MS Project: Allow for employee termination

[Brett]

After allocating all resources for the project and allow microsoft to
allocate evenly over all tasks, an employee submits his/her resignation. It
would be nice if MS Project would allow the changing of the Resource
Availability dates to reflect this fact and then allow for releveling to
parcel the work to the other resources in the group. However, when currently
doing this, MS Project comes up with overallocations for the resource that
left.

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[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Brett,

Please note that this would mean a new product since the principle of your
question implies a completely new approach to leveling: now it NEVER changes
assignment units, not for temporary workforce but neither for any other
circumstance.
HTH

--
Jan De Messemaeker, Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/
For FAQs: http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm
"Brett" <Br...@discussions.microsoft.com> schreef in bericht
news:16631352-17F9-4ED4...@microsoft.com...

[Brett]

It sounds like I don't know what leveling is for. I use MS Project to help
me schedule the work for all tasks in a project. I do this by entering the
tasks and the work required for each t ask. I then assign all of my
available resources to each task and use the leveling feature to allow MS
Project to assign the resources as required to the tasks. This lets me
figure out what the end date of the project is.
My guess, based on the response, is that this is not a valid thing to do.

However, a month after I performed the above entry, one of the employees
(that was now assigned to a number of tasks) turned in his resignation. How
do I get him removed from all of his assignments? Do I have to go through
every task and remove him manually? Why can I not just tell MS Project that
he is unavailable on his resignation date? Is there some tutorial on how MS
project does leveling, taking into account availability dates?

Thanks.

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Brett,

First let me solve your practical problem.
Select all tasks, then cklick the assign recources button on the toolbar
Select the leaving resource, then click remove.
(Or simply delete the resoruc form the resource sheet)

Your way of using leveling is really highly original but if it works why
not?
I'll give this further thought.
The way most people use leveling is by assigning the required resource(s) to
each task, then let leveling push forward the tasks that create
overallocation.

Hope this helps,

--
Jan De Messemaeker, Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/
For FAQs: http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm
"Brett" <Br...@discussions.microsoft.com> schreef in bericht

news:8627C7AB-4E4D-4D0E...@microsoft.com...

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

All of your resources work on all of the tasks in the project???? This is
highly unusual in that in most environments the various members of the group
of resources have different qualifications, skills, and specialties. The
carpenter cannot do the work of the plumber who in turn cannot do the work
of the electrician. Likewise each task in the project also has unique
skill-sets required - painting the walls requires the skills of a painter,
not those of a plumber, while installing the pipes requires skills that only
the plumber posseses. Therefore when you assign resources you cannot put
both the painter, the carpenter, the electrician, and the plumber as a group
on all of the tasks regardless of the nature of the work and let leveling
sort out who does what, but that is what it sounded like you're doing.

Leveling does not ever assign resources, add them to or take them off of
tasks. All it ever does is delay work. If you assign a group of resources
to a task a task and some of them are over-allocated because they're also
assigned to other tasks at the same time, when you resource level one of two
things will happen (depending on the setting in the leveling options). One
possibility is that the task is delayed in toto, all the work shifted until
such time as all the over-allocated resources are clear of their conflicts.
The other possibility is the work for the non-overallocated resources
remains on the days it was originally scheduled while the work for the
over-allocated resources is delayed, leading to an apparent lengthening of
the task (it takes longer to do all the work but the total amount of work
remains constant).

Hope this helps clarify it.

--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

"Brett" <Br...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:8627C7AB-4E4D-4D0E...@microsoft.com...

[Brett]

Fantastic - I had tried selecting task properties, but the multiple resources
didn't show up. Your method works great!
I'm curious, though, about how most people use leveling. I have four people
equally capable of doing a large number of tasks. I'd like to use MS Project
to optimally schedule people to tasks so that the project completes in the
shortest time possible. The way I've been doing that is to assign all four
people to the tasks. MS Project will then show me the completion date for
the project. Obviously, this creates problems with actually allocating the
tasks to each person. Would most people simply start assigning a single
resource to each task and try and optimize the assignments? This would
result in a non-optimal solution, possibly taking much longer than if the
assignments had been optimally given.

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

Still, this is how it is generally done.
But before leveling, people will look at the most spectacular
overallocations and mayeb replac resources already.
HTH

--
Jan De Messemaeker, Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/
For FAQs: http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm
"Brett" <Br...@discussions.microsoft.com> schreef in bericht

news:8C3C6E43-6984-4434...@microsoft.com...

[Brett]

Thanks for the response. Actually, my situation is more like having 8
painters for a huge number of painting jobs. I can assign any painter to any
task (because they are equally qualified to paint). However, there are 1000
painting jobs of varying work, so I want to optimally assign these painters
to the jobs so that I complete all the jobs as quickly as possible (and
therefore get paid as soon as possible).
I'm understanding a lot more about the use of MS Project, and I just don't
think it can do what I want it to. I'll keep my ears open for any other
input.
Thanks.

[Brett]

Thanks. That clarifies that I'm trying to use the program for more than it
was designed to do. I'll work around this and figure out how to get all I
can out of the program.

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

Ultimately could you have more than one painter assigned to each job or
after leveling should there be only one painter per job?

S

--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

"Brett" <Br...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message

news:34E74494-42FC-4571...@microsoft.com...

[Brett]

The problem I originally wrote about (allow for employee termination) would
not require that only one painter was assigned to each job. This problem was
simply related to how to get rid of an already allocated resource. I'm
manually handling assiigning a single resource to each job.
Your question is a very interesting one, because, if MS Project did
everything I wanted it to do, it would indeed take the 'pool' of resources
that are available for the painting project and then assign only 1 resource
to the painting job, optimally assigning the entire project. The logical
extension to this option would be to allow the user to provide not only a
'pool' of resources to use on each task, but also to specify how many of
these resources could actually work on the task at a single time.

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

The problem with software doing that is that each task requires a particular
set of skills to perform and only a human has the knowledge to rationally
decide who is best suited to do what.

It actually does part of what you propose - if you say the "painter"
resource has a maximum allocation of 800% that means you have a8 painters in
that pool. You can assign an individual task anything from 1 guy (100%) up
to all of them (800%) with it red-flagging as overallocated if you assign
more than you have available at any given time. But it is up to you to
decide how many should work on a given task. Project's job is to help you
manage the project by doing the calculations for you but I for one wouldn't
want it to even try and take over actually doing the managing such as making
such assignment decisions for us. We're living in a de-humanized enough
world as it is - let's not make it worse by trying to make us even more of a
slave to the machines, the procedures, and the rulebooks.

--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

"Brett" <Br...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message

news:F1DC4ABC-999A-48A5...@microsoft.com...

[Jim Aksel]

Brett - I know I am piling on late here. Doing it this was assumes that all
your resources are homogenious and can perform all the tasks assigned in the
time/work allocated.

By "all your resources" I assume you mean "All the resources within a given
skill catagory capable of doing the task" .... in other words if you have 2
Engineers and 3 finance people, you assign both engineers to all the
engineering tasks only. My point still holds, however.