Wanting to Enter Resources for Tasks and have units assigned at 100%

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    • #414429

      Hi and happy new year!
      I’m laying out tasks for a six month project within Project Professional desktop v2016. I have laid out the tasks, created dependencies and entered the anticipated work. These are all fixed work tasks.
      I’ve created resources tying the resources to our Active Directory and am assigning the resources to the tasks. As I enter a resource, Project enters the name but assigns the resource at a Unit allocation, frequently, of less than 100%. I can go back into the task detail and up the Units to 100% but find that double entry very frustrating. Any way around this?

      Thanks
      Mark

    • #414430
      Daryl Deffler
      Participant

      Robert
      My recommendation is to avoid Fixed Work tasks all together unless you are truly scheduling a task that is, for example, 100 hours of labor regardless of how many resources are assigned. These types of tasks are generally more construction oriented such as “framing a wall”.
      My recommendation is to use Fixed Units.
      Here’s the difference;
      * All tasks have a formula behind the scenes that must stay in balance. That formula is Duration = Work / Availability (assignment units). When you change one of those variables Project will adjust one of the other remaining variables to keep the formula in balance.
      * In a Fixed Work task, the Work component of the formula is locked because that’s how you configured the task. When you make changes, Project will try to only adjust the Duration or Availability components of the formula. Fixed Work tasks have a unique twist. When you have a new Fixed Work task with 100 hours assigned, Project will evenly distribute the 100 hours across all the assigned resources when you first add the resource assignments (individual assignment units come into play also). However, when you ADD a new resource to a Fixed Work task with resources already assigned, you start getting unexpected results because Project uses a different algorithm when it’s not the first time resource are assigned. Resource assignment units may be changed and hours may be shifted. Without getting into tons of detail, it can get very perplexing because on the surface, it looks like it makes no sense.
      * In a Fixed Units task, You pretty much have direct control. Fixed Units means the Assignment units are locked and they generally won’t change unless you manually change them. What then changes is the Duration or Work. So in a Fixed Units task, you should enter the Assignment Units (100% for example) and then enter the hours for each resource. Following this pattern, Project will adjust the duration to keep the formula in balance and you will most likely get the desired outcome.

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