I am using Project 2007 SP3, and have trouble getting Project to accept that it is not allowed to change the amount of work I assign to tasks and subtasks just because I move a start date or add a predecessor to a task.
Details:
I have a project with tasks and subtasks, and resources allocated to subtasks.
In particular, I have
Task 2 - Design and Build a piece of equipment
Task 2.3 - Separable hardware modules
2.3.1 - Module A
2.3.1.1 - Specification & preliminary Design
2.3.1.2 - Design
2.3.1.3 - Procure component parts
2.3.1.4 - Acceptance Testing
2.3.1.5 - Assemble
...etc
I have resources like
Electrical Engineer, max units = 100% (1 EE available for whole project)
Mechanical Engineer, max units = 200% (2 MEs available for whole project)
etc.
I already had estimatates of work by resource by lowest level task figured out in an excel spreadsheet. For instance, 24 hours of mechanical engineering in 2.3.1.1, and 120 hours in 2.3.1.2. Plus 8 hours of Electrical in 2.3.1.1 and 20 hours in 2.3.1.2, etc. These are estimated outside of MS Project using an estimation tool in Excel.
I imported these into the project by doing this (it's roundabout, but I have a hundred tasks and 20 resources, and I didnt want to manually enter them)
Set all tasks at all levels to fixed work (ignored for higher level tasks, which stayed at fixed duration) -- This is how I want the project run - -fixed work, not fixed duration or fixed units.
Assign all resources to all tasks by...
In gannt chart, select all tasks (with all subtasks shown, so I selected the whole shooting match)
Toolbar>Resources>Assign people and equipment to tasks
Assign resources
In modal box, select all resources, hit assign
Assign correct efforts by resource by...
Select manual calculation (so it doesn't do things while Im importing data)
Select Resource Usage
Select a Resource (for instance Electrical Engineer)
Expand so it shows all tasks and subtasks
Copy work from excel spreadsheet into this table
Repeat with other resources
Select automatic calculation (turn it back on)
Now it shows bottom level tasks correctly, and shows higher level tasks as having resources assigned, but work = 0.
I assigned everyone to everything so it would be easy to copy/paste from excel. The excel spreadsheet always has zero hours for tasks that have subtasks, since the labor is actually calculated at the lowest possible level.
Now what I WANT to happen is be able to move task 2.3 start date to fall late in the project (using either start no earlier or by setting a predecessor like "task 123FS + 3 months"), and have resource requirements correctly figure out the duration of all tasks. Note that I am NOT trying to force durations to change.
What ACTUALLY happens is Project decides to add arbitrary large amounts of work to task 2.3. Before I add the constraint, the EE resource has zero hours in Task 2.3 (all the work is down in Tasks 2.3.1.x). After adding the start constraint, Project has added many hundreds of hours to 2.3, plus hundreds to 2.3.1.
So why did Project add work? How do I stop it?
I suspect this is tied to the fact that high level tasks are locked as being task type="fixed duration" and cant be changed to "fixed work". The bottom tasks are set to "effort driven" by default, and I haven't messed with that.
Do I need to de-assign all the resources from the summary tasks? I can do that, but it's pretty annoying, because then I dont have an easy way to copy/paste from excel into the project.
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