Double booking the same person

[Rob List]

Hi,

I want to use project as a cross-company management tool, but this is rather
hard as you can't double book people.

For example, i know that Bill is scheduled for 2 days a month of meetings,
which is 24 days during the period of 01/01/2005 and 31/12/2005 - problem is,
if i set that kind of timescale, Project thinks the task is 260 days long -
which it isn't.

The other problem I have is double booking people. Obviously if Bill is
doing 24 days between now and the end of the year in meetings, I hope he's
going to be doing something else for the remaining 236 days (even if he is a
lazy bugger), but when I try and do this it tells me Bill is double booked.

Any ideas? I'd love you forever if you could sort this for me - if you were
in London, I'd buy you a pint!

 

[Rob List]

Sorry guys, forgot to say - I've got Project 2003 Professional.

Cheers,
Rob

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

For the meeting scenario use a Recurring Task entry (Insert, RecurringTask).
Task duration would be however long 1 meeting is, lets say 4 hours.
Recurrence would be the intervals for the meeting, in your example probably
every 2 weeks (although that's 26 meetings in the year, not 24, that
certainly close enough for practical purposes). If it really is twice a
month, you could do 2 of the these entries, one once a month, on say the
first Monday of the month, for the first meeting in the month and the other
once a month, perhaps on the third Monday, for the second meeting in the
month. Task start would be the start of the year or the first planned
meeting date. "End by" would be the end of the year. This will show up in
the Gantt chart as a summary task with a series of short task bars extending
from the first meeting date until the end of the year. When you click the
outline symbol next to the task name you see all the little blocks
representing individual meetings in a cascade. If these meetings are
dedicated times and all the resource's other tasks have to be scheduled
around them, with the set of meetings expanded so you see the entire list,
select all the individual meeting and click the Task Information button. In
the Information screen, set the priority to 1000, meaning "do not level."
When your resource has another task that extends through the meeting period,
he'll be shown as over-allocated because he can't be at two different places
at once. But Resource Levelling will interrupt the task in question,
splitting it and pushing the end date out as needed to make room for him to
interrupt his work and go to the meeting.

You really wouldn't want to actually double book people and leave it in the
schedule as is. The task entries in Project represent real physical
activity at a specific place extending over a specific time period. They
have a physical reality and are not just time frames during which work may
or may not be going on. Double booking would mean that he has to be in two
places at once doing two different things at the same time. What really
will happen when a task is scheduled and another one comes along supposed to
start at the same time or while the first one is in progress, is that either
the second task gets deferred until the first one is done or, if it is a
higher priority than the first one, work on the first one will stop until
the second is completed and then resume. But tasks usually require a
specific amount of work, so if a task is interrupted, its ending date must
move out so the same amount of work ultimately is performed.

 

[Rob List]

Hi,

My god, I'm such an idiot nt to have spotted the Rcurring Task button! Thank
you so very much!

Regarding double-booking, the thing is I'm trying to create a schedule where
Bill spends 5 days every month doing spec work, but I don't mind which 5
days. Along with Bill's 5 days of speccing per month, I want to schedule 10
days of testing per month- and again, I don't mind which days. Then I'd like
to drop in something that Bill MUST do by a deadline, say a 5 day task. I
would then like Project to slot in Bill's testing and speccing around that
mandatory task.

I really can't thank you enough!

Cheers,
Rob

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

That's a tough one and points up the difficulty of using Project for
scheduling things that really aren't projects or project tasks at all.
Projects have discrete beginning and ending points and a limited set of
deliverables and each task within them also have discrete beginnings and
endings. They begin when work is first performed and end when the
deliverable is completed. Your specing and testing tasks really are on-going
line-of-business activities and violate those fundamental definitions of a
project task - for example, there is no single deliverable whose creation
will cause speccing to cease for all time. The deliverables for on-going
activities regenerate themselves - a new one pops up as soon as the current
one is completed - and continue marching on one after the other in
perpetuity. The work creating them doesn't have a beginning or end but
continues on forever at the rate the deliverables materialize.

One way to do it, sort of, is to create a task "spec" and a task "test" both
with 1 year durations. There are 20 work days in a month, on average.
Assign Bill to "spec" at 5/20 or 25% and to "test" at 10/20 or 50%. He can
sort out for himself which days he does what. That leaves 25% of his work
month for other things. The monkey wrench in the works comes up when you
try to actually schedule the 5 day task with a deadline to occur on specific
dates in that framework. What should happen? Are we only concerned with
averages, as long as we get it done by the deadline, or should work on
speccing and testing stop while he does this new task? If so, what happens
to the man-hours we would have devoted to speccing and testing? And what do
you mean by "5-day task" in the first place - is that 5 days of full time
work, 80 man-hours, 5 days at 25% effort, 10 man-hours, or just what?

--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer/Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

 

[Rob List]

Hi Steve,

Thank you so much for your help!

Yes, I agree, I don't think this is really what project is designed for (nor
do I think it's a very effective way to manage a company!).
averages, as long as we get it done by the deadline, or should work on
speccing and testing stop while he does this new task<<

When Bill does his "fixed" 5 day task, these will need to be performed to a
deadline, so the testing and the speccing will need to fit in around that 5
day task.
you mean by "5-day task" in the first place - is that 5 days of full time
work, 80 man-hours, 5 days at 25% effort, 10 man-hours, or just what?<<

Say a programming task that must be performed by Bill, because Bill is the
only one who knows the code for example.

This is such an organisational mess! I am truely grateful for your replies!

Cheers,
Rob

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

Still not quite getting to what I'm asking ...
After accounting for his speccing and testing tasks Bill is still available
on average 2 hours a day for other things. We give him the "5-day"
prgramming task. My question is does he have to do that to the exclusion of
anything else or can he work on it 2 hours a day as long as he starts early
enough to get it done before the deadline? So does "5-days" mean 5 man-days
or 40 hours of work, taking 5 days if he works on it full-time but also able
to be done over 20 days at 2 hours per day if he wishes to organize his day
that way, or does it mean at 2 hours per day he will take 5 days to do it
for a total of 10 man-hours of programming work required, or does it mean it
requires 40 man-hours of programming work AND we're only going to give it to
him 5 days before the deadline so he has to drop everything else and work
full-time on programming in order to meet the deadline?
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer/Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

 

[Rob List]

Hi Steve,

Sorry. I guess the answer is it depends on the situation, it would be nice
to cater for both. So if I can tell Project that Bill has a 5 day task that
HAS to be done before 01/06/05, then if I enter that task TODAY, it can
schedule an hour a day for the next few months. But if I were to enter that
task on 20/05/05, then it would be good if Project knew Bill had to work more
solidly in order to get it done in time.

I hope I'm not asking too much!!

Rob