Assigning and Managing Resources in Microsoft® Project 2013

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The minimum period you are able to enter for a vacation is a single day.

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If the resource is highlighted in the Resource Sheet when the Change Working Time button is selected, the resource will already be selected when the Change Working Time dialog box is displayed.

Setting up a view to assign resources

Much of what we do in Project requires us to be in the right view, at the right time, in order to see the right information. When we assign resources, this is no less important. When assigning resources, I set up my view as follows:

Insert the columns “Type,” “Effort Driven,” and “Work” into the entry table on the Gantt Chart view.

Check the Details check box in the View tab and select the Task Usage view. Within the Task Usage view, insert the column “Assignment Units.”

I am then able to navigate through the task list in the top portion of the screen and view the assignment details for each task in the lower portion of the screen.

You can make changes to Work, Duration, or add or remove resources for a task in the top portion of the screen. When any of these changes are made, Project displays a SmartTag in the top left-hand corner of the cell where you have just made the change. Clicking the SmartTag allows you to review the calculation that Project has chosen and provides you with the option to change Project’s decision. Changes to individual assignments, including work or assignment units, can be made in the lower portion of the screen.

Remember that a view can be saved. To do so, click the View tab and select the drop-down menu on the Gantt Chart button. I typically name my saved view “Resource Assignment.”

How does Project assign work?

Where one or more work resources are assigned to a task, Project uses the following formula for each assignment:

• work = assignment units × duration

Work defines the effort, or number of hours, required to complete a task.

Assignment units define what percentage of their working day each resource can devote to a task. The assignment units will initially be set to the Max Units value defined for each resource, but this value can be modified per resource and per assignment.

Duration defines the total number of days between the start and end of a task. By default, duration is displayed in days in Project, where one day is equal to eight hours (this is dependent on the calendar options for the project).

When there is a single resource assigned to a task full time, the formula is very simple. For example, a two-day duration task (which is equivalent to 16 hours) assigned to a resource who works full time on the task will calculate a work value of 16 hours (assuming a calendar of 8 hours per day) (work = 16 hours × 100%).

The scheduling process in Project becomes more complex when either of the following two combinations occurs:

• Resources do not work full time on a project. Instead, their availability is reduced (for example, if they are deemed to be productive for 80 percent of the time, their Max Units would be set to 80 percent, and their initial Assignment Units would also equal 80 percent).

• If, having made an assignment, that assignment is then modified, modifying the assignment could include any of the following:

  • Changing the duration
  • Changing the work
  • Changing the assignment units
  • Adding one or more resources or removing one or more resources from the task
  • Any combination of the above

Let’s take a look at the first scenario. If a resource’s Max Units is set to 80%, work = duration × 80%, therefore work = 16 × 80% = 12.8 hours, or put another way, working at 80% productivity over two days allows us to accomplish 12.8 hours of work. Again, this is fairly simple to understand.

We can make it a little more complex by modifying either of the work, duration, or (assignment) units. Let’s assume we modify the Work value from 12.8 hours to 16 hours, Project has the option to do one of two things. It can increase the units from 80 percent to 100 percent, leaving the duration at 2 days (16 hours); or it can increase the duration from 2 (16 hours) to 2.5 days (20 hours), leaving the units at 80 percent.

Exactly what Project will do depends on several factors. First, if the task is manually scheduled, the duration will not change and the units will increase to 100 percent. If the task is auto scheduled, Project uses a task field called Type to determine which variable to fix and which to change. The three available values for the Type field are Fixed Units, Fixed Work, and Fixed Duration (the default). Project “fixes” the variable defined by the task type and changes the second variable when the third variable is modified. Therefore, for an auto scheduled task with the task type set to the default setting of Fixed Units, increasing the work from 12.8 hours to 16 hours will increase the duration to 2.5 days, leaving the units “fixed” at 80 percent.

Taking the scenario a little further, we might want to add an additional resource to the task. Assuming we have the following task, where there is a single resource completing 16 hours of work in 2.5 days duration, the following options could occur when another resource is added to the task:

• The second resource works at the same rate as the first resource (that is, 80 percent) over the same duration. Hence the work value doubles (duration = 2.5 days, work = 32 hours).
• The second resource works at the same rate as the first resource (that is, 80 percent), but shares the workload of the first resource. Therefore, the work value stays the same (16 hours) but the duration decreases (1.25 days).
• The duration and work values stay the same (2.5 days duration and 16 hours work), but the resources work fewer hours per day, so their units are reduced from 80 percent to 40 percent.

Finally, there is another field, called Effort Driven, that affects auto scheduled tasks. You can set this field to either Yes or No (the default is No). If the task is effort driven (the value is set to Yes), when an additional resource is assigned to the task, the work value for the task is split equally across the resources assigned to the task. Note that fixed work type tasks are deemed to be effort driven by default.

As you can see, getting the correct values set for Work, Units, and Duration for a task involves a little thought and practice. Luckily, Project allows us to set a view that includes all of the fields we need to see in order to successfully manage the variables of Work, Units, and Duration for each assignment.