Setting Up People Resources

Project works with three types of resources: work, material, and cost resources. Work resources are the people and equipment that do the work of the project. We will focus on work resources first and then turn to material and cost resources later in this chapter.

Some examples of work resources are listed below.

Open table as spreadsheet

Work Resource	Example
Individual people identified by name	Jon Ganio; Jim Hance
Individual people identified by job title or function	Director; camera operator
Groups of people who have common skills (When assigning such interchangeable resources to a task, do not be concerned who the individual resource is as long as the resource has the right skills.)	Electricians; carpenters; extras
Equipment	Video camera; 600-watt light

Equipment resources don’t need to be portable; a fixed location or piece of machinery, such as a video editing studio, can also be considered equipment

All projects require some people resources, and some projects require only people resources. Project can help you make smarter decisions about managing work resources and monitoring financial costs.

Tip 

This tip describes enterprise project management (EPM) functionality. The combination of Project Professional and Project Server provides substantial, enterprise-level resource management capabilities, such as skills-based resource assignments and a centralized enterprise resource pool. For more information, see Part 4, “Introducing Project Server.”

In this exercise, you set up resource information for several people resources.

Be Sure To start Microsoft Office Project 2007 if it’s not already running.

Important 

If you are running Project Professional, you may need to make a one-time adjustment to use the Computer account and to work offline. This ensures that the practice files you work with in this chapter do not affect your Project Server data. For more information, see “Starting Project Professional” on page 11.

Open Wingtip Toys Commercial 3a from the \Documents\Microsoft Press\Project 2007 SBS\Chapter 3 Simple Resources folder. You can also access the practice files for this book by clicking Start, All Programs, Microsoft Press, Project 2007 Step by Step, and then selecting the chapter folder of the file you want to open.

1. On the File menu, click Save As.

The Save As dialog box appears.

2. In the File name box, type Wingtip Toys Commercial 3, and then click Save.

3. On the View menu, click Resource Sheet.

You will use the Resource Sheet view to help set up the initial list of resources for the Wingtip Toys TV commercial project.

4. In the Resource Sheet view, click the cell directly below the Resource Name column heading.

5. Type Jonathan Mollerup, and press .

Project creates a new resource.

6. On the next empty rows in the Resource Name column, enter the following names:

Jon Ganio

Garrett R.Vargas

John Rodman

You can also have a resource that represents multiple people.

7. In the Resource Name field below the last resource, type Electrician, and then press .

8. In the Type field, make sure that Work is selected, and then press several times to move to the Max. Units field.

The Max. Units field represents the maximum capacity of a resource to accomplish any task. Specifying that a resource, such as Jon Ganio, has 100% maximum units means that 100% of Jon’s time is available to work on the tasks to which you assign him. Project will alert you if you assign Jon to more tasks than he can accomplish at 100% maximum units (in other words, if Jon becomes overallocated). As you can see, 100% is the default Max. Units value for new resources.

9. In the Max. Units field for the electrician, type or select 200%, and then press .

Tip 

When you click a numeric field, up and down arrows appear. You can click these to display the number you want, or simply type the number in the field.

The resource named Electrician does not represent a single person; instead, it represents a category of interchangeable people called electricians. Because the Electrician resource has a Max. Units setting of 200%, you can plan on two electricians being available to work full time every workday. At this point in the planning phase, it is alright that you do not know exactly who these electricians will be. You can still proceed with more general planning.

Now you’ll update the Max. Units value for Jon Ganio to indicate that he works half time.

10. Click the Max. Units field for Jon Ganio, type or select 50%, and then press .

Tip 

If you prefer, you can enter maximum units as partial or whole numbers (.5,1, 2) rather than as percentages (50%, 100%, 200%). To use this format, on the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Schedule tab. In the Show assignment units as a box, click Decimal.

What Is the Best Way to Enter Resource Names?

In Project, work resource names can refer to specific people (Jon Ganio) or to specific job titles, such as Camera Operator or Actor. Use whatever method makes the most sense to you and to those who will see your project plan information. The important questions are who will see these resource names and how will they identify the resources. The resource names you choose will appear both in Project and in any information published from Project. For example, in the default Gantt Chart view, the name of the resource appears next to the bars of the tasks to which that resource is assigned.

A resource might refer to somebody who is already on staff or to a position to be filled later. If you have not yet filled all of the resource positions required, you might not have real people’s names to enter. In that case, use placeholder names or job titles when setting up resources in Project.