Levelling not working as expected for part-time resource

[Nina]

I have a developer who will be on-call every 3 weeks. While he is on call, he
is at work but can only dedicate 40% of his time to the project.

To capture this in MS Project, I edited resource availability by entering
Available From, Available To and Units information, for example (in AU date
format):

Available From Available To Units
NA 03/07/2008 100%
04/07/2008 10/07/2008 40%
11/07/2008 NA 100%

The problem is, MS Project does not allocate any tasks to the resource while
he is available for 40%. Work required for tasks are entered in days, and the
smallest task requires 1 day worth of work. Levelling is set to automatic,
and "Levelling can adjust individual assignments on a task" and "Leveling can
create splits in remaining work" are selected.

What I want to see is that the resource work on tasks while he is still on
call, so one task spans over multiple days while he is still on call. Any
help would be greatly appreciated as I cannot give deployment dates to the
management until this problem is sorted.

Thanks ..

 

[Rod Gill]

HI,

The only effect available from and to dates seem to have is to flag a
resource as unavailable. In your scenario I would edit the resource calendar
to be working a 40h week every 3 weeks. keep units to 40% so you get 16h of
available work one week in three.

leveling won't change the duration, but should change the start and finish
dates.

--

Rod Gill
Microsoft MVP for Project

Author of the only book on Project VBA, see:
http://www.projectvbabook.com

 

[Nina]

Hmm, OK. As a work-around I was contemplating of editing the calendar for
the week he is on call, but it just didn't seem to be an elegant solution

As for not changing the duration, that's fine as long as Resource Usage
shows that the resource is working during the week he is on call. At the
moment absolutely no work is assigned to him for that week and the scheduled
dates for the project are incorrect.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

Curious, I find your proposed solution the most elegant one
I would definitely keep the units on 100% and decrease the working time when
he is on call.
That way durations will remain the same.
Note that (this is a personal opinion) I never find percentage availability
"elegant" because the scheduling engine interprets it as working say 24 secs
every minute

HTH

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

 

[Steve House]

Remember that leveling does not change resource assignment percentages at
all. So if you've assigned your resource at 100 percent and then change his
max availability to 40%, Project does not automatically reduce his assigned
percentage accordingly. The wording for the checkbox "Leveling can adjust
individual assignments" is a bit misleading - it does not mean that it can
adjust percentages, it means that if two (or more) people are assigned to
the task and one of them is overallocated while the other one is not, it can
move the overallocated person's work without movng the other person's with
it. The ONLY thing leveling ever does is shift work forward as a block - it
never adjusts assignment levels. It's splitting the task for that week
because the assignment of 100% means that due to its nature, the task
requires his undivided attention and complete concentration. Since he can
only give it 40% that week, he really can't do any work on it at all until
such time as the conflicting tasks are done and he can return his full
attention to the task at hand. 'Fraid you're going to have to use the usage
views and manually contour the work to achieve the results you seek -
leveling simply doesn't do what you want. 40% is about 3 hours per day so
when you've made you original assignment showing him 8 hours per day for the
full 3 weeks, go into the usage view and edit the 8 per day to read 3 per
day for the week he's on call. That will extend the end date because those
man-hours of work still need to be done and the only place to do them is to
add them after the original task ending date - the duration will extend by
approximately 3 days in order to make room for the 25 hours he otherwise
would have done in week 2 but couldn't do because of the demands of being on
call.

 

[deluth]

I agree with Nina. The changing of the calendar is definitely not elegant.

I am also having this problem and looking for an elegant solution. I read
FAQs 28 and 34 and the tutorials, but was not able to find a solution. I am
relatively new to MS Project 2003, but don't like this methodology for
leveling.

I have tested this out because when I listed my resources as NOT available
in a certain period (0%), Project still assigned tasks to my resource, but
when I blocked the times in the calendar, Project levels the resources
accordingly.

I'd be happy if some one tells me I misunderstood Project and how it levels,
but to update each person's calendar each time instead of listing their
availability sounds like brute force and not elegant at all.

How I see it is that if I specify that the resource is only available for
40% of the time in a certain week, I rather specify it in the "Resource
Availability" chart than to have to go in and change the actual value in the
Calendar of the resource. What is "Availability %" for if Project cannot
level the resources based on the availability of the resource?

Base on other comments, it seems that if I have varying availability, I have
to go in and change the entire calendar for the life of the project for that
resource instead of having a quick list that indicates the Resource
"Availabilities"? Yuck!

tdeluth

 

[Steve House]

You're mixing up several concepts, I think. First and foremost, understand
that a Maximum Availability setting of 40% does not mean that the resource
is only available for 16 hours out of the week. If their calendar says
their working time is the default 8-5, Mon-Fri, they are available to work
for the full 40 hours BUT because there are other things in their life
outside the project universe that prevent them from devoting their full
attention to the project's work, they'll only get 16 hours worth of
full-time equivalent progress done in a task whose duration from start to
finish is 40 hours. In other words, the task that took a week to complete
as measured from the time when it began until the time it was finished COULD
have been done in 2 days had you been able to clear off the other stuff from
the resource's plate. The allocation percentage represents the RATE at
which the resource converts duration TIME into the equivalent hours of
full-time effort WORK. If the resource is available to you 16 hours a week,
you would still expect him to give 100% of his attention to the tasks you
assign him to. If the task requires an hour of work, you would expect him
to do it in an hour. If he comes to your project on Monday and Wednesday
and you assign him to a task requiring 8 hours of effort, you would expect
him to start and finish it on the same day - the fact he's not with you on
Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday doesn't mean you won't expect a full day of
his undivided attention on Monday and Wednesday, does it?

The difference between showing him with a work calendar of 16 hours a week
and a maximum availability / normal assignment level of 100% versus showing
him with a 40 hour a week calendar and a maximum availabilty / default
assignment level of 40% is subtle but has a profound impact on how tasks get
scheduled and resource's leveled.

Project does not assign tasks to resources or resources to tasks. Leveling
never adjusts assignment levels nor does it optimize the resources. It
never changes the duration of a resource's assignment to task. What is does
do is shift the work as a fixed-length block in order to resolve situations
where the resource has been double booked. Joe is assigned 100% for 8 hours
on Monday to wax widgets. He is also assigned to spend 8 hours Monday
painting fids. He only works 8 hours a day and since he's assigned 100% he
can't do both at once. In other words, we have scheduled him to somehow
magically accomplish 16 man-hours of work over the course of an 8-hour
workday and it simply can't be done. Leveling moves one of those tasks to
Tuesday if he's free that day. That's ALL it does. If we book him to that
1 day task at 100% but set his maximum availability to 40% leveling is
completely incapable of resolving the problem because there's no way to
reduce the assignment percentage to 40% without changing the duration of the
task and leveling never does that. Whether we leave the task on Mon or move
it to Tue, unless the duration changes the assignment remains at 100% while
the max allowed is 40%. Only by lengthening it so it spans Mon, Tue, and
part of Wed would we achieve that reduction in assignment level so we're at
40% but leveling simply won't do that, by design.

HTH