Ah. Some information. First, Project is not "clever". You are.
: Re-think your project. When you say 4 hours do you *actually* mean
Duration, or do you mean Work? for example, if it is an 8 hour work
fixed duration task, and you assign someone to work 1/2 time on it (50%
unit), then the duration is 16 hours. You need to decide exactly what
you intend and then tell that to Project.
: Put in all the tasks. From the info below, seems like they are all
"fixed duration" at either 4 or 8 hours. Tell that to Project.
: define for each resource the maximum number for each (which I guess is
1.0 per your information, or could it be 0.8 to let them be available
for other things during the life of the project? Surely they are not
100% only working on this. You decide.
: Assign to each task the resources you wish to work on each task.
Specify the "units", e.g. full time 100%, or 1/2 time 50%, etc. project
will compute the Work, e.g. duration x units.
: Since there is no dependency between tasks, then let them all start at
the project start date (default). If you in fact do have some
dependencies, then define that by successor/predecessor relationships.
: do not EVER specify start or finish dates.
: keep everything ASAP (as soon as possible).
: read about Leveling in Help. Then do Leveling, and Project will give
you a schedule which works as described to it.
: If you don't like what it does, then you can "undo". Change
priorities of tasks, change durations, change logics. You are in
charge. You define a plan that you like.
(I hardly ever do leveling. Instead I focus on making a credible plan
and I make sure that all tasks are defined in a logic that I define,
e.g. every task has a predecessor and successor. Work on making sure
the resources are reasonable, and if not, then change the plan.
Levelling is just a clue. I never rely on it.)
