From the course: Project Management Foundations: Schedules

Assign resources to activities - Microsoft Project Tutorial

From the course: Project Management Foundations: Schedules

Assign resources to activities

“

- [Instructor] Resource assignments are a big part of the project scheduling puzzle because the resources you get and when they're available can affect how long activities take and when they occur. For many projects, the people on your project team aren't identified until planning is well underway. That means you have to build your initial schedule based on guesses, like how many resources are available and how experienced they are. If your team isn't in place yet, you can use generic resources to represent the roles or skills required. In our example, I have a list of the skills needed to complete the training guide. You assign resources only to activities that belong to work packages, the lowest level activities in your schedule. That's where the work is. Summary activities roll up what's going on in the activities that belong to them, so they already represent work performed by resources. For that reason, you should not assign resources to summary activities. Milestones don't have duration, so it doesn't make sense to assign resources to them either. When you estimate work, assign the number of resources you expect to get. Your scheduling tool can then calculate activity duration. If you estimate duration and assign the number of resources you get, the scheduling tool will calculate the work they can perform in that duration. Let's say you're counting on two writers for the training guide. The example has duration estimates in place. Say the writing task is two weeks long, and you assign two writers to work full-time. Each writer works 40 hours a week for a total of 80 hours a week. For the two week duration they work a grand total of 160 hours. Don't forget to assign all the other types of resources you need, such as materials, equipment, and ancillary costs like travel. Here's some activities with other types of resources assigned. For example, a few of the publication activities have publication costs assigned as resources, in addition to work resources. The project assistant works eight hours on the register copyright activity, which means $800 labor cost. With a $55 fee for the copyright registration, the total activity cost is $855. It's important to assign all the resources needed for your project so you can determine it's schedule and total cost.

Contents