Best Practice - PMs not TMS to update plans

[Steve]

Hi, we want to only use Project Managers to update assignments instead of
fully devolving down to Team Members. Should we blank out the Default
Assigment Owner field for all Team Member resources so that the Project
Manager gets the tasks to update themselves or should we leave the Default
Assignment Owner info untouched and just make the PMs update the actual
Project plan in Project Pro? Which way is best and what are the drawbacks?

 

[Kerry]

Not an easy question. Are you using the timesheet functionality? How are you
tracking actuals? For tracking what method do you use? There are 3 methods
available.% complete, actual work done and remaining work, and hours of work
per period. If you don't care about actual work, then the project manager
can update the % complete in MS Project. You don't have to worry about the
assignment owner.

As a best practice, and we've been running only about 9 months, here's what
we've found:

We get much betterinformation when the resources update their own tasks
using hours per period. Based on the resources input, it will moves dates.
This keeps the PM on their toes, but it also shows reality.

We're also using task updates for our time recording tool now, where we used
to use another tool, not directly associated with project plans. We now have
the actuals, task by task. As aresult, we can improve our estimates. Using
percent complete, PS assumes the estimated was the actual, which is rarely
case. You can change it manually though.

We saw where the PM had to communicate task status with each team member
anyway. Using tasks updates just automated some of this communication. We
have many large projects going on concurrently. If your project managers had
to update hours per time period for each resource, for each task, it would
be way too much overhead.

We chose not to use timesheets. The interface between timesheets and task
updates was a bit too cumbersome for us (enter this here, import that
there...).

This is just our expereince. It's really based on how much of the
functionality of tool we wish to use. % percent complete is the easiest, but
you risk losing data you may want in the future.

Hope this helps a little.

 

[Steve]

thanks Kerry very useful feedback.

Steve

Not an easy question. Are you using the timesheet functionality? How are you
tracking actuals? For tracking what method do you use? There are 3 methods
available.% complete, actual work done and remaining work, and hours of work
per period. If you don't care about actual work, then the project manager
can update the % complete in MS Project. You don't have to worry about the
assignment owner.

As a best practice, and we've been running only about 9 months, here's what
we've found:

We get much betterinformation when the resources update their own tasks
using hours per period. Based on the resources input, it will moves dates.
This keeps the PM on their toes, but it also shows reality.

We're also using task updates for our time recording tool now, where we used
to use another tool, not directly associated with project plans. We now have
the actuals, task by task. As aresult, we can improve our estimates. Using
percent complete, PS assumes the estimated was the actual, which is rarely
case. You can change it manually though.

We saw where the PM had to communicate task status with each team member
anyway. Using tasks updates just automated some of this communication. We
have many large projects going on concurrently. If your project managers had
to update hours per time period for each resource, for each task, it would
be way too much overhead.

We chose not to use timesheets. The interface between timesheets and task
updates was a bit too cumbersome for us (enter this here, import that
there...).

This is just our expereince. It's really based on how much of the
functionality of tool we wish to use. % percent complete is the easiest, but
you risk losing data you may want in the future.

Hope this helps a little.