PS2003 SP2: remaining work rescheduled with allocation % set at previous peak units when accepting a

Y

yann dupre

Here is the strange situation we are observing in our Project Server
2003 SP2 implementation.

We use fixed units non effort driven tasks that extend over 2 years or
so as part of what we call "sustaining plans". We prefer to use this
approach rather than admin projects because we want to have full
visibility of all resource allocations to projects and sustaining/
operations/support/admin activities.

Typically resources are assigned to these long tasks at a fixed, low
unit level (for instance 5%).

The first time a resource reports actual work (for instance 2 hours
for Monday and nothing for the remaining of the week) and it is
accepted in the project, everything works as expected: remaining work
for the task is still scheduled at the same Allocation % (5% in our
example), but obviously the peak units are now 2h / 8 = 25%. So far
everything is normal.

If the resource keeps reporting no more than 2 hours in any single
day, then remaining work on the task will remain scheduled at the
original allocation (5%)

However, if the resource reports more than the previous peak actual of
2 hours for any single day (for instance 3 hour in a day), then, after
accepting timesheet updates, all the remaining work has been
rescheduled with an allocation of 25% (the former peak units). In
essence, all the work is now "compressed" at the previous peak units
instead of the original allocation (of 5%).
Obviously, the new peak unit is now 3/8 = 37.5%

And so on: even if we reschedule manually the work to reset the
allocation% on remaining work to 5%, the next time the resource will
exceed its previous peak units (for instance by reporting 4 hours in a
single day), then all the remaining work will be rescheduled at 37.5%,
which was the previous peak units...

Even though we use fixed units non effort driven for these "sustaining
plan" tasks, our tests have shown that the behavior is exactly the
same with Fixed Work tasks.

Fixed duration tasks behave completely differently (and very
logically): after accepting actual work, remaining work is rescheduled
evenly over the remaining days of the task, also making the unit%
change over time, depending if actual work comes above, at or below
plan. At least with fixed duration the behavior is the same whether
you accept time from timesheet entries or whether one simply types in
actual work in the project plan itself.

Interestingly, this rescheduling only happens when accepting time from
PWA timesheets. When we try to reproduce the behavior by manually
entering work hours by day in the time phased work portion of a task
usage or resource usage view, nothing happens: remaining work stays
scheduled at the original allocation%.

Have anyone observed this behavior? Is there a setting either in PWA
or Project Pro to prevent this releveling of Remaining Work to happen?
Again this is one of the only times where actepting time from PWA
timesheet updates yield very different resluts than simply typing
actual work hours by day in the plan.

Any clue on where to start looking?

Thanks

Yann
 

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