Is MS Project the right solution for us ?

[Chris]

Having no experience with Project I'm not sure if it's the
right way to go, here goes:-
I run the office for a small building and shopfitting
firm, we have one Owner who is constantlty going from
bulding site to site troubleshooting, and one sales
manager who sells the shoppfitting side of the business.
At the moment all the planning is done in the owners head
and this leads to conflicts.
What we want to do is to have a piece of software that
will allow both of them to remotely access the main PC in
the office, enabling them to schedule the work and give
the customer the best possible information. The resouces
that need to be scheduled are the sub-contractors and our
own workforce. Can Project store details of the future
plans of each individual in our workforce, (e.g.
unavailability due to holiday etc) and schedule the "best-
fit" for the job to be completed (if I specify that a
carpenter is required for a day once the 2 builders have
finished laying the foundations, can Project sech through
a list of carpenters and allocate them to the job.
Also a "to-do" list reviewable on-line by the manager
would enable him to prioritise the Salesmans work, this
needs to be modified real-time by any of the three
computers.


Sorry to go on so much but I want to make sure the
software can cope before we commit the money.

Any help or guidance would be appreciated

Best Regards

Chris
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Mikhail Kozlov]

.... and schedule the "best-fit" for the job to be
completed (if I specify that a carpenter is required for a
day once the 2 builders have finished laying the
foundations, can Project sech through a list of carpenters
and allocate them to the job

That is possible if you have Project Pro connected to
Project Server. In the Enterprise Resource Pool you have
to define so-called "generic resource" by filling out it's
profile with Project's "Enterprise Fields" and "Enterprise
Outline Codes". In your case generic resourse would be the
Carpenter. Than proceed with the representative memebers
of the generic resourse e.g. John, Peter etc. Use the same
profiles to be fulfilled. After you have completed this
preparation. You may search through the Enterprise
Resource Pool by matching resources to the generic ones.
That is very general schema so please check Project Pro
user's guide for more details

 

[Trevor Rabey]

Perhaps you are going to run into very big trouble if you have 3 people
doing the planning in non-simultaneous real time.
At least all three will have to be fluent with the right way (as opposed to
the 1000 wrong ways) to use MSP. You have to be able to accept a fairly
basic start and to get a handle on the critical path method. People have all
kinds of nighmares with MSP because they don't appreciate the method.
Also, many businesses do not have, let's call it the project maturity, to
make the best of MSP. Mainly, they don't have good estimating methods or
don't understand their own processess well enough to build good plans in the
first place, or they don't have good enough internal reporting to accurately
and readily track progress. Some outfits (no names) have been getting away
with winging it for so long that they think that's planning.
To know whether MSP is worth it and works you only need to answer:
are you doing projects (ie start, identifiable tasks with known durations,
resources, finish)? (YES)
do you need to track progress? (OF COURSE)
do you need the CP? (ABSOLUTELY)