Introduction: Microsoft Project 2010 Series: Session 5: Assigning resources (people and material) and costs
Good afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Techgig webinar series, our endeavor to empower techies. We believe that sharing of the knowledge is the key to enhance our skills and grow us as professional with this principle in mind we have initiated a series of webinars conducted by industry experts to give you all a crisp insight of various domains. The topic of today’s session is, Assigning resources and costs this is the 5th session of the micro soft project 2010 series. This series is being conducted by Mr. B Sai Prasad, Senior Manager – Learning & Development, Cognizant Technology Solutions India Pvt. Ltd so without further delay I introduce you all to our guest speaker over to you Mr. Sai. Good evening all participants I welcome you all again for the session 5 of this project 2010 series. Here we are going to talk about how to do assignments and project 2010? If you have observed the last 4 sessions of this series we would have list on how to customers getting a project? How to create your work based on structure stating dependency and in the last session we talked about how to set up different types of resources as a part of project 2010. So in today’s session we are going to look at how to assign these resources to your activities so that we are having their (( )) tool which we can do (( )). (( )) of this one hour webinar is going to be on how to do assignments with respect to part time and full time people they are going to look at how assignment specific fields which you need to understand and manipulate in order to make data assignments in project 2010. We will also discuss how to control the effect of the different (( )) work duration and (( )) can it going to be use a part of my assignment. Then conclude this (( )) how to identify them in project 2010. So let’s have quick recap of what we discussed in last session of getting resources I hope you will not depending on which data is to come from you might say people are my resources it could be (( )), it could be machinery, it could be materials or it could be even money that could be considered as resources. So, resources are generally people facilities equipments, materials and money that will help us to create your many products of your projects. We may use of couple of use like resource sheet to which we added this resources information and this resource is very critical in terms of building a schedule if you are expecting the availability of those resources will severely impact to schedule development and also if you have a criteria based on which you want to talk and optimize your resources not only added resource information is very much important. So if you say resources are very important in terms of building your project plan that will (( )) section is also going to be very important data. Here we are going to discuss how to assign these resources to the different activity for the schedule.
Project
Now just move on to a level below this so however the different assignment specifically you need to understand so that you have better confidence in doing assignments in project 2010. So I can just start (( )) in steps, performance we need to understand the different target like we start (( )). So the specific unit you have three types of unit that is the assignment unit, we have the max unit, we have what we call as peak units and finally we have the work like up work, resources work and assignment work. So I’ll just say the simple example (( )) what are these (( )) let’s start with start and finish. So I am just going back to my project 2010, so currently I am looking at my scan chart so you can just look at the illustrate example (( )) activity here which is identify stake holders. So if I am trying to assign a resource for example let’s say 15 years for this activities you can see that this activity currently start on 3rd of December and it completes on 5th of December. So you can see that you start and finish what you see here is task start date and the task finish date but let’s look at the information of the engineer 1 here. So for which I am just going to my few resource sheet where you have the engineer. So when you double click the engineer you are able to see the resource related information here, where we have available from and available to. So this ideally tell from what date to what date is this resources allocated to your project, so you can ideally say this resource is allocated to this project from October 1st to end of December. So which means thorough out this month is allocated to the project so this is the resource start date and this is the resource finish date but now let’s come back to the same sheet again. So third set of start and finish you need to understand the assignment start and the assignment finish. What do we mean by assignment? So if I just go to the task form so you can see on the bottom (( )) task form for this particular task so it says that the engineer is working on this activity. So let (( )) the schedule so it says that this engineer is going to work on this task from 3rd of December and it’s completes on 15th of December. So you might see your task start date and your assignment start more or less looks similar. So I am just going to assign another resources let’s say designer 1 so what you can ideally do here is you can say (( )) engineer 1 is not going to start on 3rd of December instead is going to start only on 5th. So you can see a task start date is totally different where as the assignment start date of that resources going to be totally different at this stage because each resource is taking their own long time to complete this task. So this is the first information of the field you need to understand in terms of start and finish. The second is the assignment unit or the max unit or the peak unit so when I try to look at my gantt chart you see that there are two resources working and when I look at the work you can see both of them are assign to this activity 100 percentage which means if this resource is working 8 hours per day as per the calendar which means they are going to work 8 hours in this activity for the next 3 days so that is what this unit is. So the unit wants to (( )) bottom or I am trying to point to this unit is what is called as the assignment unit because this is more (( )) assignment levels. The next unit which we need to understand is then I go to the resource sheet if you look at my engineer 1 from this date to this date this tells how much percentage is allocated to the project so that is this ideally meaning by what we call as the max unit. So we talked about assignment unit and we talked about max unit the third one is called as peak unit what I mean by peak unit is if I just go back to my gantt chart here the assumption is the engineer 1and the designer 1 are working on this activity for 8 hour per day for three days which means they are allocated to this activity on a flat percentage. May be you want to have a different percentage on different days may be on first day you want them to work for 50% the second day (( )) it wants them to work for 75 and the third day it might be 100%. So the way is to do that is if I just go to my view tab you have a view called resource usage. So let me remove my task form so you are looking at my Engineer’s 1here so currently Engineer 1 is looking on this the activity 8 hours per day which means it working 100%. So those task level is working 100% Microsoft project provides your (( )) which you can control how much unit is going to work on individual days. So to better understand what is peak unit I am just going to right click to my time space data and let me click on detail (( )) and I just go for peak unit. So when (( )) peak unit is able to see it is also 100% because it is going work only 8 hours per day. For example if I say on monthly it is going to spend only four hours to consider peak unit on that day is going to reduce this percentage may be on the remaining days it is still 100%. So (( )) which you need to remember the third one is called as work which can be task work which can be resource work or the assignment work.
Team planner and Task sheet View
So just to give a quick recap of what we discussed makes sure that the task mode is auto scheduled and selects the right task type okay. So if you are doing a duration based estimate make sure it is fixed duration and effort driven more the reason why I say effort driven is no risk if the effort driven is yes, what happens is your duration will automatically be changed because when you say effort driven, effort is fixed there are duration is flexible. Whereas when effort driven is no naturally duration is fixed in this case. Whereas if you are doing a work base estimate have your type as fixed work but if you are entering both duration and work for specific task you need to decide which of these two will always be constant most of the time and accordingly you need to change your task type. Once you have select your task type step three enter either your duration estimate or your work estimate and provide the other value so if you are doing a duration estimate after providing the duration value and we want to change the work, change the work naturally the unit will get affected or change the unit the work will get affected. Now I think we have understood what are the different feel with respect to you need to understand and what are the possible values you can set for some of these fields? So let us directly (( )) want to some of the options in terms of assigning resources to activities so the first which I want to show you is called as team planner view before I show you this view and what it talks about you need to remember this view is available only in project 2010 professional version it is not available in this standard version of project 2010. Secondly whenever you are trying to talk about building a forecast able schedule right naturally you need to look at minimizing constraint as a part of building a schedule. Whereas in team planner what happens is you cannot build a forecast (( )) scheduled have you seen your next demonstration rather you can only delicate the activities to different resources. When I say delicate, you can ideally say this activity is going to be done by this resource or this resource is going to start on (( )). So naturally when we use scheme planner project will force you to put constraint that might make your schedule less dynamic in nature. So without further delay let’s talk about how to use the team planner? Fine, so may be let me have the some of these resources assigning the (( )) not for all the activities that I have assign the resources. So in order to access the team planner you can just go to the view ribbon where you can hit the team planner or you can go to the resource ribbon where you can hit the team planner button. When you hit the team planner button gives on your current date that time scale will be positioned so you can see on your screen there are four quadrants available to the top left most corner you can see the list of resource names and you have a section called un-scheduled task. What I mean by unscheduled activity is you have an activity assign to this resources but the start date and the finish date is not yet calculated so you might wonder how can that be. Remember if you are having a manually scheduled task naturally for a manually scheduled task you have freedom to decide when should the activity start or finish so it is not necessary that the start and finish needs to be calculated. So I am just going to go back to my gantt chart to give you what that looks like let’s say I have, so as you can say this activity currently is also scheduled so let me make it manually scheduled and I have the freedom to remove the start date or the finish date of this activity. So let me say this activity is going to take five days and I have just assigned it to one of the engineers. So you can see this is not a auto scheduled activity I just had some resources of an accountable for this activity so if I change my due to the team planner you can see the approval 2 is listed on my unscheduled task because the start date and the finish date is not available for approval 2. You can see there is a small difference in terms of the color you can see activities that are auto scheduled which means they would have a start and a finish date will be shaded in light blue color. Where manually scheduled activity will be in green color which will be I can say a dark greenish that is what you see is to approval 2 and towards your bottom you can see some unassigned activities coming back to unassigned you can further categorized as auto scheduled or manually scheduled. So if I have a activity but I am not assigned it to any resource that will be available on the bottom so manually scheduled unassigned activity will be on the bottom left most corner and the bottom right most corner you can find the auto scheduled activities here. So let’s look at a how to use this team planner first, as I have already told you team planner will not help you to build a forecast a build scheduled. The reason is when you try to make assignments through this planner project will automatically set constraints on those activities okay which means those activities what you are assigning will start only on or after a particular date which means it will not be flexible like as soon as possible. So let’s take a small example here so you can see there is an activity called conduct work shop let’s say if I want one of the designers to do it actually you can see that there are two designers and you can see on those two weeks they are relatively available. So you can check one option is you can just drag that bar like this and you can drop it on the day went you want that resource to us. So the moment you dragged and dropped it, you are able to find this resource designer 1 is working on this particular activity called conduct work shop. So another way of doing it is if you don’t like the drag and drop you can also right click that particular task bar where you have lot of options here like auto manual you have an option to inactivate that task so that it does not participate in scheduling you always have an option to look at whether you want to (( )) to any of the other resources. So you can just say is that I want to move it to designer 1 so naturally you will get the same output. The second option I would like to demonstrate there is available in team planner when you do a mouse over on top of any of these task bar you can see a very complete detailed information on the path. As you can see may be I cannot point the mouse you can just look at the last statement in the conduct workshop tool (( )) that labels have task path. The task path will give you the list of the (( )) of the conduct work shop so if I just do a mouse over and top of a (( )) and see that it start with the sample project which is the level zero and under which you have a requirements and under requirements you have the conduct workshop activity. So if you look at the identify stake holders you can see how these activities have been connected in terms of this schedule. When you try to do a right click you can see this is formatting tool bar that will appear where you can also update some percentage complete then I say this conduct work shop is 50% complete you can see the color will ideally change 50% will be in dark blue color the remaining 50% will be in light blue color. So though I talk about how the update percentage complete as a separate session but this is just to tell you and easy way by which you can update your percentage complete. So I am just going to do a couple of them and let’s say that yeah, so as you have already seen I am try to move this resources or activities such are multiple resources I hope you remember the conduct workshop was dragged and dropped or (( )) re-assigned to the resource to the team planner. If I now go to my gantt chart you can see those activities for which I did assignment you can see on an indicator column there is a constraint that has been placed. Carefully observe for conduct workshop it has put a constraint like this shop as (( )) earlier than constraint. This appear because of two result first we use team planner, in team planner whenever you try to do a drag and drop for all auto scheduled activities a constraint will be put. If you want to remove this constraint one option is select those multiple activities like this and you can just hit the task information option on your task driven and you can say on my (( )) constraint is as soon as possible. So as I have already said team planner is more useful only for delegating which means you want to force work on a particular day and then you go for a team planner otherwise if you want to build a forecast able schedule I would recommend don’t go for team planner. So this team planner view has been added only in project 2010 professional it is not available in project 2010 standard as well as the earlier versions of project. There are a few more colors which I think you might want to look at may be a black color will be shown for certain task that are typically late so if I just go back to my team planner naturally you don’t see any black color here because this project is actually standing only on the 1st of December. So let’s say I say my (( )) 28 what is mean by 28 is today’s date is around 28th of December you can see all my activities will be shaded in black color because these activities actually have to be completed by that date but still this activity did not complete it has been marked in black color in my team plan is indicating these are a late activities. Good, so this is the first simple view which you might want you to use assignment. The second view is called as the task sheet view, I think very similar option I already demonstrated then I explained you the different field, so you can just change your view to the task sheet view to the use data group and you have a series of check boxes available here through which you can check and uncheck which resource you want to assign. I f you look at your team planner the only (( )) you are having here is 4 constraints are placed; one activity can be assign to one resource you cannot say this activity should be done by multiple resources would be in planner. But using the task sheet so you can go to the view ribbon and you can go to the more views and select task sheet, so the task sheet will not have the chart area to the right hand side here you have an option to select multiple resource which is not possible to team planner. But when you try to select multiple resource project always assume that they are assigned to this particular task to their maximum units which means if this resources allocated to your project let’s say 100% which means he would be spending 100% of this time on this activity that you might want to have control over that, you might want to say this resource is not going to spend 8 hours on that activity rather he is going to spend only let’s say 50% or only 4 hours per day for which you might want to go for the next option which is called as the task information dialog box. For which I am just going to split my view to the bottom so you can understand how it works, see on the bottom instead of the task form I am just going to have my task usage, so you can see that this resources these 2 people are working on these activity for 4 hours, 8 hours, 8 hours so and so. If I want to say the individual resources who are working on this particular activity they are not going to spend the assignment (( )) here is 100% that’s what I assume, but if you want to say they are going to spend only 4 hours per day on this particular activity. For designer 1 I can say it is only 50% here, so you can see the moment I say 50%, the 24 hours is getting divided across 5 days 4 hours per day because I have given it at 50%. The second way of setting this assignment unit is you can double click the task on your Gantt chart you can go to the resources tab through which you can provide the same assignments units here. So but you will have a better clear picture we are looking at your task usage how this assignment unit creating impact in terms of the duration of this particular activity. The last one which I might want to demonstrate is the usage view which have already shown you but I would recommend that don’t use it together like this but I am just going to change my view to the resource usage the advantage in a resource usage is you will get a much better detailed picture about who is doing this activity in the project. So, if you look at to the left most corner you can see the list of assignments are grouped under different resources so you can hide the sub task through the (( )) sub tabs option and I can just look at one of the resources that a engineer 1 and you can see the engineer 1 is working on 3 different activities. Whereas say designer 1 is working on only 2 activities, for example if I want to move this activity identify stakeholders from this engineer 2 designer 1, you just need to select this particular row okay and you just drag it and you move it below designer 1 okay, I hope this already assign to designer 1 may be let me open designer 2 Now you are able to see both designer 1 and designer 2 together working but that assignment is totally relief from engineer 1 so this is much an easier option so you can even double click that particular assignment here which opens up the assignment unit it is the assignment work, the assignment start, the assignment finish of the particular resource on this if you remember on the last session I was talking about the cost and that can be assign to the individual resources. When you are assigning cost to the people resources, I was talking about cost rate table which can be a, b, c and d. I said a resource can have multiple skill set depending on their skill set you might want to use a different rate so it is through the assignment information cost rate table you can ideally say which rate table should be used, is it a, b, c, or d or e. Once you have done the assignment okay I am just going to go back to my Gantt chart once you have completed the assignment, you might want to look at the critical path as a part of your project plan, I hope you know what critical path is; critical path gives you the minimum duration you need to complete your project, it is also the longest path as a part of your schedule so for those who are totaling new to critical path if you just say to look at to your right hand side you can see there are 2 paths in this schedule. See the first path is the one that comes from the top, that is identify stakeholders, conducting workshop may be review finding, may be the last 2 activities. Path 2 is the 1st activity, the 3rd activity, the 4th, 5th and 6th so you can see there are 2 path available as a part of the schedule so if you look at which decides your project start date and the project finish date ideally it is only the 1st path because if you look at the 2nd path the create responsibility matrix just need one day to complete which means there is another 2 day available by which this task can be delayed whereas the 1st activities on the 1st path cannot be delayed because there is no time available for it to get delayed. There are few terms we will discuss to understand what is critical path? but let’s talk about critical path from the point of project 2010. To view the critical path as a [Audio not clear] in project 2010 there are multiple views you can use. The view what I am looking at is a Gantt chart go to the format ribbon you have an option here called critical task you can see that on the bar side, so moment you turn it on, you can see it to your right the critical path will be automatically mark in red color what I mean by the red color is if I try to increase the duration of the activities on my critical path what happens is your project finish date get affected similarly if I try to reduce the duration of any activity on your critical path your project finish date is getting affected. Let’s look at the create responsibility matrix, let’s say that the create responsibility matrix doesn’t take 1 day, take 2 days to complete as you can see it’s finish date alone gets impacted not the project finish date. So you can see that activity that won’t fall the non activities that don’t fall in the critical path will have some time available, the time available by which it can be delayed is what we call as (( )) in project. Just below the critical task you can see there is a task option called slack, when you turn on slack you can see there is a black color line, a (( )) line after this create responsibility matrix you can see the slack says the task is finishing on this date whereas a 3 slacks available till Tuesday. But if you want to have a numerical figure about this total slack you can just either insert a column here called total slack you can see (( )) responsibility matrix is having a 2 way slack, what it means is if my duration increases from 1 day to 3 days naturally it not have any impact on a project finish date. But if my slack increases by more than 3 days, if say 4 days you can see a conduct workshop becomes non critical whereas the 2nd path becomes critical. What is equally important for as a project manager is, we need to focus on a critical path and we also need to focus on the near critical path which means those activities that have a float, that is very close to let’s say 2 days or 3 days but I have found a few project manager they might have a (( )) they might even say that even if the total float is 2 days it should still be marked as critical, because I just want that to be noticed when I prepar the schedule. But by default project always says critical path means those activities that have a 0 slack available that is the reason it’s only the 1st path that has been marked in red color but if you want to create a responsibility matrix as it also to be part of the critical path because it is having very small slack you can just go to the file option, you can just find on the advance tab there is an option through which you can decide may be the place where I am now pointing to you can see tasks are critical if the slack is less than or equal to 0. Now I need to make it as 2 days here, so when I say 2 days any activities that 2 or less than 2 will also be made as critical. You can see now to your right even this activity is mark as a critical activity. So these are some of the changes which you might want to look at whenever you are trying to look at your critical path, but towards your left if you want to highlight your critical activities in a different colors you can just go to the format and you have an option to click on format path, you can just click on format [Audio not clear] items to change I can say critical task and I can just give the color as red so naturally everything becomes critical activity as part of this particular schedule. The best way to understand how critical path or how to validate whether all the activities have been interconnected with each other you can change your view to the network diagram where you can see to your right you can see how these activities have been connected and the red color activity indicate that these are all critical activities by default. Critical path as I already told you it is the minimum duration to complete a project there is a couple of ways to identify how a critical path is, but the critical path assumes that all your activities are inter connected with dependencies and please ensure that this slack what is you are having on the non critical activity is always greater than the threshold value. But by default project will also say a task that have slack of one or 2 day is also a non critical but if you think 1 or 2 day is still critical for you, you just need to go to the file option will make sure that you relax that threshold value. Just to summarize I talk about what should be mean by assignment where we are trying to relate relationship between a task and resources we made use of this formula called duration is equal to work divided by unit, so before you start doing assignment make sure that right task which could be fixed work, fixed duration or fixed units is set, make use of the team planner task sheet, task information or the resource usage to assign your resources. Identify a critical path by making use of the format ribbon or by making use of the network diagram and reports to find that out. The next session, session 6 is all about how to convert this draft schedule to an optimal schedule because we might have chances of the dates becoming unrealistic now or it might be the resources are also over utilized or underutilized. The next session is going to be on 8th of November so thanks to you guys if you have your feedbacks please visit my facebook page saithesimple and just post your feedback through the post link available.