Task overallocated on project

[Ralph]

I have a scenario, which i hope someone can help me on. I am using the
resource pool and i have a resource dedicated to project A for M-W on T-F the
same resource is be used on project B. However, the task on Wednesday is 8
hours but it took the resource 16 to finish. Which project will get effected
and when i mean affected i mean, project A is over due and my hunch is that
the project B gets effected and then all the task for that time will push
out, throwing off the projects date. Normally i would just create a test
project to test this theory, but we are still in negations over the use of
the resource pool or admin projects.

 

[mark.everett]

Ralph -

Part of the answer depends on you report time and how mature your
process is. If you report time using % Work Complete and have not
added Actual Start and Actual finished fields to your Published Fields,
Project assumes that your planned and actual dates were met.

If you are using the Hours Per Day method, with remaining work and
actual start and actual finish fields added, then both projects will be
impacted:

Project B knows nothing about Project A unless they are linked. In
your scenario, Project A's work went 4 days (Mon - Wed + Thur). Unless
your resource plans on working 16 hours on Thursday, he or she will
start working Project B on Friday and (barring working over the
weekend) finish on Monday.

So what will happen is that both Project A and Project B will show the
impact. The actual work on the task(s) in Project A will be one day
longer in duration and 8 hours higher in work and the the actual
duration on Project B will be one day longer than planned.

Hope this answered your question.

I suppose, if you wanted to get around this, you could have your
resource enter time on Project B according to plan, but that doesn't
reflect the reality of the situation.

Mark Everett | PMP
www.quantumpm.com