How to assign 1 resource to a fixed work task where the resource has 50% availability for the first 2 days and then 100% availability after that?

Question

I have a project that I am trying to schedule and am having a little difficulty. I am a MS project novice and will try to explain the problem in a simple example.

I have 1 task which is fixed work. It needs a total of 10 Man days to be completed (example make 10 items that take a day each). If all the resources have 100% availability, and I add 1 resource to it, the project will be completed in 10 days. If I add 2 resources, it will be completed in 5 days. 5 resources will take a total of 2 days and 10 resources will take 1 day to complete the task.

Now.. I am trying to have 2 resources work on this. "Resource A" has 100% availability. "Resource B" has 50% availability for the first 4 days and then 100% availability from then on (I entered this information in the Resource information under Resource availability). With this criteria.. The task should take a total of 6 days.

Day 1: 1.5 completed

Day 2: 1.5 completed

Day 3: 1.5 completed

Day 4: 1.5 completed

NEW AVAILABILITY FOR RESOURCE B

Day 5: 2 completed

Day 6: 2 completed.

END OF WORK.

But MS project calculates it to be completed in 6.67 days. I looked at the resource usage and realized that the usage for Resource B does not change from 50% to 100% after 4 days. It stays at 50% throughout.

I played around with the availability of resource B by changing it to 30% and other various % and I notice that the resource does not change mid task and stays at the first assign % throughout.

How can I solve this issue? Is there a way to do it. Would prefer a simple solution.

Thanks in advance for the help

Cheers

Answer 1

As Mike Robinson mentioned in the comments, the easiest way to do this is to approximate the overall availability.

However, if you want to explicitly enter resource availability by day, it can be done by creating a calendar for that resource, modifying it as necessary, then assigning that calendar to the resource (in the Resource Sheet view):

Step 1 From the Project menu tab, select Change Working Time and click Create New Calendar in the upper right corner. Name it something like Resource B. Then you will see this screen:

Step 2 Make the adjustments to working time. For this case, to say that the resource is only available 50% time for the first 4 days, create an exception by giving it a name and a start date and click the Details... button. Then you'll see this screen:

Step 3 Adjust the working time as necessary. In this example, the calendar "Resource B" has an exception to work only 8:00 AM - 12:00 PM from Monday May 11 through Thursday May 14.

Step 4 Assign the calendar to the resource in the Resource Sheet view.

In summary, a resource's availability can be limited for a few days, however the effort is likely only worth it when the working time is significantly different than the project calendar.