Resources with multiple calendars

[jackvinson]

Dumb question time, as I am sure this is answered somewhere. I don't know
the proper lingo to find what I need. I'd appreciate advice on where I can
read more or see examples for this one.

The primary question: How do I deal with resources that have multiple
calendars, such as people and equipment.

I have people and equipment. The equipment may run 24-hours, so I've given
them the 24-hour calendar. People only work on the calendar that I've set
for the project (slight modifiocation of the Standard calendar).

When I assign a task to a piece of equipment, it will not run at night.
There are no people associated with the task.

I'm even more confused when I have a task assigned to both humans and
equipment that splits over a day.

[And why do the task durations keep changing when I change calendars or add
resources? I've set them all to Fixed Duration. Do I need to turn off
"effort driven" as well?]

 

[DavidC]

Hi,

It sounds as though the tasks are set to the default calendar being the
project calendar.

I would check to make sure that the task calendar is set to 24 hours.

When a new task is created it always takes the project calendar as the
default, it shows in the task calendar field as 'none'. If you have a task
which can run for 24 hours per day then assign that calendar to the task. If
a resource is then allocated to the task which has a calendar having less
working hours than 24, then the task will amend the end date in order to
allow the resource with the shortest working day to complete that task.

In your case a one day task starting at 8:00am on a 24 hour calendar will
finish at 8:00am the next morning, as long as any resources applied to the
task are on a 24 hour calendar. If though there is a reosurce who has say a
ten hour calendar, then the task will take 24 hours but only in 10 hour bites
and will finish now 12:00am on the third day after the start date.

Hope this helps

Regards

DavidC

 

[jackvinson]

Ah... That helps somewhat. I still can't convince Project that it needs to
do something different with a task that uses a resources that has a different
calendar than the project.

Where do I go to find the answers to questions like this? It's very
frustrating to try to use Project and have it do non-intuitive things to me.

Jack

 

[John Sitka]

Might help, might not. Depends on how your brain is wired

Since you acknowledge that your
->equipment may run 24-hours,
That could be read, at it's most basic, that this equipment could contribute to project progress "at any time".
So if one sees Project as the container that holds those little bits of work. The Project calendar should
be "at least" a 24 hour calendar or you have already set up default constraints on the progress of your project.
Your people are resources and can be assigned a standard calendar if they only ever work standard days.
Or each individual can have a calendar or each group can be "considered" to adhere to a calendar etc.
The obvious methodology comes out of the disciple of applying restrictions only where they are explicitly set, by you.
That makes it easy to observe expected behaviour and eliminates suprises.
It only takes a little while to try it out, operationally and conceptually using your current information in a test case.
Things might click.

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

If the issue is that the equipment required to do the task and the people
required to operate the equipment, I suggest making the cleandar for the
equipment read the same as the operator's calendar. Even though it's
sitting there, it can't be used without an operator, right. So it's really
not available for any hours that the operator is off.

Task duration changes when you add or remove resources when the task is set
to effort driven. Make them non-effort driven to get that under control.

I'm of the opinion that Fixed Duration is a vastly overused task type. All
too often people use it to try to force the duration to stay at some
previously budgeted or targeted value. IMHO duration needs to be an honest
estimate of however long the work will require, not a closed box that you
try to force the work to fit into. When I think of a task that is
legitmately "fixed duration" it is something that must run for a specific
length of time - an engineering test might be an example, perhaps where an
engine under test needs to be run at 5000RPM for 30 minutes without lube
oil. That would be in the project plan as a fixed duration task, no doubt
about it. But to use fixed duration to try to force the schedule into what
someone has predetermined the schedule ought to look like is, IMHO, a misuse
of the tool.

Duration is the number of working time units between start and end of the
task. What is a "working time unit?" It is the minutes included in the
working time as defined by whatever calendar is governing the task. If you
cahnge the calendar and do not change the task start and end date, the
duration must change because the calendar now defines a different number of
minutes between those two points to be "working time minutes" than it did
before. Conversely, if you change the calendar's definiton of working time
and expect the duration to remain the same as it was before, the start
and/or finish date and time must also change.

 

[jackvinson]

Thanks all for your replies. I've gotten something working - more or less.

What I was really trying to do was map out the activities of a group I'm
working with, so I was doing a lot of adjusting to the resources and timing
of every task as I learned more about them. The frustration with effort
driven tasks is that they changed every time I added another resource to the
task on an iterative basis. (It works just fine if I know everything on the
first pass.)

Thanks again,

Jack