Re: [Planner Dev] Resource leveling - also

[tom doctorunix com]

I am looking at migrating from MrProject to Planner.  In MrProject there was a
plug-in for resource leveling.  Will that plug-in work in planner if I just
merge the source trees or are they going to be very different?

tc

Quoting Daniele Levorato <daniele levorato infocamere it>:

> Hi All!
> I'm Daniele and I'm a newbie in Planner, but I've used other planning
> tools and I know the concepts...
> First of all I'm really interested in Planner... since it was called
> "MrProject" some time ago...
> I want to share with you my opinion about an interesting feature,
> essential for a good planning tool, in my opinion. I know, it's a long
> mail so I would really appreciate if you are so patient to read it and
> tell me what you think...
> 
> Sorry if you find some points obvious, and perhaps some of them have
> already been spotlighted in the past, I'm sure, but I've just joined the
> mail-list, I don't know about previous discussions and this is my first
> mail (be kind please :-) )
> ... so, let's go (p.s. sorry for my English too)
> 
> Today I've started using Planner seriously at work and I found really
> interesting the last added "Resource Usage" view since now you can
> monitor resource over-load and try to correct them.
> So I started creating my project WBS and introducing dependencies
> between tasks obtaining the Gantt. However this is the simple part...
> now I have to assign resources to various tasks.
> The problem is: how do I level all resources properly?
> It's important to level resources or Planner will never give me a
> correct time table and so a project-end forecast (and I really need
> it!).
> I know that Planner can't do automatic leveling, but it would be usefull
> to have a way to level resources, even manually...
> ... I'll try to explain...
> Imagine two parallel task say both of 5 work days....
> 
> task 1    ---|=|=|=|=|=|--- Bob [100]
> task 2    ---|=|=|=|=|=|--- Bob [100]
> 
> If "Bob" was assigned to both it would have 200% of work time which is
> not acceptable. In this circumstances I (the PM) can say that Bob can
> first do the first task and then the second, if I don't care about task
> completion date and I believe that Bob can't do these two task at the
> same time...
> 
> task 1    ---|=|=|=|=|=|--- Bob [100]
> task 2    -------------|=|=|=|=|=|--- Bob [100]
> 
> But in this way I will introduce an improper "task 2" predecessor: there
> should be no dependency between the two tasks. The link is introduced
> not due to a logical dependency but to be able to level resources and
> this is not good. If assignments change (let say that Tim enter the team
> and is assigned to task 2) I'll have to remember that there's no link
> between task 1 and 2 so now they can be done in parallel. Perhaps if
> Planner let you declare that the dependency is due to a resource
> leveling (Bob leveling) then it would be possible for Planner to
> automatically remove it when Bob is no longer used in task 1.
> 
> task 1    ---|=|=|=|=|=|--- Bob [100]
> task 2    ---|=|=|=|=|=|--- Tim [100]
> 
> Another possibility is to change the percentage of Bob's work in the two
> tasks: say 50%. So in both cases Bob will be allocated "only" 100% and
> Planner will give me the correct project time-schedule.
> 
> task 1    ---|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|--- Bob [50]
> task 2    ---|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|--- Bob [50]
> 
> But in this way (well even in the other situation) the tasks are
> "stretched" and another "overload" with a third task could occur...
> doing all these considerations "manually" is hard...
> However even if Planner is not able realize a plan strategy by it's own,
> I can manage the situation (and in my opinion no algorithm can be
> provided for that, only the PM should do manually such decision).
> 
> But this is a lucky situation! Imagine instead task 1 with 8 days and
> task 2 with 5 days:
> 
> task 1    ---|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|--- Bob [100]
> task 2    ---|=|=|=|=|=|--------- Bob [100]
> 
> Now adding the "dirty" dependency is again possible (but not desirable
> in many situation, the gantt becomes unreadable) while it is not
> convenient to decrease the percentage of work, for example:
> 
> task 1    ---|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|--- Bob [50]
> task 2    ---|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|--------------- Bob [50]
> 
> Bob is not over-loaded but he won't work at his best since the
> percentages are:
> 
> Bob Work  ---|     100%          |    50%    |---
> 
> While, in the real world it should be:
> 
> task 1    ---|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|----- Bob [50|100]
> Bob Work 1---|     50%           | 100%|-----
> task 2    ---|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|----------- Bob [50]
> Bob Work 2---|     50%           |-----------
> Bob Work  ---|     100%          | 100%|---
> 
> In fact, working at 50%, task 2 would be finished after 10 days (5 work
> days), meanwhile task 2 have been worked at 50% too for 10 days. Since
> again they are 5 work days (and task 2 requires a total of 8 works
> days), 3 days remain to be performed. Since Bob now can work at 100%
> (task 2 is finished) in 3 days Bob will finish even task 1.
> This is the correct, optimized time/resource scheduling.
> Note that, correctly, from the work viewpoint it's the same of
> performing first task 1 and then task 2 (work like energy should be
> constant) so 13 days in total, but from single-task-end viewpoint the
> two end dates are different.
> This solution is acceptable and fits reality (in my opinion) but Planner
> don't let you "split" a task in two work-session to define separately
> the percentage.
> In my opinion this "split" should be implemented (like in MS Project for
> example) since will let the user a fine-grained way to allocate
> resources and so manage the situation.
> 
> >From an algorithm viewpoint an "automatic leveling" would also be
> possible.
> Simply imagine that Planner wants to level Bob (the user asks Planner to
> level Bob using a percentage strategy)... So Planner iterates from
> projects start date and step over day by day. For each day it analyzes
> how many task have been assigned to Bob (ex. 2) then it divide Bob work
> capability (100) by the number of task (100/2) calculating the
> percentage of work on each task for that day (50%). Even the "priority"
> can be considered to realize an asymmetric work percentage split. At
> this point Planner consider the day after and its Bob's tasks (again 2)
> repeating the same operation. After every elaborated day the work time
> for each task is tracked (ex. after the 2nd day Bob should have worked 1
> day on task 1 and one on task 2). When all the work for a task has been
> considered the task is finished and its end date is known (ex. after the
> 10th day Bob has been involved in 5 days work on task 2 so all task 2
> have been considered... the 11th day there's only task 1 and 100/1 =
> 100% so Bob will work 100% on task 2 for that period).
> 
> You will notice that it works, conceptually...
> Perhaps Planner should implement this algorithm targeted on a Resource
> (or considering more at once).
> 
> Concluding, from a user viewpoint it should be possible to:
> 
> 1) re-arrange task introducing a "special dependency" (say t2 depends on
> t1) linked to a resource, so that "t2 depends on t1" as long as t1 is
> assigned to a certain resource (say Bob). This would allow to introduce
> "non-logical" dependencies, used to level resources, that are clearly
> visible in a special way in the Gannt (to not confuse them with the
> "logical" ones) and are automatically dropped when the resource
> assignment is no longer applicable (ex. Bob is no longer assigned to
> t1).
> 
> 2) User select one or more resources and one or more (or all) tasks and
> applies the "percentage" leveling. The percentage of working capability
> of the resource is split on daily-basis, based on task priority and
> using a maximum split amount (for ex. Planner knows from Bob
> Resource-Information that it can't do more than 3 task in parallel for a
> certain day) so all less-priority "exceeding" tasks will be shifted
> using the previous method ("non-logical" dependencies) while the others
> will be "stretched" using split work percentage.
> 
> Well... what do you think about that? would it be difficult to implement
> it? but above all would it be useful? In my opinion it's very useful...
> even the point 1) alone would be at least useful in certain
> circumstances, but the 2) would give more "added value" to resource
> planning in Planner.
> 
> In Fact in real practice I've faced several circumstances like this:
> 
> time   ---------X---Y---------
> t1     ---|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|--- Bob
> t2     ---------|=|=|--------- Bob
> 
> Where t2 starts on X-day (due to some deps.) and costs 2 days, and both
> have to be performed by Bob.
> I can't shift t2 before t1 (due to dependencies) nor t2 after t1 since
> imagine that t2 is linked to a chain of tasks in the critical path.
> What happens in the real world is that Bob will start t1 and in the
> x-day will work on t2, suspending t1, or will work both on t1 and t2, it
> depends on Y-day (can be postponed? or is critical? the PM knows) so we
> can say that it depends on "priority". So if the priority is the same,
> using algorithm 2 we'll have:
> 
> time   ---------X-------Y-------------
> t1     ---|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|------- Bob
> work 1 ---| 100%|   50% | 100%|-------
> t2     ---------|=|=|=|=|------------- Bob
> work 2 ---------|   50% |-------------
> WORK   ---|        100%       |------- Bob
> 
> While if t2 priority is much more that t1 priority we can even obtain:
> 
> time   ---------X---Y-----------------
> t1     ---|=|=|=|---|=|=|=|=|=|--- Bob
> work 1 ---| 100 | 0 |   100   |-------
> t2     ---------|=|=|------------- Bob
> work 2 ---------|100|-------------
> WORK   ---|        100%       |------- Bob
> 
> And so t1 is split (suspended) to work on t1 in the middle, to respect
> its priority and preserve the critical path... in fact Y-day is the same
> as in base-line!
> I think that this would be great!!! It's not the solution to all
> "resources leveling problems" but still works in many circumstances.
> 
> Thanks for you attention, and sorry if I've been too long
> 	Daniele
> 
> 
> 
> ________________________________________________________________________
> D a n i e l e  L e v o r a t o
> InfoCamere S.c.p.A
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> System Engineer
> Direzione Registro Imprese
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> 
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