Re: Allocating work hours to resources

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Do you mean hours for the specific task or hours for the project as a whole? If you're talking about her hours for the review task, I think the best way is to do it is as I suggested <humble bow>. Keep in mind that work hours and duration hours are quite different critters. She'll need to have 1 hour a month set aside to do the reviews. So I'd just say she needs to have 1 hour set aside on each, say, last Friday in the month for the length of the project. Assume that for that hour she can give full attention to the review process, and assign her 100% to it. Project will calculate the total man-hours she's putting in for you and for a 2 1/2 years (ie, 30 month) project it will total out she'll do 12 hours per year or 30 hours total. No calculating at all required on your part. I also feel strongly that it's not the job of the PM to structure the resource's workday - they're usually perfectly capable of doing that on their own. So if she finds on some of those Fridays she's got other stuff on her plate and postpones the review until Monday or juggles a couple of fires at once and so works on the review from 9am to 3pm while fielding other demands on her time instead of 9am to 10am as the project schedule might call for, well why worry about it. It all evens out in the end. You've estimated it will take her 1 man-hour per month to do the reviews and you've scheduled her to do reviews for one hour per month on dates that seem reasonable and that's really all that's needed.
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs


"Howard" <Howard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:D0504079-AC84-4213-AB65-12FB1C6B9255@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Thanks Steve. Is there a better way to input a total amt of hrs, since this
project is more of a effort driven process than an exact science 8h/day,, 40
hr/week work schedule?

Thanks, H

"Steve House [Project MVP]" wrote:

In that case EACH monthly instance of her review should be a separate, 1
hour duration task to which she is assigned 100%. You can easliy enter all
30 of them in one swell foop by entering it as a monthly recurring task from
the Insert menu. Remember that the 100% means that out each hour of
duration she works on the task she accomplishes 1 man-hour of work. In this
case that makes perfect sense because even though its only a small fraction
of her total working time, for the time she's actively doing the review she
can't be also doing other things as well. Her attention is focussed 100% on
the task at hand. The result of entering a recurring task is a collapsed
Summary task showing the full 2 12 year's duration, 30 hours of total work.
When you expand the summary, you'll see each individual 1-hour task detailed
out, once a month on the day of the month you specified.

--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs


"Howard" <Howard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:88DD341D-EA84-4370-89AF-8B31CC8C38AD@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>I had a feeling this was going to be the reaction. I need to account >for
>her
> time (albeit small) for a newsletter subject that only needs her quick
> review. I'm in the planning part of this, and am trying to estimate > time.
> This task will be recurring monthly, and won't take more than 1 hr per
> month.
>
> H
>
> "Steve House [Project MVP]" wrote:
>
>> 12 hours per YEAR ?????? Are you talking about 1 task that is running
>> several years yet only requires a total of about 30 hours of work on >> it
>> spread out over its total duration? No offense intended but why are >> you
>> even bothering scheduling something so trivial?
>>
>> A "task" is usually considered a single discrete block of work within >> the
>> project that is performed by a single resource and produces a single
>> output
>> deliverable. The duration is how long it will take from when actual >> work
>> commences on it until the time when the deliverable will is completed >> and
>> handed off to the next task in the chain of events.
>>
>> If your project runs 2 1/2 years I would be very surprised if it >> didn't
>> involve dozens of different discrete identifiable activites. Before >> you
>> even start to think about assigning resources and their hours you need >> to
>> list all of those different discrete activities in detail. If you >> don't,
>> you
>> don't have anything to assign the resources to. If we have 8 hours >> of
>> work
>> that can be done at any time within a 2 year time frame but whenever >> we
>> do
>> it the resource will devote their full attention to it and perform the
>> work
>> in a continuous block, that's not a 2 year task, that's a 1 day task >> with
>> a
>> deadline 2 years after the project starts. The rule of thumb is a >> task
>> should run between 8 and 80 hours - over 80 hours and you're not
>> detailing
>> the work sufficiently to manage it while under 8 hours and you're
>> micromanaging to excess. A single task with 12 hours of work per year
>> running for 2 1/2 years sure doesn't seem to fit into those >> guidelines.
>>
>> For most normal activities one should try to assign resources 100% to
>> each
>> task they're on. The case you described with it as a single task >> would
>> be
>> 30 hours of work spread over about 5000 hours of duration, 30/5000, or >> a
>> 0.6% assignment level, hardly worth bothering with. She'll spend more
>> total
>> time than that visiting the washroom or making the occasional personal
>> phone
>> call on company time.
>> -- >> Steve House [MVP]
>> MS Project Trainer & Consultant
>> Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs
>>
>>
>> "Howard" <Howard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>> news:B2CA3981-1434-4D76-9DB0-3C876C2A8A72@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > I'm trying to assign available work hours to resources within a
>> > project's
>> > task in MS Project 2000. I'm only tracking tasks and time, not $$
>> > costs.
>> > For example, task 1, I've assigned Jane to it, and she's been given >> > 12
>> > hours
>> > per year (long range project lasting over 2 1/2 years). How can I
>> > assign
>> > Jane just the 12 hrs.? Do I need to figure out manually what the % >> > is?
>> >
>> > Thanks, Howard
>>
>>



.

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