource at the new lower maximum units.
Filter the project using the Using Resource... filter to show only the
tasks
for the specific resource. Select all of the non-summary tasks for the
resource. Click the Assign Resources button and select the resource
already
assigned. Click the replace button. Select the same resource in the
replace dialog box and enter the new lower max. units. This will
re-assign
the same resource to the tasks with the new lower unit assignment.

The resource leveling command will not re-assign units.

I noticed in your original post that you said the resource only works
nights
and weekends. Have you changed her working calendar to reflect the
night
and weekend working time? Instead of setting her max. at 25% if she
only
works 10 hours per week during the night and weekend, I would leave her
max.
units to 100% and edit her calendar.

I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie
I should add that I'm confused about the task allocation. If I change
her
to
25% at the resource, what happens to the tasks she's already assigned
at
100%. Does Project 'know' that assignment in the task is for a part
timer
or
do I have to manually change all her tasks.

:

I have a resource who was shown on the plan as 100% FTE. The reality
is
that
she works about 25% only evenings and weekends. Of course she's
already
overallocated so I'm not certain I'm reading this right. When I
change
her
Resource Availability in the Resource Information dialog/General Tab
to
25%,
I expect to be able to level her and the duration of her tasks
quadruple.
The
duration isn't changing, leveling is just complainingt she's
overallocated.
How do I fix this?