Lesson8.4.Balancing Resource Overallocations Automatically

Lesson 8.4. Balancing Resource Overallocations Automatically

Figure 8-7. The Resource Leveling dialog box.

Figure 8-8. The project filtered for overallocated resources.

If you're not sure of the best way to balance an overallocated resource, you can leave it up to Project to level the resource instead. In leveling, Project splits and delays tasks in order to get rid of resource overallocation. Project tries to level only noncritical tasks (tasks with slack) to avoid affecting other tasks' schedules, because leveling often results in later start and finish dates for an overallocated task's successors.

This lesson shows you how to use leveling to balance overallocations in your project.

1. Select View The top pane displays the project in Resource Usage view, and the bottom displays the Leveling Gantt view.

   First, find the overallocated resource you want to level.

2. Select Project The table is now filtered so that only overallocated resources appear.

3. Select the Michele Filshie resource and click the Go To Selected Task button on the Standard toolbar. Scroll to the right until you see the date 4/28/06.

   Notice that Michele Filshie is scheduled to work 12 hours on April 28. Let's level the resource's workload so that she is not overallocated.

4. Select Tools Resourcesfrom the menu.

   The Resource Leveling dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 8-7. Here you can specify how you want leveling to occur in the project.

5. Make sure the Manual and Level entire project options are selected.

   These are the default leveling options. They mean that all the resources in the project will be leveled when you click the Level Now button in the dialog box.

6. Click the Level Now button.

   The Level Now dialog box appears.

7. Select the Entire pool option and click OK.

   The Resource Leveling dialog box closes and the project is leveled, as shown in Figure 8-8.

   How did Project level the resource? It increased the duration of the "Approve cover text and images" task to 1.5 days. You can see the changes made by Project in the chart area of the view. Green bars indicate how the tasks were scheduled before leveling; blue bars indicate the current schedule of the tasks.

QUICK REFERENCE

TO LEVEL YOUR RESOURCES AUTOMATICALLY:

1. SELECT VIEW

   SELECT PROJECT

   SELECT THE OVERALLOCATED RESOURCE(S) AND SELECT TOOLS

   CLICK THE MANUAL OPTION AND THE LEVEL ENTIRE PROJECT OPTION, AND THEN CLICK THE LEVEL NOW BUTTON.

2. CLICK EITHER THE SELECTED RESOURCES OPTION OR THE ENTIRE POOL OPTION, AND THEN CLICK OK.