Schedule Longer Working Hours or Additional Shifts

If you won’t be getting additional resources to assign to tasks with overallocations, you may be able to reduce those overallocations by increasing the number of working hours for the resources already assigned to those tasks. You increase the number of hours a resource is available to work by increasing the resource’s working hours on the resource’s calendar.

Typically, you can increase a resource’s working hours only as long as they do not exceed your overtime limit. By keeping the number of hours below the overtime limit, you can continue to pay the resource a standard rate, not an overtime rate.

To increase a resource’s working hours

On the Tools menu, click Change Working Time.
In the For box, click the resource whose calendar you want to change.
On the calendar, select the days you want to change.
To change a day of the week for the entire calendar, select the day at the top of the calendar.
Click Working time.
In the From and To boxes, type the new working times.

Another way to increase the total number of working hours available to the project is to add shifts. You can create a night-shift or swing-shift base calendar and assign it to a group of resources or set the working hours for each resource individually.

If you have resources working night shifts that span 2 days, such as 11:00 P.M. to 7:00 a.m., select the first day of the work week and type 11:00 pm to 12:00 am, and then select the next day and type 12:00 am to 7:00 am. Repeat this process for each work day. Notice that the first day of the work week has evening hours only and the last day has morning hours only.