New PM with 80+ projects to supervise - suggestions needed

[KateC]

Hi all,

I was recently hired to help organize and track all the small development
projects in our IT department both to better set client expectations of
delivery, as well as improve our 10 developer staff's efficiency.

I chose Project for the upper level reporting and eventual costing I want to
get to, but I need help and suggestions for what I want to do at a developer
level.

We have multiple lines of business. At first I tried to put each business
unit in its own subproject and manage it from the master project using a
central resource pool. I've abandoned that due to problems reporting on a
developer's To-Do list.

So now, I've started fresh in a single master project file. I added a text
column to indicate with BU the project was for, but when looking up to do
lists in reports, I'm only seeing a blended task list, and it's not
separating the projects from each other. Example:

In Gantt chart view, set up as:

BUSINESS1 PROJECT1
BUSINESS1 -- Task1
BUSINESS1 -- Task2
BUSINESS1 -- Task3

BUSINESS1 PROJECT2
BUSINESS1 -- Task1
BUSINESS1 -- Task2
BUSINESS1 -- Task3

When I do a report > Assignments > To Do and select a resource, their task
list comes out

Task1
Task2
Task3
Task1
Task2
Task3

With no differentiation of PROJECT or BUSINESS UNIT.

I can't help but think there is an easier way to sit with my developers,
show them the next week's worth of tasks and adjust our schedule.

Thanks
Kate

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

I can see at least two relatively easy options:

1) When you set up your custom fields, configure them to "Roll Down to the
Assignment Level." You may have to go through and reenter the data at the
task level to get it to recalculate down to the assignment level (but I could
be wrong on that).
2) Then in the Resource or Task Usage Views, configure a custom Group
(Project > Group By) to group by those fields, remembering to group
assignments and not tasks.

Option #2

1) Use intelligent WBS codes - as described here:
http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/ep...telligent-wbs-codes-in-microsoft-project.aspx