Resource Requirement (%'s) change during the project

[Mike G]

Okay, the bain of my existance right now is that some of my resources have
changed and so has thier involvement on any one task.

Let's say that I have five (5) resources for one task and that I have an
estimated amount of money and time to be used based on my plan. Let's also
say that I have resource #3 set to complete 30% of the work required and
resource #4 to do 40%. As resource #3 gets involved, they start to go over
thier expected hours while resource #4 needs much less. Since I have entered
resource #3 to use 30% and resource #4 to use 40%, my costs are now skewed.
As I rebaseline the project I adjust thier percentages, which becomes a
headache.

The headache is because I don't know how to change thier hours or %'s to get
the correct EAC without recalculating thier current % of funds/hours.

I have to be doing something really silly since this can't be the first time
this has appeared.

Someone, anyone care to chime in. An expert would be great!?!?

Mike

 

[José Miguel Piñeres]

Hello Mike,

Welcome to this Microsoft Office Project General Questions newsgroup.

To tell you the truth, I am not quite getting the whole picture of your
problem. There are three kinds of percentages when referring to resources:
Maximum Units (Capacity), Assignment Units (Dedication), and Peak Units.

I suggest you read the information on the following link concerning Resource
units:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project/HA102548291033.aspx?pid=CH100667251033

Since it seems that you are varying the percentages (units) of dedication of
your resources in the tasks, there are a couple of things you need to have
clear for each particular task before you modify the resource assignments:

A) Does the timing requirements of the task have to do more with its
Duration, or the amount of Work needed to complete it, or the dedication
(units) of its resources?
B) Does the task requires the resources to perform their work together, or
can they do it separately?

Now that you have answered those two questions, you need to choose the type
of task that will accommodate your needs.

Please see the following pages for more information on Task types and Effort
Driven Scheduling.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project/HP100920391033.aspx?pid=CH100666551033

and

http://office.microsoft.com/download/afile.aspx?AssetID=AM103544341033

Concerning costs and the reason for variation, please refer to the following
page: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project/CH100666641033.aspx

With that taken care of, let us keep in mind the following:
1.- If you change the dedication percentage (units) of a resource's
assignment, the amount of work assigned to the resource will not change,
unless the task type is Fixed Duration.
2.- If you vary the amount of work a particular resource is assigned on a
particular task, then cost of the resource will vary accordingly. But the
cost of the task will vary only, if the total amount of work for the task has
also changed.

I hope this can be useful to you. Please let us know how you get along with
it.

Best regards,