Resource Over Allocation

[Matt Skalicky]

I am not having much luck trying to perform Enterprise Resourcing Levelling.

I have about 8 enterprise projects sitting in Project server. All projects use resources from the enterprise resource pool

Currently, a number of resources have more than 8 hours of work allocated to them on certain days. I can't seem to find a way to remove this overallocation easily.

I have looked at resource levelling but it seems to work at the project level not at the enterprise level. I guess the resource substitution wizard does sort of work at the enterprise level in some sense, but I am concerned (through ignorance mainly) that it seems it may take people out of the resource pool to substitute them without considering the impact on other projects

at the moment, the only way I have found to fix these overallocations is by manually editing each project and changing resource assignments, lengthening task duration, etc... until the allocation is resolved and even for just 8 projects this seems awfully long winded..

Am I missing something obvious or is it just a long winded process

Thanks in advanc

Matt

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Matt --

You could open all 8 of the projects, then apply the Resource Usage view in
any one of the projects. Do your leveling there and level only one resource
at a time. Doing so will level that resource's overallocations across all
of the 8 projects. Hope this helps.

--
Dale A. Howard [MVP]
Enterprise Project Trainer/Consultant
Denver, Colorado
http://www.msprojectexperts.com
"We wrote the book on Project Server"

I am not having much luck trying to perform Enterprise Resourcing Levelling.

I have about 8 enterprise projects sitting in Project server. All projects

use resources from the enterprise resource pool.

Currently, a number of resources have more than 8 hours of work allocated

to them on certain days. I can't seem to find a way to remove this
overallocation easily.

I have looked at resource levelling but it seems to work at the project

level not at the enterprise level. I guess the resource substitution wizard
does sort of work at the enterprise level in some sense, but I am concerned
(through ignorance mainly) that it seems it may take people out of the
resource pool to substitute them without considering the impact on other
projects.

at the moment, the only way I have found to fix these overallocations is

by manually editing each project and changing resource assignments,
lengthening task duration, etc... until the allocation is resolved and even
for just 8 projects this seems awfully long winded...

 

[Greg B]

Hi,

We are having exactly the same hassles as Matt with resoure leveling.

The only difference is we are trying to perform resource leveling on over 30 schedules. It appears almost impossible to perform resource leveling if all schedules have to be opened at once.

Is there any addins/plugins available that can run to provide information on a resource/s without opening all the schedules.

Any other ideas???

Also when we look at the resource usage, projects that have no work remaining and archived are showing hours on the resource usage sheet. How can this be so????

HELP . . .
Greg

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Greg B --

First of all, I would recommend that you remove and archive completed
projects from your Project Server database. To expedite this process, your
Project Server administrator should use the EditSite utility to create a new
Project Server instance in which to archive completed projects. He/she
should also back up the Enterprise Global file for your Project Server
production instance and then restore the Enterprise Global to the archive
instance. Once done, he/she should save every completed project as an .mpp
file, delete the project from the Project Server database, and then import
the completed projects into the archive instance of Project Server. This
will eliminate your problem of seeing completed projects in the Resource
Usage view.

Secondly, please know that if a resource is overallocated across multiple
projects, then you must open every project in which that resource is
assigned before you can perform the built-in leveling function of Microsoft
Project (Tools - Level Resources). Thus, if Resource A is overallocated
across 4 projects, and is assigned to work in 6 projects, you should have
all 6 projects open since leveling across the first 4 projects can impact
the other 2 projects.

Lastly, you should also know that the built-in leveling tool in Microsoft
Project is only one way to level overallocated resources. There are other
ways that I believe are more effective and are much easier to perform. For
example, at a client site last week, we learned that a resource is
double-booked (200% Units and 16 hours per day) across two projects for a
6-week time period. If the manager used the leveling tool, Microsoft
Project would simply have delayed the resource's tasks in the lower-priority
project by six weeks, causing the entire project to slip by six weeks.
Instead, the manager used a much wiser approach, which was to substitute an
available resource for the overallocated resource on the lower-priority
project which solved the problem with no project slippage. Just some
thoughts. Hope this helps.

Hi,

We are having exactly the same hassles as Matt with resoure leveling.

The only difference is we are trying to perform resource leveling on over

30 schedules. It appears almost impossible to perform resource leveling if
all schedules have to be opened at once.

Is there any addins/plugins available that can run to provide information

on a resource/s without opening all the schedules.

Any other ideas???

Also when we look at the resource usage, projects that have no work

remaining and archived are showing hours on the resource usage sheet. How
can this be so????