Hi Jason,
My comments are embedded.
Julie
Project MVP
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RedHead said:
Julie,
Good point on the predecessor/successor relationship. I did not have
any pred/suc set.
However, now I have gone back and set the single resource availability
exactly as you have shown.
The 4 tasks are all fixed work and have work values of 160, 320, 640
and 1280 hours for Task 1,2,3 & 4 and 1 is a pred to 2 and 2 is a pred
to 3 and 3 is a pred to 4 and all are assigned to the one resource.
I then level and none of the check boxes are selected (as before).
[Julie] If all of your tasks are linked, the resource shouldn't be
overallocated.
Project then successfully levels without any messages but as you
probably know that with the percentages and the pred/suc in place the
appropriate calculations are already made so leveling changed nothing.
[Julie] Perhaps you are expecting Resource Leveling to do something it
is *not* designed to do, which is change assignment units. Resource
leveling is *not* an optimization tool. Its sole mission is to solve
resource overallocations in the specific circumstance when a resource's
peak units (sum of assignment units) exceeds the maximum units for the
resource. The resource leveling command will *never* change assignment
units, it will only delay tasks so the peak units does not exceed max.
units.
Now if I look at the resource usage the spread of the work is 4 hours
a
day across the entire duration of the project which is now schedule
out
to Fri 1/16/09 because of the number of hours and the 50% assignments
units.
[Julie] By your comment above it sounds as though you assigned the
resource when all tasks were scheduled during the months of
October/November. Project assigned the resource at 50% assignment
because during the month of October/November, that was the resource's
max. units.
If you had created the predecessor/successor relationships between the
tasks and *then* assigned the resources, you would see the assignment
units for tasks in Dec/January at 60%, Feb/March at 70%. Try selecting
the tasks, click the Assign Resource button and removing the resource.
Set the work on the tasks to zero. Re-assign the resource and you
should now see what I think you are searching for.
Now if I set the Project information "Current date" to be out in the
future, let's say Dec 1, 2006 then the Max Units does changed on the
Resource Usage form to the appropriate amount that I set it to with
the
max units availabilty.
However, the assignment units remains at 50% or whatever the value was
for the Max units in the first availability from/to interval.
As stated, I want the assignment units to change to 60% on 1 Dec and
70% on 1 Feb...even if it is the middle of a scheduled task.
[Julie] Project will assign the resource at the max. units for the
resource at the start of the task. See below for some additional
information about editing the planned work per day if you wish.
In addition, I don't believe the work contour will do what I want
either. The contour is on a task by task basis and not a resource and
date interval basis.
The base calendar approach will effectively do the job but results in
work NOT being scheduled on the days or partial days that I removed
from the calendar as none work times. Again this models the finish
date effectively but creates issues for the resources when I send them
their scheduled tasks and they see that NO work is schedule on certain
days when in fact they plan to work on the task on that day.
[Julie] If the resource plans to work on a day then why is it set as
non-working in their calendar? Even if you did not intend them to work
that day (you changed a day to non-working) Project will still accept
actual work on the day. Project will then re-project the new end date
of the task based upon the work performed.
Ugh ! As stated, I am a amatuer with Project but would have thought
that varying availability and effectively assignment units of
resources
to task across date intervals would be straight forward. The reason
being, is that this type of resource allocation and execution in the
real world is very common, especially in the software industry (i.e.
the resource is allocated at 50% on Release 2 because they are still
working 50% on Release 1...as time moves forward then they are
allocated at 60% on Release 2 and 40% on Release 1, etc.)
[Julie] I agree, it is common in most organizations where resources are
assigned to many projects. I guess one of the questions/observations I
would offer is that you seem to be spending a fair amount of time mired
in some quite detailed information - worrying about individual days of
work and trying to "model" finish dates.
I know few resources who will work precisely the amount of work on a
daily basis than was originally planned. Whether a resource works 1
hour more or less per day on a daily basis planned is a tracking issue
and trying to anticipate precisely everything that will occur 6 to 8
months in the future is a quick path to madness in my opinion.
Resources need to know how many hours per day and the duration of the
task. There will be some days when due to other issues they will work
more or lesshours.
What I would really like to do is applied a pre-defined S Curve to the
Resource max availability and assignment units.
[Julie] Sorry Jason. There is no predefined S Curve for resource max
units, only for assignment units and as you mention, it is per
assignment.
You most certainly can go in to the Resource Usage view and manually
edit planned work. If you wish to, you can also add the Peak Units
field to the timescaled portion of the view and see what the peak units
per assignment is. Again, far too much detail for my tastes -- but it
is possible.
If you any ideals please let me know.
Thanks again for the responses.
[Julie] - You're most welcome Jason. I hope the explanations above help.
Please post again with further questions/comments as needed.
