Not really. But first of all, project isn't assigning units to the resource
at all. The PM assigns the units when he puts the resource on the task.
Second, "fixed work" doesn't really mean the total work required by all the
resources is fixed. When you have multiple resources, the work equation
W=D*U applies to each resource individually, not the group. Fixed work
means when I adjust the units of a resource, his duration is recalculated
and when I adjust his duration, his units are recalcualted, his work
(viewwed by itself) remains constant. But changing the work, duration, or
units on one resource will have no effect at all on the work of other
resources. Closer to what you're thinking of is the selection of effort
driven or non-effort driven behaviour, but even that is not quite on the
mark. Effort driven says the total work is distributed between the
resources while non-effort driven says it is replicated between them. But
this only kicks into effect when you are adding or taking away resources -
when you are simply editing one of the group without actually removing him
from the task or adding someone else to it, it has no effect.
With all the calendars set to the defaults, imagine a task with a 5 day
duration and two resources, one assigned 75% and the other assigned 25%.
The first resource is doing 30 man-hours while the second is doing 10
man-hours. You are thinking that if you reduced the first resource to 50%,
Project would hold the 40 hours of total work constant and shift 10 hours to
the second resource, raising his assignment to 50% as well and giving both
of them 20 man-hours of work. I'm afraid it doesn't work like that. With
the task marked "fixed work" changing the first resource from 75% down to
50% will have no effect at all on the second resource. Instead what will
happen is that the first resource's duration will increase to 7.5 days since
he still has to do 30 man-hours of work (that's what "fixed work" means) but
is doing it at a slower rate. The overall task duration also changes to 7.5
days since the task duration itself is from when the earliest starting
resource begins work until the latest finishing resource ends work. But
nothing at all changes for the second resource - he still does 10 man-hours
of work at 25% with it spread it out over 5 days. Both of them work
together for the first 5 days then number 2 goes away and number 1 continues
by himself for the next 2.5 days. To get something else to happen, you need
to use the usage views and manually enter in what each person needs to do
each day.
HTH
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit
http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm for the FAQs
Sandie K said:
One of my colleagues has a MS Project 2007 schedule that is assigning 0%
units to a resource on tasks to which he should be contributing. These are
fixed work tasks and his resource calendar has him assigned to work during
those time periods.
I believe the right way to increase the units for this resource would be
simply to reduce the units for the other resources assigned to the task.
Does
this sound like the correct way to handle it? Any other suggestions?
Thanks in advance.
