using up part-time resource's availability in one task?

[roger]

Hi all,

I just found this group and have been eagerly devouring information
that relates to resource allocation (esp. postings by Steve House), but
am still confused by this:

I'm scheduling a 2-hour design meeting with two attendees. I'm setting
this task to Fixed Duration because, as far as I'm concerned, that's
the best way to estimate the project schedule; i.e., I believe it will
take these two people two hours of collaborative work to complete the
design.

When I assign the resources, they are each assigned at 50%, according
to Project's standard algorithm. But this doesn't make sense from my
point of view; I want both people in the room for the entire duration;
I'm extracting two person-hours of work from each. So, I bump their
assigned units to 100%. The work goes to 4 hours, the duration is
unchanged, and all is well. (Another way to do this is to turn off
Effort-driven scheduling when I create the task.)

Now, suppose I schedule the same meeting, but one of the attendees has
only 25% of their time to devote to my project. I've established this
by setting this person's Max units available to 25%. With
effort-driven scheduling turned off, I assign the resources to the
task. The full-time resource is assigned at 100% (2 hours); the
part-time at 25% (.5 hours). But again, this doesn't make sense; I
want the part-time resource to spend 2 hours in this meeting. So, I
bump this person's assigned units to 100%. The work goes to 4 hours,
the duration is unchanged, and all is well..except that the resource is
flagged as overallocated, because their Peak units (100%) exceed their
Maximum (25%).

But this person is actually working just 2 hours, or 25% of the work
day, on my project. How can I tell Project to let me allocate 25% of
this person's day to one task in my project, rather than assuming they
will only do 25% of the work on any given task?

If this is not possible, then I don't see how one can profitably make
use of resource availability when there are tasks with fixed
durations...

Thanks in advance for any insight anyone might provide.

Roger Rohrbach

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Roger,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

I think you'll find a full answer in my series on Microsoft Project in the
TechTrax ezine, particularly #10 & 11 on resource allocation and task types,
at this site: http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc or this:
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMFrame.asp?CMD=ArticleSearch&AUTH=23
(Perhaps you'd care to rate the articles before leaving the site,
Thanks.)

FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information can be seen at
this web address: <http://www.mvps.org/project/>

Hope this helps - please let us know how you get on

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP

 

[John M.]

I believe the reality of the situation is that MS Project is designed to
handle these situations in a slightly different manner. You would like to
have a configuration setting to control the level of granularity (hour by
hour, day by day, week by week) used in turning a resource "red" (i.e.
overallocated). As far as I am aware, this option does not exist; however,
I don't view this as a problem because the option does exist as part of the
leveling process.

If a resource is generally available to the project 25% of their time, then
I also do what you did in setting their availability to 25%. 25% could be
per day (2hrs per day) or per week (1.25 days per week) or per month - which
Project doesn't know. So, if you need them full-time on some tasks and 25%
on others, do exactly what you did in overriding the default units. Then
when you get to the topic of leveling resources, you can choose the level of
granularity to level the tasks. If you choose to do it on a daily basis,
then Project will not impact your task because the resource is assigned 25%
for the day. However, if you choose to do it at the hour by hour level, then
it will give you an error saying that it cannot resolve the overallocation.
In your case, you wouldn't be leveling at the hour by hour level anyway...so
no problem.

If you are manually leveling the plan, you would be doing a similar thing.
While the resource will show up as "red" (i.e. overallocated), you will be
able to see in the usage views that their work does not exceed their
capacity as long as you are looking at a daily or weekly level.

Hope this helps.

John

 

[roger]

Mike,

Thanks for the prompt followup. I'd found your articles before
arriving at this group, and while they were helpful in other ways,
there's no discussion of using resource availability (i.e., setting Max
units available). There's an allusion in lesson 7 to "a later lesson"
in which it will be discussed, but I've not found any such discussion.
Lesson 10 explains assigned units, but not the effect of limiting
available units.

I've seen elsewhere here the suggestion to set the part-time resource's
calendar to to reflect the percentage of the work day they are
available. But this seems limiting--I'd have to always schedule all
tasks involving that resource for the same two-hour window. I was
hoping to declare the fact that someone can spend 2 hours a day on my
project, then simply use up to 2 hours of their time, per day, without
overallocating them. It seems simple to me...but Project begs to
differ!

Roger

 

[roger]

Thanks, John. Levelling seems to have no impact on my task no matter
what the granularity--no doubt this is because it's a fixed-duration
task. So, if I take your meaning correctly, I am to ignore the red
ink, and simply watch that I've not exceeded 2h/day in the Resource
Usage view for this resource. I can live with that.

 

[John M.]

No problem. For the record, the levelling outcome would be the same
regardless of the task type. MS Project runs algorithms to determine which
tasks to delay based on overallocations. It may split a task, if you set
the option to allow it...but it won't change the units that are assigned (as
part of an attempt to optimize the schedule). If you set the levelling
option to check at the hour by hour level, you should receive an
informational error that it couldn't resolve the overallocation, but it
won't delay the task because of it, as this would just move the
overallocation and not resolve it.

Cheers!

John M.