Assign a curve to a resource or role assignment

You can assign a resource distribution curve to any resource or role assignment on activities with a duration type of Fixed Duration and Units/Time or Fixed Duration & Units. Resource usage and costs are distributed evenly during an activity unless you specify nonlinear distribution using curves.

1. Choose Project, Resource Assignments.
2. Select the resource/role assignment to which you want to assign a resource curve.
3. Double-click in the Curve column and select the curve you want to assign to the resource/role assignment, then click Select.
   
   To display the Curve column, click the Display Options bar, then choose Columns, Customize. Select Curve from the General group and click to add the column to the Selected Options.

Tips

• Using pre-defined or custom resource curves, you can define 21 points on the curve to spread units or costs over the duration of an activity. While this is suitable for most activities, some of your activities might require a more granular resource distribution. For example, for long duration activities with varying levels of effort, a resource curve might not fully reflect when work is planned to be performed on the activity. To accurately capture future period resource distribution for these activities, you can manually enter future period budgeted or planned and remaining unit assignment values in the Resource Usage Spreadsheet of the Activities and Resource Assignments windows.
• For activities whose assignments you want to manually plan, you can assign a resource curve to a resource or role assignment, then manually modify the future period values to more accurately capture the planned resource or role distribution. When you assign a resource curve and manually modify future period values, the assigned resource curve is removed from the resource or role assignment.

Notes

• Curves are defined by 21 points (5% intervals from 0 to 100).
• You can also assign resource curves in the Resources tab of Activity Details.
• Curves cannot be assigned to an activity with a duration type of Fixed Units or Fixed Units/Time.

Related Topics

Manually enter future period assignment values

Future period bucket planning