J
John Sitka
And have the resources update their task status.
Thanks
J.
Thanks
J.
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D
Dale Howard [MVP]
John --
Are you using Project Server 2002 or 2003? The timesheet functionality is
built into the tool.
--
Dale A. Howard [MVP]
Enterprise Project Trainer/Consultant
Denver, Colorado
http://www.msprojectexperts.com
"We wrote the book on Project Server"
Are you using Project Server 2002 or 2003? The timesheet functionality is
built into the tool.
--
Dale A. Howard [MVP]
Enterprise Project Trainer/Consultant
Denver, Colorado
http://www.msprojectexperts.com
"We wrote the book on Project Server"
J
John Sitka
No,
But I did have it running.
Specifically what I need is to have our distributed managers update
remaining work on a daily basis.
Then the head Project manager would Open Project and Manage the
overallocations.
Can you make a recommendation on how to get this done.
But I did have it running.
Specifically what I need is to have our distributed managers update
remaining work on a daily basis.
Then the head Project manager would Open Project and Manage the
overallocations.
Can you make a recommendation on how to get this done.
D
Dale Howard [MVP]
John --
I'm still not clear. Are you using Project Server or not? The answer
depends on what you are doing.
I'm still not clear. Are you using Project Server or not? The answer
depends on what you are doing.
J
John Sitka
No to Project Server only Project 2003 Pro is currently available.
I meant I have had Server installed as a test case.
I meant I have had Server installed as a test case.
D
Dale Howard [MVP]
John --
Without Project Server, you would probably need some type of paper timesheet
system to gather actuals from your team. To create your paper timesheets,
you could create a modified form of the Resource Usage view and print only
one resource at a time. Just a thought. Perhaps the others will have some
better ideas than I do, as I live only in the Project Server world.
Without Project Server, you would probably need some type of paper timesheet
system to gather actuals from your team. To create your paper timesheets,
you could create a modified form of the Resource Usage view and print only
one resource at a time. Just a thought. Perhaps the others will have some
better ideas than I do, as I live only in the Project Server world.
J
John Sitka
"To create your paper timesheets"
This is not an option as then the Project Manager would have to update the
Project.
across every task.
"Without Project Server, you would probably need some type of paper
timesheet"
I hope this isn't the case. I just recently found out that Project Pro has
native support
for data residence in Access or SQL. This feature would not be there if it
was
not meant to be exploited. In fact there is quite a bit of documentation
about how to
manipulate the data. I guess people just don't do it.
Within Project Server I think I remember there was status update requests.
How did the responses to these requests show themselves to the project
manager?
At no point did I see any automation of remaining work being entered into
the project,
but I may have missed it.
While I have your attention can you remind me how this works. I should have
my Project
Server install back within a couple days.
Please consider I am trying to step through a system here and the MOST
important part
is my ability to be able to distribute task (dispatch) sheets to our
intranet and have the reponsible
person update the remaining work on that task. Except when the Project
Manager has
the project opened for editing.
Thanks.
This is not an option as then the Project Manager would have to update the
Project.
across every task.
"Without Project Server, you would probably need some type of paper
timesheet"
I hope this isn't the case. I just recently found out that Project Pro has
native support
for data residence in Access or SQL. This feature would not be there if it
was
not meant to be exploited. In fact there is quite a bit of documentation
about how to
manipulate the data. I guess people just don't do it.
Within Project Server I think I remember there was status update requests.
How did the responses to these requests show themselves to the project
manager?
At no point did I see any automation of remaining work being entered into
the project,
but I may have missed it.
While I have your attention can you remind me how this works. I should have
my Project
Server install back within a couple days.
Please consider I am trying to step through a system here and the MOST
important part
is my ability to be able to distribute task (dispatch) sheets to our
intranet and have the reponsible
person update the remaining work on that task. Except when the Project
Manager has
the project opened for editing.
Thanks.
J
John Sitka
I saw one of your previous posts about how to report actuals
where the PS admin sets the allowable reporting fields.
My ONLY concern is "remaining work" as that is all anybody asks
about or knows around here. It is also the most valuable thing to know.
So that looks good and possibly all the solution I need.
Can this reporting be granted write privlages without
a manual audit by a higher up. The idea being that the
higher up, the General Project Manager would see an updated "set" of
projects
whenever he looks at them, YES he is dependent on accurate reporting by the
others
This "set" if I remember correctly is the portfolio, the General Project
Manger could
then manage resource contention and variances at the enterprise level.
Note: I named the General Project Manager. He will be the only one with
actual Project
usage experience. The other Project Managers below him need only report on
their status'.
Their projects will be handed to them; created and manipulated by the
General Project Manager.
Possibly through consultation with the Project Managers. Please note that I
use the term
Project Managers just to model the example. They do not set the initial
course of action to be taken
on the Project. Nor do they understand all that goes into their project.
They are responsible for completetion
and reporting of the tasks outlined to them. Only the General Project
manager has the knowledge to build
a full project. The General Manger thus maintains a hundred projects at a
time and once in place he needs to audit
the work remaining when it is not done timely, and adjust resource
assignment and task order as appropriate.
where the PS admin sets the allowable reporting fields.
My ONLY concern is "remaining work" as that is all anybody asks
about or knows around here. It is also the most valuable thing to know.
So that looks good and possibly all the solution I need.
Can this reporting be granted write privlages without
a manual audit by a higher up. The idea being that the
higher up, the General Project Manager would see an updated "set" of
projects
whenever he looks at them, YES he is dependent on accurate reporting by the
others
This "set" if I remember correctly is the portfolio, the General Project
Manger could
then manage resource contention and variances at the enterprise level.
Note: I named the General Project Manager. He will be the only one with
actual Project
usage experience. The other Project Managers below him need only report on
their status'.
Their projects will be handed to them; created and manipulated by the
General Project Manager.
Possibly through consultation with the Project Managers. Please note that I
use the term
Project Managers just to model the example. They do not set the initial
course of action to be taken
on the Project. Nor do they understand all that goes into their project.
They are responsible for completetion
and reporting of the tasks outlined to them. Only the General Project
manager has the knowledge to build
a full project. The General Manger thus maintains a hundred projects at a
time and once in place he needs to audit
the work remaining when it is not done timely, and adjust resource
assignment and task order as appropriate.
D
Dale Howard [MVP]
John --
If you are returning to Project Server, then I believe you will be able to
do everything you wish within that tool. You will probably want to set your
default method of tracking progress to be "Hours of work done per day or per
week" with actuals entered on a daily basis. You should also extend this
methodology to include asking the resource to update the Remaining Work
estimate at the end of the week. This is how team members can show that
they are falling behind schedule or that they have completed a task early.
The methdology we recommend to our corporate clients is as follows:
1. Team members enter their Actual Work for each task on a daily basis
2. Team members adjust the Remaining Work estimates at the end of the week
only as needed
3. Team members add a Note to any task in which they changed the Remaining
Work estimate to document the reason for doing so
4. Team members update progress at the end of the week
5. Project managers process task updates into the project plans at the
beginning of the next week
Project managers can also use the built-in Status Reports capability of
Project Server. Essentially, the PM will create a Status Report request to
which team members must respond with text-based information on a regular
cycle, such as weekly or monthly. The PM receives the status reports as
individual reports from each team member plus a consolidated report of all
responses from all team members. Hope this helps.
If you are returning to Project Server, then I believe you will be able to
do everything you wish within that tool. You will probably want to set your
default method of tracking progress to be "Hours of work done per day or per
week" with actuals entered on a daily basis. You should also extend this
methodology to include asking the resource to update the Remaining Work
estimate at the end of the week. This is how team members can show that
they are falling behind schedule or that they have completed a task early.
The methdology we recommend to our corporate clients is as follows:
1. Team members enter their Actual Work for each task on a daily basis
2. Team members adjust the Remaining Work estimates at the end of the week
only as needed
3. Team members add a Note to any task in which they changed the Remaining
Work estimate to document the reason for doing so
4. Team members update progress at the end of the week
5. Project managers process task updates into the project plans at the
beginning of the next week
Project managers can also use the built-in Status Reports capability of
Project Server. Essentially, the PM will create a Status Report request to
which team members must respond with text-based information on a regular
cycle, such as weekly or monthly. The PM receives the status reports as
individual reports from each team member plus a consolidated report of all
responses from all team members. Hope this helps.
J
John Sitka
There are a few procedural things you mention that I do not understand.
Why would a team member only update a Remaining work once a week.
Remaining Work = Work - Actual Work
estimate = estimate - actual
as Remaining Work approaches zero it becomes less of an estimate until it is
zero at which time it is no longer
an estimate as the task is done. Does this not throw the task into completed
status. Or is the task only complete
when the Actual Work is equal to the Work. I would think these behave....
Set Remaining work to 0, Work is fixed and set in the production
plan thus the only variable is actual work which would change to equal Work.
The point is I am trying to mimic the way things happen on a shop floor
environment.
A team member can get asked at anytime during the day "How many hours till
you are done" He may say 5 but that might include
an hour of clean up, break down of a work station, etc. I rely heavily on
the responsibility of autonomous efficiency within our team leaders.
If he does 4 hours actual work but the resource is not free for an extra
hour due to the routines of production, I want to be able to abstract
the status based on the fact that this task is done in 5 hours (remaining
work) which signals the freeing of the resource much more important
than the recording of historical actuals that 4 hours went into the task and
1 hour went to set up or maintenance.
Or if we need to vary the Actual work to mark a complete task, then
whatever. The Project documentation
shows the above equation and we will simply solve for and write to the
project the appropriate values. Or override the values, and mark task as
done
and auto fill the Actual Work equal to Work maybe. It dosen't matter to me.
But the IDEA is the reamining work is what we want to capture.
If it has to be a combination of the others fine. But my team members don't
need to know that.
"Team members add a Note to any task in which they changed the Remaining
Work estimate to document the reason for doing so"
This implies an accountablilty that simply isn't needed at this level. We
have other business mechanisms in place to
evaluate their abilities. Right now we only want to now when the physical
resources they are using are free. Therefore I don't need this
kind of communication. Their claim of remaining work will be audited in
production meetings. Notes and explainations do nothing to automate
a collection and calculation of resource availability.
Are you saying there is no automated way for team members to write their
actuals or remaining work or % complete to the actual project.
And any such updates have to be manually entered by the general Project
Manager?
The above is a key point. The above equation and the ability of Project
Server to handle status requests from team members has lead me to believe
I can automate the completion of tasks. Based on a status reporting
mechanism. I understand there are different ways Project behaves
(fixed work, fixed duration) but that is in addition to the automation I
seek; team members report and the project is updated. Is this possible?
Please consider this scenerio,
I as Project Manager want to issue 100 projects to 20 team members. Each
gets 5 projects that they are reponsible for.
I have built each Project to have zero over allocation form an enterprise
resource pool that contains both finite and infinite resources,
work begins with a distribution of tasks to all five. At the end of they day
each team member writes their actuals to the projects. If I overestimated
the work for task A at 2 hours per project and every team member finished
it in 1 hour per project. The next morning I need all Task A's to show
Remaining Work 0 and the task as completed, If that means 100% completed or
some other representation of a complete task that is what I need to have
greet me in the morning. I don't want to or can't manually
enter all these new values. My team members aren't going to lie, they may
laugh at my outrageous estimate of 2 hours per Task A in the production
meeting
if I tell them about it, but that is as far as it has to go. All in the past
now correct? all (5 X 1/per team member) Task A's are done. I wouldn't even
care if those tasks
were no longer included in the project. Maybe the whole plant took the rest
of the day off, whatever. What's done is done. Truely I should be able to
just hit the
levelling button and gain 2 hours on the finish date universally across the
whole portfolio.
This is a simple case but I need to know if this simple repetative update
mechanism is available. Like I said I read one of your previous posts
and it gave me hope. Now I'm not so sure I can write these team member
status declarations directly to the project.
While you may not agree with any of the setup I have described as being
recommended or sensible, I have really
stirved to provide a detailed account of what is essentially a direct
question.
Can my team members directly update Project data through Project Server?
Why would a team member only update a Remaining work once a week.
Remaining Work = Work - Actual Work
estimate = estimate - actual
as Remaining Work approaches zero it becomes less of an estimate until it is
zero at which time it is no longer
an estimate as the task is done. Does this not throw the task into completed
status. Or is the task only complete
when the Actual Work is equal to the Work. I would think these behave....
Set Remaining work to 0, Work is fixed and set in the production
plan thus the only variable is actual work which would change to equal Work.
The point is I am trying to mimic the way things happen on a shop floor
environment.
A team member can get asked at anytime during the day "How many hours till
you are done" He may say 5 but that might include
an hour of clean up, break down of a work station, etc. I rely heavily on
the responsibility of autonomous efficiency within our team leaders.
If he does 4 hours actual work but the resource is not free for an extra
hour due to the routines of production, I want to be able to abstract
the status based on the fact that this task is done in 5 hours (remaining
work) which signals the freeing of the resource much more important
than the recording of historical actuals that 4 hours went into the task and
1 hour went to set up or maintenance.
Or if we need to vary the Actual work to mark a complete task, then
whatever. The Project documentation
shows the above equation and we will simply solve for and write to the
project the appropriate values. Or override the values, and mark task as
done
and auto fill the Actual Work equal to Work maybe. It dosen't matter to me.
But the IDEA is the reamining work is what we want to capture.
If it has to be a combination of the others fine. But my team members don't
need to know that.
"Team members add a Note to any task in which they changed the Remaining
Work estimate to document the reason for doing so"
This implies an accountablilty that simply isn't needed at this level. We
have other business mechanisms in place to
evaluate their abilities. Right now we only want to now when the physical
resources they are using are free. Therefore I don't need this
kind of communication. Their claim of remaining work will be audited in
production meetings. Notes and explainations do nothing to automate
a collection and calculation of resource availability.
respond with text-based information on a regular cycle, such as weekly or
monthly
5. Project managers process task updates into the project plans at the
beginning of the next week
Are you saying there is no automated way for team members to write their
actuals or remaining work or % complete to the actual project.
And any such updates have to be manually entered by the general Project
Manager?
The above is a key point. The above equation and the ability of Project
Server to handle status requests from team members has lead me to believe
I can automate the completion of tasks. Based on a status reporting
mechanism. I understand there are different ways Project behaves
(fixed work, fixed duration) but that is in addition to the automation I
seek; team members report and the project is updated. Is this possible?
Please consider this scenerio,
I as Project Manager want to issue 100 projects to 20 team members. Each
gets 5 projects that they are reponsible for.
I have built each Project to have zero over allocation form an enterprise
resource pool that contains both finite and infinite resources,
work begins with a distribution of tasks to all five. At the end of they day
each team member writes their actuals to the projects. If I overestimated
the work for task A at 2 hours per project and every team member finished
it in 1 hour per project. The next morning I need all Task A's to show
Remaining Work 0 and the task as completed, If that means 100% completed or
some other representation of a complete task that is what I need to have
greet me in the morning. I don't want to or can't manually
enter all these new values. My team members aren't going to lie, they may
laugh at my outrageous estimate of 2 hours per Task A in the production
meeting
if I tell them about it, but that is as far as it has to go. All in the past
now correct? all (5 X 1/per team member) Task A's are done. I wouldn't even
care if those tasks
were no longer included in the project. Maybe the whole plant took the rest
of the day off, whatever. What's done is done. Truely I should be able to
just hit the
levelling button and gain 2 hours on the finish date universally across the
whole portfolio.
This is a simple case but I need to know if this simple repetative update
mechanism is available. Like I said I read one of your previous posts
and it gave me hope. Now I'm not so sure I can write these team member
status declarations directly to the project.
While you may not agree with any of the setup I have described as being
recommended or sensible, I have really
stirved to provide a detailed account of what is essentially a direct
question.
Can my team members directly update Project data through Project Server?
D
Dale Howard [MVP]
John --
We recommend that team members adjust the Remaining Work estimate at the end
of the week because they will only submit their updates once a week. If you
wish to have team members submit updates every day, then they should adjust
the Remaining Work estimate every day. If the task is not completed, but
the Remaining Work is 0 hours, then the resource should increase the
estimate to show that the task is not done.
And no, there is no automated way for team members to update their actuals
directly into the project plan. The project manager must at least be
minimally involved with the process. He/she can review and process task
updates on the Updates page of PWA. To speed up the process of updating
actuals into the project plan, the PM can write one or more Rules to do so,
but the PM must still click the Run Rules Now button to run the Rules. Hope
this helps.
We recommend that team members adjust the Remaining Work estimate at the end
of the week because they will only submit their updates once a week. If you
wish to have team members submit updates every day, then they should adjust
the Remaining Work estimate every day. If the task is not completed, but
the Remaining Work is 0 hours, then the resource should increase the
estimate to show that the task is not done.
And no, there is no automated way for team members to update their actuals
directly into the project plan. The project manager must at least be
minimally involved with the process. He/she can review and process task
updates on the Updates page of PWA. To speed up the process of updating
actuals into the project plan, the PM can write one or more Rules to do so,
but the PM must still click the Run Rules Now button to run the Rules. Hope
this helps.
J
John Sitka
Invaluable information Dale Thank-you.
The weekly estimate is still not workable for what I need as no resource
really remains that
dedicated, sometimes yes, it will remain fully utilized for a week at a
time, but sometimes the changes are hourly,
a very dynamic situation as our production plans change rapidly. It is a
concurrent engineering environment.
It seems like one would not want this "burden" but the "burden" is ten fold
if actuals are delayed, even a half day can
have huge impact all this is compounded by 24/7 runtime.(three shifts)
So I need to deviate from the "recommended" but that is just a question of
timing is it not?
The concept of weekly vs daily vs hourly adjustments is just a label,
correct?
So now I can see we may have to increase the level of sophistication of our
team members
and elevate them to Project Managers. That's OK, but we can only tolerate
them as
PWA users not Project Pro users, In effect these folks will be responsible
for submitting and overseeing
the updating of actuals into the project plan. Again this is just a label,
some battles with permissions
configuration, and a discipline of don't touch what you are not supposed to.
The General Project Manager will resolve resource contention accross all
projects or the introduction of new
resources to the enterprise pool.
I'm excited to get my Project Server back. (lost to leaky capacitors). I
just need a few core components
of it's whole mechanism to accomplish what I need. But I have also found
that direct writes via third
party ODBC application to a Project Prorollout with a resident datastore in
SQL has it's own challenges.
Which presents the best value and demands my attention is a tough choice.
The weekly estimate is still not workable for what I need as no resource
really remains that
dedicated, sometimes yes, it will remain fully utilized for a week at a
time, but sometimes the changes are hourly,
a very dynamic situation as our production plans change rapidly. It is a
concurrent engineering environment.
It seems like one would not want this "burden" but the "burden" is ten fold
if actuals are delayed, even a half day can
have huge impact all this is compounded by 24/7 runtime.(three shifts)
So I need to deviate from the "recommended" but that is just a question of
timing is it not?
The concept of weekly vs daily vs hourly adjustments is just a label,
correct?
So now I can see we may have to increase the level of sophistication of our
team members
and elevate them to Project Managers. That's OK, but we can only tolerate
them as
PWA users not Project Pro users, In effect these folks will be responsible
for submitting and overseeing
the updating of actuals into the project plan. Again this is just a label,
some battles with permissions
configuration, and a discipline of don't touch what you are not supposed to.
The General Project Manager will resolve resource contention accross all
projects or the introduction of new
resources to the enterprise pool.
I'm excited to get my Project Server back. (lost to leaky capacitors). I
just need a few core components
of it's whole mechanism to accomplish what I need. But I have also found
that direct writes via third
party ODBC application to a Project Prorollout with a resident datastore in
SQL has it's own challenges.
Which presents the best value and demands my attention is a tough choice.
J
John Sitka
Wow Dale, I got PS 2003 running again
and just as you said it does some things exactly as I need.
The Project manager can run his rules Project Pro kicks in and it updates
the Projects in the MAter Project. Exactly what I needed and the timesheet
distribution to
the resources is perfect....
EXCEPT.
My resources aren't people, They are finite capacity, scheduled, 24/7
running machines
performing custom operations.
I need to make it so one person can update the actuals for a group of these
machines.
I was extremely dissapointed in the default behaviour of project server to
asume all resources
are users. How do I get around this?
Today I will investigate the behavior or logical divisions of actual
reporting
when in the context of Team leaders hopefully the answer is contained there.
It would seem all I need to do is be able to have a single individual be
responsible
for the updateing of timesheets for a group of resources. At it's most
basic.
Forget the request update mechanism, or the approval mechanism. Those are
functionaly
equivalent to what I need and manageable I just need to
configure the timesheet interface so it is filtered properly to display the
set of all tasks
for which a certain individual has resonsibility over and that the
submissions are valid.
and just as you said it does some things exactly as I need.
The Project manager can run his rules Project Pro kicks in and it updates
the Projects in the MAter Project. Exactly what I needed and the timesheet
distribution to
the resources is perfect....
EXCEPT.
My resources aren't people, They are finite capacity, scheduled, 24/7
running machines
performing custom operations.
I need to make it so one person can update the actuals for a group of these
machines.
I was extremely dissapointed in the default behaviour of project server to
asume all resources
are users. How do I get around this?
Today I will investigate the behavior or logical divisions of actual
reporting
when in the context of Team leaders hopefully the answer is contained there.
It would seem all I need to do is be able to have a single individual be
responsible
for the updateing of timesheets for a group of resources. At it's most
basic.
Forget the request update mechanism, or the approval mechanism. Those are
functionaly
equivalent to what I need and manageable I just need to
configure the timesheet interface so it is filtered properly to display the
set of all tasks
for which a certain individual has resonsibility over and that the
submissions are valid.
D
Dale Howard [MVP]
John --
You can do one of the following for the work performed by machine resources:
1. Ask someone to log into the machine resource's account in PWA and enter
actuals
2. Enter actuals for the machine resource in the actual Microsoft Project
plan
Hope this helps.
You can do one of the following for the work performed by machine resources:
1. Ask someone to log into the machine resource's account in PWA and enter
actuals
2. Enter actuals for the machine resource in the actual Microsoft Project
plan
Hope this helps.
J
John Sitka
Thanks
I think I got over the disappointment of the "all resources are users
situation",
It was IT dept. Pizza day.
It's these leaps of logic that are a tough struggle some times.
(There is no logical reason that enterprise resources should be assumed to
be people.
Next version would obviously correct it as the concept is so flawed.)
Once I got my reporting working last night I was so pumped I really
wanted that other aspect of "reporting on behalf of a group of resources"
to be there to.
Really I believe we could use 1.) as a workable solution.
Maybe some of our users will progress to the point where they can interact
with
the Project Plan directly.
J
I think I got over the disappointment of the "all resources are users
situation",
It was IT dept. Pizza day.
It's these leaps of logic that are a tough struggle some times.
(There is no logical reason that enterprise resources should be assumed to
be people.
Next version would obviously correct it as the concept is so flawed.)
Once I got my reporting working last night I was so pumped I really
wanted that other aspect of "reporting on behalf of a group of resources"
to be there to.
Really I believe we could use 1.) as a workable solution.
Maybe some of our users will progress to the point where they can interact
with
the Project Plan directly.
J
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