Interesting question as I come across this often when troubleshooting why someone’s “hours were off” in their schedule. I definitely wouldn’t want to put a resource on a summary task as summary task fields (work, cost, etc.) are calculated roll-ups of sub level tasks. This can cause some real problems such as hours being assigned to resources on sub level tasks and rolled-up hours assigned again to the resource at the summary level task, effectively doubling hours in that WBS.
It’s always best to assign resources at the work task level. That being said, the one possible scenario where it might work is if all the lower level tasks were being done by the same resource, in which case the assignment could be done at the summary task level and NOT on each sublevel task. However, this kind of defeats the purpose of knowing what was done when on the sub level tasks and begs the question as to why a single task with detailed notes was not created rather than multiple sub level tasks without resource assignments and a resource at the summary level. Seems like more trouble than what it would be worth. Just a thought…
