How to calculate project finish date with fixed work and different date of resource availability

Question

I am preparing a high-level project plan in mpp to see the top level view when the project will finish based on the resources availability and work estimation. My requirement is as: I have an estimation of Task 1 for 365 days. Two resources are available from 3 June and three more would join in Oct. I have to see based on the work and resource availability when the project will finish. I added 365 days in the work column, assigned 5 resources and adjust the start date of all 5 resources. But, the mpp has distributed the work evenly across all 5 resources so that first 2 resources would leave the project early and 3 resources joining in Oct work at later date. What I want is all 5 resources would finish the project at same date so it would give me project completion date. Please suggest how to do? Any other method to do without mpp?

Thanks Vibha

Answer 1

MSP's ability to allocate work among multiple resources is pretty limited, and the allocation doesn't account for the restricted availability you describe. Nevertheless, the solution is easily found using a simple spreadsheet calculation. Besides the 365-day (presumed) man-day work estimate, the key input is the number of workdays that resources r1 and r2 must work alone before the others arrive. I've used 88 workdays (~4 months from early June to early October) in the example, and this leads to a total task duration of 125.8 workdays.

The duration can be confirmed in MSP by assigning the 5 resources to the Fixed-Units or Fixed-Work task at the pre-computed work allocation levels. (Some assignment leveling would be needed to reflect the resource availability restrictions in the Usage tables, but this doesn't affect the task's duration.)

Answer 2

This is going to look like an ad so I understand if it's going to be removed by moderation but.

I'm using epicflow plugin for MS Project (also works with Jira and as a standalone tool) It lets me see how project will be affected over time if I add or remove resource, start sharing resources with other projects and etc.

There's a feature called "what if analysis" It creates a duplicate project environment where you can make any changes and move to any date in the future to see how your project will change (which deadlines will be missed due to resource overload, which projects will be affected, which resources will be under/overloaded in a week, month, year or whatever timeframe you need.