By assigning a standard rate to a resource, you’ve taken the first basic step to assigning costs to your project. Although there are several other ways to assign costs, let’s take a look at the effects of the simplest case, where you assign a resource with a standard rate to a task. In Project, the cost of your project is a mathematical calculation. Project applies the cost of each resource assigned to a task and calculates a cost for each task. The cost of your project is the sum of all of the tasks’ costs.
The method you use to assign resources to tasks doesn’t depend on whether you are working on a stand-alone project or an Enterprise project stored in the Project Server database. You can assign resources to tasks from most of the Task views; in this example, I use the Gantt Chart view. The table you select isn’t important, but I’ve selected the Cost table so that you can see the effects on costs when you add resources to a task. Follow these steps to add resources to a task:
In the table portion of the view, click the name of the task to which you want to assign a resource.
Click the Assign Resources button or, on the Tools menu, click Assign Resources to open the Assign Resources dialog box:
In the Resource Name column, click the resource that you want to assign.
Use the Units column to identify the amount of the resource you need.
Note
By default, Project assigns 100%—one unit—of Work resources, so you don’t need to type anything if you want to assign a Work resource full-time to the task. To assign a resource to work half-time on the task, type 50; you don’t need to supply the percent sign (%). For Material resources, Project assigns one unit of the resource by default.
Click Assign. Project displays a check mark beside the resource’s name to indicate that the resource is assigned to the selected task. Project also calculates the resource’s cost using the cost you supplied when you defined the resource.
Repeat Steps 3, 4, and 5 to assign additional resources to the selected task, or click Close.
Tip
If you’re using Project Server and you intend to use the Resource Substitution wizard, use the R/D field to indicate whether you need a specific resource or any resource with the required skills. Type R—for Request—to indicate that you can use any resource with the skills required for the task, or type D—for Demand—to indicate that you need a specific resource.
