## Delay a Task Yourself

When you add delay time to a task, you delay not only that task but also its successors. If you add a delay to a critical task, for instance, you can cause the project finish date to occur later. Allowing Microsoft Project to automatically resolve resource overallocations can add delay time to both critical and noncritical tasks that have overallocated resources, with sometimes unpredictable results. If you have just a few overallocated resources, you might get better results if you add delay to tasks yourself.

When you add delay to a task manually, you can check the effect on the resource’s allocation, and then adjust the delay further if needed. So that you don’t affect the finish date of your schedule, first delay tasks that won’t delay the project finish date (those with total slack). Add delay time only up to the amount of slack time for each task. It’s useful also to delay noncritical tasks before tasks on the critical path.

Experiment with adding delay times to different tasks to see the effect on your schedule. Note that delay time is always given in elapsed time and that nonworking time is included in the delay time.

To delay a task with an overallocated resource

1. On the View Bar, click More Views .
2. In the Views list, click Resource Allocation, and then click Apply.
3. On the View menu, point to Toolbars, and then click Resource Management.
4. In the top pane, select an overallocated resource in the Resource Name field.
5. In the bottom pane, select a task that is assigned to the resource during the time the resource is overallocated in the Task Name field.
6. In the Leveling Delay field, type the duration by which you want to delay the task.
   To avoid delaying successor tasks and the finish date of the schedule, type a value that is not greater than the total slack for that task. You can see the total slack for a task by inserting the Total Slack field into the Leveling Gantt view in the bottom pane.
7. Press ENTER.
   The amounts of delay and slack for a task are indicated by thin lines next to each task.
8. If the resource is still overallocated, increase the delay value.

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