Underallocated Resources

[Justin Fults]

I have a quick scenario I would like to throw out here.

I have multiple enterprise projects in which the teams
were built using the Enterprise Resource Pool. After
setting up my newest project plan and assigning each
resource to the appropriate tasks, I needed to level the
project to resolve an overallocation. After doing so,
the Project Finish Date has gone from mid-October to the
middle of February '04. After analyzing further, I found
that one specific resource was scheduled to complete a
task (which takes place early on in the Project) 2 months
later than the other tasks within the same Summary Task.
I looked at the availability of the resource during that
2 month time period and discovered that the resource
actually had no assignment work scheduled (other than
a .5 hour recurring task every Monday).

The Resource Calendar shows him as being available during
that time and everything else checks out? Why would
Project be delaying this task so far into the future when
the resource has the availability to complete the work?

My Level Settings are the default settings with the
exception of the "Leveling can create splits in remaining
work." value, which I have opted to "uncheck". Even
changing this back to its default value did not help.

Any suggestions? This seems like a unusual issue.

Thanks,
Justin

 

[Dale Howard]

Justin --

I can assure you that your issue is not an unusual issue. In fact, tomorrow
morning I will spend approximately 3 hours teaching a group of capable
project managers how to effectively level their projects. Leveling is a
difficult subject, as you have already discovered, and Microsoft Project
isn't always very helpful in the process.

It sounds like those recurring tasks are the likely cause of your heartache.
It also sounds like you are attempting to level on a Day by Day basis, which
doesn't work well with overallocations caused by recurring tasks that have a
Duration of less than 1 day for each reccurrence.

In addition to checking the "Leveling can create splits in remaining work"
option, you might also try setting the "Look for overallocations on a _____
basis" to the "Hour by Hour" option. Hope this helps.