Forum Discussion
Man hours
It sounds like you are approaching this at too high a level since you are talking about "projects". Normally a project is a collection of activities (tasks) linked together in a logical sequence to achieve an end goal. If all you have at this point is the start and desired finish of a "project" (i.e. single timeline), then the best you can do for a manpower estimate is to compare it with similar projects that were completed and perhaps apply educated guess adjustment factors.
In order to get a better and more realistic manpower estimate, each project must be broken down into the sequence of tasks mentioned above. Given that, if you know the estimated time span (duration) for each task and the estimated manhours to accomplish each task, you could set Project's task type to "fixed duration", enter the duration and work and then assign an arbitrary resource. Project will calculate the required number of resources required. for example, in the following example the "project" consists of four tasks in logical sequence, each with an estimated duration and work content. When the "people" resource is assigned, Project calculates the assignment level required. The assignment level is shown in the Resource Name field as a percentage of a full time work resource. The level of course varies over the total project timeline but in this example, 2 people will be needed for the last task.
This is a very simplified example to what is a complex process but it might be useful as a first draft approach.
John
1) Produce Draft Spec = Author + user
2) Review draft spec = cast of thousands reviewing it
3) Modify spec = Author and user
4) Sign off specification = Sign off athories.
In this way you can show that the reviewing team are not busy for the whole of the time it takes to produce, review, modify and sign off.
Then you can go about assigning the allocation - so the review stage will only take each reviewer say 0.5 days but they need to be allowed a week to all get around to doing it; so each reviewer is allocated at 10% of the 5-day duration.
Once you have this level of detail in the plan MS Project will be able to give you an accurate view of the levels of each resource that you need. However, you do then need to look at the resulting detail with a realistic eye as whilst you may only need the technical author for say 3 weeks over a 2 month period (for instance) you will probably have to recruit or pay for them for the whole time period unless you can cost share with other projects.