Material Assignment Contour is Changed after Upgrade (2010 to 2019)

[Barakb321]

Hello,

We are upgrading the server from 2010 to 2019 (Project Pro 2016).

We noticed a task that has 2 resources - 1 work resource and 1 material resource.

We researched it in 4 places:

1. Project Pro 2010
2. Project 2010 DB view Epm_AssignmentByDay_UserView
3. Project Pro 2016
4. Project 2019 DB view Epm_AssignmentByDay_UserView

We see that the work resource assignment ends on 1-Sep-19 in all sources

We see that the material resource assignment ends on 29-Dec-19 in Pro 2010 and both DB's (meaning that the migration works OK)

We see that the material resource assignment ends on 1-Sep-19 (same date as the work resource) in Pro 2016, meaning that when the Pro is opened, it re-calculated the material assignment according to a different logic, maybe adjusting it to the work assignment. BTW - the total amount of material work didn't change, the entire material work performed for Sep - Dec in 2010 was summed up to 1-Sep-19 in Pro 2016.

Is there any explanation for this?

Thanks,

Barak

[#2 · Accepted solution]

First of all, there is no material work, material is a consumable. Yeah I know, when you look at a material assignment row in a Usage view, it shows as "work" but it is not. Material is assigned as a quantity of something like gallons of fuel, number of bricks, reams of paper, etc. A material resource is linearly spread over the full task duration, assuming it is "prorated", although it can also be manually edited for any time span. In your case however, the material time span is greater than that of the work resource which makes no sense. I can only assume it is an assignment corruption that was corrected when you converted to Project 2016.

Hope this helps.
John

[#3]

Thanks for your response. It gave me a good direction.
I did some more checks and saw that an assignment of Work Resource with Material Resource on different times behaves quite chaotically:

1. Finish date is set by the latest finish date among assignments (even if it's the Material Resource) but duration is set by the work resource, so duration doesn't fit the time between start and finish
2. Adding a work resource to a task with material resource with the new assignment having an earlier finish date than the material assignment:
a. If done using Task Form *dialog* or Resource Names field - won't affect the finish date of the material assignment
b. If done using Task Form *in details pane* - the finish date of the material assignment will adjust to that of the work assignment
c. In the above scenario, in any case, the duration of the task will change to that of the duration of the work assignment
d. adding a *second* work assignment to a task with material assignment and work assignment (no matter if the material assignment is longer, shorter or equal than the first assignment) - the material assignment will adjust to the second assignment if it's longer than the first assignment and *won't change* if the second is shorter than the first

[#4]

In working with Project over the years I have run across some instances when Project just doesn't respond in an explainable manner. I don't get the same response you describe above using Project 2019 Pro which doesn't surprise me. There will always be scenarios that challenge Project's scheduling algorithm. Learn to live with them and develop a workaround when necessary.