Unavailability of Enterprise Resource

[anovak]

Is there any way to not allow a PM to add an Enterprise Resource to the
Project Team if the resource is booked and shows '0h' availability?
Or, is it just up to the other resource manager to keep tabs on
overallocation that might exist for their resource?

Thanks,
Andy Novak
University of North Texas

 

[mark.everett]

There is no way that I know of to prevent this from happening. It
needs to be a training and performance issue wit the PMs, enforced by
the PMO / Project Server Admins. There are audit tools available that
will detect overallocated resources very specifically, but it should be
part of the process that before or when a new plan is published on the
server that it is reviewed for exactly that kind of thing.

Mark Everett | PMP
www.quantumpm.com

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Andy --

This is a huge training and performance issue with your project managers.
At a minimum, you must train them to do the following:

1. Make realistic resource assignments on every task. This means that if a
resource is only going to work part-time on a task, the project manager MUST
NOT assign the resource at 100% Units. For example, I need to assign a
resource to work on a task for an average of about 2 hours per day over the
life of the task. Therefore, I must assign the resource at 25% Units on
this task. If I assign the resource at 100% Units, I have just made a
totally unrealistic task assignment and have totally invalidated the
Availability information for the resource in Project Server. If you do not
get your PM's to do this, there is little point in the second point below.

2. Do not assign resources to a task when the system says that the resource
has 0h of availability during that time period. If a PM ignores the
resource availability information and books an unavailable resource to a
task anyway, the project manager will intentionally cause an overallocation
and the result will be that somebody's task will finish late due to the
overallocation.

Just some thoughts. Hope this helps.

 

[anovak]

Thanks. On #2, I suppose that doesn't automatically shift the plan
does it? It just gives that person more than they could possibly
handle. I guess it would up to each tech manager (who play both PM and
RM roles from time to time) to keep on top of their folks allocation
graphs and if it spikes, that means someone did a "no no" by booking
them on another project?

By the way is Fixed Units the way to go with without Effort Driven most
of the time for IT shops.? Its not like bricking a house where it
takes a shorter amount of time the more people you throw at it. Is
that better than Fixed Duration in our case? Or should we use Fixed
Work? I've always been unsure about this.

Thanks,
Andy

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Andy --

No, #2 will not automatically resolve the resource overallocation.

Fixed Units is the default and I recommend it be left for most tasks unless
you have a very good reason for doing so. The Effort Driven status can be
deselected on tasks on which adding extra resources will not shorten the
Duration of the task. For example, when I teach a class, it takes me 2 full
days. If I am given an extra teacher to help me, the class will still take
2 days, but each of us will work only half the time. That is a class
example of a non-effort driven task. Hope this helps.