Does MPS 2007 show time remaining in Manager's approval view?

[Sage James]

We're currently using MPS 2003. Approving managers have complained that they
can't view a task's time remaining when approving timesheets. Instead, in
order to find out if someone has increased their time remaining, they have to
look at the resource view.

We are considering upgrading to 2007 and, if it fixes this problem, that
might clinch it.

Thanks,

- Jaems

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Jaems --

I have some bad news for you. In Project Server 2007, the Task Updates page
will not solve your problem, as a PM still cannot easily determine if a team
member increased the Remaining Work on a task assignment. Because of this,
we have always advocated a task reporting process that requires a team
member to add a Note whenever he/she increases the Remaining Work. The Note
should include text such as the following:

"12/21/2007 - Increased Remaining Work from 0h to 24h because
______________."

Fill in the blank with the reason for increasing the Remaining Work. Beyond
the requirements for team members, the process should also require project
managers to actually READ any Notes added by team members. At least this
way the PM can get a "heads up" on tasks whose Duration will increase.

Beyond this, your can also teach your PM's how to look for Work variance on
in-progress tasks. After updating progress into the Microsoft Project plan,
the PM should apply the Tracking Gantt view. This view will show schedule
(date) slippage. Then the PM should click View - Table - Work and pull the
split bar to the right. The PM should look for in-progress tasks with Work
Variance greater than 0 hours. This indicates that the team member
increased the Remaining Work on the task. Just a couple of thoughts of how
to work around your PM's problem and get on with their work. Hope this
helps.

 

[Kurt Verhaegen]

Hi,
We' ve solved this issue with a concept of "Last Published Work" and "Last
Accepted Actual Work", this is an enterprise Number at task level. These
fields are also published (Tools\customise\published fields). The fields get
their value not by a formula due to the fact that you can't retrieve the
winproj settings in a formula to build a select case to have the number field
showing the correct dimension hours/days/weeks, so we set the hours via a
before save event. (in EPM 2007, you can do it with a before publish event).
Then adjust the timesheet view to show also these 2 columns.
Result is that: eg
- a task with 80h of planned work, 20h actual work
- so work= 80, actual work= 20, last published work= 80, last published
accepted actual work= 20
- team member register 16h additional actual work--> work= 80, actual work=
36, LPW= 80, LPAAW= 20, so you can see that work= LPW= 80 so no
increase/decrease of remaining work
- team member register 8h additional actual work and 12h increase of
remaining work --> work= 92, actual work 36+8= 44, LPW= 80, LPAAW= 36 --> so
you see that work <> LPW
Since these fields are available on the timesheet view, they are also
available on the Approval sheet or My updates view(which you can't customise
in EPM2003).
Grtz
Kurt
Exerti

 

[Sage James]

Thanks Kurt, I was able to get that working - it should keep the PMs happy!

- James