Re: It's all in the Leveling(?)

Hi Beyers ,

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Mike Glen
Project MVP


Beyers Konig wrote:
Hi

I have to manage 11 projects using about 14 resources. Each project
contains about 200 tasks, giving a total of more than 1500 tasks. I
use Project Professional 2003 with its Enterprise features. The
Resources enter actual work done on Project Web interface. I use only
Enterprise Resources and have created one Global Masterproject where
all the other projects are inserted as 'sub-projects' into this
master project.

The projects range from Hardware, Firmware and Software Development to
Production planning and Installation Management. Because of the amount
of projects running concurrently I have to use Resource Leveling, but
major limitations in the way it works makes it virtually impossible
for me to use.

The problems I am facing is this: (Keep in mind I have to use
Priorities as our featurelist and feature priorities are very dynamic)

A) How to handle what I call 'Monitor Tasks'.
To explain: Say for instance we order our BOM. The orders for the
hundreds of components are placed at various companies. After order
placement, somebody has to track the progress of order delivary. Thus
the task would be "Monitor/Track Order Delivery Progress". Now, the
resource doing the tracking needs a variable amount of time each day
of say 1 to 2 hrs each day. This resource hours must of course be
taken into account in Project Planning.
i) If I use a Task where the resource units are entered a say
12% (about 1hr/day) then 'Resource Leveling...' moves task with 100%
allocated units out and does a bad job of overlapping other less than
100% unit tasks for the same resource. (I can allow for splitting of
task only for certain tasks, but not for all tasks throughout, i.e. I
cannot split a code development task, and Project does not allow me to
specifay which tasks can be split and which not)
ii) If I use a "Recurring Task" then I run into the problem
that these tasks have priorities of 1000 and I cannot level

B) Our development are done on a feature by feature basis. Every
feature has a number of tasks to complete that feature. I want to
Prioritise and Plan the development of these features (by using
"resource Leveling"). When work on a feature starts then all the
(sub)tasks for that feature must be carried out, without delay between
these tasks or splitting of these tasks, untill all work on the
feature is done. Thus, "Resource Leveleing must "move" (or delay)
features (which in essence is a summary task) rather than moving the
tasks themselves. Another way of saying this is: Project must allow
me to 'group' tasks, and then thes groupings will be prioritised and
moved/delayed in order to Level the Resource allocations. I have found
no way Project can do this. (Note: Other there are no dependancy links
between different features. Priorities ONLY must determine when work
on a feature must be carried out or when a work on a feature must be
delayed)

I hope someone can help.
Thanks
Beyers



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