Odd resource handling

[Neil Peterson]

Howdy all,

One of my functional managers has an odd way of handling resources. I'm
left with the options of:
1. Convert them to my way of thinking (non-trivial solution)
2. Find a way to make Project handle resources as they would like to.

So far I'm failing entirely to find a method for #2. Here's the situation.

This manager has 6 people. Some tasks require specific resources due to
skills matching. Most tasks are "grab the necessary people from the
group to accomplish this task".

Specific examples:

Consider resources A,B,C,D,E,F all belong to resource group "QA".

Tasks
1. Develop test cases - requires person A for 2 days
2. Acceptance test for milestone build - 6 person days (anyone who is
available)
3. Tricky UNIX testing - requires person B for 2 days (pred: task 2)
4. General testing - 20 person days (any available) (pred: task 2)

and so on

The schedule from the manager's point of view is easy:

Day 1: A (task 1), BCDEF (Task 2)
Day 2: A (task 1), BCDEF (Task 2 - 0.25d), B (Task 3 - 0.75 d), CDEF
(Task 4 - 0.75d)
Day 3: B (Task 3), ACDEF (Task 4)
Day 4: B (Task 3 - 0.25 d), B (Task 4 - 0.75 d), ACDEF (Task 4)
Day 5: ABCDEF (Task 4)
Day 6: ABCDEF (Task 4 - 1/6 of day assuming my math is correct)

And so on. Clearly this can be scheduled manually. But when person E
is now needed for a skill specific task on another project or wants a
vacation the "manual reschedule" is non-trivial. And with a dozen odd
projects with a high change factor in play I'd be spending too much time
manually assigning people.

As far as I know project can handle "everyone is equal just grab
resources" [set a resource "QA" with 600% availability], OR "each person
is assigned separately" [using resources A,B,C,D,E,F the way I do for
everyone else]. Mixing and matching seems to be beyond Project's skill set.

Before I embark on the project of converting this manager to a more
usual school of thought I thought I'd ask if I am missing something in
project.

Neil Peterson
Project Manager

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Neil,

Welcome to this Microsoft Project newsgroup

Project can only assign from a group of resources or singly by name. It
cannot extract a name from within a group

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

 

[Neil Peterson]

Project can only assign from a group of resources or singly by name. It
cannot extract a name from within a group

Your phrasing is a little odd here. I think you mean "by typing in a
name, or using the drop downs to assign existing resources"

If that wasn't what you meant then how does project "assign from a group
of resources"? because that is likely something I could use but don't
know how to do.

I was just hoping I had missed something. Its a shame as "first
available of (A,B,C)" where that gets re-evaluated at every leveling
would be a GOOD resource for many tasks within software projects.

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

I should comment that this page has been useful in the past and is
appreciated.

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

I'll simply convert the manager in question. I can be stubborn....

Neil Peterson

 

[Mike Glen]

To re-phrase: you can have a group like Carpenter with, say, 10 men. You
can assign the resource Carpenter to a task and project will do just that,
leaving 9 carpenters for assignment over the same period. If one of the
carpenters is called Fred, you cannot assign Fred to a task and expect
Project to realise that it now only has 9 carpenters left for that period.
You either have a group or you have individuals by name.

Hope that helped,


Mike Glen
Project MVP