Welcome back to our course on Project 2016 Advanced.
In this section we’re going to take a look at the use of overtime.
Have a particular problem here with version 06 of the website schedule in that the current
end date is right about the middle of November and we’re really hoping to have all this
wrapped up by the end of October.
So what we’re looking at is some way of getting back some of the time that we seem
to have lost here.
Things are running a little behind schedule.
But in any case the schedule was always very tight to finish by the end of October anyway.
Now what we’ve identified is that potentially we could save some time on the testing task.
The testing begins in late August and runs right through to the end of October.
It’s a task that involves 400 hours of work.
That’s 50 working days at 8 hours a day.
And we have three different resources working on it.
None of the resources are working on it full time but they do have other commitments on
other projects and so on.
So what we’re looking at here as one option for winning back some time is to get those
resources to do overtime work on this task.
Now that’s not the only option for clawed back some time but it’s the one that we’re
going to look at in this section.
Now one thing that I’d like to cover first of all before we actually apply overtime here
is to look at the cost of the testing because one of the unfortunate consequences of overtime
is usually that it involves an increase in cost.
So let’s just show cost here.
And against the testing task, 50 days, 400 hours and it’s $20,500.
Okay let’s take a look then at how we might use overtime here.
I’m going to display details and then in details I’m actually displayed work.
Now note this 400 hours of work is divided very conveniently between three resources.
100 hours for Northern Farm Foods, 100 hours for Toby, 200 hours for Bakersfield Associates.
Units 0.25, 0.25, 0.5.
Now this is not quite the same as the baseline work that was originally established here
but I’m going to ignore baseline work at the moment and we’re just going to deal
with overtime.
Now the very simplest way to do this is give everybody a proportionate amount of overtime
work.
And one very important point to bear in mind when you allocate overtime work is that it
isn’t shown in some special way on the schedule.
You don’t even have to adjust any calendars to accommodate overtime work.
The way that it works is that there is agreement that overtime will be done and then the resource
or resources that need to do the overtime do it.
They do it within the duration of the task.
So without delaying in this case the revised duration of the task.
When they do it, how they do it, what arrangements they make for it are up to them.
Although of course if they do have a specific overtime rate we will notice the difference
in the cost for the task.
So what I’m going to do here just as a first try is say well let’s give everybody a quarter
of their work as overtime.
So I’m going to give Northern Farm Foods 25 hours.
Now it’s important to realize that the overtime work figure is included in the work figure
to its left.
So the 100 hours work on Northern Farm Foods is still 100 hours work for Northern Farm
Foods but it includes 25 hours being done as overtime.
The same for Toby and then Bakersfield associates are going to have 50 hours.
That’s it.
Now look at the schedule, look at the cost when I click on OK.
Now you notice that we have clawed back quite a bit of time and in fact the project now
finishes before the end of October which was our intent.
But the cost has gone up from $20,500 to $23,125.
So the use of overtime has achieved the schedule objective but at of course an actual monetary
financial cost.
Now note a couple of other options there.
One option we might have had would have been for example if one of the participants in
the testing had said, “Well I don’t have the capacity to do any overtime.”
We might have redistributed the amount of work.
I’ve kept the work at 400 hours.
The idea wasn’t to cut down how much work we did on testing, just to get part of it
done as overtime.
If I redistributed it, so for example if Toby said, “I can do overtime” and Bakersfield
Associates said, “No, that’s all the capacity we’ve got.”
We could maybe move 100 hours of Bakersfield’s to Toby and let Toby do more on overtime.
If you can shorten one resources time working on the project in terms of elapsed time but
not the others then the task is still going to run on as we had just now well into November.
In order to shorten it you need to shorten it on all fronts if you like.
So if Bakersfield can’t do 200 hours more quickly maybe they can do 150 or 100 hours
more quickly and that’s why we would distribute it to one or other of the other resources.
So with a combination of possible redistribution and the allocation of overtime according to
the capacity that resources have got to do overtime you have one option for reducing
the duration of a task.
Now although we’re primarily here looking at issues related to cost and in this case
how the use of overtime has increased cost in order to shorten a task, another way you
might deal with this specific problem might for example be to give the testing task a
task calendar.
So for instance, a calendar that would allow work to be done at the weekend or late into
the evening.
And then provided resource calendars allow them to work at the weekend or late into the
evening then their work on the task could be scheduled.
Note however that if we rescheduled the work according to, for example, an extended calendar,
exceptions to the calendar and the resources then worked on that task but on an extended
schedule they would not be charging their time at the overtime rate.
They’d still only be using their standard rate.
So you would need to deal with that situation as well.
But for the moment we’ve achieved our objective of shortening the project timescale even though
we’ve had to spend a bit more money to do it.
That’s it for this section.
I’ll see you in the next one.