Setting up non-working calendars for resources

[DWeb]

Hello! I have read through postings and MVP websites, trying to determine
the proper approach for setting up my projects to properly account for
non-working time for my work resources (no material resources used). Now I'm
confused about which way to go and would love to get help from the smart
people out there.

I have resources who have different expected availability, which has been
budgeted - some will be out on maternity leave for 3 months, others are
working about 60% of the time, etc., where the specific days may not be
known, as much as the total hours per month that they are supposed to be
available to work.

Is there a simple way to handle these scenarios without having to select
specific days in "Change Working Time/<Resource Name> Calendar" that people
will be unavailable and marking those days as nonworking time?. I'm afraid
that working with assignments and leveling will be off too much if I said Joe
is not working Mon-Tu, as opposed to working 3 days in a week.

Can I just setup "Non-working" tasks of fixed duration, non effort-driven
and assign, for example, the resource available at 60% to these non-working
tasks at 40% assignment units?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Rod Gill]

For resources away for a week or more, simplest solution is to edit their
calendar and make the period non-working. Project then automatically delays
all their work.

For resources working only 60% of a 40 hour week: in the resource sheet set
max units to 60% and only ever assign them to tasks at 60% or less. No need
to edit calendars at all. Project automatically spreads a task's duration
out to get the entered work done.

Adding non-working tasks is a very complicated, manual and slow way of
resolving this problem and I don't recommend it.

Simplest settings for all tasks are usually Fixed Units, Effort driven off.
Any other settings I find are slower and create more work and confusion.

 

[DWeb]

Thanks for the response, Rod.

The main reason I had for going down the "non-working tasks" path was the
comments I read on MVP Jan de Messemaeker's website discussion that "Load
reports over time such as shown by the Usage views will show the resource as
underallocated" when using calendars to represent non-working time. Showing
resource allocation as accurately as possible is a significant requirement
for our project management team. However, we are more than willing to
sacrifice some of that accuracy to avoid any cumbersome practices associated
with using the non-working task approach.

With regards to your comment about setting max units to 60% for resources
scheduled to work 3 days a week, will that put too strict a control on their
allocation? What if they are periodically allowed to work 4 days a week or
only 2 days a week? I still get a bit confused about how unit settings
affect outcomes. If someone has max units of 60%, why do I need to assign
them at 60%? I thought that if I assigned them at 100% it would assign them
at their maximum unit availability? Is my understanding incorrect? Also,
what about the case where we have two people planned (in the budget) to be
out a certain period for maternity leave that will be different than the
actual timeframe for their absences? Set resource availability at 0% for
certain periods and 60% (or whatever applies) for the period when they return?

Also, with regards to your suggestion to always use Fixed Units tasks (non
effort-driven), would you suggest doing that for my "Support Activities"
project that has several support tasks that last the entire length of the
contract that are performed by most resources? I setup these tasks (end user
support, bug fixes, issue management) as fixed duration, non effort driven
and allow work to calculate based upon the assigned resources' units. I was
concerned that any other task type would change the duration. Any thoughts
on this? I am setting up another "Release Plan" project that has Fixed work
tasks representing application enhancements being delivered by these same
resources (shared via a resource pool), where I need to be able to see when
these enhancements will complete based upon the assigned resources and their
availability. Would you suggest changing this from Fixed Work to Fixed Units
as well?

Thanks again for taking the time to respond and offer your thoughts and
suggestions.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

Just a word in from a dissident
I never advise to use percentages on resources.
60% for a resource (be it availability or load) is interpreted by Project,
and used in calculations, as 36 seconds per minute.
Now this may be a good an approximation as any, to me it is not an ideal.
I prefer to think people always work 100%.

Moreover, Project Management Theory of Constraints shows that you get the
best delays by having people always first finish what they're doing and not
spread their time over multiple tasks.

And yes, representing nonworking time by tasks (my article is now also on
the Microsoft website ) gives some extra work, but assigning percentages
does that as well - I wouldn't pay for the pages of paper spent printing
the explanations on that one.

For instance, yes, when a resource has 60% availability the default for
assigning is 60% but it is very easy to assign a precentage higher that
that - which make Resource Leveling unusable.

I work for an IT shop with 80 project leaders where these guidances are
applied (Only 100%, absence is a task) and that gives the results thay
want..

Greetings,

 

[DWeb]

Thanks - I appreciate you taking the time to comment. I tried testing out
the macro you have on your website on a test project, but I got this error -
"Run-time error '1101'...The argument value is not valid". Not sure what to
do - I was hoping to see how the macro created the tasks to get an idea of
how I should do it.

It appears, from reading the macro text, that you setup the non-working
tasks as Fixed Units. Is the idea then that the resources are assigned at
100% units to the non-working tasks and that each non-working "period" per
resource gets its own task? Do the non-working tasks have a "start no
earlier than constraint" or something?

I'm not sure I understand how I should set up non-working tasks when I'm
going in without any resource calendar dates setup yet. Before I started
this thread, I had created a Non-working time project and had one task,
"Non-working time" that I was assigning all resources to. However, because I
knew what the total planned "absent hours" per month was, I had setup the
task as Fixed Work and assigned the work per person to the Non-working time
task according to the difference between total available work hours per month
and their expected work hours per month.

After seeing that your macro uses Fixed Units, I'm all confused again on how
to approach this. What am I missing?

Regards

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

I agree 100% with you about assigning resources 100% as a rule <grin>. But
I do have some qualms about the idea of showing non-working time as tasks
rather than forcing Project just to avoid scheduling during them by
designating them non-working time in the resource calendar. Here's an
example of the problem I see. We have Joe Resource who gets $10 per hour
assigned to Project X which consists of two 5-day tasks A & B. He's going
on vacation for 2 weeks in between the two tasks. If we represent his
vacation as a task, ---

Task A - 5d - 40 man-hours - $400
Task Vacation - 10d - 80 man-hours - $800
Task B - 5d - 40 man-hours - $400

Our schedule is right but our total labour hours and costs are double what
they should be. This example illustrates why I don't like to see anything
in that plan except actual work directed at the project's deliverables. The
costs and man-hours spent on vacation are actually not part of the project
at all. Including such time as tasks is fine as far as scheduling and
resource leveling is concerned but throws everything else seriously out of
whack. How do you adjust the budgets so they reflect the real marginal
costs of the project if you do?

When I see a full time resource assignment something like a 1 day task on
Tuesday at 50%, my thoughts are not that the resource is going to work from
1300-1700 on it. My thought is he's going to spend 4 hours on that task but
as long as it's done on Tuesday, I really don't care WHICH 4 hours it is,
I'll let him sort that one out for himself - as far as the project schedule
is concerned it takes all day. OTOH, if the resource is a part-time worker
who is only physically there for 4 hours a day, I'll set up a resource
calendar that shows hours of work for the 4 hours he is actually scheduled
to be on the property and if I need him to do 4 hours on something on
Tuesday, spending his full shift, I'll make it a half-day duration task and
assign him 100% to it.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Steve,

Just about the cost.

If you read the article I wrote on it, my advice is to use an other (zero
cost) cost rate table for nonworking tasks.
OTOH, I never felt this as a big thing because over here practically nobody
uses Project to calculate costs.
Unless teh customer specifically asks for it I do not even touch it in my
courses.

Greetings

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hello DWeb,

See my reply embedded
Greetings,

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/
+32-495-300 620

Thanks - I appreciate you taking the time to comment. I tried testing out
the macro you have on your website on a test project, but I got this error -
"Run-time error '1101'...The argument value is not valid". Not sure what to
do - I was hoping to see how the macro created the tasks to get an idea of
how I should do it.

I tested the macro again and found out it doesn't support the presence of
external tasks in the original project.
Just to make sure there are no other flaws... when you get the message
normally the VB Editor shows up with a line overlined. What is the content
of that line?

It appears, from reading the macro text, that you setup the non-working
tasks as Fixed Units. Is the idea then that the resources are assigned at
100% units to the non-working tasks and that each non-working "period" per
resource gets its own task? Do the non-working tasks have a "start no
earlier than constraint" or something?

Yes, that is the idea. The tasks receive a Must start on constraint (in such
a way that when you do leveling later, they don't move and leveling will
split the other tasks)

I'm not sure I understand how I should set up non-working tasks when I'm
going in without any resource calendar dates setup yet. Before I started
this thread, I had created a Non-working time project and had one task,
"Non-working time" that I was assigning all resources to. However, because I
knew what the total planned "absent hours" per month was, I had setup the
task as Fixed Work and assigned the work per person to the Non-working time
task according to the difference between total available work hours per month
and their expected work hours per month.

After seeing that your macro uses Fixed Units, I'm all confused again on how
to approach this. What am I missing?

I'm not claiming my approach is the only one or even the best one. It all
boils down to a matter of planning philosophy. Lost of people are all the
time planning availability and remaining availability. I do not plan
remaining availability, it is the result of Project's planning. I enter the
tasks with if ever possible all resources assigned to 100%, that normally
yields overallocations, then I run Leveling.
Nonworking tasks just play the same part as other tasks, it is just that by
fixing them with a MSO constraint leveling will move the other tasks around
them.

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

If the project manager is responsible for bringing the project in on
schedule and within budget, how is that possible without monitoring costs
and knowing if you're under, on, or over budget? And what about earned
value as a means of tracking progress - just use an arbitrary unit cost?

Didn't think about using another cost rate table for the non-working tasks -
duhhh, another one of those head slapping "of course!" moments <grin>.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Steve,

First, "budget" is very often measured in men-month so no need for Euros
And Earned value as a method is practically unknown here as well.
Greetings,

 

[DWeb]

Hi Jan,

Thanks for the quick response!

The debugger stops on this line:
Set AnyTask = NWTproject.Tasks(Counter)

When I mouseover NWTproject.Tasks(Counter), I see "<The argument value is
not valid.>". Counter has a value of 1.


I appreciate what you are saying about multiple approaches. The one you
suggest is consistent with our planning philosophy and desire to use leveling
to indicate resource availability. I just want to get it in place to make
sure I have an approach I can articulate.

Thanks again for all the help!

 

[DWeb]

Just a quick response related to tracking budget without costs. I have
worked within a organization that managed using earned value, calculated with
hours. This required some custom tables and macros within MS Project,
because I believe MS Project's out of the box earned value approach relies on
using the cost fields. The approach I particpated in used custom ACWP, BCWS,
BCWP fields based off Work, Remaining Work, Actual Work, and Baseline Work
values. We also had the option of using cost in dollars (vs. hours) for
doing Earned Value calculations.

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

Was just wondering about that - even if we disregard the currency issue, the
staff hours spent "working" on non-working tasks should not be included in
the man-months required for the project. In my previous example of two
tasks and a vacation, the project really only requires 80 man-hours but
including the vacation as a task makes it appear to be 160 man-hours, double
the real value. How is that handled?

--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Hi Steve,

First, "budget" is very often measured in men-month so no need for Euros
And Earned value as a method is practically unknown here as well.
Greetings,

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/
+32-495-300 620

If the project manager is responsible for bringing the project in on
schedule and within budget, how is that possible without monitoring costs
and knowing if you're under, on, or over budget? And what about earned
value as a means of tracking progress - just use an arbitrary unit cost?

Didn't think about using another cost rate table for the non-working tasks -
duhhh, another one of those head slapping "of course!" moments <grin>.

--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

"Jan De Messemaeker" <jandemes at prom hyphen ade dot be> wrote in
message

Hi Steve,

Just about the cost.

If you read the article I wrote on it, my advice is to use an other (zero
cost) cost rate table for nonworking tasks.
OTOH, I never felt this as a big thing because over here practically
nobody
uses Project to calculate costs.
Unless teh customer specifically asks for it I do not even touch it in my
courses.

Greetings
--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/
+32-495-300 620
"Steve House [Project MVP]" <[email protected]>
schreef in bericht I agree 100% with you about assigning resources 100% as a rule <grin>.
But
I do have some qualms about the idea of showing non-working time as tasks
rather than forcing Project just to avoid scheduling during them by
designating them non-working time in the resource calendar. Here's an
example of the problem I see. We have Joe Resource who gets $10 per hour
assigned to Project X which consists of two 5-day tasks A & B. He's
going
on vacation for 2 weeks in between the two tasks. If we represent his
vacation as a task, ---

Task A - 5d - 40 man-hours - $400
Task Vacation - 10d - 80 man-hours - $800
Task B - 5d - 40 man-hours - $400

Our schedule is right but our total labour hours and costs are double
what
they should be. This example illustrates why I don't like to see
anything
in that plan except actual work directed at the project's
deliverables.
The
costs and man-hours spent on vacation are actually not part of the
project
at all. Including such time as tasks is fine as far as scheduling and
resource leveling is concerned but throws everything else seriously
out
of
whack. How do you adjust the budgets so they reflect the real
marginal
costs of the project if you do?

When I see a full time resource assignment something like a 1 day task on
Tuesday at 50%, my thoughts are not that the resource is going to work
from
1300-1700 on it. My thought is he's going to spend 4 hours on that task
but
as long as it's done on Tuesday, I really don't care WHICH 4 hours it is,
I'll let him sort that one out for himself - as far as the project
schedule
is concerned it takes all day. OTOH, if the resource is a part-time
worker
who is only physically there for 4 hours a day, I'll set up a resource
calendar that shows hours of work for the 4 hours he is actually
scheduled
to be on the property and if I need him to do 4 hours on something on
Tuesday, spending his full shift, I'll make it a half-day duration
task
and
assign him 100% to it.

--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs


"Jan De Messemaeker" <jandemes at prom hyphen ade dot be> wrote in
message
Hi,

Just a word in from a dissident
I never advise to use percentages on resources.
60% for a resource (be it availability or load) is interpreted by
Project,
and used in calculations, as 36 seconds per minute.
Now this may be a good an approximation as any, to me it is not an
ideal.
I prefer to think people always work 100%.

Moreover, Project Management Theory of Constraints shows that you
get
the
best delays by having people always first finish what they're doing and
not
spread their time over multiple tasks.

And yes, representing nonworking time by tasks (my article is now also
on
the Microsoft website ) gives some extra work, but assigning
percentages
does that as well - I wouldn't pay for the pages of paper spent
printing
the explanations on that one.

For instance, yes, when a resource has 60% availability the default for
assigning is 60% but it is very easy to assign a precentage higher that
that - which make Resource Leveling unusable.

I work for an IT shop with 80 project leaders where these guidances are
applied (Only 100%, absence is a task) and that gives the results thay
want..

Greetings,

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/
+32-495-300 620
"DWeb" <[email protected]> schreef in bericht
Thanks for the response, Rod.

The main reason I had for going down the "non-working tasks" path was
the
comments I read on MVP Jan de Messemaeker's website discussion that
"Load
reports over time such as shown by the Usage views will show the
resource
as
underallocated" when using calendars to represent non-working time.
Showing
resource allocation as accurately as possible is a significant
requirement
for our project management team. However, we are more than willing to
sacrifice some of that accuracy to avoid any cumbersome practices
associated
with using the non-working task approach.

With regards to your comment about setting max units to 60% for
resources
scheduled to work 3 days a week, will that put too strict a control on
their
allocation? What if they are periodically allowed to work 4 days a
week
or
only 2 days a week? I still get a bit confused about how unit
settings
affect outcomes. If someone has max units of 60%, why do I need to
assign
them at 60%? I thought that if I assigned them at 100% it would
assign
them
at their maximum unit availability? Is my understanding incorrect?
Also,
what about the case where we have two people planned (in the
budget)
to
be
out a certain period for maternity leave that will be different
than
the
actual timeframe for their absences? Set resource availability at 0%
for
certain periods and 60% (or whatever applies) for the period when they
return?

Also, with regards to your suggestion to always use Fixed Units tasks
(non
effort-driven), would you suggest doing that for my "Support
Activities"
project that has several support tasks that last the entire length of
the
contract that are performed by most resources? I setup these tasks
(end
user
support, bug fixes, issue management) as fixed duration, non effort
driven
and allow work to calculate based upon the assigned resources' units.
I
was
concerned that any other task type would change the duration. Any
thoughts
on this? I am setting up another "Release Plan" project that has
Fixed
work
tasks representing application enhancements being delivered by
these
same
resources (shared via a resource pool), where I need to be able to see
when
these enhancements will complete based upon the assigned resources and
their
availability. Would you suggest changing this from Fixed Work to
Fixed
Units
as well?

Thanks again for taking the time to respond and offer your thoughts
and
suggestions.

:

For resources away for a week or more, simplest solution is to edit
their
calendar and make the period non-working. Project then automatically
delays
all their work.

For resources working only 60% of a 40 hour week: in the resource
sheet
set
max units to 60% and only ever assign them to tasks at 60% or less.
No
need
to edit calendars at all. Project automatically spreads a task's
duration
out to get the entered work done.

Adding non-working tasks is a very complicated, manual and slow way
of
resolving this problem and I don't recommend it.

Simplest settings for all tasks are usually Fixed Units, Effort
driven
off.
Any other settings I find are slower and create more work and
confusion.
--

Rod Gill
Project MVP


Hello! I have read through postings and MVP websites, trying
to
determine
the proper approach for setting up my projects to properly account
for
non-working time for my work resources (no material resources
used).
Now
I'm
confused about which way to go and would love to get help from the
smart
people out there.

I have resources who have different expected availability,
which
has
been
budgeted - some will be out on maternity leave for 3 months,
others
are
working about 60% of the time, etc., where the specific days
may
not
be
known, as much as the total hours per month that they are supposed
to
be
available to work.

Is there a simple way to handle these scenarios without having to
select
specific days in "Change Working Time/<Resource Name> Calendar"
that
people
will be unavailable and marking those days as nonworking time?.
I'm
afraid
that working with assignments and leveling will be off too much if
I
said
Joe
is not working Mon-Tu, as opposed to working 3 days in a week.

Can I just setup "Non-working" tasks of fixed duration, non
effort-driven
and assign, for example, the resource available at 60% to these
non-working
tasks at 40% assignment units?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

Yes, you can do EV with hours as well as costs although it is is incomplete
if you do, not taking into account the costs associated with last minute
resource substitutions, the higher cost of overtime work that may be needed
to stay on schedule, or material costs. But even if you track by hours
instead of dollars, IMHO including non-working time as tasks introduces
serious errors in the hours required for the project. In the example in my
message to Jan of 2 one-week tasks with a 2-week vacation in the middle,
including the vacation as a task makes the project's total man-hour budget
160 hours yet the real budget should only be 80.

The costs of the project should not be the total costs to the firm of doing
business, they should be the cost of doing this project instead of deploying
the resources to do something else. Your company is going to have to pay
for Joe Resource's vacation regardless of whether he's assigned on the
project or not so the cost/hours of his vacation should be excluded from the
project. They are properly accounted for as part of the overheads of the
firm, totally separate from the project budget. If you are billing a client
for the project, they certainly need to be included in the amount billed but
you account for that when you use a burdened labour cost for the resource
rate.

--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Just a quick response related to tracking budget without costs. I have
worked within a organization that managed using earned value, calculated
with
hours. This required some custom tables and macros within MS Project,
because I believe MS Project's out of the box earned value approach relies
on
using the cost fields. The approach I particpated in used custom ACWP,
BCWS,
BCWP fields based off Work, Remaining Work, Actual Work, and Baseline Work
values. We also had the option of using cost in dollars (vs. hours) for
doing Earned Value calculations.

If the project manager is responsible for bringing the project in on
schedule and within budget, how is that possible without monitoring costs
and knowing if you're under, on, or over budget? And what about earned
value as a means of tracking progress - just use an arbitrary unit cost?

Didn't think about using another cost rate table for the non-working
tasks -
duhhh, another one of those head slapping "of course!" moments <grin>.

--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

"Jan De Messemaeker" <jandemes at prom hyphen ade dot be> wrote in
message

Hi Steve,

Just about the cost.

If you read the article I wrote on it, my advice is to use an other
(zero
cost) cost rate table for nonworking tasks.
OTOH, I never felt this as a big thing because over here practically
nobody
uses Project to calculate costs.
Unless teh customer specifically asks for it I do not even touch it in
my
courses.

Greetings
--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/
+32-495-300 620
"Steve House [Project MVP]" <[email protected]>
schreef in bericht I agree 100% with you about assigning resources 100% as a rule <grin>.
But
I do have some qualms about the idea of showing non-working time as
tasks
rather than forcing Project just to avoid scheduling during them by
designating them non-working time in the resource calendar. Here's an
example of the problem I see. We have Joe Resource who gets $10 per
hour
assigned to Project X which consists of two 5-day tasks A & B. He's
going
on vacation for 2 weeks in between the two tasks. If we represent his
vacation as a task, ---

Task A - 5d - 40 man-hours - $400
Task Vacation - 10d - 80 man-hours - $800
Task B - 5d - 40 man-hours - $400

Our schedule is right but our total labour hours and costs are double
what
they should be. This example illustrates why I don't like to see
anything
in that plan except actual work directed at the project's
deliverables.
The
costs and man-hours spent on vacation are actually not part of the
project
at all. Including such time as tasks is fine as far as scheduling and
resource leveling is concerned but throws everything else seriously
out
of
whack. How do you adjust the budgets so they reflect the real
marginal
costs of the project if you do?

When I see a full time resource assignment something like a 1 day task
on
Tuesday at 50%, my thoughts are not that the resource is going to work
from
1300-1700 on it. My thought is he's going to spend 4 hours on that
task
but
as long as it's done on Tuesday, I really don't care WHICH 4 hours it
is,
I'll let him sort that one out for himself - as far as the project
schedule
is concerned it takes all day. OTOH, if the resource is a part-time
worker
who is only physically there for 4 hours a day, I'll set up a resource
calendar that shows hours of work for the 4 hours he is actually
scheduled
to be on the property and if I need him to do 4 hours on something on
Tuesday, spending his full shift, I'll make it a half-day duration
task
and
assign him 100% to it.

--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs


"Jan De Messemaeker" <jandemes at prom hyphen ade dot be> wrote in
message
Hi,

Just a word in from a dissident
I never advise to use percentages on resources.
60% for a resource (be it availability or load) is interpreted by
Project,
and used in calculations, as 36 seconds per minute.
Now this may be a good an approximation as any, to me it is not an
ideal.
I prefer to think people always work 100%.

Moreover, Project Management Theory of Constraints shows that you
get
the
best delays by having people always first finish what they're doing
and
not
spread their time over multiple tasks.

And yes, representing nonworking time by tasks (my article is now
also
on
the Microsoft website ) gives some extra work, but assigning
percentages
does that as well - I wouldn't pay for the pages of paper spent
printing
the explanations on that one.

For instance, yes, when a resource has 60% availability the default
for
assigning is 60% but it is very easy to assign a precentage higher
that
that - which make Resource Leveling unusable.

I work for an IT shop with 80 project leaders where these guidances
are
applied (Only 100%, absence is a task) and that gives the results
thay
want..

Greetings,

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/
+32-495-300 620
"DWeb" <[email protected]> schreef in bericht
Thanks for the response, Rod.

The main reason I had for going down the "non-working tasks" path
was
the
comments I read on MVP Jan de Messemaeker's website discussion that
"Load
reports over time such as shown by the Usage views will show the
resource
as
underallocated" when using calendars to represent non-working time.
Showing
resource allocation as accurately as possible is a significant
requirement
for our project management team. However, we are more than willing
to
sacrifice some of that accuracy to avoid any cumbersome practices
associated
with using the non-working task approach.

With regards to your comment about setting max units to 60% for
resources
scheduled to work 3 days a week, will that put too strict a control
on
their
allocation? What if they are periodically allowed to work 4 days a
week
or
only 2 days a week? I still get a bit confused about how unit
settings
affect outcomes. If someone has max units of 60%, why do I need to
assign
them at 60%? I thought that if I assigned them at 100% it would
assign
them
at their maximum unit availability? Is my understanding incorrect?
Also,
what about the case where we have two people planned (in the
budget)
to
be
out a certain period for maternity leave that will be different
than
the
actual timeframe for their absences? Set resource availability at
0%
for
certain periods and 60% (or whatever applies) for the period when
they
return?

Also, with regards to your suggestion to always use Fixed Units
tasks
(non
effort-driven), would you suggest doing that for my "Support
Activities"
project that has several support tasks that last the entire length
of
the
contract that are performed by most resources? I setup these tasks
(end
user
support, bug fixes, issue management) as fixed duration, non effort
driven
and allow work to calculate based upon the assigned resources'
units.
I
was
concerned that any other task type would change the duration. Any
thoughts
on this? I am setting up another "Release Plan" project that has
Fixed
work
tasks representing application enhancements being delivered by
these
same
resources (shared via a resource pool), where I need to be able to
see
when
these enhancements will complete based upon the assigned resources
and
their
availability. Would you suggest changing this from Fixed Work to
Fixed
Units
as well?

Thanks again for taking the time to respond and offer your thoughts
and
suggestions.

:

For resources away for a week or more, simplest solution is to
edit
their
calendar and make the period non-working. Project then
automatically
delays
all their work.

For resources working only 60% of a 40 hour week: in the resource
sheet
set
max units to 60% and only ever assign them to tasks at 60% or
less.
No
need
to edit calendars at all. Project automatically spreads a task's
duration
out to get the entered work done.

Adding non-working tasks is a very complicated, manual and slow
way
of
resolving this problem and I don't recommend it.

Simplest settings for all tasks are usually Fixed Units, Effort
driven
off.
Any other settings I find are slower and create more work and
confusion.
--

Rod Gill
Project MVP


Hello! I have read through postings and MVP websites, trying
to
determine
the proper approach for setting up my projects to properly
account
for
non-working time for my work resources (no material resources
used).
Now
I'm
confused about which way to go and would love to get help from
the
smart
people out there.

I have resources who have different expected availability,
which
has
been
budgeted - some will be out on maternity leave for 3 months,
others
are
working about 60% of the time, etc., where the specific days
may
not
be
known, as much as the total hours per month that they are
supposed
to
be
available to work.

Is there a simple way to handle these scenarios without having
to
select
specific days in "Change Working Time/<Resource Name> Calendar"
that
people
will be unavailable and marking those days as nonworking time?.
I'm
afraid
that working with assignments and leveling will be off too much
if
I
said
Joe
is not working Mon-Tu, as opposed to working 3 days in a week.

Can I just setup "Non-working" tasks of fixed duration, non
effort-driven
and assign, for example, the resource available at 60% to these
non-working
tasks at 40% assignment units?

Thanks in advance!

 

[DWeb]

Steve,

I agree totally with your points. Using hours can totally skew your
perspective of performance. If the average cost rate is $1.00 vs. $100, you
clearly get a totally different result, even for the same status shown using
hours only.

I have a question related to your comment about the project showing
non-working time as an expense of the project, which it is not, I agree. If
I create a master project that only includes the "core" sub-project tasks,
and excludes the non-working time subproject, does that cure the dilemma you
raise?

Thanks

Yes, you can do EV with hours as well as costs although it is is incomplete
if you do, not taking into account the costs associated with last minute
resource substitutions, the higher cost of overtime work that may be needed
to stay on schedule, or material costs. But even if you track by hours
instead of dollars, IMHO including non-working time as tasks introduces
serious errors in the hours required for the project. In the example in my
message to Jan of 2 one-week tasks with a 2-week vacation in the middle,
including the vacation as a task makes the project's total man-hour budget
160 hours yet the real budget should only be 80.

The costs of the project should not be the total costs to the firm of doing
business, they should be the cost of doing this project instead of deploying
the resources to do something else. Your company is going to have to pay
for Joe Resource's vacation regardless of whether he's assigned on the
project or not so the cost/hours of his vacation should be excluded from the
project. They are properly accounted for as part of the overheads of the
firm, totally separate from the project budget. If you are billing a client
for the project, they certainly need to be included in the amount billed but
you account for that when you use a burdened labour cost for the resource
rate.

--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Just a quick response related to tracking budget without costs. I have
worked within a organization that managed using earned value, calculated
with
hours. This required some custom tables and macros within MS Project,
because I believe MS Project's out of the box earned value approach relies
on
using the cost fields. The approach I particpated in used custom ACWP,
BCWS,
BCWP fields based off Work, Remaining Work, Actual Work, and Baseline Work
values. We also had the option of using cost in dollars (vs. hours) for
doing Earned Value calculations.

If the project manager is responsible for bringing the project in on
schedule and within budget, how is that possible without monitoring costs
and knowing if you're under, on, or over budget? And what about earned
value as a means of tracking progress - just use an arbitrary unit cost?

Didn't think about using another cost rate table for the non-working
tasks -
duhhh, another one of those head slapping "of course!" moments <grin>.

--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

"Jan De Messemaeker" <jandemes at prom hyphen ade dot be> wrote in
message
Hi Steve,

Just about the cost.

If you read the article I wrote on it, my advice is to use an other
(zero
cost) cost rate table for nonworking tasks.
OTOH, I never felt this as a big thing because over here practically
nobody
uses Project to calculate costs.
Unless teh customer specifically asks for it I do not even touch it in
my
courses.

Greetings
--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/
+32-495-300 620
"Steve House [Project MVP]" <[email protected]>
schreef in bericht I agree 100% with you about assigning resources 100% as a rule <grin>.
But
I do have some qualms about the idea of showing non-working time as
tasks
rather than forcing Project just to avoid scheduling during them by
designating them non-working time in the resource calendar. Here's an
example of the problem I see. We have Joe Resource who gets $10 per
hour
assigned to Project X which consists of two 5-day tasks A & B. He's
going
on vacation for 2 weeks in between the two tasks. If we represent his
vacation as a task, ---

Task A - 5d - 40 man-hours - $400
Task Vacation - 10d - 80 man-hours - $800
Task B - 5d - 40 man-hours - $400

Our schedule is right but our total labour hours and costs are double
what
they should be. This example illustrates why I don't like to see
anything
in that plan except actual work directed at the project's
deliverables.
The
costs and man-hours spent on vacation are actually not part of the
project
at all. Including such time as tasks is fine as far as scheduling and
resource leveling is concerned but throws everything else seriously
out
of
whack. How do you adjust the budgets so they reflect the real
marginal
costs of the project if you do?

When I see a full time resource assignment something like a 1 day task
on
Tuesday at 50%, my thoughts are not that the resource is going to work
from
1300-1700 on it. My thought is he's going to spend 4 hours on that
task
but
as long as it's done on Tuesday, I really don't care WHICH 4 hours it
is,
I'll let him sort that one out for himself - as far as the project
schedule
is concerned it takes all day. OTOH, if the resource is a part-time
worker
who is only physically there for 4 hours a day, I'll set up a resource
calendar that shows hours of work for the 4 hours he is actually
scheduled
to be on the property and if I need him to do 4 hours on something on
Tuesday, spending his full shift, I'll make it a half-day duration
task
and
assign him 100% to it.

--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs


"Jan De Messemaeker" <jandemes at prom hyphen ade dot be> wrote in
message
Hi,

Just a word in from a dissident
I never advise to use percentages on resources.
60% for a resource (be it availability or load) is interpreted by
Project,
and used in calculations, as 36 seconds per minute.
Now this may be a good an approximation as any, to me it is not an
ideal.
I prefer to think people always work 100%.

Moreover, Project Management Theory of Constraints shows that you
get
the
best delays by having people always first finish what they're doing
and
not
spread their time over multiple tasks.

And yes, representing nonworking time by tasks (my article is now
also
on
the Microsoft website ) gives some extra work, but assigning
percentages
does that as well - I wouldn't pay for the pages of paper spent
printing
the explanations on that one.

For instance, yes, when a resource has 60% availability the default
for
assigning is 60% but it is very easy to assign a precentage higher
that
that - which make Resource Leveling unusable.

I work for an IT shop with 80 project leaders where these guidances
are
applied (Only 100%, absence is a task) and that gives the results
thay
want..

Greetings,

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/
+32-495-300 620
"DWeb" <[email protected]> schreef in bericht
Thanks for the response, Rod.

The main reason I had for going down the "non-working tasks" path
was
the
comments I read on MVP Jan de Messemaeker's website discussion that
"Load
reports over time such as shown by the Usage views will show the
resource
as
underallocated" when using calendars to represent non-working time.
Showing
resource allocation as accurately as possible is a significant
requirement
for our project management team. However, we are more than willing
to
sacrifice some of that accuracy to avoid any cumbersome practices
associated
with using the non-working task approach.

With regards to your comment about setting max units to 60% for
resources
scheduled to work 3 days a week, will that put too strict a control
on
their
allocation? What if they are periodically allowed to work 4 days a
week
or
only 2 days a week? I still get a bit confused about how unit
settings
affect outcomes. If someone has max units of 60%, why do I need to
assign
them at 60%? I thought that if I assigned them at 100% it would
assign
them
at their maximum unit availability? Is my understanding incorrect?
Also,
what about the case where we have two people planned (in the
budget)
to
be
out a certain period for maternity leave that will be different
than
the
actual timeframe for their absences? Set resource availability at
0%
for
certain periods and 60% (or whatever applies) for the period when
they
return?

Also, with regards to your suggestion to always use Fixed Units
tasks
(non
effort-driven), would you suggest doing that for my "Support
Activities"
project that has several support tasks that last the entire length
of
the
contract that are performed by most resources? I setup these tasks
(end
user
support, bug fixes, issue management) as fixed duration, non effort
driven
and allow work to calculate based upon the assigned resources'
units.
I
was
concerned that any other task type would change the duration. Any
thoughts
on this? I am setting up another "Release Plan" project that has
Fixed
work
tasks representing application enhancements being delivered by
these
same
resources (shared via a resource pool), where I need to be able to
see
when
these enhancements will complete based upon the assigned resources
and
their
availability. Would you suggest changing this from Fixed Work to
Fixed
Units
as well?

Thanks again for taking the time to respond and offer your thoughts
and
suggestions.

:

For resources away for a week or more, simplest solution is to
edit
their
calendar and make the period non-working. Project then
automatically
delays
all their work.

For resources working only 60% of a 40 hour week: in the resource
sheet
set
max units to 60% and only ever assign them to tasks at 60% or
less.
No
need
to edit calendars at all. Project automatically spreads a task's
duration
out to get the entered work done.

Adding non-working tasks is a very complicated, manual and slow
way
of
resolving this problem and I don't recommend it.

Simplest settings for all tasks are usually Fixed Units, Effort
driven
off.
Any other settings I find are slower and create more work and
confusion.
--

Rod Gill
Project MVP


Hello! I have read through postings and MVP websites, trying
to
determine
the proper approach for setting up my projects to properly
account
for
non-working time for my work resources (no material resources
used).
Now
I'm
confused about which way to go and would love to get help from
the
smart
people out there.

I have resources who have different expected availability,
which
has
been
budgeted - some will be out on maternity leave for 3 months,
others
are
working about 60% of the time, etc., where the specific days
may
not
be
known, as much as the total hours per month that they are
supposed
to
be
available to work.

Is there a simple way to handle these scenarios without having
to
select
specific days in "Change Working Time/<Resource Name> Calendar"
that
people
will be unavailable and marking those days as nonworking time?.
I'm
afraid
that working with assignments and leveling will be off too much
if
I
said
Joe
is not working Mon-Tu, as opposed to working 3 days in a week.

Can I just setup "Non-working" tasks of fixed duration, non
effort-driven
and assign, for example, the resource available at 60% to these
non-working
tasks at 40% assignment units?

Thanks in advance!

 

[DWeb]

Hello Jan,

Another question for you. In the approach you suggest for non-working time,
in a scenario where a resource had Monday and Friday as non-working days for
4 consecutive weeks, how many non-working tasks would you setup? Or better
yet, if that was someone's planned schedule for an entire year, would it be
one non-working task?

I have created a single task, "Non-working Activities", and have been trying
to assign resources to it (who I have already assigned to other tasks, in
some cases). I changed the non-working activities task to Fixed Units with a
must start on date of the contract start date, with a duration that takes it
to the contract end date. I was trying to enter the non-working hours per
month for each resource in the task usage view, based upon the planned
budget. Doing this drops their units below 100%, I'm assuming because of the
length of the task and all the unassigned days for each resource.

How should the tasks be setup using the non-working time approach?

Regards

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Steve,

Since my customer is more concerned about the good usage of resources rather
than checking on which project they were spent, the primary objective IS to
count nonworking time as working time.

In practice, they put nonworking time in a separate project (they call it
NPA projects, non productivce activities) that is managed on program manager
level and linked to the same pool as the POP files (Productive Operational
Project).

Do also notice that their budget follow up is rather original (but I do like
the idea): actuals are taken from the time registration program, planned
work from the POP files - That way no integration between the time
registration program and Project is needed. Budget comes from neither, it is
decided op upper management level.

Greetings,


--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/
+32-495-300 620

Was just wondering about that - even if we disregard the currency issue, the
staff hours spent "working" on non-working tasks should not be included in
the man-months required for the project. In my previous example of two
tasks and a vacation, the project really only requires 80 man-hours but
including the vacation as a task makes it appear to be 160 man-hours, double
the real value. How is that handled?

--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Hi Steve,

First, "budget" is very often measured in men-month so no need for Euros
And Earned value as a method is practically unknown here as well.
Greetings,

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/
+32-495-300 620

If the project manager is responsible for bringing the project in on
schedule and within budget, how is that possible without monitoring costs
and knowing if you're under, on, or over budget? And what about earned
value as a means of tracking progress - just use an arbitrary unit cost?

Didn't think about using another cost rate table for the non-working tasks -
duhhh, another one of those head slapping "of course!" moments <grin>.

--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

"Jan De Messemaeker" <jandemes at prom hyphen ade dot be> wrote in
message
Hi Steve,

Just about the cost.

If you read the article I wrote on it, my advice is to use an other (zero
cost) cost rate table for nonworking tasks.
OTOH, I never felt this as a big thing because over here practically
nobody
uses Project to calculate costs.
Unless teh customer specifically asks for it I do not even touch it

in
my

courses.

Greetings
--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/
+32-495-300 620
"Steve House [Project MVP]" <[email protected]>
schreef in bericht I agree 100% with you about assigning resources 100% as a rule

But
I do have some qualms about the idea of showing non-working time as tasks
rather than forcing Project just to avoid scheduling during them by
designating them non-working time in the resource calendar. Here's an
example of the problem I see. We have Joe Resource who gets $10 per hour
assigned to Project X which consists of two 5-day tasks A & B. He's
going
on vacation for 2 weeks in between the two tasks. If we represent his
vacation as a task, ---

Task A - 5d - 40 man-hours - $400
Task Vacation - 10d - 80 man-hours - $800
Task B - 5d - 40 man-hours - $400

Our schedule is right but our total labour hours and costs are double
what
they should be. This example illustrates why I don't like to see
anything
in that plan except actual work directed at the project's
deliverables.
The
costs and man-hours spent on vacation are actually not part of the
project
at all. Including such time as tasks is fine as far as scheduling and
resource leveling is concerned but throws everything else seriously
out
of
whack. How do you adjust the budgets so they reflect the real
marginal
costs of the project if you do?

When I see a full time resource assignment something like a 1 day

task
on

Tuesday at 50%, my thoughts are not that the resource is going to work
from
1300-1700 on it. My thought is he's going to spend 4 hours on that task
but
as long as it's done on Tuesday, I really don't care WHICH 4 hours

it
is,

I'll let him sort that one out for himself - as far as the project
schedule
is concerned it takes all day. OTOH, if the resource is a part-time
worker
who is only physically there for 4 hours a day, I'll set up a resource
calendar that shows hours of work for the 4 hours he is actually
scheduled
to be on the property and if I need him to do 4 hours on something on
Tuesday, spending his full shift, I'll make it a half-day duration
task
and
assign him 100% to it.

--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs


"Jan De Messemaeker" <jandemes at prom hyphen ade dot be> wrote in
message
Hi,

Just a word in from a dissident
I never advise to use percentages on resources.
60% for a resource (be it availability or load) is interpreted by
Project,
and used in calculations, as 36 seconds per minute.
Now this may be a good an approximation as any, to me it is not an
ideal.
I prefer to think people always work 100%.

Moreover, Project Management Theory of Constraints shows that you
get
the
best delays by having people always first finish what they're

doing
and

not
spread their time over multiple tasks.

And yes, representing nonworking time by tasks (my article is now also
on
the Microsoft website ) gives some extra work, but assigning
percentages
does that as well - I wouldn't pay for the pages of paper spent
printing
the explanations on that one.

For instance, yes, when a resource has 60% availability the

default
for

assigning is 60% but it is very easy to assign a precentage higher that
that - which make Resource Leveling unusable.

I work for an IT shop with 80 project leaders where these

guidances
are

applied (Only 100%, absence is a task) and that gives the results thay
want..

Greetings,

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/
+32-495-300 620
"DWeb" <[email protected]> schreef in bericht
Thanks for the response, Rod.

The main reason I had for going down the "non-working tasks" path was
the
comments I read on MVP Jan de Messemaeker's website discussion that
"Load
reports over time such as shown by the Usage views will show the
resource
as
underallocated" when using calendars to represent non-working time.
Showing
resource allocation as accurately as possible is a significant
requirement
for our project management team. However, we are more than

willing
to

sacrifice some of that accuracy to avoid any cumbersome practices
associated
with using the non-working task approach.

With regards to your comment about setting max units to 60% for
resources
scheduled to work 3 days a week, will that put too strict a

control
on

their
allocation? What if they are periodically allowed to work 4 days a
week
or
only 2 days a week? I still get a bit confused about how unit
settings
affect outcomes. If someone has max units of 60%, why do I need to
assign
them at 60%? I thought that if I assigned them at 100% it would
assign
them
at their maximum unit availability? Is my understanding incorrect?
Also,
what about the case where we have two people planned (in the
budget)
to
be
out a certain period for maternity leave that will be different
than
the
actual timeframe for their absences? Set resource availability

at
0%

for
certain periods and 60% (or whatever applies) for the period when they
return?

Also, with regards to your suggestion to always use Fixed Units tasks
(non
effort-driven), would you suggest doing that for my "Support
Activities"
project that has several support tasks that last the entire

length
of

the
contract that are performed by most resources? I setup these tasks
(end
user
support, bug fixes, issue management) as fixed duration, non effort
driven
and allow work to calculate based upon the assigned resources' units.
I
was
concerned that any other task type would change the duration. Any
thoughts
on this? I am setting up another "Release Plan" project that has
Fixed
work
tasks representing application enhancements being delivered by
these
same
resources (shared via a resource pool), where I need to be able

to
see

when
these enhancements will complete based upon the assigned

resources
and

their
availability. Would you suggest changing this from Fixed Work to
Fixed
Units
as well?

Thanks again for taking the time to respond and offer your thoughts
and
suggestions.

:

For resources away for a week or more, simplest solution is to edit
their
calendar and make the period non-working. Project then automatically
delays
all their work.

For resources working only 60% of a 40 hour week: in the resource
sheet
set
max units to 60% and only ever assign them to tasks at 60% or less.
No
need
to edit calendars at all. Project automatically spreads a task's
duration
out to get the entered work done.

Adding non-working tasks is a very complicated, manual and slow way
of
resolving this problem and I don't recommend it.

Simplest settings for all tasks are usually Fixed Units, Effort
driven
off.
Any other settings I find are slower and create more work and
confusion.
--

Rod Gill
Project MVP


Hello! I have read through postings and MVP websites, trying
to
determine
the proper approach for setting up my projects to properly account
for
non-working time for my work resources (no material resources
used).
Now
I'm
confused about which way to go and would love to get help

from
the

smart
people out there.

I have resources who have different expected availability,
which
has
been
budgeted - some will be out on maternity leave for 3 months,
others
are
working about 60% of the time, etc., where the specific days
may
not
be
known, as much as the total hours per month that they are supposed
to
be
available to work.

Is there a simple way to handle these scenarios without

having
to

select
specific days in "Change Working Time/<Resource Name> Calendar"
that
people
will be unavailable and marking those days as nonworking time?.
I'm
afraid
that working with assignments and leveling will be off too

much
if

I
said
Joe
is not working Mon-Tu, as opposed to working 3 days in a week.

Can I just setup "Non-working" tasks of fixed duration, non
effort-driven
and assign, for example, the resource available at 60% to these
non-working
tasks at 40% assignment units?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

Also see my other post.
Yes, my customer solved the dilemma by putting NP tasks in a separate file
and integrating through a resource pool.

Greetings,

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/
+32-495-300 620

Steve,

I agree totally with your points. Using hours can totally skew your
perspective of performance. If the average cost rate is $1.00 vs. $100, you
clearly get a totally different result, even for the same status shown using
hours only.

I have a question related to your comment about the project showing
non-working time as an expense of the project, which it is not, I agree. If
I create a master project that only includes the "core" sub-project tasks,
and excludes the non-working time subproject, does that cure the dilemma you
raise?

Thanks

Yes, you can do EV with hours as well as costs although it is is incomplete
if you do, not taking into account the costs associated with last minute
resource substitutions, the higher cost of overtime work that may be needed
to stay on schedule, or material costs. But even if you track by hours
instead of dollars, IMHO including non-working time as tasks introduces
serious errors in the hours required for the project. In the example in my
message to Jan of 2 one-week tasks with a 2-week vacation in the middle,
including the vacation as a task makes the project's total man-hour budget
160 hours yet the real budget should only be 80.

The costs of the project should not be the total costs to the firm of doing
business, they should be the cost of doing this project instead of deploying
the resources to do something else. Your company is going to have to pay
for Joe Resource's vacation regardless of whether he's assigned on the
project or not so the cost/hours of his vacation should be excluded from the
project. They are properly accounted for as part of the overheads of the
firm, totally separate from the project budget. If you are billing a client
for the project, they certainly need to be included in the amount billed but
you account for that when you use a burdened labour cost for the resource
rate.

--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Just a quick response related to tracking budget without costs. I have
worked within a organization that managed using earned value, calculated
with
hours. This required some custom tables and macros within MS Project,
because I believe MS Project's out of the box earned value approach relies
on
using the cost fields. The approach I particpated in used custom ACWP,
BCWS,
BCWP fields based off Work, Remaining Work, Actual Work, and Baseline Work
values. We also had the option of using cost in dollars (vs. hours) for
doing Earned Value calculations.

:

If the project manager is responsible for bringing the project in on
schedule and within budget, how is that possible without monitoring costs
and knowing if you're under, on, or over budget? And what about earned
value as a means of tracking progress - just use an arbitrary unit cost?

Didn't think about using another cost rate table for the non-working
tasks -
duhhh, another one of those head slapping "of course!" moments

--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

"Jan De Messemaeker" <jandemes at prom hyphen ade dot be> wrote in
message
Hi Steve,

Just about the cost.

If you read the article I wrote on it, my advice is to use an other
(zero
cost) cost rate table for nonworking tasks.
OTOH, I never felt this as a big thing because over here practically
nobody
uses Project to calculate costs.
Unless teh customer specifically asks for it I do not even touch it in
my
courses.

Greetings
--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/
+32-495-300 620
"Steve House [Project MVP]"

schreef in bericht I agree 100% with you about assigning resources 100% as a rule

But
I do have some qualms about the idea of showing non-working time as
tasks
rather than forcing Project just to avoid scheduling during them by
designating them non-working time in the resource calendar. Here's an
example of the problem I see. We have Joe Resource who gets $10 per
hour
assigned to Project X which consists of two 5-day tasks A & B. He's
going
on vacation for 2 weeks in between the two tasks. If we represent his
vacation as a task, ---

Task A - 5d - 40 man-hours - $400
Task Vacation - 10d - 80 man-hours - $800
Task B - 5d - 40 man-hours - $400

Our schedule is right but our total labour hours and costs are double
what
they should be. This example illustrates why I don't like to see
anything
in that plan except actual work directed at the project's
deliverables.
The
costs and man-hours spent on vacation are actually not part of the
project
at all. Including such time as tasks is fine as far as scheduling and
resource leveling is concerned but throws everything else seriously
out
of
whack. How do you adjust the budgets so they reflect the real
marginal
costs of the project if you do?

When I see a full time resource assignment something like a 1 day task
on
Tuesday at 50%, my thoughts are not that the resource is going to work
from
1300-1700 on it. My thought is he's going to spend 4 hours on that
task
but
as long as it's done on Tuesday, I really don't care WHICH 4 hours it
is,
I'll let him sort that one out for himself - as far as the project
schedule
is concerned it takes all day. OTOH, if the resource is a part-time
worker
who is only physically there for 4 hours a day, I'll set up a resource
calendar that shows hours of work for the 4 hours he is actually
scheduled
to be on the property and if I need him to do 4 hours on something on
Tuesday, spending his full shift, I'll make it a half-day duration
task
and
assign him 100% to it.

--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs


"Jan De Messemaeker" <jandemes at prom hyphen ade dot be> wrote in
message
Hi,

Just a word in from a dissident
I never advise to use percentages on resources.
60% for a resource (be it availability or load) is interpreted by
Project,
and used in calculations, as 36 seconds per minute.
Now this may be a good an approximation as any, to me it is not an
ideal.
I prefer to think people always work 100%.

Moreover, Project Management Theory of Constraints shows that you
get
the
best delays by having people always first finish what they're doing
and
not
spread their time over multiple tasks.

And yes, representing nonworking time by tasks (my article is now
also
on
the Microsoft website ) gives some extra work, but assigning
percentages
does that as well - I wouldn't pay for the pages of paper spent
printing
the explanations on that one.

For instance, yes, when a resource has 60% availability the default
for
assigning is 60% but it is very easy to assign a precentage higher
that
that - which make Resource Leveling unusable.

I work for an IT shop with 80 project leaders where these guidances
are
applied (Only 100%, absence is a task) and that gives the results
thay
want..

Greetings,

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/
+32-495-300 620
"DWeb" <[email protected]> schreef in bericht
Thanks for the response, Rod.

The main reason I had for going down the "non-working tasks" path
was
the
comments I read on MVP Jan de Messemaeker's website discussion that
"Load
reports over time such as shown by the Usage views will show the
resource
as
underallocated" when using calendars to represent non-working time.
Showing
resource allocation as accurately as possible is a significant
requirement
for our project management team. However, we are more than willing
to
sacrifice some of that accuracy to avoid any cumbersome practices
associated
with using the non-working task approach.

With regards to your comment about setting max units to 60% for
resources
scheduled to work 3 days a week, will that put too strict a control
on
their
allocation? What if they are periodically allowed to work 4 days a
week
or
only 2 days a week? I still get a bit confused about how unit
settings
affect outcomes. If someone has max units of 60%, why do I need to
assign
them at 60%? I thought that if I assigned them at 100% it would
assign
them
at their maximum unit availability? Is my understanding incorrect?
Also,
what about the case where we have two people planned (in the
budget)
to
be
out a certain period for maternity leave that will be different
than
the
actual timeframe for their absences? Set resource availability at
0%
for
certain periods and 60% (or whatever applies) for the period when
they
return?

Also, with regards to your suggestion to always use Fixed Units
tasks
(non
effort-driven), would you suggest doing that for my "Support
Activities"
project that has several support tasks that last the entire length
of
the
contract that are performed by most resources? I setup these tasks
(end
user
support, bug fixes, issue management) as fixed duration, non effort
driven
and allow work to calculate based upon the assigned resources'
units.
I
was
concerned that any other task type would change the duration. Any
thoughts
on this? I am setting up another "Release Plan" project that has
Fixed
work
tasks representing application enhancements being delivered by
these
same
resources (shared via a resource pool), where I need to be able to
see
when
these enhancements will complete based upon the assigned resources
and
their
availability. Would you suggest changing this from Fixed Work to
Fixed
Units
as well?

Thanks again for taking the time to respond and offer your thoughts
and
suggestions.

:

For resources away for a week or more, simplest solution is to
edit
their
calendar and make the period non-working. Project then
automatically
delays
all their work.

For resources working only 60% of a 40 hour week: in the resource
sheet
set
max units to 60% and only ever assign them to tasks at 60% or
less.
No
need
to edit calendars at all. Project automatically spreads a task's
duration
out to get the entered work done.

Adding non-working tasks is a very complicated, manual and slow
way
of
resolving this problem and I don't recommend it.

Simplest settings for all tasks are usually Fixed Units, Effort
driven
off.
Any other settings I find are slower and create more work and
confusion.
--

Rod Gill
Project MVP


Hello! I have read through postings and MVP websites, trying
to
determine
the proper approach for setting up my projects to properly
account
for
non-working time for my work resources (no material resources
used).
Now
I'm
confused about which way to go and would love to get help from
the
smart
people out there.

I have resources who have different expected availability,
which
has
been
budgeted - some will be out on maternity leave for 3 months,
others
are
working about 60% of the time, etc., where the specific days
may
not
be
known, as much as the total hours per month that they are
supposed
to
be
available to work.

Is there a simple way to handle these scenarios without having
to
select
specific days in "Change Working Time/<Resource Name> Calendar"
that
people
will be unavailable and marking those days as nonworking time?.
I'm
afraid
that working with assignments and leveling will be off too much
if
I
said
Joe
is not working Mon-Tu, as opposed to working 3 days in a week.

Can I just setup "Non-working" tasks of fixed duration, non
effort-driven
and assign, for example, the resource available at 60% to these
non-working
tasks at 40% assignment units?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

I wonder if we use "budget" in different ways. It sounds like you're
referring to a top-down budget where senior managment allocates XX amount to
the project out of the firm's available capital - the budget thus is
actually an allocation of projected revenues. "We'll have 1 million Euros
available this year for operating improvments so we can spend up to 250
kiloEuros on the new network rollout." I think of the budget, OTOH, as the
bottom-up estimate of what it will actully cost us to perform the necessary
tasks at the required quality level plus contingencies and management
reserve. If we're lucky this will be <= the amount available in the
top-down allocation - if it's not, it's virtually certain the project will
fail. In any case, it seems fundamental to the job of the PM to insure
there's enough money available to achieve the required results, informing
senior managment of the projected costs before they decide what funds to
commit so they can compute the ROI, etc, before making their decision and
then tracking progress to insure we're getting the required work
accomplished without exceeding projections, something we can't do without
monitoring costs.

I like the idea of the separate "project" for non-working time but it still
seems like an unnecessary complication and duplication of effort since the
same data has to be tracked in the human resources and payroll accounting
systems anyway and they do it with much greater accuracy than is possible in
Project.

--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

Hi Steve,

Since my customer is more concerned about the good usage of resources
rather
than checking on which project they were spent, the primary objective IS
to
count nonworking time as working time.

In practice, they put nonworking time in a separate project (they call it
NPA projects, non productivce activities) that is managed on program
manager
level and linked to the same pool as the POP files (Productive Operational
Project).

Do also notice that their budget follow up is rather original (but I do
like
the idea): actuals are taken from the time registration program, planned
work from the POP files - That way no integration between the time
registration program and Project is needed. Budget comes from neither, it
is
decided op upper management level.

Greetings,


--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/
+32-495-300 620

Was just wondering about that - even if we disregard the currency issue, the
staff hours spent "working" on non-working tasks should not be included
in
the man-months required for the project. In my previous example of two
tasks and a vacation, the project really only requires 80 man-hours but
including the vacation as a task makes it appear to be 160 man-hours, double
the real value. How is that handled?

--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs


"Jan De Messemaeker" <jandemes at prom hyphen ade dot be> wrote in
message

Hi Steve,

First, "budget" is very often measured in men-month so no need for
Euros
And Earned value as a method is practically unknown here as well.
Greetings,

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/
+32-495-300 620
"Steve House [Project MVP]" <[email protected]>
schreef in bericht If the project manager is responsible for bringing the project in on
schedule and within budget, how is that possible without monitoring costs
and knowing if you're under, on, or over budget? And what about
earned
value as a means of tracking progress - just use an arbitrary unit cost?

Didn't think about using another cost rate table for the non-working
tasks -
duhhh, another one of those head slapping "of course!" moments <grin>.

--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

"Jan De Messemaeker" <jandemes at prom hyphen ade dot be> wrote in
message
Hi Steve,

Just about the cost.

If you read the article I wrote on it, my advice is to use an other
(zero
cost) cost rate table for nonworking tasks.
OTOH, I never felt this as a big thing because over here practically
nobody
uses Project to calculate costs.
Unless teh customer specifically asks for it I do not even touch it in
my
courses.

Greetings
--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/
+32-495-300 620
"Steve House [Project MVP]"
<[email protected]>
schreef in bericht I agree 100% with you about assigning resources 100% as a rule

But
I do have some qualms about the idea of showing non-working time as
tasks
rather than forcing Project just to avoid scheduling during them by
designating them non-working time in the resource calendar. Here's an
example of the problem I see. We have Joe Resource who gets $10
per
hour
assigned to Project X which consists of two 5-day tasks A & B.
He's
going
on vacation for 2 weeks in between the two tasks. If we represent his
vacation as a task, ---

Task A - 5d - 40 man-hours - $400
Task Vacation - 10d - 80 man-hours - $800
Task B - 5d - 40 man-hours - $400

Our schedule is right but our total labour hours and costs are double
what
they should be. This example illustrates why I don't like to see
anything
in that plan except actual work directed at the project's
deliverables.
The
costs and man-hours spent on vacation are actually not part of the
project
at all. Including such time as tasks is fine as far as scheduling and
resource leveling is concerned but throws everything else seriously
out
of
whack. How do you adjust the budgets so they reflect the real
marginal
costs of the project if you do?

When I see a full time resource assignment something like a 1 day task
on
Tuesday at 50%, my thoughts are not that the resource is going to work
from
1300-1700 on it. My thought is he's going to spend 4 hours on that
task
but
as long as it's done on Tuesday, I really don't care WHICH 4 hours it
is,
I'll let him sort that one out for himself - as far as the project
schedule
is concerned it takes all day. OTOH, if the resource is a
part-time
worker
who is only physically there for 4 hours a day, I'll set up a resource
calendar that shows hours of work for the 4 hours he is actually
scheduled
to be on the property and if I need him to do 4 hours on something on
Tuesday, spending his full shift, I'll make it a half-day duration
task
and
assign him 100% to it.

--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs


"Jan De Messemaeker" <jandemes at prom hyphen ade dot be> wrote in
message
Hi,

Just a word in from a dissident
I never advise to use percentages on resources.
60% for a resource (be it availability or load) is interpreted by
Project,
and used in calculations, as 36 seconds per minute.
Now this may be a good an approximation as any, to me it is not
an
ideal.
I prefer to think people always work 100%.

Moreover, Project Management Theory of Constraints shows that you
get
the
best delays by having people always first finish what they're doing
and
not
spread their time over multiple tasks.

And yes, representing nonworking time by tasks (my article is now
also
on
the Microsoft website ) gives some extra work, but assigning
percentages
does that as well - I wouldn't pay for the pages of paper spent
printing
the explanations on that one.

For instance, yes, when a resource has 60% availability the default
for
assigning is 60% but it is very easy to assign a precentage
higher
that
that - which make Resource Leveling unusable.

I work for an IT shop with 80 project leaders where these guidances
are
applied (Only 100%, absence is a task) and that gives the results
thay
want..

Greetings,

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/
+32-495-300 620
"DWeb" <[email protected]> schreef in bericht
Thanks for the response, Rod.

The main reason I had for going down the "non-working tasks"
path
was
the
comments I read on MVP Jan de Messemaeker's website discussion that
"Load
reports over time such as shown by the Usage views will show the
resource
as
underallocated" when using calendars to represent non-working time.
Showing
resource allocation as accurately as possible is a significant
requirement
for our project management team. However, we are more than willing
to
sacrifice some of that accuracy to avoid any cumbersome
practices
associated
with using the non-working task approach.

With regards to your comment about setting max units to 60% for
resources
scheduled to work 3 days a week, will that put too strict a control
on
their
allocation? What if they are periodically allowed to work 4
days a
week
or
only 2 days a week? I still get a bit confused about how unit
settings
affect outcomes. If someone has max units of 60%, why do I need to
assign
them at 60%? I thought that if I assigned them at 100% it would
assign
them
at their maximum unit availability? Is my understanding incorrect?
Also,
what about the case where we have two people planned (in the
budget)
to
be
out a certain period for maternity leave that will be different
than
the
actual timeframe for their absences? Set resource availability at
0%
for
certain periods and 60% (or whatever applies) for the period
when
they
return?

Also, with regards to your suggestion to always use Fixed Units
tasks
(non
effort-driven), would you suggest doing that for my "Support
Activities"
project that has several support tasks that last the entire length
of
the
contract that are performed by most resources? I setup these tasks
(end
user
support, bug fixes, issue management) as fixed duration, non effort
driven
and allow work to calculate based upon the assigned resources'
units.
I
was
concerned that any other task type would change the duration. Any
thoughts
on this? I am setting up another "Release Plan" project that
has
Fixed
work
tasks representing application enhancements being delivered by
these
same
resources (shared via a resource pool), where I need to be able to
see
when
these enhancements will complete based upon the assigned resources
and
their
availability. Would you suggest changing this from Fixed Work
to
Fixed
Units
as well?

Thanks again for taking the time to respond and offer your thoughts
and
suggestions.

:

For resources away for a week or more, simplest solution is to
edit
their
calendar and make the period non-working. Project then
automatically
delays
all their work.

For resources working only 60% of a 40 hour week: in the resource
sheet
set
max units to 60% and only ever assign them to tasks at 60% or
less.
No
need
to edit calendars at all. Project automatically spreads a task's
duration
out to get the entered work done.

Adding non-working tasks is a very complicated, manual and
slow
way
of
resolving this problem and I don't recommend it.

Simplest settings for all tasks are usually Fixed Units,
Effort
driven
off.
Any other settings I find are slower and create more work and
confusion.
--

Rod Gill
Project MVP


Hello! I have read through postings and MVP websites,
trying
to
determine
the proper approach for setting up my projects to properly
account
for
non-working time for my work resources (no material
resources
used).
Now
I'm
confused about which way to go and would love to get help from
the
smart
people out there.

I have resources who have different expected availability,
which
has
been
budgeted - some will be out on maternity leave for 3 months,
others
are
working about 60% of the time, etc., where the specific days
may
not
be
known, as much as the total hours per month that they are
supposed
to
be
available to work.

Is there a simple way to handle these scenarios without having
to
select
specific days in "Change Working Time/<Resource Name> Calendar"
that
people
will be unavailable and marking those days as nonworking time?.
I'm
afraid
that working with assignments and leveling will be off too much
if
I
said
Joe
is not working Mon-Tu, as opposed to working 3 days in a week.

Can I just setup "Non-working" tasks of fixed duration, non
effort-driven
and assign, for example, the resource available at 60% to these
non-working
tasks at 40% assignment units?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

Well, like a rope from a table, it depends.
If that is the working schedule of the resource, you would probably compare
the total working time to the theoretical availability (3d/week) and then of
course you could enter these as nonworking time for the resource (that is
what this large customer of mine does).

Otherwise, if you want to show 260 days per year as full load, yes it would
be nonworking tasks.
Entering them manually it would be 52 tasks, but I'm afraid my macro will
generate 104 tasks as it interrupts NW tasks during weekends.

OBTW you should try to add as first line in my macro On Error Resume Next.
That should at least carry it through once.

If you would like to see the full setup at my customer, mail me (address on
my website) and I'll mail you back the flow.

HTH