resource over allocation

[fickasm1]

We have stand-alone copies of MSP 2002 that our company uses. We do not have
the whole Central package.
Many of our managers have problems with resource over allocation in their
project plans. We have tried to resolve this issue ourselves, using leveling
and adjusting availabiltiy and never seem to get the results we expect.
Can anyone please explain resource overallocation, how it works, the best
way to avoid it, the best way to correct it, and any other info on the
subject you would like to share?

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi fickasm1 ,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

As a starter, you might like to have a look at my series on Microsoft
Project in the TechTrax ezine, particularly #18 & 19, and #20 next month at
this site: http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc or this:
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMFrame.asp?CMD=ArticleSearch&AUTH=23
(Perhaps you'd care to rate the article before leaving the site,
Thanks.)

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

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

What are the results you expect and how are they different from what you are
getting when you do resource leveling?

IMHO you should NEVER try to resolve an overallocation by adjusting the
resource availability. The resource maximum availability is the maximum
amount of time out of his work schedule that you can use him in your
project. For a single individual it can never exceeed 100% because 100%
means that for out of every hour he is at work, you can use him as much as 1
hour. If you go over 100% you're saying he's somehow magically able to
generate more man-hours of work than the time he has to do it and that's
impossible for one person to do.

When you see a resource name turning red indicating he's overallocated, it
means that you have scheduled him to do more work in a time interval than he
is physically capable of doing - think of it as scheduling him to be in two
different places at once. If he works an 8-hour day and I schedule him 100%
on Monday to spend the day polishing fids, I'm expecting him to work 8 hours
on it. If I also assign him 100% on Monday to waxing widgets, I'm expecting
him to spend 8 hours doing that as well. Monday he's expected to do 8 hours
waxing widgets plus 8 hours polishing fids for a total of 16 man-hours of
work. But he's only physically present at work for 8 hours! How is it
possible for him to ccomplish 16 hours of work during 8 hours of time? The
answer is, he can't. To correct it you have several options. You can take
him off of one task and assign someone else to it who isn't already
committed to something else. You can reduce the amount of his assignment
percentage on each task from 100% to 50% - for most types of work that means
that each of them will now take 2 days to finish instead of 1 but in many
projects that might be ok. Or you can pick one of those tasks and move it
to Tuesday when the resource is otherwise free. That's what resource
leveling does - it delays work until such time as the resource is free to do
it.

HTH