Re: [Planner Dev] Duration Calculation

[Kurt Maute <kurt maute us>]

On Wed, 2006-05-31 at 21:38 -0700, Andrew De Ponte wrote:
> Well, after messing around with it a bit, I have decided that neither
> linking by creating a relationship or using the 'start no earlier than'
> constraint are acceptable to me. Neither of them represent correctly in
> the gantt chart that the tasks can be performed simultaneously. Plus,
> the relationship method negates the original purpose of using
> relationships, to allow the manager to see which tasks truly depend on
> others.

True - its a workaround.

> However, I have decided that using the resource unit values is an
> acceptable solution. If you take and set the unit values for shared
> resources existent on multiple subtasks such that the sum of the unit
> values of that given resource add up to 100 for all sub tasks, the gantt
> chart will properly display the tasks as being able to simultaneously be
> performed and take the proper amount of work and duration.
> 
> One method for using this technique in a default case might be to evenly
> divide the unit of 100 up among all subtasks that a given resource is
> applied to. This works with multiple resources if this is done for each
> resource.
> 
> Then have some sort of balancing between them if the unit value is
> changed by the user. For example if there were two sub-tasks and
> resource "Bob" was applied to both with a unit of 50 on each sub-task
> and the user changed resource "Bob" unit to 60 on the first sub-task the
> second sub-task should automatically update to 40 unless it was
> previously edited. It may be beneficial to have a check box or something
> that would allow this auto balancing or one that would not (make it fixed).

I wouldn't implement resource leveling this way.  What I would do is
give priority to the tasks along the critical path, so that if there is
a resource conflict, the resource would be given to the task that's on
the critical path, and the one that's not would show a delayed
completion date.

For conflicts among tasks that are either both on the critical path or
both not on the critical path, I would give priority to the task with
the lower WBS number, since most PMs that I know put the tasks that
generally should go first higher in the WBS.  To allow the user to
override this, I'd let them use the priority field.

To allow a team member to work on more than one task at a time, you'd
have to manually adjust their allocation percentage as you have in this
case, and I think that's an appropriate way to handle many conflicts,
but very difficult to get a machine to make those decisions for you.

-- 
Kurt Maute <kurt maute us>