identify resource requirement for sub-set of an overall project

[ayrshire man]

how can i dentify specific resource requirements for a sub-set of an overall
project. Example if the project is to build a house and the subsets are ,
livingroom, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. how can I identify the resources
required to construct the living room?

 

[John]

how can i dentify specific resource requirements for a sub-set of an overall
project. Example if the project is to build a house and the subsets are ,
livingroom, kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. how can I identify the resources
required to construct the living room?

ayrshire man,
I'm not sure why you posted to the developer group. Our main newsgroup,
microsoft.public.project is the correct place to post general
questions/issues with stand alone versions of Project. this newsgroup is
for questions with Project VBA, PSI, or other automation.

However, it sounds like you would like project to do way more than it is
designed to do (i.e. develop and manage a project for you).
Unfortunately Project is only software that responds to the data given
to it. You as the project manager are the only person who can correctly
identify which resource skills are required to do a particular set of
tasks. Oh, you could probably develop a complex macro to recognize
certain task characteristics and then make resource assignments based on
a pre-defined skill set, but developing the algorithm for that decision
making process would take more time than if you identified and assigned
the proper resource manually yourself.

John
Project MVP

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

If this is Project 2003 I can describe a solution without VBA (bit
complicated but working allright).
Due to a "new feature" in Project 2007 this has become unfeasible without
VBA!
Can you tell me the version I'll come back whezn knowing that.

Greetings,


--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
+32 495 300 620
For availability check:
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/Calendar.pdf

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

Dare I ask, what feature is this that causes the issue? You have piqued
my interest.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hello,

Through 2003, Assignments had but one Text1 (or Number7...) field.
You entered a value in text1 for an assignment in Task Usage, and you found
that value in the Text1 field for the assignment in teh Resource Usage view.
Perfect, logical...

Not for the geniusses in teh Lab, however. In 2007 these two "fields" are
independent. Note that in VBA they are BOTH addressed as assignment.text1
but depending on how you define the assignment (from the task or from the
assignment) the value you get for the same property of the same object is
different.

Would you think they humbly recognize this as a bog? O No! They even try to
outbluff me saying it is because of an EEC Tax regulation issue... Well, I
live near Brussels, I am a vivid fan of the European Union, and I think that
to blame your errors on "Europe" or "Brussels" is bad enough for politicians
in the UK but for a software lab it is ... (fill in the blanks)

Now my solution for the poster's question is to group one of the usage views
by an assignment custom field.. but with the value of the field depending on
the view it's more complicated and i have to lookup my notes on how exactly.

Thanks for the interest.



--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
+32 495 300 620
For availability check:
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/Calendar.pdf

 

[Gary L. Chefetz]

Jan:

Now tell us how you really feel! LOL

 

[Gary L. Chefetz]

Ok, now that I've poked fun, I should say something serious. I'm not sure
about the story on the ECC regulations, but I do think I understand this
design change, and I believe it was driven by sound logic for the Enterprise
solution. The problem with custom fields in 2003 and earlier, is that they
didn't carry a distinct value at the assignment level. This didn't matter as
much with stand-alone projects because nobody was really concerned about
breaking the information down to the assignment level. Project Server
introduced collaborative reporting and suddenly everyone wanted to collect
custom bits of information through the My Tasks page and have these remain
discrete values in the system. In the 2003/2002 (and older) model, the last
person to enter a value in the field determined the ultimate value as the
system maintained only one value for the field at the task level. The
addition of discrete assignment-level values allows for the existence of
individual values for a tracking field values at the assignment level and
the use of roll-up logic to represent the derived value of the field at the
task level.

As much as this bugs Jan, I don't consider it a bug or design flaw.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Gary,

Let me comment on this.
Who says nobody used custom fields (in Professional, I mean) on assignment
level? They are THE way to group to reply to questions like the poster's,
and that worked perfectly in 2002/2003.
So in Professional there is no such thing as "the addition of assignment
level custom fields" (that happened as far as I remember in 2000). Maybe
they couldn't be "customized" the same way as Task or Resource fields but
they could hold a value, ONE value for ONE assignment.
In these versions, the assignment object was well defined, and each property
of it had ONE value.
Now when today using the API you define an assignment object and you call
for the value of a custom field (same coding, ass.text1) you may get two
different values depending on how you define the assignment.
I do not think this is normal IT standard, any programmer producing such a
flaw would be punished severely..
And I fail to see the impact on server because in Server you name the cistom
fields and then they are disconnected from the standard ones like text1
altogether.
Sorry but this is really not "a feature".

Greetings,

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
+32 495 300 620
For availability check:
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/Calendar.pdf

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

OK, It's not a big deal, let's drop the argument.
By all means, the explanation is in FAQ 51 and the workaround in FAQ 37 in
http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
+32 495 300 620
For availability check:
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/Calendar.pdf