Microsoft Project 2003 hanging when resource leveling

[yhbae]

I use Project 2003 extensively day to day, leveraging resource levelin
feature frequently. Unfortuantely, at times it just hangs. Once i
starts to hang, it will hang all the time when I try to level. Thi
tends to happen to schedule that are relatively large - typically ove
1000 lines.

Does anyone know if there are known issues on this? I remember thi
happening on Project 2000 as well few years back. I was hoping 200
would fix this problem but it didn't.

Workaround so far is to level few resources at a time which is a rea
pain. The other way is to save often, try deleting various lines to se
which line is causing the issue. Delete that line, create it again
redefine dependencies to that line, and usually it works ok afte
that.....

Any clues would be appreciated

 

[Rod Gill]

Do you have the latest service pack installed (SP3)?

--

Rod Gill
Project MVP

Project VBA Book, for details visit:
http://www.projectvbabook.com

NEW!! Web based VBA training course delivered by me. For details visit:
http://projectservertraining.com/learning/index.aspx

 

[yhbae]

It appears that we have only up to SP2 installed. Is this a known issue
on SP2 or lower?

Thanks again.

 

[Dave]

It appears that we have only up to SP2 installed. Is this a known issue
on SP2 or lower?

Thanks again.

For clarity, can you tell us if it actually hangs or does it just take a
long time (many minutes or even hours) to complete the operation?

 

[yhbae]

For clarity, can you tell us if it actually hangs or does it just take
a
long time (many minutes or even hours) to complete the operation?

I left it for more than 30mins and it still does not complete the
leveling process. Typically, it takes about 30 seconds. I would say it
won't complete even if I leave it for hours....

 

[Dave]

I left it for more than 30mins and it still does not complete the
leveling process. Typically, it takes about 30 seconds. I would say it
won't complete even if I leave it for hours....

I'd try leaving it for hours if you can. My suspicion is that it is
taking a long time rather than hanging - I have seen this happen.

If it is just taking a long time, then maybe you could make copies of it
and try cutting bits out of it before levelling to try and determine
which tasks are causing the problem.

Is your project in phases? If so, can you push one phase artificially
far into the future (just set a temporary constraint on its start
milestone) to allow you to level between given date ranges to try to
narrow down the section causing the problem.

Have you tried setting some tasks to priority 1000 before levelling so
they are excluded from the levelling process? Again once again to try
to determine what part of the plan is giving grief.

Are you sure that on each individual task, nobody is assigned to more
than 8 hours a day (or whatever your working day is) because otherwise
you have lost before you start.

 

[yhbae]

I'd try leaving it for hours if you can. My suspicion is that it is
taking a long time rather than hanging - I have seen this happen.

If it is just taking a long time, then maybe you could make copies of
it
and try cutting bits out of it before levelling to try and determine
which tasks are causing the problem.

Is your project in phases? If so, can you push one phase artificially
far into the future (just set a temporary constraint on its start
milestone) to allow you to level between given date ranges to try to
narrow down the section causing the problem.

Have you tried setting some tasks to priority 1000 before levelling so
they are excluded from the levelling process? Again once again to try
to determine what part of the plan is giving grief.

Are you sure that on each individual task, nobody is assigned to more
than 8 hours a day (or whatever your working day is) because otherwise
you have lost before you start.

You mean it may actually take hours to complete leveling? That would be
really awful...

I do make copies and when I have enough time I try to "debug" by
deleting various lines until it all of a sudden goes fast. In almost
all cases, it is caused by a single line and often just deleting and
adding it again and re-establishing dependecies fixes the problem. Very
annoying though since it takes a long time (trial and error) to find the
line...

Leveling in phases is not easy either. I have about 30 people in the
schedule and there are about 5 or 6 projects active at any given moment
along with production support work. Leveling works in this situation
nicely when it works
since I can maintain very dynamic schedule that can take into account
unforseen activities and understand impacts of these.

I do have level 1000 tasks as well - usually these are vacations, fixed
support rotations, etc.

I am pretty sure no one are assigned more than 8 hours at any given
time as the resource usage sheet reports no over-allocation.

Thanks for your feedback(s).

-YH

 

[Dave]

You mean it may actually take hours to complete leveling? That would be
really awful...

I do make copies and when I have enough time I try to "debug" by
deleting various lines until it all of a sudden goes fast. In almost
all cases, it is caused by a single line and often just deleting and
adding it again and re-establishing dependecies fixes the problem. Very
annoying though since it takes a long time (trial and error) to find the
line...

Leveling in phases is not easy either. I have about 30 people in the
schedule and there are about 5 or 6 projects active at any given moment
along with production support work. Leveling works in this situation
nicely when it works
since I can maintain very dynamic schedule that can take into account
unforseen activities and understand impacts of these.

I do have level 1000 tasks as well - usually these are vacations, fixed
support rotations, etc.

I am pretty sure no one are assigned more than 8 hours at any given
time as the resource usage sheet reports no over-allocation.

Thanks for your feedback(s).

-YH

It shouldn't take hours - that is usually an indication that something
has gone wrong with the plan.

It sounds as though you have found a line which can cause this problem.
Is it always the same line?

If you structure the way you try to isolate the line by deleting or
moving half of the plan, you can then try to find out which half of the
plan the problem is in and then which half of that and so on.

Maybe you are suffering from corruption or bloat and it may be
worthwhile following the advice on the FAQ pages regarding that.

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi yhbae ,

I suppose there might be some corruption somewhere. Have you tried the
suggestions in FAQ Item: 43. Handling project file corruption and/or bloat?

FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information can be seen at
this web address:http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm

Hope this helps - please let us know how you get on

Mike Glen
Project MVP

 

[yhbae]

Thanks guys, I will check that FAQ section and see if I can get any
useful tip from it.

Currently, my schedule is causing me this problem again. I currently
don't know which line is causing the issue. I usually do "binary
search" on the schedule to find that line. delete last 50%, level.
Depending on result, further delete 25%, etc... O(log N) search
algorithm! haha...... sigh actually...