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I am using MS Project for the first time, and I am developing a Gantt chart. I have multiple parallel tasks with different length, and only 1 employee works on these tasks.

enter image description here

Because the working time is shared between the tasks, each of these takes take longer than their defined single-time.

I added the employee as "resource". But when I click "Match resources" (I don't know how it is called in the English version of MS Project, German "Ressourcen abgleichen"), the tasks are shown in a sequential order in the time line.

This is not what I want, because it looks like the employee would need to finish task A before starting Task B.

Example:

  • "Development of feature X from April 1 till April 3." Testing of feature X" from April 3 till April 5. This us nit good because it looks like no testing is done during development at all, which is not true.
  • Better: "Development" from April 1 till April 5 and "Testing" from April 1 till April 5. However, these 2 tasks should still have their single-time of 3 days in the task overview list.
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  • Do you need to decompose to this level? Are you capturing hours / costs for each separate task? If not, come up a level and capture one activity that includes all that work. Issue resolved.
    – David Espina
    Apr 27, 2015 at 16:42
  • I am doing it for my final project in apprenticeship, so it has to be detailed. However, I am the only human resource. In business school we learned to draw gantt and network plans by hand, but for my thesis I want to use/learn a professional tool.
    – Daniel Marschall
    Apr 27, 2015 at 16:57
  • Hi, could we help you or are you still searching for an answer? If you could find a solution on you own, it would be great if you post it. It might help others in future. In addition, you'll find a short explanation how to work with the answers here: pm.stackexchange.com/tour
    – Tob
    May 10, 2015 at 17:42

2 Answers 2

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Your tasks should be loaded as fixed units. Go to Resource Usage and spread the hours per task against the one resource manually. Don't let the tool level the tasks for your as it will split and sequence the tasks. Instead, spread the hours across the duration of each task they way you think it should appear.

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Within the tasks resource widget (double click on the task) you can set the % the resource is available for the task. Set it e.g. To 75% for development and 25% for testing.

But keep in mind that project deals with the task duration and not with the effort. If you estimated the duration with 100 h and reduce the resource to 75%, you have to increase the duration to 125 h.

enter image description here

Picture 1 includes automatic resource matching / "abgleichen".

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