Work on Fixed Work tasks changes unexpectedly when assigning resou

[DWeb]

Hello-

I am seeing something strange that I hope I can explain well enough to see
if someone else has encountered anything similar (and has an explanation!) I
have imported (not linked) data from an Excel worksheet that includes (among
other fields, some custom) task name, work effort (Work, in days), but NOT
duration, start, or end dates (just deadline). I have mapped the fields
appropriately from Excel to Project.

To this project I added a generic resource with varying monthly availability
ranging from around 130% for April 2005 to 1310% in November 2005. This
availability is reflective of an available FTE calculation by month that I
did on a separate Excel spreadsheet.

All of my tasks in Project are setup after importing as Fixed Work, effort
driven. The project start date is 1/17/2005. After importing the tasks, the
somewhat odd thing is that the durations are mostly "1 day?", but some are "0
days?", again, before any resource assignments have been made.

Because my resources are not available until April 2005, I expect that when
I add the generic resource at 100% to a fixed work task of 31 days of work,
that the start date will change to April 1, and that it will calculate to
have a duration of 31 days and a corresponding end date. However, when I
assign "Generic Resource" at 100% and click "Ok", project gives a duration of
thousands of days (ending sometime in 2049), CHANGES the WORK VALUE and the
ASSIGNMENT UNITS to enormous numbers and negative numbers in some cases.
When I change the split view to show Resource Work, I also see that Overtime
Work and Actual Work have also been assigned.

If I delete the assignment, reset the work and the duration and assign
again, the exact same thing happens - every time. Finally, I played with
zeroing out the actual work and overtime work, entering remaining work as 31
days, changing the assigned units back to 100% and after a couple of weird
project calculations, it finally sticks the way I expected it to the first
time.

I can't recreate this issue in a one-task project with a resource that is
not available until April - it works as expected. I suspect something weird
is going on because the tasks were imported, and not entered directly into
Project, but I'm not sure. Needless to say, this is a problem, because I
have a lot of tasks to manipulate and wasn't expecting this to happen.

Any thoughts or suggestions? I hope this made some sense. Thanks!

 

[JulieS]

Hi DWeb,

I am unable to reproduce the problem in Project 2003. When I create an Excel
worksheet with Name, Work and Deadline dates, import into project and then
perform the steps you outline, all goes as expected. The duration of the
tasks are adjusted (from 1 day) to the expected duration based upon work and
assignment units. There is no actual or overtime work.

A couple of questions:
When you say work effort in days, how do the work values appear in the Excel
spreadsheet? Although you can convert work to show in days, I believe when
you import it will treat the number from Excel as hours.
When you mapped the fields for the import, what Project fields did you
import the data into?
What version of project are you using? In earlier versions (2000) I did see
some very odd behavior (enormous resource unit assignments) when using fixed
work tasks.

Julie

 

[DWeb]

JulieS,

Thanks for the response. To answer your questions, I was working on MS
Project 2003. The work values were stored in a numeric field in MS Excel, to
which I applied a custom format to append "days" to each cell, and I changed
the MS PRoject defaults to display work as days.

Tomorrow when I get back to the computer that I was working on, I'll post
more specifics about the specific field mappings. Thanks!

 

[DWeb]

Hi JulieS,

I'm still having the problem. The work values actually appear in the
spreadsheet as days - if MS Project is treating them as hours, what should I
do - import them into some generic Project number field and then "push" them
into the Work field with some type of macro? (not sure how to do that)

Regarding the fields, the import map (tasks only) looks like this:
Excel --> Project
Issue/CR Text3 (Request Type)
# (Merge Key) Text4 (#)
Title Name
Estimated Total Effort Work
Priority Text1 (Est. Priority)
Business Driver Text2 (Bus. Driver)
Delivery Date Deadline

Any suggestions? This is really slowing things down, as I have a list of
tasks and was hoping I could select them all and assign 100% of the generic
resource all at once, and then level to see the impacts.

Thank you!

 

[JulieS]

Hi DWeb,

At a glance I can't see anything in your mapping that you list that should
be causing the problem.

If you have set the default to work in days (Tools>Options> Schedule tab
"Work is entered in : Days) and then clicked Set as Default, Project should
be treating your imported work numbers as days. If you show the Work Field
(Insert>Column) in the Task Sheet, does the work show correctly before you
assign resources?

I assume you are creating the resources in project (not importing). In your
earlier post you mentioned that you are contouring their availability
(increase of max. units over time.) The only other suggestion I can think
of is a possible problem with the way the resource's max. units have been
changed or odd stuff with their calendars. You mentioned in the earlier post
that your resources are not available until April. How did you reflect
that - change the resource's calendars to non-working time before April?

In trying to reproduce your problem I have changed the resource's
availability in two ways. Option 1: I mark their calendars as non-working
time from January through the end of March and then contour their
availability. When I then assign them to a task with an original start date
of 17 January 2005, the task start moves to the first working day in April
and calculates the duration of the task based upon assignment units and
work.

If I leave the calendar unchanged (standard calendar no non-working time
other than Saturdays & Sundays) and have entered in their availability on
the General tab starting with 1 April 2005 and assign the resource, the task
still starts on 17 January 2005 the end date of the task gets pushed out but
the resource is immediately overallocated, even if that is the only task I
have them assigned to.

Are you running Project 2003 with SP-1? I'm afraid I don't have any other
guesses. If I have missed something or there is further information you
have to tell us, please post again and I'll try again to replicate the
problem.

Hope this helps.
Julie

 

[DWeb]

Hi JulieS,

Aha! I didn't change the resource's calendar for non-working time. I set
the General tab availability to be 0% up to 3/31/2005 and then varying %s for
each month after that. When I removed the 0% to reflect your 2nd scenario
and just started with the actual availability for 4/1/2005 onward, it works
fine. Bizarre!

Thank you SO MUCH for the help... That saved me a TON of additional wasted
time.

 

[JulieS]

Hi DWeb,

Glad to have been of assistance and thanks for the feedback.
Julie