MGMT404Lesson #6 - Resource WorkloadsMS Project

V2007Due Date: Check Class Schedule/Syllabus

Objectives

View resource workloads

Locate resource conflicts

Use automatic leveling to resolve resource overallocations

Manually resolve resource overallocations

When making resources assignments to tasks, MS Project tries to schedule the appropriate work for that resource; however conflicts can arise if a resource is scheduled to perform more work than the resource can accomplish. These conflicts can occur as a result of a single or multiple task assignment and are often a case of overallocation of the resource. (You can also underallocate a resource). The problem then becomes how to resolve those conflicts. With MS Project, some of these conflicts can be solved automatically or manually.

For this lab, we will be using the MS Project Lab file, MyLab5_XXX (where XXX are your initials) from where we left off in Lab 5. (Also check your class web site for Lesson6Start.mpp, which is a starting point for this lab if you need to start with the correct information).

Viewing Resource Workloads

Viewing resource workloads helps to identify to what extent a resource is overallocated or underallocated. When a resource is overallocated, the resource text is highlighted in red and a leveling indicator is displayed.

To view the workloads:

  1. Open MS Project. Open your project file from Lab 5 (MyLab5_XXX.mpp).
  2. Save asMyLab6_XXX, where XXX are your initials.
  3. From the View menu (or the View Bar), select Resource Usage.

This view shows each resource, total assigned for the entire project, each task the resource is assigned and total hours for each task, and on the right, a time graph showing the detail of how the work is divided up. (You may need to expand the columns and move the time graph to see all details).

  1. Notice the resource, Systems Administrator, is highlighted in red. This resource is overallocated.

Also notice the icon to the left of Systems administrator. This is the leveling indicator.

  1. Select the SystemsAdministrator resource name.
  2. On the Standard toolbar, click the Go To Selected Task button.
  3. The right pane timescale scrolls to the first work values for the resource.
  4. Scroll the timescale (at the bottom of the scale) until you see work values highlighted in red. In the week of November 11-17, the timescale shows this resource working a total of 40 hours on Thursday of that week. The breakdown is 16 hours on Install Hardware and 24 hours on Install Software. (Figure 1). Why do you think this resource is overallocated?

Figure 1

Another way to find and view resource overallocations is to use the Resource Management toolbar.

  1. From the View menu, point to Toolbars and then select Resource Management.
    The resource management toolbar should now be displayed under your formatting toolbar.
Button / Description / Button / Description
/ Resource Allocation View / / Resource Pool updating and refreshing
/ Task Entry View / / Address Book for resources
/ Go To Next Overallocation / / Resource Details
/ Opens Assign Resources dialog box / / Filter resource tasks
/ Displays Shared Resources, when resources are available to other projects / / Leveling Help
  1. From this toolbar, click the Resource Allocation View button. (The first one on the left).
  2. The resource allocation view is now displayed.
  3. Click on Systems Administrator in the top pane. The tasks for the selected resource are displayed in the bottom pane along with the Leveling Gantt view, showing you the first conflict in the schedule (Figure 2).

Figure 2

  1. By viewing this screen, we notice that the two tasks, Install Hardware and Install Software are occurring at the same time. Install Hardware was initially scheduled for 2 units of Systems Administrator for 2 days for a total of 32 hours. The 32 hours were distributed over the two working days…at 16 hours on Thursday and 16 on Friday. Install Software was initially schedule for 3 units of Systems Administrator for 2 days (or 48 hours total). The 48 hours were distributed over the two working days at 24 hours each day. That’s 40 hours per day for the two tasks. Unfortunately, we only have 3 units of resources (System Administrators) total for these two days, and 3 units can only do 24 hours of work in one day (3 * 8 is 24 hours). At this point, we have to decide what we want to do to alleviate this situation.

Resolving Resource Conflicts Automatically

Before you begin a project, you should try to resolve your resource allocation conflicts. Overallocations can be resolved automatically or manually. Before you decide to do either, you should review all allocation problems, availability of resources, time and task constraints, etc., before you make changes.

Leveling is a strategy used to resolve resource overallocations by delaying or splitting tasks. If you do it automatically, MS Project examines all overallocations by looking at task dependencies, start times, dates, priorities, and constraints, and it determines if a task can be delayed or split to resolve the conflict. Keep in mind that if you allow MS Project to determine how to level your resource workloads, it may not be to your liking! When MS Project levels a resource, the resource's selected assignments are distributed and rescheduled and the task and/or project schedule may change.

  1. From the Project Menu, click Project Information.
  2. View the Finish Date for this project. It should read 11/19/07. Click OK or Cancel.
  3. Click in the bottom pane of your Resource Allocation View screen (the one that lists the tasks and Gantt chart). Click anywhere except on a task name.
  4. From the Tools menu, click Level Resources. The resource dialog box appears:

Figure 3

  1. Be sure the default options are selected as shown in Figure 3.
  2. Click Level Now. What happened? (Look at delay applied to Install Software).
  3. You will notice that the Systems Administrator is no longer in red. But look at the workload detail in the top right pane and the Gantt chart in the lower right pane.
  4. In the Gantt chart, the green bars indicate the original start and finish dates, the blue bars represent the new start and finish dates, the olive lines indicate delay of a task and the aqua lines indicate slack.
  5. From the Project menu, review the Project Information. The finish date is now 11/21/07; two days have been added to the project.
  6. But what if this is unacceptable? Can you undo automatic leveling? Click OK/Cancel to close Project Information.
  7. Be sure the lower pane is active (click in the bottom pane to make sure).
  8. Go to Tools, then Level Resources, then select ClearLeveling, and select EntireProject, click OK. (You can also click on Undo if it is still highlighted).
  9. Check to make sure your Finish date is back to 11/19/07. Unfortunately, the System Administrator returns to overallocation “red” and the resource is still working 40 hours on Thursday and Friday.

Resolving Resource Conflicts Manually

Using MS Project to perform leveling operations might result in unwanted schedule adjustments or solutions that are not practical for the project. In addition, there may be some conflicts that MS Project cannot resolve, as we shall see later. When the above occurs, other techniques can be used to manually resolve the overallocations. Some suggestions for manual leveling include:

Increasing the maximum units of the resource

Reschedule the task that has created the conflict

Add overtime

Adjust task dependencies or constraints

Remove a resource that is not important to the task

Replace the overallocated resource with an underallocated resource

Make adjustments to the working days and hours

Decrease the amount of work assigned to the resource

Given our previous problem with the System Administrators, let's see if there is a better way of leveling the workload without jeopardizing our schedule. In this case, while it would be nice to assign more System Administrators to the task, let's say we only have three on our staff! So we will make changes to their current schedule and make adjustments to the hours worked.

Please follow these instructions carefully! (You may want to save your file at this point!)

  1. Make sure you are in Resource Allocation View and your screen looks like Figure 2.
  2. In the upper pane, double-click on the name Systems Administrator.
  3. The Resource Information box should open. Select the Working Time tab.
  4. In the calendar, change the Nondefault Working time for Thursday, November 15, 2007 to reflect the time frames of 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM, 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM, and 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM.
  5. Change the working time for Friday, November 16, 2007 to reflect the time frames of 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM, 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM, and 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM.
  6. Finally, change the working time for Saturday, November 17, 2007 to reflect the time frames of 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM, and 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM. Click OK.
  7. Check your project finish date from the Project Information. Your current finish date should be Saturday, November 17, 2007. If correct, you should saveyourfile just in case. If not, reload your file and do steps 1-7 again before continuing.
  1. After making the above changes to the Systems Administrator working times (looks like we will be paying overtime), we have added more hours to the weekdays and added a full working day on Saturday. Assuming that we have three units of System Administrators, each one can work a 12-hour day on Thursday and Friday and an 8-hour day on Saturday. That amounts to 36 hours (12 x 3) on Thursday and Friday, plus 24 hours (8 x 3) on Saturday for a total of 96 hours. The two tasks, Install Hardware and Install Software are 32 hours and 48 hours of work respectively, for a total of 80 hours. So, we should be able to adjust (or level) the load to make sure there are no overallocations.

Figure 4

  1. In the top pane, make sure the timeline for the Systems Administrator reflects the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of November 15-17, 2007. You will notice that the change in the calendar has altered the amount worked on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. (This is because MS Project "front" loads all work). Follow the next instructions to the letter. (You may want to save your file at this point).
  2. Click in the cell for Thursday work for the Install Hardware task. It should say 24 hours.
  3. Enter 12 in this cell. (For 12 hours).
  4. Staying in the Install Hardware task row, move to Friday and enter 12 in this cell.
  5. Staying in the Install Hardware task, move to Saturday and enter 8 hours.
  6. Your screen should now look like figure 5:

Figure 5

  1. You will notice that the only number in red is for Saturday, a total of 32 hours.
  2. Carefully, click in the cell for Thursday for the task Install Software. (There currently is no number in the cell). Enter 12 for 12 hours.
  3. In the cell for Friday, leave the 24 hours.
  4. In the cell for Saturday, change the 24 hours to 12.
  5. If everything goes right, your red should go away, this resource is not longer overallocated and your screen should look like figure 6: (If not repeat instructions 11-18)

Figure 6

  1. Check your project information. Is your finish date back to Monday 11/19/07? If so, great! We met our goal, without overallocating resources. If not, you need to close the file, without saving it and go back to instruction 10 of this section.
  2. You may have noticed the next to the two tasks, Install Hardware and Install Software. This indicates that the work assignment has been edited.
  3. While what we did was an extreme example, it gives you an idea of some of the things you can do to resolve resource assignment conflicts. If you decide to adjust your resources, regardless of method, it is always best if you save your file before doing so, in case you make errors or do not like the results.
  4. Again, resource leveling (and what goes on "behind the scenes") can be a very complicated process. It is best that when you make your initial assignments that you consider workload, availability, etc.
  5. At this point, save your file.
  6. From the Window menu, click on Remove Split. Change to Gantt chart view.
  7. Print out the Gantt chart view. Include all the columns of the Table: Entry and the Gantt chart. Be sure to include proper project header information and format. Make sure you widen the column showing task names and resource names. (Hint: on Page Setup in Print Preview, select the tab View and check Print All Sheet Columns). This will be printout number 1.

On your own

  1. In the Gantt chart view, click on task Research Products and Services.
  2. Click on the Assign Resources button on the Standard toolbar.
  3. In the Assign Resources dialog box, select Systems Analyst and then click on Remove.

Figure 7

  1. Keeping the Assign Resources dialog box open and while still on the task Research Products and Service, select Systems Analyst again and enter 200 (for 2 units). Press Assign. (Figure 8).

Figure 8

  1. What we have done is replaced an initial assignment. If you were replacing different unit allocations of the same resource, you would do the preceding instructions. If you were replacing one resource with another resource, you would use replace rather than assign. We have just told MS Project that rather than one System Analyst doing 28 hours of work, we will have two System Analysts doing 28 hours of work each (total of 56 hours). If we had just changed the percentages from 100 to 200% without removing the initial assignment, MS Project would have assumed effort-driving and would not have added 28 hours of work, but divided 28 hours of work between the two units. A very important, yet another confusing, point to understand about how MS Project views the information you enter.
  2. Make sure this task, Research Products and Services, is still showing 3.5 days before proceeding.
  3. Change to Resource Sheet view.
  4. Scroll down to Systems Analyst. Is the name in red? It should be! The resource is now overallocated, perhaps because we assigned two units of a resource when we only have one unit available!
  5. Click on the name, SystemsAnalyst.
  6. From the Tools menu, select Level Resources.
  7. You should see the Resource Leveling dialog box (figure 3). Click on the Level Now button.
  8. Check Selected Resources in the next dialog box and press OK.
  1. You should now see a MS Project alert message:

  1. Whenever you get this message, MS Project cannot resolve the problem automatically. The message however gives you suggestions on how to resolve the problem. Here, MS Project also tells you what the problem is and the date of the problem.
  2. Press Skip. (If you get another error message, just press skip until error messages stop).
  3. MS Project did not perform leveling because it could not do so.
  4. How would you solve this problem? Without affecting the project finish date? Look at the suggestion that MS Project is giving you. Perhaps if you went to the Resource Sheet view and changed the maximum units for this resource?
  5. So do it. Change the maximum units for System Analyst to 200%. What happened? (Obviously you must actually have another person acting as a System Analyst in order to increase the units to 200%)
  6. Once you resolve the problem so that no resource is overallocated, print out the following:

A Project Summary Sheet

A Task Usage Report (showing work by weeks)

  1. The above reports will be printouts 2 and 3 respectively. Again make sure proper project header information is included.
  2. Check point: 38.5 days. (Plus see project statistics below).
  3. Change back to Gantt chart view and save your file.

Check Point for End of Lab 6


Review Questions

Name ______

Answer the following questions using complete sentences:

1)What is resource overallocation?

2)What is resource leveling?

3)Under what circumstances would you want to manually resolve conflicts?

4)What would be the caution of adding more resources to a task to resolve resource conflicts?

5)What would be the caution of rescheduling a task to resolve a resource conflict?

Attach your three printouts, in print order, to the back of this sheet and submit by the lesson due date.

ProfkcMS Project Lesson #6Page 1