Scheduling help.

[Manis]

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Need some real help with the following issues that I have.

The project that I am dealing with, has no less than 500 tasks and 30 team
members. These include part time members, remote teams etc. The tasks are
fixed duration, fixed work etc. Some are constrained to start and finish on a
specific date.

The problems that I am facing are

1. Overallocation - There are more than 1 task that do not really depend on
anything other than the project start date. Resource are overallocated to 300
% and more. I have tried auto levelling and that doesn't bring about the
desired result. Is there anyway I can stop overallocation from happening in
the first place?

2. If overallocation cannot be stopped, what is the best (quickest, easiest
....) way to manually resolve overallocation?
I was thinking of putting in dependencies that are not really task
dependencies but are resource dependencies.. The problem with that is that we
then have all tasks in sequence and the timeline is stretched badly. AND, all
the tasks are in the critical path!

Thanks guys!

 

[Rod Gill]

If this is a tight time constrained project then you need to calculate what
resources you NEED and demand them. If the resources aren't available you
won't finish on time. The fact that you are so over-allocated and Project
can't resolve the issue suggests either you don't have enough resources or
that you need to manually solve the over-allocation and that you are likely
to end up with every Tasks critical or nearly critical.

Make sure your assignments are realistic. 100% means working 8h per day on
the task. Given admin time etc. is that really true?.

 

[Manis]

I have the basics figured out. I have people working only 6.5 hrs/day and the
holidays and vacations are all in. The constraints are on specific tasks not
the entire project. I'm not having the basic problems here.

1. Why is MS Project over allocating? (I'm not using auto levelling - auto
or manual). It is scheduling tasks for more than 10 hrs for 1 resource on a
particular day. How can I tell Project to not allocate a person for more than
X hrs on a work day?
2. If I have to manually resolve overallocation, what is the best/easiest
way to do it?

Thank you,
Mani.

 

[Rod Gill]

What is the Max units you have for the resource and what have you assigned?
You must manually keep units below max units.

Select Window split
Resource sheet or resource usage top half,
Gantt Chart bottom half.

Click on each over-allocated resource (in red) and Project shows only the
tasks for the selected resource below. manually resolve resource problem.