How to keep Activities together with dependencies and ressource leveling

Michael

Hello,
I try to create a project plan where three teams need to work on lets say 10 items. Each item shall have the structure Team 1 starts (not always involved), Team 2 takes over (overlap is optional), Team 3 finalises (again overlap is optional).
I imported csv data with a hierarchy: Epic -> Workpackage -> Team activity. Plus dependencies.

What I want to achieve: I would like to see a plan where the teams work strictly in sequences.
My current result: See screenshot. I forced a sequence through priority but after resource levelling there are huge time gaps, e.g. line 7 and line 14.

I understand that the strict sequence might be suboptimal in terms of resource allocation but we want to avoid context switch of the teams so I at least like to see such a plan to decide if we want to go this way.

I tried levelilng options but this did not solve it for me. Is there any way I can enforce the activities to stay together?

Thanks! Michael

vicky

Priority is for you an anti counter of the #? Even thought this is possible, it fells a bit strange to me.

What I want to achieve: I would like to see a plan where the teams work strictly in sequences.

Sorry I don't understand exactly what that should be. Could you precise for example in which order the ABC team should work? Due to the dependencies, the # and the priorities, if something is more important or higher up in the list, it will take precedence.

Michael

Hi Vicky, thank you for your reply.

"Priority is for you an anti counter of the #?" - my understanding is that the manual order and the priority both play a role. I tried to "enforce" an order by giving the activities high up on the list (low #) a high priority to so that both factors work towards the sequence I would like to see.

I have created a small test project to illustrate where I struggle. Maybe its simply not possible because Merlin is optimising when levelling the resources. I understand that what I try to do is certainly not optimal in terms of resource usage and duration of the project but still I would like to see the flow of activities.
This really might be an edge cases, my apologies and thanks for your help. As context - we try to understand the timeline and flow of activities for a basic "roadmap" and then switch to an agile delivery mode. So we can and will not follow the Merlin plan as it would be the case in a "normal" project but we want to use it as a guideline for the optimal sequencing with the caveat that we want to keep the flow Team 1, 2, 3 as close together as possible. Team 1 and 2 are building APIs which are then used by Team 3. Technically they do not have to be together but all teams need to get into the details and we want to avoid gaps of weeks or month before the topic is picked up by the next team.

So what I would like to avoid in this plan are long gaps between the work of e.g. Team 1 and 2 within one workpackage even if this extends the duration of the project.

Thanks! Michael

Michael

Did some further experimenting. Looks to me like the Priority determines the END of an activity which makes sense from an optimisation point of view.
Might be the case that what I want to do just does not make much sense from the point of view of Merlin which optimises resources and duration. Which normally is exactly what is required.

vicky

To your first question on the screenshots.
There is an overallocation first for team 1 based on following three assignments

If you call Resource Leveling by Default, Merlin Project will use following rules and push first those assignments with less impact to the project's end.

Top first, later later.

Now to the priority based levelling

Which again solves overallocations on all assignments for all periods.

It will first try to solve the overallocation on the first week of work according to the rules.
There are overallocations only for team 1.
Resource levelling will push assignments with less priority first.

Now this also moves successor activities: one of those (#12) is assigned to the same team, other successors are assigned to Team 2.

Now moving forward to the week, on the next week, there used to be overallocation for team 2.
The moment the second assignment of team 1 was moved one week forward (through leveling) there were just 2 assignments. Still over-utilisation.

The moment the third assignment of team 1 was moved two weeks forwards, there ware no over-utilisations on that week anymore, BUT some overutilizations on the next.

So if we now apply the rules of priority on the over allocated assignments of team 2, we move the second assignment 5 days, there are still some overallocations on two assignments. We move again the last of three assignments by 10 days. This solves the overallocations on first, second and third and 6th week. And so on and so on.

If you check eventually
the activities in the work breakdown, you'll see why there are time spaces in between activities.

So that being said, maybe you want to change the approach of your planing?
Maybe you can use a kanban board instead?

If you have for example a Kanban with 5 states: backlog, in process - team 1, in process - team 2, verifying - team 3 , done…

You can insert your work packages to the backlog, and when work occurs, the package wonders from left to the right.

Would that help you better doing the work you need?

Michael

Hi Vicky,

thank you for your research, the comprehensive answer, the insights into the levelling mechanism and the pointer towards the Kanban style tracking!
I will dig deeper in the levelling stuff, your description helps a lot! And for tracking purposes we will use the Kanban view indeed, thanks!
Finally - I got close to the result I was looking for by removing the 3rd team which had only a small part of the work and is not critical. These entries seem to lead to some optimisations moving the packages apart.
Solved from my point of view. Thank you very much for your excellent support!
Have a great weekend, Michael