resource scheduling question

[Bob]

Just because you have a resource that is working M-F 8am-5PM doesn't mean
that they have all that time available to work on your project.

how can you go in and say that some resource has N Hours per day,
irrespective of what TIME those hours are applied?

In other words, say i have a resource in a matrix environment that can give
me 4 hours of Project Work. I don't care, as a PM, if it's from 8am to noon,
2 hours in the AM, 2 hours in the PM, etc. I care that he's allocated on my
plan for 4 HOURS of Project work for that day. Maybe on MWF he can give me 4
hours, and on TUES / Thurs he can give me 6 hours.

again, i don't care what time he books them in, as long as he's applied in
my calendar at the hours he can give me.

when i book him now, i have him setup as a resource who works M-F 8am to
5pm. When Project books him as a resource, it allocates all those hours.
That's not realistic.

I need to be able to say that John Doe is available N Hours per day on M, T,
W, N+2 hours on Th /Fr. and not actuually book a time frame.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

If you don't care, just give him the time 8-12 of 8-14 or whatever.
Indeed, people don't care as a PM so why worry?
You can enter things like 60% availability but Project translates that as 36
secs per minute. Is that true? It's definitely not better than entering 8-13
or whatever.
Why care when you don't care?

 

[SHOHMAN]

Could this also be done in the resource calendar? For example, if the person
is available to work at certain times on certain days, you can specify that
in Resources by defining working times for resources using a custom calendar.
Would that also work? In your reply you mention giving the person a working
shift of 8 to 12. How would you do that? I have a task that is one hour in
duration and I would like to specify that it happens at 10:00 in the morning.
Is that possible?

 

[JulieD]

Hi Shohman

if you have a task that needs to happen at a certain time then it is best to
make a new calendar with just that time as working time (tools / change
working time / new) and assign it to the task on the advanced tab of the
task information dialog. this option is available if you're using ver 2000
or later.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

How do you do that, you ask.
Tools, Change Working time, select the resource's calendar
Select M ffor all Mondays, enter new shift tiome(s) in the small windows
below right.
Same for other days of the wek.
HTH

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

You say you don't care which hours the resource works but a PM very often
must care what hours of the day those 4 hours the resource gives your
project will occur in. Why? Because his task may produce a deliverable
that feeds as input to the next task in line and I want to tell the resource
doing it when he should be ready to roll. Thus I need to know exactly what
hours the first task will occupy so I'll know what day and/or time it will
be ready to move on to the next step.

And I'd take exception to your first line as well. In many scenarios the
work schedules aren't flexible - resources covered by strict hours of
service laws or collective bargaining agreements for example and no ethical
PM would ever put business exigencies ahead of such rules. If someone is
scheduled between 8 and 5 Mon thru Fri, those are the ONLY hours during
which work can take place. If someone is willing to work more that's great
but in planning your schedule you should never count on it. Fom a
scheduling standpoint, even if your organization's culture says "We're
officially scheduled for 8 hours a day but everyone really puts in 10 or 12"
I'd never, ever count on it in creating my project plan. If you do, you can
also count on coming up to the deadline, when you really NEED that extra 4
unoffical hours to meet your promised objective, and the critical resource
says "Tonight's my wedding anniversary and I'll be damned if I'll work
overtime." And I for one wouldn't blame him or her at all - we shouldn't
expect our resources to live for work.