Actual work from unopened projects not reflected in resource usage

[MikeR]

Hi All,

I have a perplexing problem. It appears that when I open one or a few
files (out of many) from Project Server, actual work from unopened projects
is not reflected in the work rollup. See article 888638 on Microsoft's site

http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;888638&spid=2525&sid=global

The suggested workaround is to open all files relating to the resource in
question. While this works, this is impractical in my environment because:

1 - there are hundreds of files
2 - some files, such as those representing administrative time, were not
meant to be managed by any other than a few admins (this is a current
business practice of ours)
3 - I may not have access to every relevant file

Is there another way around this? Anyone know of plans to fix it?

As an aside, this behavior certainly looks like a bug to me - after all, it
appears that I can see the planned work from unopened files just fine. The
article cited above spins this as a "behavior" rather than a "problem" or
"bug", though I haven't found any reference in the regular documentation that
would lead to this conclusion. I would hope that someone is looking at a
more satisfactory resolution than opening all files. Anyone out there have
additional details on what might be in store?

Thanks,
Mike

 

[Reid McTaggart]

You can use PWA to get your rollups of Actuals and other such data. The
behavior is not a bug because the tool was never designed to do what you want.

Showing all work across all projects is useful for planning assignments.
Analyzing Actuals is a retrospective analytical activity that is handled in
PWA.

I do agree that the advice to open all projects is not practical. It should
say to use PWA.

 

[MikeR]

Hi Reid,

Thanks for the response. You have confirmed what I had deduced. You
are indeed correct that PWA will give the proper picture of the work across
all projects. However, for my situation the solution is incomplete. Let me
explain.

Suppose I want to use load levelling. Typically I would open up a
file, go to Resource Usage, select the resource I want to level, and have at
it. But, actuals in other projects appear to be ignored, as per our
discussion, and I wind up overcommitting my resources by the amount of
actual time. In a nutshell, this means that resource levelling doesn't work,
at least not in any useful way.

Do you have a suggestion that would allow resource levelling to be used
in my environment?

I have been watching others trying to deal with the problem, and am
seeing all sorts of schemes being tried. The most common is to set up
massive numbers of dependencies between tasks in order to "waterfall" them.
Unfortulately, this creates "spaghetti code" projects, and in most cases
(ie., where the dependencies are strictly to force a schedule, and do not
represent actuall task relationships) are a misuse of the dependency
mechanism. A second is to force dates on tasks (ie., "must start on" and the
like. This is problematic because as time information is entered every week,
the schedule owners have to go back and redo all the dates.

I'm not sure what the limitation is here. I imagine that some sort of
database is created that represents time in all projects. If so, does the
information on actuals get into this (in which case, perhaps a 3rd party
levelling product might do better), or is it left out completely?

Thanks,
Mike

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,
I'm not a Server specialist but here is what I heard in a course.
You have to create a master project with all the projects using that
resource(s) inserted.
When that maste ris open all projectcts are "open" as Microsoft Project
files
The enterprise pool then will act as a normal resource pool and one can use
resource leveling normally, i.e. using a resource pool without server.

Hope that is true - give me a feedback??

 

[MikeR]

Hi Jan,

Thanks very much for the response. You are indeed correct. Opening
all the files involved (either individually, or through the use of a master)
does work. The difficulty I'm having in my environment is that opening all
the relevant files is not always easy - we have hundreds of files here -
though for a given resource the number of files is quite a bit smaller. It
can be done, but it's not fun ;-)

The thing that puzzles me is that the levelling (and everything else
having to do with resources) sees the "work" but not the "actual work" of
closed files. It would make our work much easier if the "actual work" from
closed files were exposed as well.

Thanks again,
Mike

 

[Reid McTaggart]

Mike,

You've obviously given this a lot of thought. Before I go further in
suggesting approaches, could you explain to me why it is important to have
information on Actual work when you are trying to do resource leveling? I
don't understand that, but I also don't want to assume your approach is
mistaken. Understanding that may help me better appreciate what you're
trying to accomplish, and the environment in which you're working.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

This puzzles me thoroughly, because when you introduce actual work, Work is
immediately set equal to it.
Greetings,

 

[Sarah]

And Actual Work should only occur in the past, and should not have any
affect on resource leveling going forward, right?

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi sarah,

Perfectly true but in reality sometimes there might be a delay in reporting
for some projects such thaht there can be an overlap say during the past
week or so.

 

[Sarah]

But my question is, why should he be concerned with Actual Work when
doing resource levelling? Actual Work is past, resource levelling is
for future work. I guess I just don't see where the impact is.

Sarah K

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Sarah,

Again, in the ideal world, you're right.
But in a resource pool-type environment, where some of the projects are kept
up to date by the hour, but others are updated only once a month f.i., you
cannot "forget" the actual work if you want a realistic estimate on the
projects that have not yet been actualized.
HTH