Last week's information for indicators

[saws]

We display the light bulb indicators showing project health in one of the
project center views. The project schedules are refreshed each week and hence
the values of these change each week. The management now wants a way to view
last week's indicators as well - to compare.

One way I can think of is to rename schedules and keep two copies of the
schedules -current week and last week. That way both schedules will show up
on the view and hence the indicators will also be visible. But this method is
rather crude apart from the fact that it will require lot of server memory.

Can anyone suggest any other way out?

Thanks,

 

[Earl Lewis]

Saws,

Teach the managers how to use the tools so they can go look at the indicators regularly, thereby obviating the need for said report.

By the very nature of this request it's ovious the managers don't use the tools - PWA specifically. If they really want to know what's going on they should be looking there often and know the status of the projects they care about. I'd also question the wisdom of a week-to-week change indicator. Can projects really be significantly changed in just one week? Sure, some can, but as a whole does it really make sense?

Can you tell that I have problems with lazy managers? Sheesh! They want everyone else to do their work for them. Sorry, but somehow in my little mind I equate these kinds of requests with frivilous lawsuits. People asking for something to be handed to them just because they can.

Honestly, I could whip up a VBA fix for this situation pretty easily. But I'm hesitant in this case since to me it appears to be a case of lazy manager syndrome. I'm not trying to punish or penalize you by any means. Sometimes we just need to draw the line, and this seems like one of those cases.

If your job depends on it let me know and I'll show you a way to do it with VBA - if that's something that would even work. In fact, now that I think about it a better solution might be to do it directly in the database, maybe with a trigger or a scheduled job.

Earl
We display the light bulb indicators showing project health in one of the
project center views. The project schedules are refreshed each week and hence
the values of these change each week. The management now wants a way to view
last week's indicators as well - to compare.

One way I can think of is to rename schedules and keep two copies of the
schedules -current week and last week. That way both schedules will show up
on the view and hence the indicators will also be visible. But this method is
rather crude apart from the fact that it will require lot of server memory.

Can anyone suggest any other way out?

Thanks,

 

[Matt Kale]

Ok, this might be a stupid question but how do you get the 'light bulb'
indicators showing project health in the Project Center? I've looked at the
fields available in the views, but saw nothing obvious. This organization
uses a 'Red, Yellow, Green' status by project, which I assume is quite
similar to the light bulb indicators. I'm excited by the prospect of an
automated function...

 

[Rob Stewart]

Hi Earl,
I hear what you're saying, but when the requests for these reports come not
from project managers, but by executive mandate, the "lazy manager" argument
becomes much more difficult to sell.

Here is a specific example of what we're trying to do. (sounds similar to
what Saws is doing)
We need to calculate % Productivity-Earn/Burn
This calculation has been defined as:
(Remaining work from last week - Remaining work from current week)/actual
hours from current week

We had a line on it, Using Portfolio Analyzer, bringing in the "Weeks of the
Year" time dimension into the cube, but, then realized that the Remaining
Work for this week is just that, remaining work THIS WEEK (e.g.40 hrs) and
NOT Remaining Work for the rest of the project, based on this week's
cube-build-snapshot.

Being able to look at last week's portfolio snapshot vs. This week's
portfolio snapshot in a single view will be a very large success.
I've thought about the possibility of building seperate cubes and P.A.views,
as well as looking at SQL reporting services, but I am looking for some ideas
to move this along without heading down a drawn out dead-end.
Right now, we're stuck to the weekly ritual of Exporting a Project Center
view to Excel, while continuing to support the timber industry with side by
side comparisons.

TIA,
-RS

 

[Earl Lewis]

Rob and Saws,

You should both look into the CPI (cost performance index) and SPI (schedule performance index) values that are already built into project. These are commonly used and understood metrics in the project management profession. And do in fact represent the performance relative to the all past recorded actuals, not just the prior week.

Basically, each one of these metrics is a measure of comparison, i.e. actual to planned. A CPI of 89% (or .89) says that you're getting 89 cents out of every dollar your spending (less than optimal utilization). In other words the lower the index the worse the perfomance to plan. Same goes for SPI, 89% (or.89) says you're getting 53.4 minutes out of every hour in the plan. Again, the closer you get to 1 the better you're performing to plan.

We've also created stop-light indicators for these values, so execs can see the graphical representation, in case translating the numbers hurts their heads. Then we have to explain what thresholds we're using to turn the light red vs. yellow vs. green.

Just thought I'd let you know about this in case you hadn't run across it before.

Earl
Hi Earl,
I hear what you're saying, but when the requests for these reports come not
from project managers, but by executive mandate, the "lazy manager" argument
becomes much more difficult to sell.

Here is a specific example of what we're trying to do. (sounds similar to
what Saws is doing)
We need to calculate % Productivity-Earn/Burn
This calculation has been defined as:
(Remaining work from last week - Remaining work from current week)/actual
hours from current week

We had a line on it, Using Portfolio Analyzer, bringing in the "Weeks of the
Year" time dimension into the cube, but, then realized that the Remaining
Work for this week is just that, remaining work THIS WEEK (e.g.40 hrs) and
NOT Remaining Work for the rest of the project, based on this week's
cube-build-snapshot.

Being able to look at last week's portfolio snapshot vs. This week's
portfolio snapshot in a single view will be a very large success.
I've thought about the possibility of building seperate cubes and P.A.views,
as well as looking at SQL reporting services, but I am looking for some ideas
to move this along without heading down a drawn out dead-end.
Right now, we're stuck to the weekly ritual of Exporting a Project Center
view to Excel, while continuing to support the timber industry with side by
side comparisons.

TIA,
-RS

 

[saws]

You might find this article useful..Check it out..
http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-6329_11-1051435.html?tag=search

 

[saws]

Well I agree with you completely on that one. We already have the CPI and SPI
trend line graphs in place, so let me check if we can convince the executives
to use those. Else I will have to get back to you for help!
Thank you very much!

 

[Matt Kale]

Thanks saws, I got the article and it's very helpful. The Project Management
Office is going to love this one.

If anyone wanted to share some example custom field calculations
(particularly Schedule Variance) I would be very grateful!

 

[Rob Stewart]

For Variance percentage:
[Work Variance]/[Baseline Work]*100

Careful with the SPI column though, especially if you don't use cost in any
of your projects. ;-)

-RS

 

[Earl Lewis]

Rob,

In order to make sure costs calculate for our tasks we've applied a generic $50 rate to all resources. This doesn't represent actual cost but it's an easy number to work with and ensures that when resources are assigned to tasks that the cost is there too.

Also, CPI and SPI both depend on baselines. No baseline, no CPI/SPI.

Earl
For Variance percentage:
[Work Variance]/[Baseline Work]*100

Careful with the SPI column though, especially if you don't use cost in any
of your projects. ;-)

-RS

 

[saws]

No luck with convincing the executives Earl! Do you mind sharing the VBA code
that you referred to?
Thanks a lot!

 

[Earl Lewis]

Saws,

If you re-read my post I recanted the VBA idea since the kind of change you require needs to be global and VBA is more appropriate for individual plan changes. VBA would be able to only act on projects that are opened in Project Pro.

What I then suggested was a SQL trigger or scheduled job that could update all the projects at one time. Basically, copying the value from the current indicator field to the field defined to hold "last weeks value". This will take a little time to figure out but I'll look at it and let you know what I come up with.

Earl
No luck with convincing the executives Earl! Do you mind sharing the VBA code
that you referred to?
Thanks a lot!