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Deployment Practices: Why Resource Max Units Should Never Be 100%

Reason number one is that in all but the most extraordinary situations it is modeling a situation that is just not possible.

But first some background on what Max Units really is. Max Units defines the percentage of a resource’s full calendar working “period” that they can be assigned to work on tasks before Project sees them as being over-allocated.

Example:
A resource’s calendar says they come in at 8am and work until 5pm and take a 1 hour lunch. They do this Monday – Friday. That is an 8 hour work day\40 hour work week. So if the Max Units is 100% then if the resource is assigned to work 9 hours in one day they will be seen as over-allocated. Same for if they are assigned to work on 2, 1 hour tasks during the same hour. This goes down to the minute level too so if two 1 hour tasks overlap by 1 minute then for that 1 minute they are over-allocated.

This helps the PM create models of assignments and get an idea of how many hours each team member is being assigned to tasks and how that falls across time, other assignments, etc.

So now you might be seeing what is wrong with 100% Max Units. It says that if I work an 8 hour day, I am available to work 8 hours on tasks. On it’s face this sounds logical but dive a little deeper and it becomes obvious that this is just not possible. Nobody ever arrived at work at 8am, took a 1 hour lunch, and then left promptly at 5pm AND got 8 hours of work done on tasks. EVER.

OK wait, I take it back. It is possible that someone did this on your project:  IF your project schedule has tasks for things like: going to the bathroom, answering non-project related emails, going to a company meeting, being tapped on the shoulder by your cube-neighbor and being asked for “just a quick 5 mins. of help” (that turned into 30 mins), the list goes on and on. So if your project contains a task for every possible distraction from YOUR project and you expect your resources to track all of that then never mind. You can set your Max Units to 100%. (just count on a lot of churn on your team.)

But for most of us it is not possible to work 8 full hours on PROJECT WORK in an 8 hour day. Doing so means that you were present for more than 8 hours so that all the other things had time in your day along side your real work. The best way to help our models (because that what project schedules really are: models of what we want our project work to look like) be more accurate is to lower Max Units to something more like 85%. That would be the highest I would ever go on any project I was managing. I have seen it set as low as 75% at some sites but generally I see 80-85%.

What this means is that if you have a 1 day duration task and you assign a resource that has an 85% Max Units value, Project will calculate the Work for that task to be 6.8 hours. This means that you are modeling that on average this resource spends 1.2 hours of their 8  hour day doing something OTHER THAN working on your project. A Max Units value of 75% means that 2 hours is spent doing other things. Of course some will get more than 6.8 done in a day and some will get less done. It depends on the nature of their job, their relationship with other projects, other teams, etc. So the value you set will never be perfectly accurate but it WILL certainly be MORE accurate than 100% which is nearly always wrong. The point here is to make your model as accurate as you can.

 

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I’m hoping to start a small series of Deployment Practices posts here covering things I have found to be useful ideas, practices or methods for deploying Project Server. Please email me if you have suggestions or questions.

Technorati Tags: Project Server,Resource Management,EPM

When did "Resource" or "Coder" Become 4 Letter Words?

I was recently involved in a conversation where it came up that the term “coders” when used to refer to software developer was dehumanizing, offensive and inappropriate as it was indicative of a state of mind of the interchangeability and essential sameness of all software developers. This is not unlike the ongoing discussion that says the same thing about the use of the word “Resource” or “Resources”. Those that find these terms wrong base their opinion on the premise that referring to those that work on a project as resources reduces them to interchangeable cogs within a machine where if one gets sick or leaves they can just be replaced like a lego brick.

I have a problem with this line of thinking. I tend to hold that it is sometimes required to refer to groups of people with a term that differentiates them from other groups of people. This might be Software Developer, Coder, Systems Analyst, Technical Writer, Accountant, etc. Is the use of any of these terms offensive? Is it the term used or the fact that ANY term is being used? If ANY term is acceptable then would it not also ‘reduce’ the group in the same way? If so how does one refer to a group of people with a similar set of skills? Is it possible to do so?

It seems to me that a manager that treats the people working on his\her project as interchangeable is of course not doing a good job of being a manager. But does a manager that treats their people with complete respect as individuals reduce them by referring to them by their job title or skill?

I always put more stock in actions and intentions than in the pure use of a word. I mean a manager could use all the “right” words but still treat their people with no respect. This is because they have no respect and their intent is wrong. But if a manager has full respect for their people but uses the wrong term and has no intent to dehumanize them are they a bad manager?

I'm fully ready to hear that I'm way outside the envelope of reality here. Maybe I'm just not getting it. Set me straight. I know I'm not seeing it but maybe a comment here can word it in a way that I have not seen before. Up to now the explanations I have seen all seemed like political correctness for it’s own sake.

Project Management Systems Don't Kill Project Knowledge, Bad Project Managers Kill Project Knowledge

Jack Dahlgren talks here about the perceived dangers (not ‘evils’ as I said earlier. Sorry Jack) of project management systems like Project Server that use tools like timesheets to gather status information. He also points to Glen Alleman’s post here about the same subject.

Both are basically saying that systems like this are bad because they automate the interaction between project manager and team member and are not as good as face to face interactions between the PM and the team. They are saying that such systems are bad for teams because they do not allow for the transfer of project knowledge or “project wisdom”.

I could not agree more with both Glen and Jack. HOWEVER. the big problem with this is that both Jack and Glen are assuming that teams that use such software never speak. They seem to be assuming that the PM never has any meetings with the team and that the PM never goes and talks with the team. Any team doing this is just flat out wrong. No caveats. No exceptions. I will put it in bold print so there is no mistakes:

Any project manager that expects an Enterprise Project Management application like Project Server to be the only avenue of communication between themselves and their team is not only wrong, they are TRAGICALLY WRONG!

It is not the software. I can tell you with some confidence having worked many times with the team that designed Project Server that it was not designed to replace face to face communication between Project Manager and Team. What Jack and Glen are describing are organizations that are fundamentally broken. The software just helps them be broken faster.

In my work deploying Project Server with QuantumPM we (myself and the other consultants at QPM) were always very clear about the GRAVE dangers of assuming that Project Server timesheets would replace or fix broken lines of communication within the Project Team.

Glen says that PMs should be asking “…simple questions - what do you mean when you say "we're making progress”. I agree. Project Server (and other tools like it) allows for the efficient collection of the progress information in the detailed kind of way that things like Earned Value and many organizations demand (timesheets) This allows the PM to spend their face to face interactions asking the good questions instead of collecting Actual Work numbers and allows them to ask these good questions armed with the data they might need to ask them well.

So in closing: Project Server does not kill process and interaction, bad PMs do.

Games PM's Play

As usual Johanna Rothman has great stuff to say. She is doing a series on “Schedule Games” that is very good stuff.

Check them out: Game 1, Game 2, Game 3, Game 4