Resource Pools & Splitting Time between two projects

[DominoStarnes]

Software Versions: Project 2002 Professional and Project 2003 Professional
(I've tried this in both versions)

SUMMARY OF ISSUE: I am attempting to define a daily maintenance task in a
separate project file which is intended to take up 50% of a resource's daily
time (resource is defined in a resource pool and the maintenance task is
defined in a separate project file). Ideally, this "daily maintenance task"
would be 50% of the resource's allocated time and the other project's tasks
would fill in using the remaining available time. To accomplish this, I've
assumed that I would assign a "50%" value for the units of the individual
task to which the resource is assigned in the separate project file which
contains the daily maintenance task. However, the result has consistently
been that the resource is only scheduled for the single "maintenance task"
and the total hours which the resource is scheduled is reduced to whatever
percentage is assigned in the reduced units value.

QUESTION: How can I get Project to schedule a set percentage of time to one
project’s task and fill in the remaining time with dynamically adjusting
project tasks from other projects?

(Any and all help/assistance is gratefully appreciated!)

 

[JulieS]

Hello Domino,

In short, you cannot. Project will never "schedule a set percentage of
time to one
project's task and fill in the remaining time with dynamically adjusting
project tasks from other projects?"

You have a couple of options.
The method you suggest with setting up a separate project file to hold
the daily maintenance task and allocating 50% of a pooled resource's
time to the task. Then creating other project files with other tasks,
assigning the resource at 50%.

But the question becomes why bother with the 50% maintenance task
project at all. If your resource is only available 4 hours per day for
other non-maintenance tasks, why not just set the resource's max. units
to 50% or change his/her calendar to only allow 4 hours of working time
per day.

I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie
Project MVP

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for the FAQs and additional information
about Microsoft Project

 

[DominoStarnes]

Julie,

Thank you (thank you, thank you) for your response. Since I was working
with limited prior Project experience, I eventually made it work with the 50%
maint. task and limiting the other projects to the remaining 50%. While this
worked, I did discover that it became rather cumbersome when various
resources were not a 50/50 split. One resource, for instance, has a 40%
maint. task, a 20% maint. task, and fills in the rest of her schedule with
40% of whatever project work needs to be done.

To explain the reason we are maintaining project files for flat-percentage
maintence tasks, we are attempting to use the resource usage screens/reports
as resource planning tools. My management requires that they see the
maintenance tasks so that totals equal 8 hours/day and 40 hours/week, etc.

Again, thank you for your time and consideration. Your feedback is greatly
appreciated.

-- Domino

 

[JulieS]

You're most welcome Domino and thanks for the feedback.

Julie
Project MVP