[thelist] Scheduling production people... HELP

Alan Mccoy amccoy at altairtek.com
Tue Apr 24 10:47:18 CDT 2001


I just finished tackling this same lil' problem.

We have an average of 4 or 5 projects going at the same time. What I've
found works quite well is to first make a separate project file with only
resource info (names of your staff) and no tasks. That is your resource
pool. Then, make a separate project file for each project and have each one
use that same resource pool file you previously created.

Then, create another project file to use as a master file. You can then
insert all your individual project files (for all your individual projects)
into the master file. Use "Insert -> Project" to do this for each file.

This is the beauty part...you can then expand each project in the master
file to see how your tasks are laid out among all your projects at once. AND
if you modify a task or assign a resource to a task, it updates the original
file for that specific project. Since all the projects use the same resource
pool, you can check the resource usage view to see if someone is overbooked.
Also, I just enabled "auto-leveling" to see what it would do and I was
pretty impressed. It won't let me overallocate a resource among all the
projects in the master file.

For example, Let's say I need Joe the Programmer to do 4 hours on Project A
on Monday and I also need him to do 3 hours on Project B and 4 hours on
Project C on the same day. MS Project will check that shared resource (Joe
the Programmer) among all the projects that have been inserted in the master
file and bump his tasks over into the next day if he's booked for more than
8 hours (you can set the default daily working hours to whatever you like)

There's MUCH more I need to learn in MS Project, but this little trick was a
BIG help!!

Hope it helps you, too!

Alan

> maybe I just need a ms project tutorial, but I was never able 
> to get it
> to handle multiple people on multiple projects (on multiple 
> timelines).
> My understanding was it worked on a "one project at a time" kind of
> model. 
> But I give up quickly on these things.. should I look harder?
> 
> Sam
> 
> Ron_Senykoff at BEAEROSPACE.COM wrote:
> > 
> > <snip>
> > I need to find a piece of software, or web app that
> > will allow me to keep track of what my people are working 
> on, their %
> > allocation time to a specific project, and the other usual 
> stuff that comes
> > along with managing and scheduling people.
> > </snip>
> > 
> > MS Project
> > http://www.microsoft.com/office/project/default.htm
> 
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