How to find balance in project from microsoft project

[Eric Tan]

Hello I'm new user in Microsoft project 2007 program

I have a question to ask your guy. How to find balance in project?

pls help me as soon as possible

Eric

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

If I knew how to find balance in project, I'd write a book about it.....

Seriously though, what are you looking for exactly? What do you mean by
"balance?"

 

[Eric Tan]

Hello Anddrew sorry to make you confuse with my ambiguious question.
already mention my specific question in another same topic

thank for your help
Eri

 

[Prasad]

Hello Anddrew sorry to make you confuse with my ambiguious question. I
already mention my specific question in another same topic

thank for your help
Eric

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Eric Tan
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Eric,

The doubts about resource leveling are natural for beginners of MS
Project. They want this powerful, popular software to produce a
resource leveled schedule automatically. For example, in a thread "3
problems with MS PROJECT" last month, jkazan asked, "I have more than
4 thousand lines in my project. My aim job is level 9 resources. Is it
possible to level it automatically?".

You also seem to have a similar desire which is very rational. But,
you would soon take manual resource leveling in Project as inevitable.
To the best of my knowledge, nobody seriously uses automatic resource
leveling feature of MS Project although it may be effective in some
cases. In fact, many people take pride in their ability to perform
manual resource leveling in Project. Eric Uyttewaal, an expert on MS
Project, wrote an excellent book on dynamic scheduling with MS
Project. In this book, he challenges readers to develop an algorithm
for automatic resource leveling in project scheduling. Microsoft made
tremendous improvement in Project over the years. But, I have no idea
what improvement really took place for automated resource leveling
although many users keep making laborious and time-consuming manual
effort for resource leveling, which is critical when many shared
resources have finite capacity and a schedule with resource conflicts
is unacceptable to managers. I do not know why Microsoft does not pay
a serious attention to this deficiency in spite of having great
resources. However, there are a few best-of-breed operational-level
scheduling tools that have powerful algorithms for quick and automated
resource leveling when resource allocations are 100%. They also handle
multiple resource requirements of tasks as well as multi-skilled or
multi-functional resources.

Prasad ( www.optisol.biz )

 

[Michael.Tarnowski]

Hello I'm new user in Microsoft project 2007 program

I have a question to ask your guy. How to find balance in project?

pls help me as soon as possible

Eric

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Hi Eric,

I want to clarify an important point, you will find often mentioned in
this group:

The resource levelling command is
· it is not a resource optimisation tool and will not make sure
resources are assigned work every day. It solves over-allocation by
delaying tasks only. That's all;
· it will not reassign tasks to other resources;
· it will not change assignment units for existing resource
assignments;
· it will honour task relationships (predecessor / successor) as well
as lag or lead – so it is entirely possible that levelling will cause
gaps in resource work.
When MSP comes up with a planning solution, it only gives the best
solution that it can come up with, which the planner can accept or
change. This applies also when the assignments are first made. It
assumes, because not told otherwise, that one resource is equivalent
to another and durations will decrease as the units are increased
(with the default task type and effort driven).
Be aware:
· Levelling can only delay tasks. It can't change resource assignments
and it can't change the Work on a Task.
· Resource levelling is not resource optimising.
· MSP never decides which resource does what – that is up to you.
Levelling never ever replaces a resource by a different one

Have a nice day, cheers
Michael

 

[Prasad]

Hi Eric,

I want to clarify an important point, you will find often mentioned in
this group:

The resource levelling command is
·      it is not a resource optimisation tool and will not make sure
resources are assigned work every day. It solves over-allocation by
delaying tasks only. That's all;.....................

Have a nice day, cheers
Michael

Michael,

I sincerely appreciate your clarifications. You said that resource
leveling solves over-allocation by
delaying tasks only. To verify this point, I have constructed a tiny
example as follows.

A project consists of only 3 tasks T1, T2 and T3 with durations 1, 5
and 4 (in hours), respectively. Suppose:
Task T1 requires machine M1 and worker W1.
Task T2 requires machine M2 and worker W2.
task T3 requires machine M1 and resource W2.

Assume that there are no dependency relations among the tasks. I am
not comfortable with the way that automatic resource leveling (on hour
by hour basis) delays task T3 to resolve an over-allocation. There is
a remote possibility that I did not make proper selections in
"Resource Leveling" window.

Regards,
Prasad