Leveling pushes out tasks to 2049???

[Mike Huang]

I've been using the resource leveling feature for a while now. Recently, on
some of my projects (anywhere form 250-600 tasks), I have been experiencing
an odd, and very disconcerting behavior.

When I open the Resource Leveling panel, I select the "Level Now" button,
rather than leveling the project as I would expect to see, it takes 3-8
minutes "Calculating..." then pushes out all the tasks to 2049!

Most of the tasks are set up to be "Start as soon as possible," but waiting
42 years won't go over so well with management...

Any ideas why this is happening?? How do I get this to work correctly
again?? Help! I'm totally stuck!

Thanks in advance!
Mike

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Mike,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

Check for links on summaries: filter for summaries and scan down the
predecessors list. Try also inserting the successors column and check
again. You might like to see FAQ Item: 48 - Summary Task Linking. Have a
look at 49 as well and check that no resources have been assigned to the
summaries.

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
Project MVP
See http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc for Project Tutorials

 

[Mike Huang]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the suggestions. As we already make a point to _not_ assign
resources to task summaries, we were good to go there. I did go back and
modify the project plan to remove the summary task links.

Unfortuantely, this sitll did not resolve the issue. In fact, the symptoms
are almost exactly the same.

The main difference being that before, if I did resource leveling on a
"Month by Month" basis, sometimes the leveling would complete "correctly"
(although that wasn't what I really wanted). But, with the links to summary
tasks removed, any leveling, including "Month by Month", causes the tasks to
push out to 2049.

What else could be happening here? What else can I try?

Thanks,
Mike

 

[Mike Glen]

The only other thing that comes to mind is if there is some restriction on a
resource. If you have profiled one to not be available after a ceertain
date and levelling requires it to move beyond that date, then Project keeps
trying until it reaches the end of its calendar - 2049. See if you can see
which task is driving it out to 2049 and track back from there.

Mike Glen
Project MVP

 

[Axel Magard]

... MS Project keeps trying until it reaches the end of its calendar - 2049 ...

I have been running into the same problem described by Mike Huanq above. I
also had been using links to summary tasks but after removing those the
problem still remained bothering me.

The quote by Mike Glenn above nevertheless turned my thinking into the right
direction: what else could cause MS Project to not find a solution for a
proper resource leveling and let it bump into the end of its calendar ?

In my case it was a weird construction of how I had linked tasks together.
In my case I had a task with a Start-To-Finish relationship to a second task
having a Finish-To-Start relationship to a third task enforcing bascially
that the first and third task always would run in parallel, but both tasks
required one resource to be available 100% which was also the maximum for
that resource.

I actually noticed that exactly this resource' overallocation had not been
resolved during my first attempt to level resources. The overallocation only
went away after a second leveling without clearing leveling results before.

Now, after fixing my linking of tasks, the leveling works fine with the
first shot and no task is pushed into 2049.

Lesson learned: be careful with "Start-To-Finish" relationships !

Regards ... Axel Magard from IBM Germany, Mainz

 

[Mike Glen]

Thanks, Axel, for sharing that with us - one more for the scrapbook

Mike Glen
Project MVP

 

[Hung]

I'm not quite sure if the problem I got is the same with you or not, but my
levelling resource also drove my tasks to several years later.

Later on, I discovered that this would be fixed if I apply SP2 for my Ms
Project Professional 2003

HTH