Managing Many Small Projects with part-time Workers

[Elaine]

I've used Project in the past with projects with tasks lasting days and
weeks, but this is a new experience.

I have about 40 small development projects (can say that the main task on
most is just "dev") that last only a few hours each.

There are 3 workers. 1 works 10 hours/week, 1 works 20, and another an
undetermined amount, but isn't assigned much work.

I definied the one that works 10 hours a week as having 25% max units. For
the 15 hour one, he's assigned at 50%.

I have listed all of the dev projects and assigned hours to them. I assigned
the developers.

Many of the projects are not dependant on one another.

Questions:
1) Do I HAVE to have dependancies on everything to keep the Gantt moving
foward in time?
2) Is there a way to get Project to establish correct Gantt by calculating
available hours for the assigned resource, and moving project times out based
on the Resource's availability?
For instance, I have 3 projects that total 20 hours of work.
They are not dependant on each other.
Can Project look at the hours and lay them end to end without
my declaring a dependancy between them?

I have gone through most of the documentation here at MS and searched the
web, but not finding a great amount of help for dealing with mass amounts of
small, non-interdependant work items.

 

[DavidC]

Hi Elaine,

First: You can assign specific work times for each resource rather than use
a percentage of utilisation. Assigning a percentage use of a resource leaves
Microsoft 'thinking' that the resource has spare time available. Better to
go to the "change working time" and select the calendar for the resource and
change the times for each resource individually and for the days that they
work. This will then truly reflect when they are available to work on their
activity.

second unless there is a dependency between activities it is unwise to link
them together just to get a sequence. Better to think of the schedule as a
list of independant activities which if you had an infinite number of
resources, could all start at the same time. Now when you assign resources
to the activities, you will find that some resources will be overallocated,
inother words they cannot do all the work showing at that time. Now set a
priority to each of the tasks, if one task has some priority need over
others. Now you can level the project selecting, "Prioirty,standard". This
should now sequence out you programe that shows when each activity is best to
be undertaken using the reources available in the time they have available.

Hope this helps

regards

DavidC

 

[vanita]

Hi Elaine

I would like to add something to what has been suggested.

While working with human resources, it would be better to have resource
assignments in numbers instead of percentages as that is more appropriate for
machinery/equipment. You could change the resource availability/assignment to
numbers by going to Tools > Options > Schedule > Show assignment units as a
DECIMAL.

After this you can even show a resource as available/working in decimals
like 0.5, which would mean working half days.

I hope it helps

Vanita

 

[Elaine]

Thank David and Vanita. This has helped.

Had quite a few funky issues with Project not saving changed work time - it
is holding now, but it kept erasing my entries...

Everything seems to be working as it should now. The next question - is
there a guide somewhere for how to create some better reports? Or how to
control which fields show up? I'm decently skilled at database work, and I'm
finding the software's choice of what to put in the reports a bit eratic...

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Elaine,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

I'm not aware of any definitive documents. However, I have broached the
subject for beginners which might help you to see a way of getting what you
want. You might like to have a look at my series on Microsoft Project in the
TechTrax ezine, particularly #24 on Customizing Reports, at this site:
http://tinyurl.com/2xbhc or this:
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMFrame.asp?CMD=ArticleSearch&AUTH=23
(Perhaps you'd care to rate the article before leaving the site,
Thanks.)

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

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

Actually, 50% (or 0.5 if you prefer) does NOT mean they're working half
days. The resource units describes the RATE at which time is converted into
work. A resource who's maximum is 50% does NOT work 4 hours per day. They
still work 8 hours a day but for whatever reason, when they are assigned to
work on a task that would require 4 man-hours of full-time equivalent work
to complete it will take them their entire 8 hour work-day to accomplish it.
If you assign them a task that requires 20 man-hours of FTE work effort,
they will be working on it 8 hours per day for the entire week (40 duration
hours) to get it done.