Project 2013 Introduction

Project 2013

Lesson 4 – Working with Resources

indicator appears to the left of the resource name in the Indicators column in the shape of a preset contour indicator with a pencil on top of it.

You can contour assignments for both work resources and material resources. When you contour a work resource assignment, the schedule may be impacted as you change the workload for a resource. When you contour a material assignment, you change the amount of the materials available during the duration of a task. For example, if you need 75 tons of steel per week to complete a task, Microsoft Project will show 15 tons available during each of the five work days by default. However, if you know only 10 tons will be available the first day, 20 tons the second day, and so on, you can contour the assignment. Depending upon your situation, contouring a material resource assignment may also impact the schedule. While the preset contours can be helpful in evaluating different scenarios and planning your project, you will probably manually edit the work distribution in most situations. When you manually edit a contour, you can change the work values without significantly affecting the duration. For example, if a resource is scheduled to complete a task by working eight hours a day for three days, you could manually edit the contour so that the task is complete at the end of four days, which should not greatly impact your schedule. You could enter six hours on the first day, four hours on the second day, eight hours on the third day, and six hours on the fourth day to reflect how this resource will actually work. You could also manually edit a contour if a resource will not work full-time on a task for the entire duration.

NOTE

To apply a preset contour, select the desired resource in the Resource Usage view and then select the Assignment Information button. On the General page in the Assignment Information dialog box, select the desired contour from the Work contour list. By default, a resource will be overallocated if you contour the work assignment so that the resource works more than eight hours a day.

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Procedures

1. Switch to the Task Usage view. 2. Select the resource assigned to the task you want to contour. 3. Scroll the right pane to view the work distribution you want to change. 4. Select the field containing the value you want to change.

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