automatic resource assignment

[Mark Kampe]

I have what I believe to be an extremely common situation.

I have a dozen programmers. For the purpose of this question, assume them
to be interchangeable. Each has his own availability (due to hiring dates,
other projects, ramp-up times) which I think I know how to represent in the
resource information. Each also has assorted other obligations (support,
review participation, meetings, etc) that I also think I know how to
represent as tasks. All of these people are capable of a reasonable degree
of multi-tasking. I also have a bunch of new development tasks that need
doing, and to a first approximation it doesn't matter who does which of them.
I would love to be able to tease Project into assigning tasks to resources,
based on the available time that each resource has. I haven't seen a way to
do this.

I can make my own assignments, but I have to specify how much each person
will work on the task. This is not a fixed number ... as each person has a
different number of available hours each week (due to availability dates,
ramp-ups, and other responsibilities). I would at least like to get Project
to apply "the available hours" to a task ... but I cannot find a way to do
this either.

Essentially, it seems that I have to decide who will work, how much, on each
task, starting when ... after which Project will be happy to print beautiful
reports. Figuring out who should work, on which task, starting when, seems
to be my problem. This seems a pretty common problem (it is one I've had
continuously for the last thirty years) and yet I can't find discussions of
it, nor have I seen sample projects that seem to address these issues.

In a (surely different, but) related problem, I have deliberately assigned
only a small fraction of a person to a task (knowing that they will have at
least that much time available). Whether the task is fixed unit or fixed
work, I often find that
applying someone 10% time to a 25 day task, results in them doing four hours
per week of work for five weeks after which the task is shown as completed
.... (in only 20 hours of work). Apparently I don't understand when a
duration is a start-to-end day count, and when duration is a number of
staff-days.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hallo Mark,

Let me first comment on this part of your woes:

" Essentially, it seems that I have to decide who will work, how much, on
each task, starting when"

This is partially true.
You indeed have to decide who will work how much on which task, Project will
NOT do that fopr you, NOT at all, you are right.
But then you are just as wrong. Starting when is what you should not enter,
Project has a great number of scheduling rules and logic to define that for
you. Indeed, that IS the purpose of pProject: calculating when a task
can/has to be done. If you haven't discovered any of these rules, I suggest
you start reading or take a course

Your secvond remark puzzles me totally. 10% of the time during 25 days is
(in my maths) 2,5 days thus 20 hours.
Duration is 25 days, Work is 20 hours. Those are two of the task properties
Project uses. What else would you want to see?

Hope this helps,

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
+32 495 300 620
For availability check:
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/Calendar.pdf

 

[Mark Kampe]

But then you are just as wrong. Starting when is what you should not enter,
Project has a great number of scheduling rules and logic to define that for
you. Indeed, that IS the purpose of pProject: calculating when a task
can/has to be done.

But I cannot seem to get it to make these calculations correctly, when
factoring in the amount of time that employees have to work.

Every employee has a different number of available hours every day.
I would want leveling to take 500 hours of work, and put 3 on day 1,
6 on day 2, 4 on day 3, etc ... leveling the work over the available resource
time. I thought that this was what day-to-day leveling was about. Perhaps
I merely cannot figure out how to enable it. When I assign a resource to a
task, I am required to specify a fraction of their time. Unfortunately, even
with day-to-day leveling, it seems to use exactly that fraction of their time
(leaving the employee over commited, or under-booked depending on how much
free time they had each day. Is there a way to level a task over the
available time?

Your secvond remark puzzles me totally. 10% of the time during 25 days is
(in my maths) 2,5 days thus 20 hours.
Duration is 25 days, Work is 20 hours. Those are two of the task properties
Project uses. What else would you want to see?

I have a task that will take 25*8 = 200 hours to complete. The available
resource can put 10% time (=4 hours/week) on it. Thus the task should take
50 weeks. Project shows the task being completed in 25 days (with 20 hours
of work done). This is wrong. I want to know how to tell Project the
information in a way that will cause a correct answer (50 week duration) to
come out.

I see a field in which I can enter duration, but in this situation duration
is a value which must be solved for (Duration = work/effort). Where can I
enter the required work. I assumed that this was where fixed work and fixed
unit tasks come in, but I have tried defining my task each way, and it always
comes out taking 25 days to complete.

 

[Mark Kampe]

MSP will do a hell of a lot for you but it won't manage the project.
A human has to do that.

I was planning to handle most of the planning, and all of the organizing,
staffing direction, monitoring, controlling, and correction myself. I was
hoping that Project could help me with the task and resource scheduling
aspects of the planning process. It is advertised to be quite good at this

If you have a dozen pigeons and you throw them a bag of breadcrumbs and it
doesn't matter which breadcrumbs they eat first or which pigeons eat which
breadcrumbs, then even if you know when the pigeons are available, it is
asking a lot to expect software to make a plan out of so little information.

In the early stages of planning, I have two general questions:

1. Do I, at least in principle, have enough pigeons to deal with the
available breadcrumbs in the available time (factoring in process overheads
and other commitments)?

2. Are there any critical paths (created by either task or resource
dependencies) that may be difficult to cover in the available time.

I was trying to see if Project could help me with question 1. From what I
am hearing, the answer is no. OK, I will continue using excel to answer this
question.

For question 2, Project is great at showing me the critical paths created by
task dependencies ... but apparently it can't help me with the knapsack
problem of how to assign N tasks to M resources in a way that creates the
fewest and shortest critical paths. I have to propose alternative
allocations of responsibilities. I usually do this with magnets an pieces of
paper. Are there features of Project that can do this more completely,
conveniently or quickly than I can magnets and pieces of paper?

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

"The available time" is the working time in the calendar.
Once that is set, assigning the resoruce @100% will use up the available
time.
Leveling will only shift tasks when two or more combined cause an
overallocation.
Hope this helps,

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
+32 495 300 620
For availability check:
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/Calendar.pdf

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

The answer is yes. YOU assign resources to the tasks, Project will tell you
where are the potential overallocations.
But no, sorry, Project does not have a logic to itself assign resoruces to
tasks. It helps you find a solution but it doesn't propose one.

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
+32 495 300 620
For availability check:
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/Calendar.pdf