Create Resource Assignments

Quick reference

• 00:04 Now that we've built a resource pool, we can now assign resources.
• 00:09 These resource assignments can be done in a number of different ways.
• 00:14 One way to do it is to come over here to the resource names column,
• 00:18 locate the resource, and choose the resource.
• 00:21 In this case, acquire land can be done by the home owner and we check that box.
• 00:26 You can see over here on the right hand side of the screen,
• 00:30 home owner shows up in the Gantt chart as well.
• 00:33 Now, this is one approach to adding the resource.
• 00:37 But there's a few other approaches that I'm going to cover.
• 00:40 So I'm going to do Ctrl Z, and undo the addition of that resource.
• 00:46 Another method for assigning resources to a task is to locate
• 00:50 the resource tab, and then click the assign resources icon,
• 00:55 which is located in the assignment section.
• 00:59 So click the assign resources button, now a dialog appears, and
• 01:04 you can move this out of the way.
• 01:06 So you can see the resource names column, and
• 01:09 then select a resource, and click the assign button.
• 01:13 You can see I've just assigned this resource to a task.
• 01:17 Now I'm not going to recommend you use this approach either.
• 01:21 So click the close button, and
• 01:24 perform an undo Ctrl Z to remove that resource from the task.
• 01:29 The recommended method for assigning resources to tasks
• 01:34 is to use the split view, also called the details view.
• 01:38 To get there, click the view tab at the top of the page,
• 01:43 locate the split view section, and then click the details checkbox.
• 01:50 Now you can see we have the Gantt chart at the top, and
• 01:54 we have the split view called the task form at the bottom.
• 01:59 So, you'll notice that I have acquire land selected up here, and so
• 02:03 you can see acquire land listed below.
• 02:06 If I click on create architectural design,
• 02:09 you can see the bottom part of the screen adjusts.
• 02:12 So I'll go back up here to acquire land, and
• 02:15 I'm going to choose the resource home owner, and click the OK button.
• 02:21 So what's happened now is I've assigned the home owner to this task.
• 02:25 Microsoft Project by default,
• 02:27 does what I like to refer to as peanut butter spreading.
• 02:32 The number of hours that someone needs to work on a project task,
• 02:36 by the number of days.
• 02:38 So since a home owner is 100% on this 30 day task,
• 02:42 it's saying the home owner is going to spend 240 hours.
• 02:46 Well, actually acquiring the land includes waiting for certain things to happen,
• 02:51 talking to banks, things of that nature.
• 02:54 So it's actually not a whole lot of that person's time, it's actually much less.
• 02:58 So what we're doing is a little bit of what we might call resource leveling,
• 03:04 so that we don't show someone as over extended on a particular task.
• 03:09 So the process that you follow when you're working with your resources
• 03:14 is to ask them, how much time are you going to need to spend on each task?
• 03:18 And so here for acquire lands, the home owner is probably only going to work maybe
• 03:24 over these 30 days, probably only spend three full days worth of their time.
• 03:29 So we just type 24 and that's hours, and that will equate to three days.
• 03:36 Now, we just click the next button, and we can go to the next task.
• 03:41 This create architectural design, well, that will be done by the architect.
• 03:46 The architect will do that task.
• 03:48 We'll click OK, and once again 20 days, full time.
• 03:53 Well, the architect may only need about a smaller portion of that,
• 03:59 so maybe about half, so we can type in 80 hours, 80h, and press Enter.
• 04:05 Pressing Enter is the same thing as pressing the OK button.
• 04:08 And then we can just press an Enter again and go to the next task.
• 04:14 And we'll just continue adding resources as needed.
• 04:19 Now, this acquiring loan piece is going to be done by home owner.
• 04:25 However, the home owner might want some help from the project manager.
• 04:29 I'll choose these two and click the OK button.
• 04:33 And now part of this acquiring the loan over 10 days.
• 04:37 Now, that will include let's say 16 hours, four days of the homeowner
• 04:42 meeting with the bank, going back and forth to offices, signing paperwork.
• 04:47 And then the project manager coordinate everything else, and
• 04:51 the project manager will have 24 hours.
• 04:53 And so I just keep pressing the Enter key until I move to the next one.
• 04:57 Now you'll see here up at the top of the screen under resource names,
• 05:02 we have both resources listed.
• 05:04 And if I stretch out the Gantt chart view, you can see home owner, project manager.
• 05:09 So you can add as many resources as you'd like to each task.
• 05:13 Now the duration for this task has not changed,
• 05:17 because we set this test to be a fixed duration and not effort driven.
• 05:22 And so what this is saying is, I don't care how many hours someone needs to work,
• 05:28 the duration should never change.
• 05:30 So now what we'll do is continue filling out the resources for
• 05:35 each one of these tasks.
• 05:37 After we've assigned all of our resources, you can see there might be these little
• 05:42 red people, and if you mouse over, they're showing as over-allocated.
• 05:47 We'll talk about that in future lessons.
• 05:49 The next step for us is to build what's called a work breakdown structure, and
• 05:54 that's what we'll do in the next lesson.

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