Unexplained Overallocation

[Mike]

Hello,

I have a resource that shows an overallocation, i.e. the resource's name
appears in red in the Resource Sheet, but upon examining the resource's time,
I can't find where the overlap exists.

None of the Work hours in Resource Usage appears in red even when changing
the timescale to view time by the hour. I even tried looking at the
resource's time by the minute, but couldn't find a way to change the scale of
Work hours into minutes (for each minute division of the scale, the resource
was shown to have worked "0.02h" rather than "1m" -- Project must round the
number since .02 hours equals 1.2 minutes; the same value is listed for
resources who are NOT overallocated).

Also:
- There are no warning messages after levelling that indicate a problem,
- The Resource Graph shows no red overages anywhere,
- Setting the resource's Max Units to 101% clears the overallocation.

Any suggestions would be appreciated...thank you.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

IMHO the rounding is the culprit
When a resource is on 3 tasks, with units such as 36.6%,46.6% and 16.8%
(adding up to 100%)
Porject may well round that to 37,47 and 17%, adding up to 101%, making the
resource appear as red.
I think leveling adds up work (which may be rounded differently) and may not
detect the "problem"
By the way, Tools, Options, schedule, allows you to set work is entered in
minutes.

HTH
--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
+32 495 300 620
For availability check:
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/Calendar.pdf

 

[DavidC]

Excuse my jumping in here. Another option but somewhat laborious is to use
the resource usage sheet. This will allow you to find the period when the
resource is showing as overallocated and then find the exact day when the
overallocation occurs and manually change the allocation to a specific task
to eliminate the overallocation.

Hope this helps

Regards

DavidC

 

[Mike]

Thanks for your reply, Jan. I will look at the rounding...

--

-Mike

Hi,

IMHO the rounding is the culprit
When a resource is on 3 tasks, with units such as 36.6%,46.6% and 16.8%
(adding up to 100%)
Porject may well round that to 37,47 and 17%, adding up to 101%, making the
resource appear as red.
I think leveling adds up work (which may be rounded differently) and may not
detect the "problem"
By the way, Tools, Options, schedule, allows you to set work is entered in
minutes.

HTH
--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
+32 495 300 620
For availability check:
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/Calendar.pdf

 

[Mike]

DavidC,

As I mentioned in the original post, I have used the Resource Usage sheet to
locate the overallocations. None, however, can be found...

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

Have you tried the "jump to next overallocation" tool in the resource usage
view? Go to the very start of the project on the timeline and hit
[ALT][F5]. Look for days with hours shown in red. Some of the hardest
cases to locate are where the assignment on a single task is greater than
the maximum allowed allocation as entered on the resource sheet. It often
happens when Joe Resource is initially entered with a maxiumum of 100% and
assigned to some tasks at that level, then at some point in the future the
resource sheet is edited to reduce the max. But changing the Max Allocation
on the resource sheet doesn't carry over and reduce any existing
assignments, thus the resource is left overallocated on those prior
assignments, booked on them at 100% when his max allowed is, say, 50% or
75%.

 

[Mike]

Hi, Steve,

Yes, I have tried to locate the overallocation using that method and by
browsing through the entire project by hand, but none were found. There were
no hours in red either; only the resource's name is in red...

--

-Mike

Have you tried the "jump to next overallocation" tool in the resource usage
view? Go to the very start of the project on the timeline and hit
[ALT][F5]. Look for days with hours shown in red. Some of the hardest
cases to locate are where the assignment on a single task is greater than
the maximum allowed allocation as entered on the resource sheet. It often
happens when Joe Resource is initially entered with a maxiumum of 100% and
assigned to some tasks at that level, then at some point in the future the
resource sheet is edited to reduce the max. But changing the Max Allocation
on the resource sheet doesn't carry over and reduce any existing
assignments, thus the resource is left overallocated on those prior
assignments, booked on them at 100% when his max allowed is, say, 50% or
75%.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm for the FAQs