RESOURCE USAGE

[Silene]

I work with a calendar that is setting 9 hours work/day for all the
resources. In the resource usage I see that more than 8 hours of work is
shown in red, but also sometimes all kinds of hours like 4.5, 5.6, 4.8 hs is
red as well, even though is a normal working day. What is going on here????

txs

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

A couple of things:

1) Are you sure the resource calendars are also set to 9 hours per day?
If not, they would show up overallocated when assigned to 9 hours of tasks.
2) Project calculates overallocations to the minute. If you have two tasks,
both assigned to the same resource, and both scheduled on the same day from
8:00 AM - 8:30 AM, the resource will show up as overallocated, despite the
fact that there's only 1 hour of effort logged for the same day. I'd look
at overlapping tasks as your culprit.

To look for overlapping tasks, expose the Resource Management toolbar, and
click on that first icon to get the split screen view with Resource Usage
at the top and the Gantt Chart at the bottom. Then, zoom in to whatever
level of granularity you require to identify where the overlap resides.

I'd also point out that I am a bit concerned that you have hours showing
up as 4.5, 5.6, etc. Are you really assigning work on that granular a level,
or do you have Fixed Duration tasks, to which you are assigning work estimates?
What is your duration/effort estimating methodology? That may be the true
culprit.


- Andrew Lavinsky
Blog: http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/epm

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Silene,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

You might like to see FAQ Item: 5. Default Working Hours

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

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

Mike Glen
Project MVP
See http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc for my free Project Tutorials
I work with a calendar that is setting 9 hours work/day for all the
resources. In the resource usage I see that more than 8 hours of work is
shown in red, but also sometimes all kinds of hours like 4.5, 5.6, 4.8 hs is
red as well, even though is a normal working day. What is going on here????

txs

 

[Silene]

Is taking me quite a while to understand this subject, so I have more
questions.
1) I don't schedule the resources by the hour, how can I prevent
overallocated (referred in your answer 2)?
2) I have duration of PDR/CDR meetings of 3 hours. Also I have a resource
that only works 4 hours a day. Maybe this is why I have broken duration
(4.5, 5.6)!?
3) Can you explain more about duration/effort estimating methodology, I may
be working in a wrong way?

Thank you so much for all the answers,

Silene

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

1) I don't schedule the resources by the hour, how can I prevent
overallocated (referred in your answer 2)?

If you don't schedule them by the hour, then why does it matter if they're
overallocated? I would just ignore that indicator.


2) I have duration of PDR/CDR meetings of 3 hours. Also I have a resource
that only works 4 hours a day. Maybe this is why I have broken duration
(4.5, 5.6)!?

Possible. Why are you scheduling tasks of less than a day or so? The general
rule of thumb is not to schedule a task less than 1% of the overall duration,
or more than 10% of the overall duration of the project. What would be the
point of scheduling a meeting. Does that shift all subsequent tasks out
for three hours?

3) Can you explain more about duration/effort estimating methodology, I may
be working in a wrong way?

I think where the confusion may be is in understanding what kind of schedule
you're trying to build. Are you trying to estimate when things will happen,
or estimate how many man hours each task will take? Based on your answer
to that question, you'd go build a schedule in different ways and pay attention
to different metrics. For instance, if all you're looking at is a duration
based schedule, the question of overallocation is irrelevant. If you're
doing an effort-based schedule, the goal is to accurately map resource allocation,
and to a certain extent, have that drive the schedule. Which is your goal?

When you assign duration to a task, what two variables do you know?

1) Duration
2) Number of Resources
3) Man Hours Required by the Task

In IT, typically, I would say that the task is 80 man hours, and I have two
developers working on it - then using the tool to calculate the duration
of 1 week. In construction, I'd say that we have a team of 10 working on
a task for 2 weeks, then derive the man hours from those two variables.

My recommendation is to go enroll in a Microsoft Project (or general scheduling)
class in your vicinity. It will help you significantly.


- Andrew Lavinsky
Blog: http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/epm

 

[Silene]

Thanks a lot for the answers but to continue understanding:
1) I don't schedule by the hour but I need to know the occupancy of my
resources/day. Should I look in the resource usage view only and relocate
them?

2)I schedule meetings to track the dates and considering the resources are
high tech people the cost of a 3 hour meeting is significant. Can you
comment on that, please?

3)I understand my goal is estimate when things will happen, an effort-based
schedule, so I should have a
accurately map resource allocation.

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

Ok - so we are developing an effort-based schedule where hours are tracked.

In that case, your goal is to use MS Project to develop a model of resource
allocations. Typically, here's how you would do that:

1) Make sure your WBS includes PM activities. For the PM activities, generally,
create hammock tasks for the duration of the project and assess how many
hours the PM would probably allocate to the project - then add those to the
task. This will shave perhaps 10-20% (if not more) of the PM time away from
general availability. Consider adding contours as appropriate (check that
in the help screen).

2) Add recurring meetings to the PM deliverable. Generally, for recurring
weekly meetings, I would again create a hammock task, and then calculate
which resources attend, and then do a rough calculation of let's say 3 hrs
X No. of weeks in the entire project. This accounts for the availability
hit from my recurring meetings. For one off meetings, add them to your schedule
and consider putting a Start No Earlier Than constraint on them as well as
a Deadline. Generally, I would set the duration of the meeting to one day
(or one week), but allocate 3 hours of each resource's time. From a scheduler
perspective, I don't care so much about what day the meeting happens, as
long as I capture the work load of preparing for and attending the meeting.
As long as the effort is accounted for in your model, the specific meeting
details may be irrelevant.

3) Add your project tasks. Estimate duration and effort separately - or
estimated effort first, then calculate how many resources you will have dedicated
to the task, and allow that to guide the duration calculation. Ensure the
tasks are all linked appropriately.

Once you've done all of that, you'll have a good model of overall resource
allocation. You can then look to optimize the schedule by reviewing such
items as the Critical Path, Slack, and Resource Overallocations. This is
where the art of scheduling comes in as you'll need to make critical decisions
as to which constraint you wish to optimize for.

I'd strongly recommend you consider taking a Microsoft Project training course
in your area or online. It will probably help you out significantly.

- Andrew Lavinsky
Blog: http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/epm

 

[Silene]

Thanks a lot Andrew,
I will try all that, I think I am on the right path but defenetely I will
have to have some outside help.

Silene

 

[Rob Schneider]

Silene,

As Andrew mentioned, taking a course or at least reading a really good
book makes all the difference. Project is a sophisticated tool. Use it
as it's designed to be used makes all the difference and can surely help
with de-risking your project.


--rms

www.rmschneider.com