Re: Fully Allocate a Resource

You can make project display the start time by going to tools, options and selecting the view tab. In the date format you can opt to show or hide the time.

As a general observation, do you actually have to track what your resources are doing minute by minute? That's a very fine level of granularity. If you are only interested in ensuring that they get a number of activities done in a day then I would suggest day-by-day levelling or even week-by-week levelling might be more appropriate although your particular circumstances may dictate otherwise.

I don't understand how what you have done has resolved the problem and wonder whether you are expecting too much from the levelling engine.

Levelling is not an optimisation tool in that it won't adjust the work to fill the gaps in a resource's working day. It actually does something closer to the opposite - it simply delays tasks until there are no overallocations in the resource's schedule.

If, after levelling, a resource is not working sufficiently many hours in a day then you need to manually adjust the length of that task (and possibly level again - you may find it useful to fix those elements of the plan you are happy with by setting their priority to 1000).

You shouldn't have to adjust the contour and I wouldn't worry about it. By definition, unless the resource works exactly the same number of hours every day on a task then it is contoured. Instead, if I wasn't happy with the hours that a resource had been scheduled to work then I would alter that either by directly entering the planned hours or by adjusting the length of the task, although when doing this you need to consider the totality of hours worked by the resource across all the tasks occurring on that day.

Vic wrote:
Hi Julie,

On the leveling I didn't allow splitting of a task. And I'm not sure how to check the time of a task starting. Please let me know on that just out of curiousity. But I don't believe that is it because it's many days and many tasks that it happens.

I was able to resolve the problem by changing the Work Contour and prioritizing some tasks. When I entered Actual Work it changed the Work Contour from "Flat" to "Contour" - is that normal? So I changed them back to Flat and in addition to the prioritization that seemed to start scheduling the work so they had an 8 hour day (or at least close to it in some cases).

Hope that makes sense. While it seems to be corrected, I would still be curious to know why it does that and if there's a better way to handle the situation. Your help is appreciated.


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Fully Allocate a Resource
    ... to resolve some overallocation flags. ... Contour and prioritization worked, ... levelling or even week-by-week levelling might be more appropriate ... If, after levelling, a resource is not working sufficiently many hours ...
    (microsoft.public.project)
  • Re: Fully Allocate a Resource
    ... Contour and prioritization worked, ... levelling or even week-by-week levelling might be more ... If, after levelling, a resource is not working sufficiently many ... I was able to resolve the problem by changing the Work Contour ...
    (microsoft.public.project)
  • Re: How do I stop Contours?
    ... Overallocation is a minute by minute thing and if two 100% tasks overlap by even one minute the resource is overallocated at a 200% allocation level. ... Leveling will move one of those tasks to resolve the double booking - if the meeting is the higher priority Task 1 gets moved to start at 10am and end at 2pm. ... What APPEARS to be a contour is really the result of a split of less than a full workday duration. ...
    (microsoft.public.project)
  • Re: Performing tasks seqentially
    ... When Project does its levelling, it ONLY DELAYS tasks until the resource ... So, if you see a Duration of 21 days, it ... >> Project is specifically designed to do exactly what Andrew is asking ...
    (microsoft.public.project)
  • Re: how do I make resource levelling work?
    ... In addition to Mike's comments it is worth perhaps pointing out that levelling a plan may well be an iterative process. ... After a first pass at levelling, you can fix those elements you are happy with using the priority field, adjust durations if your tasks have become split as in your example. ... Whereas I want to specify a task with an elapsed time and an amount of effort. ... And actually I don't care whether the resource does 100% for the first 5 days and nothing for the rest or whatever. ...
    (microsoft.public.project)