MS Project 2003 Underallocations

[CraigM]

I'm trying to use MS Project 2003 to create a high-level plan. I'm using 1
resource to represent a team which has a varying resource availability as
people get freed up from other projects.

As a simple example I have modelled my resource availality as:

April - 200%
May - 300%
June - December - 700%

and I have 3 tasks on which any number of resources can work. The tasks are:

1. 4 weeks
2. 8 weeks
3. 12 weeks

So I'd expect that during April, task #1 and #2 get worked on. Task #1
finishes at the end of April and #2 finishes at the end of May.

For task #3 I expect 2 people to work on it throughout May and all 7 people
to work on it from the start of June until it is finished.

However, when I level resources MS project just gives me a flat resource
profile meaning that the team are very underused through June.

How do I get MS project to make full use of the available resources?

- Craig

 

[Doctor Dave]

When you assigned your resources to those tasks, MS Project probably
assigned a flat profile across them all.

The application has no way of knowing that you are willing to vary the
level-of-effort on individual tasks. Therefore you have to tell it.
Pretty much the only way of doing that is by doing so manually.

Levelling is not an optimisation tool. It simply delays pieces of
work until the resources have sufficient availability to be able to
work on them.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

Since leveling can only shift tasks - it never changes the assignment
units - the only way to achieve thos automatically is to break each task
into smaller tasks each with a 100% assignment unit.

Then shofting the tasks will use up the capacity.
HTH

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