Assigning Part - Time Resources

Summary
A recurring area of difficulty among Microsoft Project users relates to the assignment of resources where something less than full time is required over the duration of the task. Here we show the options available. (For the basics of resource assignment see articles one and five ). For these examples try to display the regular Gantt chart with a split screen showing the task form (the default lower view) - choose 'Window - Split'

The Simple Full assignment
To begin lets review a straight-forward assignment. A person is required full time over the duration of the task. By entering 1 unit of a person (100%) we mean that if the task is 10 days in duration, we expect 10 days of work (effort) to beexpended by the resource.

In the diagrams the blue bar represents the span of time covered by the task (duration) and the yellow bar represents the participation of the resource, with black areas representing periods of no work. Overnight hours are not shown.

For this arrangement:

• Use Fixed Duration type, set the duration, set the units to 1.0 and have the work calculated.
• Use the lower half of the screen to edit the duration, task type, work and units fields.
• Duration = 10 days, Units = 1.0, Work = 10 days (80 hours)

Part Assignment Over Full time
Here a resource is assigned for the duration of the task, but is only to work part of each day. Thus if the assignment is 50%, the expectation is that the resource will work 4 hours of each 8 hour working day. This would look as follows:

For this arrangement, use Fixed Duration type, set the duration, set the units to 0.5 and have the work calculated.

• Duration = 10 days, Units = 0.5, Work = 5 days (40 hours)

Alternatively, if you know how many hours you wish the resource to work, the duration can be calculated. For this arrangement:

• Use Fixed Work type, set the work, set the units to 0.5 and have the duration calculated.
• Duration = 10 days, Units = 0.5, Work = 5 days (40 hours)

Full Assignment Over Part Time
It is possible to assign a resource to work fully over part of the duration.To do this, assign a full unit but modify the work so that it represents half of the duration.

If the resource is to be intermitently engaged on the task:

• Use Fixed Duration type,
• Set the duration, set the units to 1.0 and have the work calculated by editing the resource usage screen for each day.
• Duration = 10 days, Units = 1, Work = 5 days (40 hours by editing each day)