Resource Allocation - Theory

[verossa]

Hi All,

Project assumes the max. unit of a resource is known by the project manager.
However, my project is based on hours. E.g. I have a department responsible
for delivering 250hrs across the life of the project which could involve any
number of specialist all booking time against tasks that will eventually
total 250hrs. On the project I have 7/8 departments working in this way.

I have no visibility of the number of employees within the department - I
will only ever see their bookings against tasks. Therefore, allocating
resource the MS Project way is difficult because it assume one resource is
one person. Where as my resource is department / time (hrs) (does this makes
sense?)

How can I manage this scenario in MS Project?

I would appreciate any thoughts - TIA Vers

 

[verossa]

Please discard, Gerard has responded below.

 

[Joe]

If I understand your situation correctly, what I would do
is have the department name as the resource. You don't
care how many people do the work or who does it; all you
care about is that this department will produce 250 hours
of work as a whole for the project. So let just say you
have one task that is 250 hours long. If the department
provides 12 hours of work in one day, you record the 12
hours for that one resource name of that department, even
though it probably was 2 or 3 people who contributed. You
shouldn't care; because all you need to know is that there
is now 238 more hours to go. Does this make sense?

 

[verossa]

Thanks for responding:

"You shouldn't care; because all you need to know is that there is now 238
more hours to go"

That's 100% correct Joe.

All I can project plan is 12 hours have been booked against a planned set of
activities / tasks (I have no visibility of resource numbers). To expand
your example, if the complete duration of one task was 12 hours and planned
period for execution is 1 week (20 Feb 04 - 27 Feb 04) then at the end of
the week I will know if I am on schedule and within budget.

If the work hasn't been booked, the task hasn't been completed which means
I'm behind schedule and under-budget. Of course, the time taken to do the
task could be shorter than planned - but this IT organisation would book the
complete hours regardless of any time saved or perhaps I'm cynical.

Does that make sense... Resource allocations are not key in my project, but
in MS Project the application seems to be driven by allocating max. units of
resource.

Thanks again, Vers