Duration vs Work Effort in Overallocations

[John Mc]

Hi all,

I am checking the overallocations using the Resource
Allocations view and see a number of overallocations which
I'm not sure how to handle.

I have two fields in project. The first is work effort
(which represents pure work time) and the second is
duration (which represents the the time to complete the
taks).

In my project Mary has two tasks on the same day. They
will both take her 1 day in duration to complete, but only
require 15 minutes of her actual work time. She can
therefore complete both tasks on the same day. However,
project is showing overallocation.


How can i solve this problem and or change my methods of
creating a project to sort this out. If applicable, I
would like to know how to bodge it (a quick fix) and also
best practice for future projects (as I'm new to this).

Many thanks, John

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi John,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

Try Tools/Resource levelling/and chose minute by minute for the levelling
granularity.

FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information can be seen at
this web address: <http://www.mvps.org/project/>

Hope this helps - please let us know how you get on )

Mike Glen
MS Project MVP

 

[Steve House]

You have a couple of options. The fundamental identity in Project is
Work=Duration*Effort and you cannot under any circumstances violate that.

Assuming here that Mary is available for a maximum of 100% thus she is
overallocated when she is used more than that over any time period, even one
minute. In your example you have Mary's work is 1/4 hour on each of two
tasks and each task has 1 day duration. At face value that corresponds to
an effort percentage of about 3%. So if the two tasks are scheduled on the
same day she is only being utilized a total of 6% and the overallocation
will go away by making her assignment to each task 3% and the duration one
day.

Another way to resolve it is to set the duration of the task to reflect the
actual time that you expect it will take each one to complete when it
starts. IMHO, this is the preferred way. She may only need to get the task
done sometime on Tuesday but that does NOT mean that the task is one day in
duration. If the task requires 1/4 man-hour of work to do and when Mary
starts on it she will devote her full attendtion to it, then the duration is
..25 hours. The fact that she could do it anytime on Tuesday that she likes
is irrelevant. I'd make the task's duration 1/4 hour, her assignment
percentage 100% and let Project calculate the work. If both tasks are
placed on Tuesday by a predecessor that finishes Monday, as an example, they
will initially both start at 8am and Mary will be overallocated. But
resource leveling on a minute-by-minute basis will take care of that,
shifting one task to start when the other has finished with a resulting
schedule showing Mary working a total of 30 min, task A from 08:00 to 08:15
and task B 08:15-08:30. This way Mary shows free for another 7 1/2 hours of
work that day and whatever follows on after those two tasks can get
scheduled on Tuesday rather than Wednesday, generally a good thing to get
your project done sooner.

 

[John Mc]

Hi Steve,

thanks very much for giving such a detailed answer, it
helped a lot. As this is a project outside of peoples
normal work activites, I'm not so much after a minimium
duration time to immediatlely schedule the next task, but
a realistic one given they will be doing this project
work on top of their existing day to day tasks. Thats
why, even though something may only take an hour, I need
to allow a day before the next task can start.

Going forward, what would be the convention for handling
this. Changing the percentatge? (ie. 12.5% for a one hour
task completed in an 8hr day), or should I start using
lags for this type of thing. Or do the pros handle it
differently to these two options?

I appreciate this is a 'best practice' type of question,
but that might be why i'm having trouble learning this
side of things from microsoft project books and websites.
They are good on specific functions, but not so hot on
methodology (at least the ones we've got in the office)

Thanks,
John Mc

 

[Steve House]

Since your resources are doing this project's work interleaved with their
other duties, I think I'd go with assigning them 10-12 % to the tasks. That
way we are leaving it to the resources themselves to manage their workdays
and decide for themselves just when during the day they will do the work.
Generally speaking I prefer to go with 100% assignments but I think this
might be a legitimate exception to that usual practice. Using lag times to
space out the tasks would certainly work but it would be a PITA to manage a
lot of them.

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

 

[John Mc]

-----Original Message-----
Since your resources are doing this project's work interleaved with their
other duties, I think I'd go with assigning them 10-12 % to the tasks. That
way we are leaving it to the resources themselves to manage their workdays
and decide for themselves just when during the day they will do the work.
Generally speaking I prefer to go with 100% assignments but I think this
might be a legitimate exception to that usual practice. Using lag times to
space out the tasks would certainly work but it would be a PITA to manage a
lot of them.

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





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