Evenly contouring Work inside a Task

[jasonhamrick]

How do I contour resources on a task so that each resource's Work is spread evenly across the entire Duration of the task, even when each resource has different Work associated with that task?

I have a Fixed Work task (Design a Web Page) with the "As Soon as Possible" constraint that has two people assigned two it. One resource is a Designer and has 40 hours to complete the task; the other resource is a User Experience person and they have 5 hours to consult with the designer on that task.

Because it is a Fixed Work task, the Designer's 40 hours means that the task has a natural Duration of 5 days - eight hours per day. Of course, the UX person is resourced for a single day -- all 5 hours on the first day.

What I would like is for the UX person's work to be spread out evenly over all 5 days, one hour per day. The only way I can think to do this is with Resource Contouring, but none of the default/build-in contours (flat, turtle, double-peak, etc) achieve my goal. I've also tried setting the Finish date manually for each Resource within the Task Usage view, but that is a laborious process.

Can you offer a solution to this?

Thanks,
Jason

 

[PDQBach]

You're wasting your time micromanaging.

But if you really want to do this:

Create all your tasks
Make all your tasks Fixed Duration
View Gantt
Window Split
In the bottom, rightmousebutton on any grey area and select "Resource work"
Task-by-task:
enter all resources; enter the Work for each of those resources.
click on Next

The reality is that the resources will do the work when they do the work ... not on some aesthetically pleasing level loading but when they can do it. Your concern is not a level loading; your concern is that the work is done by the Finish date.

If you're doing this to locate overallocations, then look for overallocations on a week by week basis (at best). Yeah, some will be overloaded. So what? The overloading only matters if your estimates are spot on accurate. They aren't. What to do? Since the estimates you got are probably +/- 25% then you really only need to worry if they are overloaded by that much.