Allocating Resources

[Dee]

Hello,

I've been using Project Server 2003 for a few months, but haven't yet
figured out the best way to allocate resources. Maybe some of you on
this group have some suggestions or would like to share your
experiences.

I realize that Project does not let you assign a resource at project
level. i.e you cannot assign a resource 40% on Project A 30% on Project
B and 30% on Project C. It has to be done at task level.

So now, if my resources have n number of tasks on Project A, I assign
40% on each task. But, my resources jump tasks, work on multiple tasks
at the same time. How do I handle assignming allocations in such
situations?

1) Levelling across multiple projects require opening each project. But
Project A, B and C are owned by different PMs.

2) Linking each resources tasks so that they fall one after the other
and the resource is not overallocated creates fake dependancies /
constraints. Every time I reschedule unfinished work, Project says it
could not reschedule certain tasks because of a constraint etc.

What is the best way of handling this. Will appreaciate any help.

TIA

Regards,
Dee

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Dee --

If it were up to me, I would assign the resource at 40% Units on each task
in Project A, 30% on each task in Project B, and 30% on each task in Project
C, and then I would publish the project. If the resource works on multiple
tasks simultaneously, then I would ask him/her to enter actuals to indicate
so. As long as I have not overallocated resources at the time of assigning
resources, I don't think I would spend much time worrying about this. Hope
this helps.

 

[Dee]

Thanks Dale. However, if for any reason, a resource is 90% allocated on
multiple projects, and is 10% available to work on new project, how
would I be able to see that avialability w/o taking care of the
overallocations?

Thanks and Regards,
Dee

 

[John M.]

Dee,

If you search through the Microsoft Project General Questions newsgroup, you
will see that this topic (or a very similar one) seems to come up about once
a month - and stirs up quite a debate. Sometimes it takes the flavor of how
to best account for productivity of resources (assign at 80% or 100%) and
sometimes it is about allocating resources across projects, as you are asking
about.

One camp, which I tend to agree more with based on the types of projects I
manage, questions why in the world you would allocate resources at partial
percentages. Don't you want resources to be focused on starting and
completing a task before jumping to another task? Many times partial
allocations are indicative of a WBS that could be further decomposed, or it
is indicative of internal organizational politics. If you have 30% of a
resource, what does that mean? Does it mean you have 100% of them for 30% of
a week? a day? a month? Or does it mean you have 30% of them 100% of the
time? If there is a workshop or joint design sessions, do I assign them at
100% along with everybody else (since they will be there) or must I assign
them at 30%? Given that people really can't focus on more than one thing at
a time, why would I schedule them to work on 3 things in parallel? I prefer
to tell people to work on "x", finish it, then work on "y" as the work gets
done in half the time when compared to jumping back and forth.

Another camp would support the use of fractional unit assignments as it is
how many organizations allocate resources (right or wrong). This group would
point out that having enhanced features added to MS Project/Server to support
resource allocation vs. assignment with the ability to take the allocation
into account when leveling would be a great help. Challenge here is that you
cannot accomplish this today without more manual work. You can't just assign
somebody to 30% of all tasks in a project and then level it as it will stack
tasks up to 90% because they are not overallocated (assuming 100% max units).
So you end up having to manually specify the leveling delay, or add
dependencies as a work-around (which reduces flexibility as you note).

Take a look around the prior posts in the general discussion section...and
see which camp you seem to prefer given your situation.

Hope this helps.

John M.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Dee --

Open all of the projects to which the resource is assigned and then apply
the Resource Usage view. Right-click in the timephased grid (timesheet on
the right side of the screen) and select the Remaining Availability option.
This will show you how much Remaining Availability each resource has in
every future time period. An alternative is to log into PWA, nagivate to
the Resource Center page, select one or more resources, and then click the
View Availability button. One other option is to navigate to the Resource
Center page, click the "View resource assignments" link in the left side of
the page, select your resources, and click the Apply button. Hope this
helps.

 

[Dee]

Thanks Dale and John!

I still wish project would allow us to allocate a resource at project
level and then at task level too.....

Regards,
Dee...