Leveling Resources

[David]

I'm new to project, so I apologize if this is silly.... but..... I've created a project plan, assigned resources, task times, etc... all from the standard Software Development template. After completing the plan, I found that one of my resources can only give me 75% of her time. I changed her Max Units to 75% and tried to level to extent the completion date according to her availability. It won't level. Am I doing something wrong, I do I just have a complete mis-understanding of leveling.

Thanks,
Dave

 

[Gérard Ducouret]

Hello Dave,

You probably created an intrinsic overallocation : that means that you
assigned the resource at 100% on one or several tasks, which is more than
possible for that resource. You have to correct manually the assigments of
that resource.
The leveling algorithm is efficient when the overallocation is due to
conflict between 2 or more tasks which use the same resource : for ex. if
your resource is assigned at 50% on one task and at 50% on another one which
runs concurrently : it exceeds the Max Unit of 75%.

Gérard Ducouret

I'm new to project, so I apologize if this is silly.... but..... I've

created a project plan, assigned resources, task times, etc... all from the
standard Software Development template. After completing the plan, I found
that one of my resources can only give me 75% of her time. I changed her
Max Units to 75% and tried to level to extent the completion date according
to her availability. It won't level. Am I doing something wrong, I do I
just have a complete mis-understanding of leveling.

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi David,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

Could be a number of things. In the Resource Levelling dialog, what
settings did you select? Try Clear Levelling and then relevel. Levelling
will only extend the project if there is an overallocation - changing to 75%
won't necessarily cause overallocations if that resource is not assigned to
more than one task at a time.

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
MS Project MVP

I'm new to project, so I apologize if this is silly.... but..... I've

created a project plan, assigned resources, task times, etc... all from the
standard Software Development template. After completing the plan, I found
that one of my resources can only give me 75% of her time. I changed her
Max Units to 75% and tried to level to extent the completion date according
to her availability. It won't level. Am I doing something wrong, I do I
just have a complete mis-understanding of leveling.

 

[David]

Thanks guys.... while I was waiting for this to show up, I searched old responses and found one that clarified the issue. I had changed Max Units. What I SHOULD have done was change that resources allocation for each task. I went back and did this (throughout the entire project plan!) and it worked as I needed it to by pushing out the dates

It just seems kind of silly that after you create a plan, there's no quick way from the resource sheet to tell MSP that a specific resource is only available 75% of the time instead of 100% and have it push the dates out

Thanks again for your help

Dave

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi David,

Yes;I'm sorry to put it bluntly, you do have a misunderstanding of Project's
Leveling.
Leveling will never ever change percent allocation on a task.
All it does is when several tasks together create an overallocation because
they are simultaneous, it will postpone the task(s) with the lowest priority
unttil the overallocation is resolved.
This being said, when it is one task that causes the overallocation (such as
in your case, assignment units are 100% ad max units 75%) postponing isn't
of any help so Leveling will give you a message it is incapable of resolving
the overallocation.
My advice is the following:
Open the Resource Usage view
Insert the column "assignment units"
For the 75% resource, change the first cell to 75%, then select all cells
for that resource in that column, and type Ctrl+D (copy down).
Unless your tasks have fixed duration type, their duration will
automatically be adjusted.

HTH


--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
Project Management Consultancy
Prom+ade BVBA
32-495-300 620

I'm new to project, so I apologize if this is silly.... but..... I've

created a project plan, assigned resources, task times, etc... all from the
standard Software Development template. After completing the plan, I found
that one of my resources can only give me 75% of her time. I changed her
Max Units to 75% and tried to level to extent the completion date according
to her availability. It won't level. Am I doing something wrong, I do I
just have a complete mis-understanding of leveling.

 

[Projectoid]

My advice is the following:
Open the Resource Usage view
Insert the column "assignment units"
For the 75% resource, change the first cell to 75%, then select all cells
for that resource in that column, and type Ctrl+D (copy down).
Unless your tasks have fixed duration type, their duration will
automatically be adjusted.

HTH

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
Project Management Consultancy
Prom+ade BVBA
32-495-300 620

Alternatively, select all tasks then click on the Assign Resources
button in the toolbar. In the dialog that opens, select the resource
for which you want to change assignments, then click on the Replace...
button. In the next dialog, enter the new Units (75%) for this
resource, then click Ok.

A final alternative, which I like to use, is to modify the resource's
availability calendar. You can make Mondays and Tuesdays non-working
days, for example, to give a resource availability of 60%. This may
better reflect actual work practices in some cases.

....PO

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

I fullheartedly agree to your calendar alternative.
Generally people who work use 100% of their capacities (brain...) and I like
Project to reflect that.
Moreover, it gives nicer results when leveling
Greets
--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
Project Management Consultancy
Prom+ade BVBA
32-495-300 620