Can MS Project be used as a departmental resource planning tool?

[Ted1234]

We want to use MS Project as a tool to level departments rather than
individual resources, for generalized planning (four months to 2 years in the
future)

A department may have 10 resources with an effective capacity of 300 hours a
week available for project work. I can create a single resource that
represents that department, but MS Project limits the number of hours for a
'resource'. For long range planning purposes, I'd rather create a single
entity that represents the entire department rather than indivudual resources.

Example:
Resource "A" represents Department "A" : 300 hours a week for proiects
Resource "B" represents Department "B" : 250 hours a week for projects.

In project '1', I would assign Resource "A" 130 hours, and Resource "B" 45
hours, and so forth. MS Project should then allow us to allocate at the
department level.

In Tools / Options/ Calendar, I'm limited to 168 hours a week for a
'resource'.

Is there a way in MS Project to perform this type of departmental or
enterprise planning? I know there are other tools available, but I'd rather
stay with MS Project.

Any suggestions or ideas? Hopefully, I'm missing something obvious.

Thanks very much.

 

[Jim Aksel]

168 hours represents 7 days at 24x7 in a week so unless we change the
time/space continuum, we will have a problem.

Try increasing the number of resource units available on the time sheet.
Your department of "Brick Layers" has 300 hours available in a week. This is
equivalent to 7.5 Heads for 8 hours/day 5 days per week. Change the Max
Units to 750% and see if that helps you.

 

[Hugo gleaves]

You can do this (to a degree).

Instead of Gant Chart view, on the left side of your window select "Resource
Sheet", this is how you tell Project how much work a resource can do, so
entering 1000% tells project that you have ten people.

Personally I see no reason why this tool cannot have a column called
"Number" or something so that we have a more intuitive way of entering such
info.

I would also like to see the idea of a "Team" defined so we can define a
group of people (lets be honest we are almost always talking about real
people) and treat them as a single entity, the simplistic way we do it now is
very limiting.

I could then define a team with all sort of characteristics and assign the
team to tasks.

Hugh

 

[John]

You can do this (to a degree).

Instead of Gant Chart view, on the left side of your window select "Resource
Sheet", this is how you tell Project how much work a resource can do, so
entering 1000% tells project that you have ten people.

Personally I see no reason why this tool cannot have a column called
"Number" or something so that we have a more intuitive way of entering such
info.

I would also like to see the idea of a "Team" defined so we can define a
group of people (lets be honest we are almost always talking about real
people) and treat them as a single entity, the simplistic way we do it now is
very limiting.

I could then define a team with all sort of characteristics and assign the
team to tasks.

Hugh

Hugh,
Are you aware that under Tools/Options/Schedule you can change the
assignment units from the default "percentage" to "decimal". I think
this may be the "number" field you are seeking. And yes, I agree, it is
much easier to think of "real people" in terms of 1 guy or 10 guys,
instead of 100% or 1000%.

As far as a team is concerned, you can define the resource name to
represent a team set as well as a single resource. It's basically all in
the Max Units level, which is really used to determine when a particular
resource, be it an individual or a set, is overallocated. There are also
multiple spare resource text fields with which to define a team's
characteristics, if you like. As far as assigning the team to tasks, if
they are called "painters" instead of "Joe", it is pretty evident the
assignment is a team assignment and not that of an individual.

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP

 

[John]

We want to use MS Project as a tool to level departments rather than
individual resources, for generalized planning (four months to 2 years in the
future)

A department may have 10 resources with an effective capacity of 300 hours a
week available for project work. I can create a single resource that
represents that department, but MS Project limits the number of hours for a
'resource'. For long range planning purposes, I'd rather create a single
entity that represents the entire department rather than indivudual resources.

Example:
Resource "A" represents Department "A" : 300 hours a week for proiects
Resource "B" represents Department "B" : 250 hours a week for projects.

In project '1', I would assign Resource "A" 130 hours, and Resource "B" 45
hours, and so forth. MS Project should then allow us to allocate at the
department level.

In Tools / Options/ Calendar, I'm limited to 168 hours a week for a
'resource'.

Is there a way in MS Project to perform this type of departmental or
enterprise planning? I know there are other tools available, but I'd rather
stay with MS Project.

Any suggestions or ideas? Hopefully, I'm missing something obvious.

Thanks very much.

Ted1234,
I think Jim's space-time continuum statement needs a little
clarification.

You are confusing resource units (total available time) with calendar
time. The "hours per day" you see under Tools/Options/Calendar has
nothing to do with resources, rather it is simply the number of hours
Project uses in its calculation for the Duration field. For example,
with the default value of 8 hours, Project will count each 8 hour
increment in the Duration field as one day. A similar convention holds
for the "hours per week" and "days per month".

What Jim called the time sheet is really the Resource Sheet. A "time
sheet" is more equivalent to either of the Usage views. Nonetheless, I
agree with Jim about setting the Max Units for resource "A" at 750%. A
similar factor would be used for resource "B". Then when assigning
either resource to a task assign at the full level. For example, let's
say you have a 5 day (duration) task. If you assign resource "A" at 750%
you will end up with 300 total hours - 60 each day.

Hope this helps.
John
Project MVP