Project 2010 For Dummies®

Chapter 9

Assigning Resources to Get Things Done

In This Chapter

Understanding how assigning resources affects task timing

Making resource assignments

Checking resource availability

Using Team Planner view

Notifying team members of their assignments

You may have entered a cost per hour (or per use) for every resource in your project, but those resources won’t cost you a thing — or, for that matter, get anything done — until you assign them to tasks.

When you do begin making assignments, several interesting things happen. Not only will your budget start to swell, but in some cases, your tasks may actually change duration. You may also start to see evidence of people who are overbooked on several tasks that happen around the same time. Understanding how those results occur is key to making intelligent assignments.

However, your work won’t be over even when everything about your assignments looks hunky-dory. That’s when you have to communicate the assignments to your team and make sure that each resource agrees to take them on. If they don’t, it’s back to the assignment drawing board.

In fact, assigning resources is something of an ongoing process throughout your project. As usual, Project provides the tools to help you manage this entire process relatively painlessly.

You’d Be Surprised What Assignments Can Do to Your Timing

For autoscheduled tasks, the three task types (as I describe in Chapter 4) are fixed units, fixed work, and fixed duration. Each defines the relationship that ...