how do I set availability at less than 8 hours per day?

[RaganStukenborg]

As much as we would otherwise prefer, our team spends less than 100% of our
time each week dedicated to projects. In reality, we're about 60% projects
and 40% support. We also tend to work on several smaller projects at the
same time, rather than one large project. Is there a way to set Project to
have the work day reflect the number of hours that are available for project
work, then assign a percent availability to use the number of project hours?
When I tried to set the standard calendar to a 5 hour work day, and allocated
a resource at 50%, they showed as working 4 hours on the project that day,
rather than 2.5.

Thanks

 

[Jim Aksel]

You can leave the hours per day, etc. as their default values (assumes 40
hours per week 8AM to 5PM with an hour for lunch).

If your troops are only available 60% of the time, then change the max units
to 60% on the resource sheet.

Now it becomes a matter of how you want to deal with the issue that John,
Paul, George and Ringo may not work 8hr/day.
What I do is make the task type "Fixed Work" rather than fixed units. So,
if I believe a task is 40 hours of work I can assign Ringo (who is at 60%)
and Project will calculate the duration for me at 8.3333 business days. It
will take Ringo that long to perform a 40 hour task.

You can also do it as fixed duration or the default of fixed units. If you
use fixed duration, you risk overloading Ringo.
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim Aksel, MVP

Check out my blog for more information:
http://www.msprojectblog.com

 

[Sai]

As much as we would otherwise prefer, our team spends less than 100% of our
time each week dedicated to projects.  In reality, we're about 60% projects
and 40% support.  We also tend to work on several smaller projects at the
same time, rather than one large project.  Is there a way to set Project to
have the work day reflect the number of hours that are available for project
work, then assign a percent availability to use the number of project hours?  
When I tried to set the standard calendar to a 5 hour work day, and allocated
a resource at 50%, they showed as working 4 hours on the project that day,
rather than 2.5.  

Thanks

I see you have multiple smaller projects and one large project, and
so, are you looking at having multiple schedules for each of them, and
managing the availablity of the resource for each?

Please clarify.

- Sai, PMP, PMI-SP, MCT, MCTS
http://saipower.wordpress.com

 

[Steve House]

50% assignment on a 5 hour calendar does NOT mean they're working 2.5 hours.
What it really means is they're working all 5 hours but due to distractions
they're only getting 2.5 man-hours worth of useful full-time work
accomplished. It takes them 5 hours to do what they could have done in 2.5
hours if they had been able to give the task their full attention.