(1) Explain your problem, don't simply post "This isn't working". What were you doing when you faced the problem? What have you tried to resolve - did you look for a solution using "Search" ? Has it happened just once or several times?
(2) It's also good to get feedback when a solution is found, return to the original post to explain how it was resolved so that more people can also use the results.
How would you schedule this?
There is a certain consulting firm which has a contract to provide 20 hours a month of consulting tasks. The contract spans through 6 months. There is a resource to be assigned to these 20 hours, however, that resource must also work on another ongoing project during that month.
How would you schedule this in Primavera / MS Project? (Or your preferred planning software)
Saludos,
Carlos.
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Rafael Davila wrote:
"Lets say you need 2 resource units to move a dead body working at the same time but 1 resource unit will not be able to do the task in twice the time as it will not be able to lift the body and move it a single inch, not even in 10x the amount of time it takes the 2 resource units to do it."
I'd just like to add that Rafael touches on a very important scheduling concept here: the varying resource elasticity of certain work activities. This is a concept of which every planner is very aware, but to which few are applying metrics.
In my Total Project Control book, the metric I recommend is the Doubled Resource Estimated Duration, or DRED. This is a secondary duration estimate for establishing the resource elasticity of a task. It is established by asking the question:
"If Activity X is estimated to take (20?)D with current resource estimates, how long would it take if we doubled (or could double) the resources?"
Some reasonable answers are:
I recommend entering the DREDs for each activity in a secondary Duration field and performing true cost analysis on them (if your software has critical path drag, drag cost and true cost computation functionality).
Fraternally in project management,
Steve the Bajan
Carlos,
I no longer have MSP. I recall someone suggesting the assignment of quantities of resources using percentages but also recall it is a flawed method that not always yields the correct answer. It is not the same assigning 1 resource 4 hours a day than assigning 1/2 of a resource 8 hours a day, sounds weird, can yield weird results.
If you have 2 units of the same resource available you can assign 2 units 100% of the day for a total of 16 man-hours if an 8 hours day but you cannot assign 4 units 50% of the day even when both add up to the same man-hours as there are only two units available.
Lets say you need 2 resource units to move a dead body working at the same time but 1 resource unit will not be able to do the task in twice the time as it will not be able to lift the body and move it a single inch, not even in 10x the amount of time it takes the 2 resource units to do it.
Good Luck,
Rafael
Rafael,
I'm biased towards Spider Project so I did not ask for Spider. You may find satisfactory that in Spider I arrived to your same methods.
I was thinking that this may be a missconception about how to plan. One would think that planning is necessary to avoid resource overallocation and multitasking. Resource overallocation would lead to delayed deliverables and multitasking would cause lost productivity. In this case we are talking about two contracts. The ongoing (1) and the "20 hours @ month" (2)
If the resource has 172 work hours available each month (typical 8 hours, five days a week), why not use them to finish its project early with the maximum quality under the contract (1) budget? Allocating 20 hours to contract (2) would affect the floats for contract (1) and could cause its delivery date to slip. Not mentioning the lost productivity increases contract (1) cost.
Well, that's what literature tells us. The truth is that a consultor would not let this opportunity go. It's almost as 20 additional free facturable ours each month, ain't it?
I looking forward to find how to do this in MSP. I've been obligated to use MSP lately for small assignments. I find it a very weird PM software, I mean, who come with the brilliant idea to take Float and call it 'Slack' ?
Saludos cordiales,
Carlos.
Carlos,
You got to be more specific as the options are endless.
There might be other ways but I suspect you want the assignments to follow the jobs. I have a preference on the second method for this specific case and would let the supervisor(s) to make manual monthly distributions. The idea is to make sure you do not overload the resource and that there is available time for the managers to make their allocations. I would recommend assigning 1 h/d the resource to a Buffer activity that will span all jobs, in this way you will have a 21.5 hours/month buffer if for whatever reason the month hours are reduced, it will also provide more room for the managers to make the allocations.
BR,
Rafael
Admin: sorry for the three posts, this is the good one
Email: PPadmin@planningplanet.com
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