Re: problems with project.,...

From: Jan De Messemaeker (jandemes)
Date: 02/19/04 

Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2004 19:11:27 +0100

Hi Dave,

Unfortunately, just by mere force of the mind we cannot change the way a
software works...

I note two questions in your note, one of them I can help, the other
unfortunately not because proh-ject can't do it - but I have an alternative
to offer.

First, you complain that it is nearly impossible in Project to force it to
make two resources work together. You're not the only one who'se gone about
insane on this, I honestly thingk the guys who wrote thsi part of project
weren't exactly clear in the mind either. If one wants two resources to work
independently, one calls it 2 tasks, but when one calls it 1 task with 2
resources in my mind they're supposed to work together. Not so in Redmond
alas!

Fortunately there is a workaround, not the most obvious one but it happens
to work for people like you and me, so why not try?

- Assign both people to the task as you do now (I recommend to assign them
at 100% - more about that in part 2). DO NOT CREATE RESOURCE CALENDARS TO
SHOW ABSENCES, instead when somebody is absent create a task representing
the duration of his absence giving it the constraint "Must Start on".
- Now you will notice that nothing much happens, people will be
overallocated on these days that's all.
- Now when all is assigned, go to Tools, Resource Leveling (it might come
out handy to read some help on teh feature, it is a bit long to explain
here) and CROSS OUT THE CHECKBOX "LEVELING CAN ADJUST INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENTS
ON A TASK". Then click Level Now.
- Project will now delay some tasks until all overallocations are resolved
and multiple assignments on a task will still be simultaneous.

Second question - I half follow you, but what I offer a a solution is not
exactly what you have in mind.
First I like your question "What's the deal with units". Indeed, when I
teach Project, I try to convince people that entering any units figure other
than 100% is a very inaccurate representation of reality since I don't want
people to work only 50% of their brain or so (in fact, what Project
schedules is that they spend 30 seconds on the task every minute - is that
accurate?). I prefer to say it's a 3 days task, thus it is 3 days of work.
Then when people say I do not know exactly when... I say exactly, Project
only gives you an early start date and a late start date, and a task can
happen anywhere in between - but while the guy is on it, he's using himself
at 100%.
But your expectation that Project will anyhow adjust units because of
occupation on othe rtasks is absolutely unjustified. PROJECT CAN'T and WON'T
DO THAT; it wxon't even try.

Instead, I once again offer you resource leveling - not splitting the guy's
brain (horizontally? Vertically?) but delaying the least urgent tasks.
Another way to look at the problem, but a solution just as accurate as
saying he woks 24 secs every minute...

HTH 

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
Project Management Consultancy
Prom+ade BVBA
32-495-300 620
"Dave Watkins" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> schreef in bericht
news:1257e01c3f6fa$d27f97a0$a101280a@phx.gbl...
> Hey people,
>
> We are trying to write a project plan for a magazine we
> are designing and are having some problems getting to
> grips with project. It seems to work pretty much how we
> want it to aside from sheduling the resources properly.
> The problems are as follows: there are two managers
> (including myself) who will be doing most of the work, we
> are using this to allocate our time against tasks etc and
> hence when we should do things. a lot of the tasks need to
> be done by both of us together so we allocate both of us
> as two resources to each task, but we need to be working
> the same hours on the task (ie if its a 10hr task in total
> with two of us working 5hrs, those 5hrs must occur at
> exactly the same time). Also what is the deal with units,
> because surely you don't want to define the percentage of
> a persons time to dedicate to a task as this should be
> automatically set by project relatively, dependent on what
> else needs to be done and what constraints exist.
>
> I would really appreciate some help on this one, cos it is
> beginning to kill me,
>
> I bow to your superior knowledge,
>
> Cheers guys.
>
> -Dave

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