Resources working on different projects – stop % allocation increasing duration

[Nick Lear]

Hi,

I am trying to do the following (the example is simplified for explanation):

I have a Resource that needs to do work for 2 clients – Client A and Client B. There is an agreement that the Resource will work 50% of their time on Client A and 50% of their time on Client B. The Resource will only be doing one task at a time – so I need to give the resource a list of tasks they will be doing and when they are expected to start and finish each task such that over a day or a week, the Resource has spent 50% of their time on Client A and 50% of their time on Client B.

Solution I have tried:

In the Project resource – split Resource into Resource A and B and have these 2 available 50% of the time. This works to a degree but the big issue I have with this is that if there are 2 tasks (one for each client) each taking half a day, Project will display this as the 2 resources working on these tasks at 50% so both will be happening at the same time – which doesn’t reflect the reality that the Resource can only do one thing at a time. So this doesn’t completely fit my needs.

The other Option I have considered is to again split the resource – but this time make one available in the morning and the other in the afternoon – creating the split. This does concern me as this could over constrain things or where a meeting for one client is called in the morning when due to be working on the other client.

I am a little stuck on how to make this work – or the answer may be that I am trying to go into too much detail.

Views and help much appreciated.

Nick

[Sai Prasad]

The first issue I see here is you have split the same resource as Resource A and Resource B to work for 50% in each project. Project doesn’t know Resource A and Resource B are the same resource and hence it can no way tell us if they are overloaded or not. Desktop Project doesn’t have feature to split the the availability of resource across multiple projects 🙁

The second issue is Project schedules the task based on when its predecessor task completes, and the working time of the resource. When Resource A and Resource B (the same resource) working on two tasks the work is scheduled on the same time. Creating link between these tasks will not be option, as they are independent tasks.

So, I suggest the following process
1. Don’t split the resource. Insert one resource and it will be assigned for all tasks
2. By default, Project checks for workload on day-by-day level. Since, you don’t want the work to be schedule on the same hour (or even minute), click Leveling Options in Resource tab, and change the “Look for overallocations on a” to Hour by Hour basis. This will alert the tasks that have resources who are given more work in the same hour.

3. Select the tasks and click Level Selection.

Hope this helps.

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