Resources must work together (a meeting)

[Ed Berde]

Task 1 (8 hours) requires equal commitment from two resources (A and B). A
has no assignments and is available to work on any day. B is available to
work only 1 hour each day.

Project assigns A to Task 1 for 4 hours on day 1. It assigns B to Task 1
for 1 hour a day for days 1-4. This is unrealistic since the resources need
to work together.

I would envision a checkbox or something in the resource assignments tab to
do this. Something like 'Resources must work concurrently'.

Is there currently any way to do this in Project?

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

Yes there is but it is quite a workaround and it will probably force you to
modify your way of using Project...
For what it is worth:
Give all resources the standard (Project) calendar NO INDIVIDUAL HOLIDAYS
Enter days off (nonworking time) as tasks with a Must start On constraint
and allocate the proper resource to it
Now use resource leveling to eliminate the so created overallocations making
sure options are set as this:
- Leveling can split tasks ON
- Leveling can adjust individual assignments OFF

It is a great pity that while the makers of Leveling have thought of the
possibility that people sometimes work TOGETHER, the others in the
development lab did not envisage this.. Sorry :-((

There is a longer article on this on my website (and MS published it on
their site as well)
HTH

 

[DonL]

Ed,

While I don't know of a way to group the resources directly..., you could
(as a work-around) create a calendar that is essentially the "intersection"
in mathematical terms of the group of resources overlapping "working time"
and then assign the calendar to the tasks that they are to work together on.
In your example, this would mean that they would end up working B's schedule
of an hour a day, and would take 8 "working" days to complete - if I
understand your situation correctly.

This approach would not be an ideal solution if this situation comes up on
any sort of regular basis, though.

 

[DonL]

The other more common way to approach this would be to schedule the resources
meetings as tasks (this would mean that you would have to already know their
availability) and assign all resources needed to these tasks, making the
priority 1000 so that the tasks will not be leveled.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Don,

Whatever you do... when you make a day nonworking time, tasks scheduled that
day for that resource will be moved. No Must start on nor priority 1000 will
avoid that.

 

[DonL]

These were actually 2 different thoughts of how to attack the situation. I
should have included both of them in my first response and clearly stated
that these suggestions do not work together.