How to Assign Resources in Microsoft Project 2016
During this Microsoft Project 2016 training tutorial video, we will show you some basic ways of assigning resources to specific tasks. We will also discuss other functions such as increasing the amount of work while keeping the same duration.
Video Transcript
Hello again and welcome back to our course on Project 2016.
In this section we’re going to look at the basics of assigning resources to tasks.
In the previous section we set up a few resources for the wedding project. Clearly there are going to be many more. But let’s switch back to Gantt Chart View using the button towards the right hand end of the Status Bar. And I’m going to choose one of the tasks and assign resources to it.
Select Agree budget and approach, right click, and click Assign Resources. Now that brings up the Assign Resources dialogue. And in the dialogue you can see a list of the available resources. Later on in the course we’ll look at the fact that as the number of resources available in a project grows you may need to filter this list in order to find a particular resource or resources that you need. But at the moment we’ve got such a short list of resources that it’s easy to find the one that we want to assign.
I’m going to assign the bride and groom to this task. I’m going to work on the principle that the bride and groom are arranging this wedding themselves. I appreciate that in many situations it will perhaps be family members or other relations or friends that will be doing some or all of the organizing. But I’m trying to make this not too complicated.
To assign a resource all I need to do is to select that resource, in this case the bride is already selected and then click on Assign. Now when I assign a resource to a task like that it doesn’t automatically close the Assign Resources dialogue. You note there a separate Close button. But what you can see if first of all the number of units. Well 100% represents one bride.
So there’s one bride attached to that task which is just as well really because we only have one bride available. And the cost of the bride working on that task is zero. Don’t forget that the rate for the bride chargeable to this project is $0 per hour. So if she’s working on that task for ten days then she’s still not going to charge us any money for doing it.
Now one very important point I’d like you to bear in mind here and this is going to become increasingly important later in the course. Is that the 100% means that the bride is working on this task fulltime. Now in reality it may well be that she is not working fulltime and that she’s actually doing her day job most of the time and she’s just spending a certain amount of time working on, in this case, the budget and approach to her wedding.
But for the purposes of this particular project and this will not be the case for the bathroom refit, but for the purposes of this project all I’m going to do is treat that 100% as being all of the time that she has available. That doesn’t mean to say it’s a 40 hour week or an eight hour day or anything else.
It just means that all of the time she’s got available she is going to spend on that task while that task is in progress. Now fortunately while that task is in progress she doesn’t actually have any other tasks on the wedding so she can spend all of her time on it.
If I want to assign a second resource and the most obvious second resource to assign is the groom. I’m going to select the groom and do the same thing. Click on Close and the bride and groom are now assigned to that task.
One of the consequences of assigning the bride and groom to that task is to do with the amount of work involved in that task.
I pointed out to you much earlier on in the course that when you look at work, particularly for a new project and particularly when this project was new, in the work column there was zero hours of work because we had no resources assigned to that task. As far as Project 2016 is concerned we have now taken a ten day task and it defaults to an eight hour working day. So ten days for eight hours a day is 80 hours. And when I assigned two people to it full time that is 160 hours of work. So as far as Project 2016 is concerned these two resources are going to do 160 hours of work on this task.
Now when you do this and the reasons for this will become apparent in the next section, when you do this and you effectively increase the amount of work from zero hours to 160 hours Project 2016 offers you alternative ways of dealing with the change that you’ve made. And that little exclamation mark on the left there with the dropdown next to it offers you alternative ways of dealing with a situation where you’ve increased the amount of work in a task.
As far as the wedding project is concerned this is of little interest really because we’re not really going to charge for the brides and grooms time.
So the costings and in fact the scheduling of this is not going to be changed by the fact that we’ve assigned two resources to that task. We’re not going to say that because the bride and groom are working on it it’s only going to take half the time. We decided it was a ten day task and that was it. We don’t make it a five day task because two people are working on it.
That set of arguments about work and duration and the amount of work in a task and so on is what we’re going to look at in the next section. And I hope that that section will explain to you why we get these options here and in fact which of these options is the right one to choose. But on this occasion we’re going to go for the default option which is Increase the amount of work but keep the same duration.
When we do that Project 2016 is quite happy. The warnings gone away. We’ve got our 160 hours of work. We’ve still got a ten day task and the bride and groom are assigned to that task.
My main concern over the next few sections is going to be the scheduling of this wedding and the scheduling of projects in general. And in fact it’s the assignment of work resources that will be the key factor. For the balance of this section I’m just going to quickly show you a couple of other ways of assigning resources and we’re going to assign those other two resources that we set up, one cost resource and one material resource just to go through the basics of dealing with those. We’ll be coming back to cost and material resources later though as I really do want to concentrate on work resources and scheduling now.
Let’s go down to the photography section and let’s suppose that I want to assign the photographer to the Select and book photographer task. So I’m going to assign the cost of the photographer to this task.
On the Resource Tab one of the buttons is Assign Resources. And that brings up the Assign Resources dialogue and from here I can assign the photographer. Now don’t forget that when I assign the photographer we don’t have a cost assigned because it’s a cost resource and we haven’t specified what that cost is until we actually assign it to the task. Now we’re going to allow for the fact that the photographer/videographer we’re going to use is going to charge right about $1,500. So enter $1,500, click somewhere else and we have a cost of $1,500.
Having done that click on Close and that resource is assigned to the task. Note how the cost appears in brackets after Photographer.
I should point out to you by the way that what you see on the Gantt Chart on the right, the words to the right of the blocks in this case, this is all customizable and we will be looking at customizing the Gantt Chart later on in the course.
The last assignment that I would like to make here is the assignment of the rings. So I’m going to go to Select and buy rings and right click. I’m going to use this approach to getting the Assign Resources dialogue. And on this occasion I’m going to choose Ring. And I’m going to actually assign the number of rings because we’re actually going to buy two rings. Note how as I use that roller there the units I’ve specified for rings which is the text that I put in the material column on the Resource Sheet is shown. You can just about see it there.
It’s saying two rings. You can just about make it out. You’ll see it better in just a moment. Click on Assign and as you can see two rings and it knows that each ring we’ve allowed $500 for. So that’s $1,000 for two wedding rings.
The other important thing to bear in mind here is that I could at the same time assign the bride and groom to this task as well. So if I select Bride, hold the Control key down, select Groom, click on Assign and now click on Close. I’ve got three resources assigned to that task. I’ve got the bride and groom work resources and material resource, two wedding rings and note the units there, two ring.
That’s the basics of assignments. In the next section we’re going to turn our attention back to work and we’re going to look at work with particular reference to different types of task. That’s it for this section. I’ll see you then.
Simon Calder
Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA.He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!
