Resource units question

[Jack]

I had always thought that on a fixed duration task (like say, a 2 hour
meeting), the resource units should all be 100% since every resource is in
the meeting 100% of the time for the whole 2 hours. Would there be any
circumstances when the resource units would be less than 100%?

 

[Gerard Ducouret]

Hello Jack,

If the IT manager decides to plan a 4 weeks parallel run (between the old
version and the new version of a software) with 2 persons on the help desk,
he/she can assign Peter at part ime (Units = 50%) and John at 50% too,
during the fixed duration of 4 weeks.(Only one person at a time)

Gérard Ducouret

 

[Steve House [MVP MS Project]]

In your example they probably would be 100% unless they were napping during
the meeting since it's hard to split your attention between a meeting and
something else. OTOH, there are many tasks that could be fixed duration
where they would not require full-time attention - we have an automated
stress test of a new product that has to run for one week. The resource
monitoring the test needs to spend about an hour a day recording readings
off the test instruments. The rest of the time the test runs unattended and
the resource can be off doing other things. Task "BigTest", task type fixed
duration, 40 hours duration, resource work 5 hours, resource effort 12%.

Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer/Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

 

[Dr. 9]

But you could have say, a 1 week task, with a shared resource ie, it takes
70% of their efforts (they can do other non-project related tasks).