Better do resource leveling manually than automatically?

[bauershias]

Hi all,

I am a bit disappointed about the MS Project leveling mechanism. It seems (and from the answer on another question I asked in this forum this was confirmed) that MS Project cannot automatically assign the remaining work time of a resource to another tasks (see thread "Balancing Resources with less than 100% in MS Project").

So here is my question: How do you handle the following scenario in your daily work: The developer Jim is assigned to a software development task called "Parser Implementation" which starts now and requires a fixed work amount of 100 hours. But it is also assigned to a task "Coaching of Team member Bob" with 10% of his working time for the next 2 weeks.

How do you best cope with these two tasks in MS Project? If you give "Coaching of Team member Bob" the higher priority and assign Jim to 100% to the task "Parser Implementation", the automatic leveling facility gives Jim only a work load of 10% (from "Coaching of Team member Bob") for the next two weeks because it does not let him start working on "Parser Implementation".

If on the other hand I only assign Jim with 90% to "Parser Implementation", the leveling facility gives Jim only a work load of 90% after "Coaching of Team member Bob" was finished.

How do you handle a constellation like this best? Simply do all the leveling manually? This can be quite a pain in the a... and become virtually impossible if the project gets more complex.

Thanks in advance,

--- Matthias

 

[PDQBach]

I never automatically level.

Levelling assumes that you have accurately estimated the amount of work.

Levelling also only pushes out, it never pulls up (that's the sort of logic that needs linear programming).

Levelling considers the Resource calendar and people going off on vacations causes all sorts of levelling "surprises" particularly since you have probably decided to use an alternate resource during that time.

Beginners enter task start dates and that forces the time as well. (You can enter the time, but few do.) The forced time is the StartOfDay (usually 8:00). A person given two one-hour tasks on the same day appears to be overloaded but isn't.

So ... I look manually at the Resource Usage display and modify tasks manually based on what I see there.

You will never get a real project schedule to show all resources as not overallocated because there are just too many real world factors (overtime policies, resource substitution, task repositioning, etc.) that make it an impossible dream.

So ... look at monthly overallocations and work from there. Good luck when you get to tasks that have multiple resources assigned.

 

[bauershias]

Ok, not what I would have liked to hear, but at least the confirmation from a pro, that I am not missing a key feature here.

The MS Project leveling algorithm is just not clever enough...

Thanks,

--- Matthias

 

[PDQBach]

Well, the data structures are well documented ... considering the number of comments that people make about levelling, maybe there is a business opportunity here.

From my personal perspective, the one thing I would really like to see is "pull up" to fully utilize a resource.