Dealing with Effort and Duration

[Marc]

Hello,

Has anyone come across (or have any ideas) on how to deal with tracking
consulting projects. When I try to get estimates of work for a project,
the consultants give me dates based on duration. E.g. it will take 1
month to complete task A. Effort is seldom measured. (I'm on an
uphill battle for change but as you may know, changes do not come easy)


Is there any way to track a project based on duration rather than
effort. Specifically, is there any way that I can keep the start and
end date from changing even though there is effort put into the project
plan? We use Central Project Office as our time tracking tool and it
automatically updates effort to the project plan each week. I am
constantly manually updating the dates but I'd like to only do this
when I know there will be a change to the duration in the project.

Thanks in advance.

Marc

 

[davegb]

Hello,

Has anyone come across (or have any ideas) on how to deal with tracking
consulting projects. When I try to get estimates of work for a project,
the consultants give me dates based on duration. E.g. it will take 1
month to complete task A. Effort is seldom measured. (I'm on an
uphill battle for change but as you may know, changes do not come easy)


Is there any way to track a project based on duration rather than
effort. Specifically, is there any way that I can keep the start and
end date from changing even though there is effort put into the project
plan? We use Central Project Office as our time tracking tool and it
automatically updates effort to the project plan each week. I am
constantly manually updating the dates but I'd like to only do this
when I know there will be a change to the duration in the project.

Thanks in advance.

Marc

Sounds to me like you're using Project to record what has happened
rather than to actually plan and schedule what you want to happen and
then track what has happened. I'd reccommend you get rid of Project and
go to one of the Gantt Chart tools available.
Generally speaking, if you're entering many dates, you're mis-using the
tool. It just doesn't work well that way. Other software will do this
just fine, and is a lot cheaper and easier to use than Project, which
is intended for Critical Path Method Scheduling.

 

[John Sitka]

So ask your consultants how many hours a day they work, (10hrs) and how many days per week they work (6) and how many
people(3) they will have working on your project.
So 1 month is 4weeks X 6 days X 10 hours = 240 hours.
build a calendar that represents this for consultants 100%
create the consultants resource and assign that calendar and apply it to task A.

Watch the eyes of the consultants roll as they try to understand the implication of what you have derived. Then tell them to relax
and that you have no place for dealing with people who believe that the rising and the setting of the sun means progress or
achievement
is inevietable. Also if they feel that your abstracted representation of their effort is not valid that they are free to submit a
better definition.
You se what will happen here is billable will be 720 or something like that but they will see you documenting 240. That can't be!!!!
Well we are concerned with work here, not accounts, expenses, rates. All those have no place in planning or scheduling. Similar to
the diurnal
cycle; "residence" does not equal progress.

They don't want to tell you exact hours, who cares. You have represented accurately what the informationis that you do know, and
as far as you know this never varies and you don't really care if they work full time on your Task or not that's their business as
to how efficient and focused they are or aren't, or the internal local variances of their task effort. If they don't meet their
obligation
it is because they had no intent of meeting it. Track progress at any interval you desire by entering actual work as
fixed even chunks of actual work. that make up the month in total. Call them up in a week and confirm they are a quarter done your
task
as per what was discussed a week ago (everybody nods). Repeat until the nods go away then when their failure is obvious
ask for a remaining work value. (Or threaten them, just don't accept the answer of two days or Dec 22 2005 or something like that.
Those kind
of answers are for politicians not professionals.)
Get their explicit committment to focused effort. They may all of a sudden bring 10 people on board in the last week, I'd ask about
this but
again you don't really care. The will soon see themselves why they are underperforming because their whole lives they themselves
have had no
definition of what it takes to "get 'er done".

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

I like your approach!!!!! <grin>