Effort Driven Scheduling / Totally Confused by Project

[Pineflakes]

I think I may be taking the the wrong approach to using Project, and I have
the feeling that there is probably a more efficient way to manage my projects
with it. In fact, I am a little worried that Project may not even be right
for my application. Please, any suggestions?

TYPE OF PROJECT: Planning a lengthy remodel of a six unit residential
building (many tasks of varying relationships) using very few resources (two
full-time workers paid hourly, and a few subcontractors, electricians,
deliveries, etc). I know the work for each task, but I want to track their
duration in order to know when to schedule subs or material deliveries.

PROBLEM: I can't find a useful way of assigning resources to the tasks
without creating messy over/underallocations and levelling issues up the
wazoo. I want to be able to assign each worker 100%, have them work an 8 or
10hr day (depending on the worker), and move directly on the the next task
once the first is completed, or automatically arrange their time to work on
another concurrent task if they should be available to do so.

WHAT I HAVE TRIED: Although I am rather new to Project, I have read the
Step-By-Step book and thoroughly investigated the Help topics. Again, I feel
that I understand the tools, features and concepts, but I am not applying
them correctly. I follow the basic project guide for entering a project's
details, starting by defining tasks, grouping them, and scheduling them, then
defining resources and assigning them. I have experimented with effort driven
scheduling and fixed units, and in my case, it seems that I should be using
fixed work since I know the man-hours for each task, but I am looking for the
task's revised duration after assigning resources. I end up manually
levelling everybody's work schedule, which is excruciatingly tedious for just
two workers since I have to make sure that I maintain the same amount of work
for each task without accidentally increasing it (as you know, even a fixed
work task can be manually changed). I want to control how many hours someone
spends on a task in a work day, not by a percentage of their available time.

For example, jack works a 10 hour day, and jill works an 8 hour day. They
are given three tasks to do: scraping (4 hrs of work), cleaning (4 hrs),
priming (12 hrs) and painting (12 hrs). All three tasks are start-to-finish
and cannot begin until the previous one is complete. With both of them
working together, scraping takes 2 hrs, cleaning takes 2 hrs, and then they
begin priming. After Jack and Jill prime for 4 hrs, Jill needs to clock out
and go home, leaving Jack to work another 2 hrs until he clocks out as well.
2 hrs of priming remains for the next day, when they both return to work and
finish priming together in an 1 hr. Then they are able to spend another 6 hrs
apiece painting.

In this example, I dont care whether Jack did more than 50% of the priming,
just as long as both he and Jill worked a full day, and didn't start painting
until all the priming was complete. How do I apply this to project? Am I
going about this all wrong? Does the solution have to do a different approach
to levelling resources, defining working times, work types, or assignment
units? It seems very simple but it has definitly been a black hole of time
and frustration for me, Aaghhhhh...
:O

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

I can only react to concrete problems, and you quote one.

Maybe this is a pity but when two people work together on a task Project
wants to know how many hours of work each one has to perform -as if it were
two different tasks!- and it doesn't try to "optimize duration" - many first
time users seem to expect that.

When you think this is absolutely necessary to show a decent schedule indeed
Project doesn't do that. I wonder which software will - it will not be an
easy one to use I'm afraid.

OTOH, I understand your frustration about percentages. I wish there were a
simplified wersion in which a resource just worked or did not work, in other
words, the only possible unit would be 100%. But this is wjer you can
improve your settings: yes you will enter work to be done but the first and
foremost parameter is that your 2 people have to work 100% so FIXED UNITS is
the best setting for you.

Hope this helps,

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

Remember that the resource assignment percentages don't represent the
percentage of the total work that each member of a group of several resoures
does when the group is assgned to the task. If I have John and Mary both
assigned to a task, that does not mean they are assigned 50%/50% or 60%/40%
or 25%/75%. The assignment percentage is the percentage of the time the
resource spends on the task that is converted into useful work output. If
I could have polished my 100 fids in 10 hours working full speed but instead
took 20 because I had other stuff on my plate as well at the same time, my
assignment percentage was 50%. So putting Joe and Mary on a task together
could still mean each of them is assigned 100%.

 

[Pineflakes]

Thanks for the input. Yes, it is as I suspected, I am trying to apply Project
in a way it can't deliver. On one hand, I had feared that this approach was
'micromanaging,' my resources' time, but that is not really what I was after.
I dont really care about the details of exactly how each resources applied
his/her workday, as long as they worked a full day and did not begin any task
before its predecessor was finished or other constraints observed.

Do you think that a fairly accurate schedule can be obstained by simply
using the two workers as one resource: workers @ 200%, and define their
workday as a comprimise between their respective 8hr and 10hr shifts (i.e. a
9 hr workday)? This would at least show me the basic project schedule and
when to apply my subs and materials. I could then also use each individual
resource for tasks that specifically involved one worker or their skills set.

Thanks
Pineflakes

 

[Pineflakes]

Another thought:

Is there any kind of VBA that might help this?

Perhaps one that could help level day-by-day work so that it doesn't allow
one guy to become overallocated on a task while his partner becomes
underallocated, just because they aren't starting and finishing their tasks
at the same time?

I read another reply that Jan gave to someone else with a VBA that helped
level summery tasks by setting their prioirity levels prior to levelling. I
paste that below:

Hi David,

Just like I suggested 15 mins. ago to another poster, I only see the
possibility to run before lebveling a VBA procedure that lifts the priority
of tasks belonging to a started subtak and/or decreases priority for tasks
belonging to unstarted summary tasks.

Example:

Sub ResetPriorities()
dim Job as task
for each job in activeproject.tasks
if not job is nothing then
if not job.summary then
job.priority= 1+9,98*job.outlineparent.percentcomplete
end if
end if
next job
end sub

HTH

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

IMHO for what you want to achieve this is a good solution.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

I wish there were a reasonably simple logic to be applied, I'd write the VBA
program immediately, but I'm afraid I do not "feel" the solution - at least
not simply.
HTH