Forum Discussion
Why is project leaving unused capacity in days?
Hey all, just curious if any of you know why Project isn't filling up my days and leaving unused capacity?
I have customized the settings so that my standard work day is 8.5 hrs, but as you can see, my days are not being filled to this capacity, resulting in an unnecessary overallocation on the Friday...?
I have tried changing the work type between fixed work and fixed units, with and without effort driven applied, but that doesn't seem to have any impact. Also, the auto leveling doesn't seem to do anything either.
Thanks,
Joe
- Joe1250,
If there is no dependency between tasks do not create one just to make the flow easier.
I think I've given you a good foundation for setting up your Project plan. It's up to you to develop the concepts presented and go forth. It will be an iterative process, you just have to see what works best for you.
John
It sounds like you are expecting Project to optimize resources and unfortunately Project does not have that functionality.
As far as leveling, the leveling function is designed to help alleviate resources that are overallocated based on the leveling options basis setting. Leveling will NOT move resource assignments to fill in available "gaps", it will only move a resource's assignments to resolve overallocation.
Hope this helps.
John
Hi again John-project, thanks once again for the response. I guess I sort of just figured that the asap constraint would provide that optimization, especially if the dependencies were set up? I've noticed that when playing around with very simple project/task examples, it does seem to optimize or schedule to the full daily work quota, but as I add subtasks and/or additional dependencies, it performs less well.
I would have thought that by setting the constraints to asap and setting up task dependencies, the leveling would have looked forward as well as back to start task B after task A was finished (not leaving 2 or 3 hrs in between), especially if this was all that would be needed to resolve a resource allocation...?
If that's not how it works, what are the best practices to fill these gaps? If I manually set the start time of task B to start immediately after the completion of task A, will that task still be considered as auto-scheduled? ie. If I had to insert a task somewhere before task A, would task B shift accordingly?
- Joe1250,
Best practice has all tasks as auto-scheduled and no constraints (i.e. as-soon-as-possible). Set up the plan with estimated time spans (duration) for each task and linked in a logical sequence (normally finsh-to-start). With this type of dynamic plan Project will move tasks as durations and dependencies are changed. The minute you manually enter a start date for a task, a start-no-earlier-than constraint is set and it "breaks" the dynamics. In some cases a defined start may be appropriate (e.g. a particular resource will not be available until a certain date) but that might also be controlled by resource calendars (e.g. vacation or part time worker).
If a resource is overallocated such that it, (both people and machines are work type resources), is simultaneously assigned to multiple tasks such that the Max Units for that resource are exceeded, then leveling can help resolve that overallocation. But even with leveling, manual re-structuring may be needed to relieve the overallocation problem.
Task dependencies should only be used when there is in fact a dependency. However, all tasks should have a predecessor, unless the task starts on the Project start date or there is a valid constraint (as noted above), and all tasks should have a successor, even if it is the final milestone in a plan. If a task has no successor, why is it in the plan?
Keep in mind that summary lines are NOT tasks, they are simply a summary of performance tasks, (i.e. tasks that have resources assigned to achieve a given result), under the summary.
Hope this helps.
John
