Decrease a Resource’s Work on a Task

If a resource is overallocated and you don’t want to reschedule or remove some of the resource’s tasks, and you can’t allow the durations of the tasks to increase, there’s another option. You can decrease the scope of one of the resource’s tasks during the period of overallocation, and thus reduce the amount of work required of that resource.

When you decrease the total work on a task, Microsoft Project (by default) decreases the duration of the task.

To decrease the amount of work assigned to a resource

1. On the View Bar, click Resource Usage .
   Tasks are listed underneath the resources to which they are assigned. Overallocated resources are highlighted in red and displayed with an icon in the Indicators field.
2. In the Work field for the tasks to which the overallocated resource is assigned, type a lesser value until the overallocation is removed.

For each resource, the Resource Usage view shows the total hours the resource is working, the hours the resource is working on each task, and the hours worked per time period on the timescale. You can see a graphical representation of overallocated resources in the Resource Graph view.

You may want the duration of a task to remain the same after you decrease the work assigned to it. When you decrease the work assigned to a task that has a fixed duration, Microsoft Project decreases the resource units assigned to the task. For example, a resource is assigned to a 2-day task at 100 percent resource units. If you decrease the total amount of work for that task to 1 day but still want the work to be completed in 2 days, Microsoft Project automatically reduces the resource’s units on that task to 50 percent. That is, the resource is now assigned to work on the task half-time on each of 2 days.

To keep the duration of a task constant after you decrease the amount of work assigned to a resource

1. On the View Bar, click Gantt Chart .
2. In the Task Name field, select the task whose duration you want unchanged, and then click Task Information .
3. Click the Advanced tab.
4. In the Task type box, click Fixed Duration.

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