Hi,

I got a question from one of my Blog Readers: “Hi, would you be so kind and explain when to assign Resource to Summary Task or Milestone!”

I will explain how to do it (which is very easy), and when and why (which is my point of view). Of course, I will  use MS PROJECT PRO 2013!

First I am going to create brand new PROJECT:

and one Resource:

Now suppose that John is Project Manager, and by default, he is responsible for whole Project. What will you get if you assign him to Summary Task, like that?:

Notice, that I added Cost and Work columns in Gantt Chart View. First of all you might think (wrong), that since John is assigned to the Summary Task, his work (in hours) will be spread among all Subtasks. No! MS PROJECT will calculate all work from subtasks, and it will assign those hours to the Summary Task, without assigning hours to the Subtasks. Now I will add one new Task but I will not put any Predecessor to it:

Notice that nothing changed, since New Task is shorter in Duration than whole Summary Task Duration. But now I’m going to put 10 days in New Task Duration, and I will get:

You can see that Total Cost for Summary Task is $12.000 (10 days * 8 hours per day * $ 150 per hours), and total Work is 80 hours (10 days * 8 hours). TIP TIME! Do not assign any Resource to Summary Task! If you want to get real work in hours and real Cost, assign john to all Tasks, instead of Summary Task like that:

Here you can see “real” work, “real” costs, and – John is overallocated! HURAAAA!

If John is responsible person for Summary Task, but he will not spend any time during execution, you can assign him to the Milestone:

With that you do not have any Costs or work Hours, but you can still filter all Milestones and John as Resources and see when something should be finished, and for which milestones is he responsible!

Regards!