Work resources are the people and equipment that do the work of the project. Project focuses on two aspects of work resources: their availability and their costs. Availability determines when specific resources can work on tasks and how much work they can perform, and costs refer to how much money will be required to pay for those resources.

Some examples of work resources are listed in this table.

Project can help you make smarter decisions about managing work resources and monitoring financial costs.

In this exercise, you enter the names of several people resources.

Set Up

Start Project if it’s not already running.

You need the Simple Resources_Start project plan located in your Chapter03 practice file folder to complete this exercise. Open the Simple Resources_Start project plan, and then follow these steps.

The Max. Units field represents the maximum capacity of a resource to accomplish any task. Specifying that a resource has 100% maximum units means that 100 percent of that resource’s working time is available to work on assigned tasks in the project plan. Project will alert you if you assign the resource to more tasks than they can accomplish at 100% maximum units (in other words, if the resource becomes overallocated). 100% is the default Max. Units value for new resources.

For a resource that represents not a specific person, but a category of interchangeable people with a common skill set, you can enter a larger Max. Units value to indicate the number of available people. Entering a Max. Units setting such as 800% for such a resource means that you can expect that eight individual people who all belong to that resource category will be available to work full time every workday.

In this exercise, you adjust the Max. Units values to indicate one resource that represents multiple people, and another resource whose capacity to work in this project plan is less than full time.

With these changes to Max. Units, Project will identify these resources as being overallocated when their assigned work exceeds their capacities. You will work with resource overallocation in Chapter 8 and Chapter 9.

Almost all projects have some financial aspect, and cost limits the scope of many projects. Tracking and managing cost information allows the project manager to answer such important questions as the following:

You can enter standard rates and costs per use for work and material resources, as well as overtime rates for work resources. Cost resources do not use pay rates and are described later in this chapter.

When a work resource has a standard pay rate entered and is assigned to a task, Project calculates the cost of the assignment. Project does so by multiplying the assignment’s work value by the resource’s pay rate—both using a common increment of time (such as hours). You can then see cost per resource, cost per assignment, and cost per task (as well as costs rolled up to summary tasks and the entire project plan). You will assign resources to tasks in Chapter 4.

Project handles overtime expenses differently. Project will apply the overtime pay rate only when you specifically record overtime hours for an assignment. You will find more information about working with overtime in Chapter 14. Project does not automatically calculate overtime hours and associated costs because there’s too great a chance that it would apply overtime when you did not intend it. In the new book launch project plan, Jun Cao’s working schedule provides a good example. In the next exercise, you will set up a working schedule of 10 hours per day, four days per week for Jun. This is still a regular 40-hour workweek, even though 2 hours per day could be mistaken for overtime with the normal assumption of an 8-hour day.

In addition to or instead of cost rates, a resource can include a set fee that Project accrues to each task to which the resource is assigned. This is called a cost per use. Unlike cost rates, the cost per use does not vary with the task’s duration or amount of work the resource performs on the task. You specify the cost per use in the Cost/Use field in the Resource Sheet view.

In this exercise, you enter standard and overtime pay rates for work resource.

Project uses different types of calendars for different purposes. In Chapter 2, you modified the project calendar to specify nonworking days for the entire project. In this exercise, you will focus on the resource calendar. A resource calendar controls the working and nonworking times of an individual resource. Project uses resource calendars to determine when work for a specific resource can be scheduled. Resource calendars apply only to work resources (people and equipment), not to material or cost resources.

When you initially create resources in a project plan, Project creates a resource calendar for each work resource. The initial working time settings for resource calendars exactly match those of the project calendar, which by default is the Standard base calendar. The Standard base calendar is built into Project and accommodates a default work schedule from 8 A.M. to 5 P.M., Monday through Friday, with an hour off for lunch each day. If all the working times of your resources match the working time of the project calendar, you do not need to edit any resource calendars. However, chances are that some of your resources will need exceptions to the working time in the project calendar—such as

Changes that you make to the project calendar are reflected automatically in resource calendars derived from the same project calendar. For example, in Chapter 2, you specified a nonworking day for a staff morale event, and Project rescheduled all work to skip that day.

In this exercise, you specify the working and nonworking times for individual work resources.

Another type of resource that you can use in Project is the cost resource. You can use a cost resource to represent a financial cost associated with a task in a project. While work resources (people and equipment) can have associated costs (hourly rates and fixed costs per assignment), the sole purpose of a cost resource is to associate a particular type of cost with one or more tasks. Common types of cost resources might include categories of expenses you’d want to track on a project for accounting or financial reporting purposes, such as travel, entertainment, or training.

Cost resources do no work and have no effect on the scheduling of a task. The Max. Units Standard and Overtime pay rates and Cost/Use fields do not apply to cost resources. After you assign a cost resource to a task and specify the cost amount per task, you can then see the cumulative costs for that type of cost resource, such as total travel costs in a project.

The way in which cost resources generate cost values differs from that of work resources. When you assign a work resource to a task, the work resource can generate a cost based on a pay rate (such at $40 per hour for the length of the assignment), a flat per-use cost (such as $100 per assignment), or both. You set up such pay rates and cost per use amounts once for the work resource, as you did in the section Entering Resource Pay Rates earlier in this chapter. However, you enter the cost value of a cost resource only when you assign it to a task. You can do so in the Cost field of the Assign Resources dialog box or in the Cost field of the Task Form with the Cost detail shown.

Lucerne Publishing maintains a profit and loss (P&L) sheet for every book it publishes. Travel is a major expense incurred in a book launch.

In this exercise, you’ll set up a cost resource.

You will assign a cost resource in Chapter 4.

You might recall from Chapter 2 that you can record any additional information about a task, resource, or assignment in a note. For example, if a resource has flexible skills that can help the project, it is a good idea to record this in a note. In that way, the note resides in the project plan and can be easily viewed or printed.

In this exercise, you enter resource notes relevant to the new book launch project. In Chapter 2, you entered a task note via the Notes button on the Task tab of the Properties group. You can enter resource notes in a similar way (via the Notes button on the Resource tab of the Properties group) but in this exercise, you’ll use a different method. You’ll use the Resource form, which allows you to view and edit notes for multiple resources more quickly.

In this exercise, you’ll enter notes in the Resource Form.

Clean Up

Close the Simple Resources file.