Help!!! Durations changing when tasks move in a resource-loaded schedule

[Community]

I’m working in MSP 2007 and am using resource-loaded schedules for the first time in my relatively short scheduling career.

I have multiple small projects and they use a shared resource pool.

The schedules are not effort driven, are fixed duration, and the “scheduling ignores resource calendars” option is checked (although on some tasks it’s grayed out??).

There is a straightforward calendar that accounts for company holidays only, and the resources are assigned at 100% although many are over-allocated.  The PMs handle it independently.

Yesterday I noticed that when I moved around a task or it was delayed by it’s predecessor, I would receive the “resource is assigned outside the original dates for task…The duration of this fixed-duration task will change to accomodate the resource assignment”.

I’ve been trying to figure this out and have even de-linked the schedules from the shared pool but nothing seems to make a difference.

Can anyone help me?  So far, I’ve been told by a far more experienced colleague that this is a bug and there’s nothing to do about it.  I keep thinking that I’ve done something “wrong” and can hopefully fix this.

Thanks in advance!  Roxanne

[Community]

One more thing, as I’ve been continuing to try to resolve this, I suspect it has to do with the resources coming from the shared pool, although delinking doesn’t seem to help???

[Community]

I agree with your one resource that says it is just a bug, as MSP does have a few. However, we often find the following workaround helps with many of these”bugs”

I also work in the same default settings you have with fixed duration, no effort driven.

Make certain also that your constraint is set correctly (ASAP for forward pass and ALAP for backward pass schedules). I have found the that constraints unexpectedly change so much that I have inserted that column to keep an eye on them.

Ctrl X your resources, do the changes you need, then Ctrl V your resources back.

Failing that, sometimes you have to just re do adding in the task.

[Community]

Roxanne,

I might not assume it is a bug but rather a behavior that is inherent to fixed duration tasks.  One thing to keep in mind is that the task duration is affected by the assignments.  Example, you have two resources on a fixed duration task with the same work/utilization.  One resource starts working on day 1 (actual start) but the next resource doesn’t start until day 3.  In this case MS Project will attempt to extend the fixed duration task to account for the combined duration of each assignment (and consequently causes the warning message).

Could this explain what is happening to the task?  I will tell you that MS Project works much better with fixed work or fixed units as the default task type.  MS Project wants to flex the project for you as you manage the schedule and using fixed duration chokes MS Project from this natural function.  It’s a long story but I digress…

Let me know if this helps.  If not we may need to dig a bit further.

Larry Christofaro

[Community]

thanks for the inputs!

The problem came from using custom calendars in some of the projects because the resource pool has the standard calendars and when projects increased hours, it defaulted to the pool calendar.

I believe (hope?) I have fixed the problem by unlinking all projects from the shared pool.  I made sure that the "ignore resource calendar" box was checked in every project, and when I relinked everything to the shared resource pool, I made sure that the "sharer takes precedence" over the pool calendars.

So far, so good.  Thanks for your help. I do appreciate it!

[Daniel Xu]

The answer is that MS Project sucks. Instead of being a tool that serves the user, it became a machine that people run around to meet needs of. If you have a bunch of smart people confused about how to fit in with the tool. The tool is a piece of shit.

[Author]

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