Master Project Plan and Pool or Project Server

[FiguringItOut]

Greetings,
I am working with a client that has 4 project managers who utilize a pool of
15 techs and 8 engineers. As an organization they can have up to 100
projects going at a time (having from 50-100 tasks). Can they use Master
Project Plans and a Resource Pool to give them an organizational overview of
task timing and resource allocation. Or are their access limitations, file
link limits, corruptability concerns with this? Would they be better off
using Project Server? Can a Master Project Plan have up to a 100
sub-projects without any problems?

Would it make sense for them to start with installing MS Project
Professional on their machines and getting their staff used to using the
application, start with each PM creating their own plans and resource pools
(maybe all of them using the same file? what kind of access limits are their
on this?) and comfortable with the basic concepts. And meanwhile be working
and developing an Enterprise Solution? Do organizations often take this
approach? Or is it more often that they jump right into the Enterprise
solution and learn the ins and outs in that environment?

I very much appreciate any insight or comments you have regarding this
question.

Sincerely,
Lizandra

 

[Chak]

Greetings,
I am working with a client that has 4 project managers who utilize a pool of
15 techs and 8 engineers. As an organization they can have up to 100
projects going at a time (having from 50-100 tasks). Can they use Master
Project Plans and a Resource Pool to give them an organizational overview of
task timing and resource allocation. Or are their access limitations, file
link limits, corruptability concerns with this? Would they be better off
using Project Server? Can a Master Project Plan have up to a 100
sub-projects without any problems?

Would it make sense for them to start with installing MS Project
Professional on their machines and getting their staff used to using the
application, start with each PM creating their own plans and resource pools
(maybe all of them using the same file? what kind of access limits are their
on this?) and comfortable with the basic concepts. And meanwhile be working
and developing an Enterprise Solution? Do organizations often take this
approach? Or is it more often that they jump right into the Enterprise
solution and learn the ins and outs in that environment?

I very much appreciate any insight or comments you have regarding this
question.

Sincerely,
Lizandra

Hello Lizandra,

Well, It all depends on what you looking for? If you're primary
objective is to use Master Project for program management, in that
case, Project Server 2007 is the best one to get the benefit on those
features. But there is no advantage by going with Project Server 2003
for Master Projects.

Again, when you are talking about Project Server, it's required huge
effort: installation, configuration, maintenance, dedicated
administrator and lot.

If you are not yet ready for building and managing the Project Server
environment, then you should use the convention method of managing
group of project with Shared Resource file.

When we are talking on managing the projects with master projects,
it's an huge file consists of hundreds and thousand tasks. Also the
other factor to consider on building and managing the master project
is: how to update the projects? Is it from Master Project OR updates
directly on individual projects, so you can just view in read-only
manner in master projects? I alway prefer to have Master Projects
for just give the consolidate view instead of updating all projects in
master.

Please remember, as Master Project is an huge file, it required to
have Shared Pool at convenient shared location and high network
bandwidth to access the file. Otherwise you will be ended on
performance issues.

Project Server is an ideal solution to manage EPM, but it depends on
what you are expecting from it.


Thanks
Chak