How to design multiple identical 'workstreams'?

[Henrik]

This is a design rather than technical question but I hope it still sparks
interest...

This is a bit tricky to explain so I'll describe the actual problem I'm
facing:

I'm developing a project plan for a product introduction in multiple
countries.

Some activities will be done centrally, consisting of several tasks which
can grouped together in workstreams, sub-workstreams etc -- for this, Project
and its task indent functionality works like a charm.

However, a number of activities will need to be done locally. For the sake
of simplicity, we can assume the activity set is identical across countries.
However, they will not be exectued at the same rate across countries. The
unit of analysis should clearly be the country, as eachcountry has specific
issues which influences progress and needs to be dealt with separately. There
are multiple countries (around 50) and activities (maybe 50 as well).

I'd like to avoid creating a long project plan which simply list all
activities for all countries, i.e. this structure:

Country 1
Activity 1
Activity 2
...
Activity 50
Country 2
Activity 1
Activity 2
...
Activity 50
....
Country 50
Activity 1
Activity 2
...
Activity 50

Is there a way to build in this multi-dimensionality in a smart way?

Thanks
Henrik

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi Henrik,

This is a frequent problem of course, and you will have to choose.

Either you want to use the date calculation power of Project, then there is
no "eleganrt" solution other than the one you describe. Every individual
task is a task. You can always have filters, sorts, groups... to look at the
tasks differently but a task is a task is a task.
Or you want an "elegant" two dimensional table, and you use Excel. You will
have to ccalculate dependencies, constraints, dates, resource load...
yourself.

Finally... if you're any good at VBA you can have your cake and eat it. Have
both constructions (Project and Excel) and write a procedure exporting teh
results of Proejct's calculation into the two-dimensional table...

Hope this helps,

--
Jan De Messemaeker
Microsoft Project Most Valuable Professional
+32 495 300 620
For availability check:
http://users.online.be/prom-ade/Calendar.pdf