Depleting work hours allocated to Team-assigned Tasks

[Ben]

Hi all,

This has me stumped, so any help/suggestions would be greatly
appreciated. The scenario I need to enable is this:

1. The PM assigns a 20h Task to a team of people, not knowing who will
actually be doing the work.

2. Team Member A does 12h work on the Task and Team Member B does 6h.
They both submit status updates back to the PM.

3. The PM approves the two updates and the plan now shows Remaining
Work as 2h.

The above scenario may sound straightforward but I can't seem to
configure Project to enable this.

- Using Team Resources allows the PM to assign the Task appropriately,
but the Task doesn't appear in Team Member's My Tasks unless they
specifically 'Self-assign team tasks'. When they do, and it's approved
by the PM, the Resource Assignment changes to their name. If Team
Member B wants to add hours to that task as well, they need to
manually add a new task to their My Tasks and find the Task. But the
real problem is that when they add their 6h to the Task, the overall
work becomes 26h (i.e. the original 20h stays with Team Member A so
Team Member B's 6h work is in added to the Task's work.)

- I tried manually listing both resources against the task (i.e. not
use Team Resources feature) and put 10h against each resource. Team
Member A has done 12 hours instead of their allocated 10h, so the
total work for the task becomes 22h instead of 20h (with Team Member B
listed as having 4h remaining)

I'd like the overall work to remain at 20h. Is this possible? Does
anyone have suggestions on other approaches I could try?

Many thanks,

Ben

 

[Marc Soester [MVP]]

Hi Ben,

what you have described is the team functionality. When you use the team
functionality the only way a resource can get this task into his task update
is by allocating himself to the task. That essentially means that he will be
replaced with the team resource and now does all the work. since another team
member wants to work the PM will need to change the task by including the
second team member which will also allow him to disptribute the time as he
wants it.

The team functionality does not mean that any team member can work on any
team task at any time, it means that once you as a team member have picked up
the task, the task will be assigned to the team member.
Hope this helps

 

[Ben]

Hi Ben,

what you have described is the team functionality. When you use the team
functionality the only way a resource can get this task into his task update
is by allocating himself to the task. That essentially means that he willbe
replaced with the team resource and now does all the work. since another team
member wants to work the PM will need to change the task by including the
second team member which will also allow him to disptribute the time as he
wants it.

The team functionality does not mean that any team member can work on any
team task at any time, it means that once you as a team member have picked up
the task, the task will be assigned to the team member.
Hope this helps
--
Marc Soester [MVP]http://marcsoester.blogspot.com















- Show quoted text -

Thanks for the reply Marc,

Yes, the Team Resource functionality supports the situation where a PM
wants to assign a task to someone within a team without specifying
whom, but doesn't seem to support assigning a task to a team as a
whole, to allow various members of the team to work on the task
together. Do you think this is functionality that others might also
find useful or is what I'm trying to do particularly unique? In an
Agile/Scrum environment, you typically let the team decide on a daily
basis which members will work on which tasks. And unfortunately (for
most PMs) Agile/Scrum is on the rise.. )

In the meantim, any other suggested workarounds or approaches would be
greatly appreciated...

Thanks again, Marc!

Ben

 

[Darrell]

I have a question...Once the task is assigned to a team, and then a team
member takes the task to work on it, when that resource is finished can't he
re-assign the task back to the team so that other resources can now work the
task? Or, perhaps reassign the task to another resource to finish the task?

Darrell

 

[Marc Soester [MVP]]

Hi Darrell,

yes he can reassign the task to someone else

 

[Marc Soester [MVP]]

Hi Ben,

I dont find your requirements unusal at all. Many organisations would like
to do what you try to achieve, but currently the software doesnt support
that. Lets hope for the next release
thanks

 

[Ben]

Hi Ben,

I dont find your requirements unusal at all. Many organisations would like
to do what you try to achieve, but currently the software doesnt support
that. Lets hope for the next release
thanks

Yes, I'm hoping as well!

In the meantime, it might be nice to be able to allow a team member to
assign the task back to the Team Resource (with its remaining work
attached.) i.e. if Team Member A self-assigns the 20h task, reports
12h, then re-assigns the Task (with the remaining 8h) back to the
Team. Then Team Member B self-assigns the task and reports 6h against
it. That would work fine in my case, but Project Server doesn't seem
to allow Team Members to re-assign a Task back to a Team. Is that by
design or is there a setting that I'm missing...?

 

[Darrell]

Ben,

I want to use team resources in the same manner so I tested being able to
assign a task back to the team resource and it worked. I assigned a task to a
team resource, had an enterprise resource on the team self assign the task,
approved the assignment, had the resource submit updates, approved the
updates, had the resource re-assign the task back to the team resource,
approved that, and then had a second (different) enterprise resource self
assign the task, approved that. No issues.

Darrell

 

[Ben]

Ben,

I want to use team resources in the same manner so I tested being able to
assign a task back to the team resource and it worked. I assigned a task to a
team resource, had an enterprise resource on the team self assign the task,
approved the assignment, had the resource submit updates, approved the
updates, had the resource re-assign the task back to the team resource,
approved that, and then had a second (different) enterprise resource self
assign the task, approved that. No issues.

Darrell







- Show quoted text -

Hi Darrell,

Thanks for that! I tried it and kept getting an error when Team
Member B went to self-assign the task. The only way I could get it to
work was to get the PM to approve Team Member A's assignments and then
republish the schedule before Team Member B could self-assign. This
becomes unweildy and is in my humble opinion unworkable:

1. PM assigns task to Team
2. TMa self-assigns task
3. TMa updates progress on task
4. TMa reassigns task to Team
5. PM accepts TMa's three actions.
6. PM republishes schedule.
7. TMb self-assigns task
etc...

Imagine if three or more people in the team wanted to add actuals to a
team assigned task.. )

Project does not seem to easily enable a PM to allocate a set group of
resources to a set group of tasks and let the resources use their Task
Updates to advise what they were working on. Any other suggestions
greatly appreciated...

Cheers,
Ben