Assigning overtime in MS Project 2010
You would not normally want to include overtime during your original planning because doing so, would leave you no room for maneuver later on.
You see, overtime is there as a mechanism to help manage the schedule during delivery, so that once a project is under way and the schedule slips, over time can keep task duration from increasing.
In effect this is done by over allocating resources for short periods of time.
Microsoft project 2010 provides several ways for you to represent overtime, and you have to resort to the overtime work field only when resources cost more for overtime hours.
There are three ways to assign extra hours:
Assigning Overtime – Increasing maximum units
If your team members earn a salary or charge the same rate for all hours, you can increase their maximum units in order to represent the longer hours that you asked them to work.
An example here would be setting maximum units to 125% using the resource sheet. This represents a 10 hour work day (assuming a standard work day of 8 hours).
The downside to this approach is that resources are now set to work these longer hours for the entire duration of the project, which would almost certainly lead to tired, overworked, and mistake prone team members.
Assigning Overtime – Increasing work time for a period
If you have project team members who do not earn higher overtime rates, UK and also defines longer hours through there resource calendar, or the resource’s information dialogue box.
For you to change the available units for a period of time, open the resource sheet and double click on the resource name. The resource’s information dialogue box will open. In the resource’s availability section, specify the start and end date for the extra hours and the extra units you want to assigned to the resource’s during that time.
If you wish to specify work hours for a defined period of time, define an exception in a resource calendar. You can then set the start and end dates for this, and the start and end times for the work days.
Overtime hours paid at an overtime rate
If you have some resources that are paid more for overtime hours, you must assigned overtime hours in project 2010 or the labor costs won’t be correct. You can set resource’s overtime rate in the resource’s sheets overtime rate field.
Overtime costs
In project 2010, work hours reside in the work, regular work, and overtime worked fields. Without overtime work and regular work are equal and all assigned work hours are regular work hours.
When you assign over time, project 2010 pence the overtime hours that you enter in the overtime work field and subtract slows hours from the regular work field. In other words, the total work value stays the same.
As an example, if a task work field is at hours and you assign 20 hours of overtime, the overtime work field changes to 20 hours while the regular work field shrinks to 60 hours.
Project 2010 calculates the labor costs fall regular work hours by multiplying the regular work hours by the standards labour rate. You can find the standard rate in the resource sheet.
Over time labour costs is calculated by multiplying the overtime work hours by the overtime rate. As an example, consider an 80 hour task. At £100 an hour for regular work, the labor cost is £8000. If the overtime rate is £120 an hour, then the task cost changes to £8400, which is calculated by multiplying 60 hours times £100 plus 20 hours times £120.
A customised usage view will simplify the assignment of overtime and observing how project 2010 allocates it.
The resource usage view with the overtime hours field in the table and time phased view will be helpful here.
