Meetings with 50% resources

[K Major]

I have a 2 hour (fixed duration/non-effort driven) meeting that will be
attended by 5 people. All 5 are part-time on my project (50% in the resource
sheet), so I have them each for four hours a day.

Since they are 50% on my project (instead of 100%), they only get allotted 1
hour of work for the meeting when it should be 2 hours of work. My only
solution to this is to bump them up to 100% on the task's resource assignment
- however, this immediately over-allocates them EVEN if this is the only
actvity for the day (i.e. I have them for 4 hours and am only using 2 of
those 4 hours). Plus, this type of over-allocation cannot be resolved (i.e.
it stays RED) because they are above their assignment units of 50% in the
resource sheet.

Do I have any options?

Help!

 

[Joe]

I am not 100% sure this will work, but try it and see.

Instead of having them at 50% in the resource sheet, try setting their
working hours to be only 4 hours. So this way 100% of their time to the
project is still only 4 hours per day. I am not sure what other issues this
will cause or if this is the best solution, but it is something else you can
try.

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

Are they full time 8-hour employees that you only get for 4 hours a day or
are they part time 4-hour a day employees that you get for their full shift?

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

This IS the best slution.
After all, when they are there, they work 60secs per minute don't they?
Ans 50% is trandsleted by project as 30 secs every minute.
I avoid useing %assignment different from 100 as much as I can.

HTH

 

[K Major]

Steve,

Full-time 8-hour employees I only get for 4 hours a day (50%).

This seems like a good solution.

If I use the suggested solution, are there any repercussions down the road
if something changes that will make this approach a poor one that results in
bad project information (ex: the resource's availability increases or
decreases)?

At a high-level, this solution seems to suggest that one should manage %
availability through the resource calendar rather than the resource sheet.
Agree?

Thanks, Kevin

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Agree.

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

The best answer I can suggest is "it depends" and I can't come up with a
solution that always works. In general I like to see the resource's calendar
reflect the times that they are on the property, whether you can have them
for all of that time or not. Since the task schedule follows the resource
calendar, that way the hours where work could be scheduled tracks the
resource's availability. If I try to set up a 4 hour per day calendar for
Joe full-time employee, the only times the task will be scheduled are the
hours on the calendar. If we arbitrarily pick, say, 1300-1700 as the hours
in the calendar, that's when Joe's tasks will be scheduled. But if he's an
8 hours a day employee that we can have for up to 4 hours a day, in reality
(most of the time) that would mean he could actually work that 4 hours from
0800-1200 or 1000-1500 or 1300-1700 or 0800-1000 & 1400-1600 or any other
permutation you can come up with. Plus, in reality that 4 hours a day is
often negotiable - by arrangement with his supervisor you might use Joe 6
hours one day and only 2 on another, averaging out over time to about 4
hours per day.

The max allocation is a flag point and sets a default assignment level -
there's nothing that says you can't leave someone assigned in excess of it,
only that most of the time you shouldn't. But there are exceptions for
every rule and in the case of your meeting, I'd just put them on that task
100% and not worry about their names being red in the resource list, as long
as you annotate it to indictate that it's not a real overallocation. But at
the same time, one needs to discipline oneself to not let assignments that
exceed 100% stand without correcting because THAT would mean that somehow
magically the resource could do more than 8 man-hours worth of work over the
course of an 8-hour workday

Another sticky point to be careful with is what's happening with your
durations. When you entered your task's durations, lets say you estimated
it as 2 days duration, does that mean it'll take M & T with the guy @ 4
hours per day or does that mean that it would take M & T if you give it to a
guy working for you full time but should be M, T, W, & T for the fellow you
only get 4 hours a day?
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer/Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

 

[K Major]

Let me play with this a little bit and I'll follow-up.

Thanks, Kevin