Duration OR Finish dates change on Admin Time Project in EPM..

[Ivor Davies]

I was wondering if anyone could answer a few questions for me regarding
administrative projects?

My manager has created an administrative time project for our department to
report on non-project time (support & maintenance) etc.

When resources update their task information the either the FINISH DATE or
the DURATION changes in the project plan, so my manager has to manually
adjust back to the proper value.

Also for some reason the status indicator that we developed changes from
green to yellow (and sometimes red) when time is updated into the admin
project plan.

Does anyone have any insight on this?

Do we need to make any changes to the tasks in the plan (i.e. - effort
driven)?

Please advise - Thank You

 

[mark.everett]

Ivor -

Typically, you would use Fixed Duration, Non-Effort Driven for the task
type. Set the duration for a month, or a quarter or six months, etc).
Assign the resource at 0 %so that you are not adding to resource
allocation. This will allow the resources to enter time without
changing the duration of the task. On the down side, when a resource
makes an entry, that task will most likely show up as 100% complete and
will drop off the "Current Tasks" view. Just train and reinforce that
if they want to use the Admin task, they first click on the "All tasks"
view in "My Tasks".

Hope this helps,
Mark S. Everett | PMP

 

[Ivor Davies]

Mark - would the same thing cause the task to change it's status from ON TIME
to LATE?

I have setup stoplights in EPM to track both the project an task level
status. For some reason when the resources update their time for
administrative time projects this causes the status of the task to change (go
from GREEN TO RED).

Please let me know if this is case.

Thanks!

Ivor

 

[Ivor Davies]

Mark - I have done as you suggested - here is a synopsis of what has been
done so far:

1) Enterrprise resources MAX units set to zero.
2) Resource units for EACH task is set to zero.
3) Task is set to "FINISH NO EARLIER THAN March 31st 2006"

When resources update their timesheet the FINISH DATE for the task is pushed
beyond the actual project end date of March 31st 2006.

What are we doing wrong - what else needs to be done on these administrative
time templates?

Please advise - this is driving me crazy...

Thank You.