Organizing Overhead Tasks

[Ted]

I'm a new Project user. I would like to schedule the activities of our IT
dept, and be able to get reports on how we actually used our time at the end
of each month. Each of our 7 staff members has about 10 hpw allocated to
Overhead tasks. How should I enter this so that staff can record time against
these overhead activities? I tried setting up Recurring Tasks, but I'm not
sure that's the right way to go. The overhead normally occurs every day, but
not always.
Any help on this one? Thanks very much.

 

[Steve House]

You're running into one of the problems involved in using MS Project (or any
PM scheduling software) as a prduction scheduling tool. In a project, all
tasks have definite beginning AND ending dates, a finite duration. The
tasks you're describing have a start but they actually have no end, their
duration is infinite. The only solution is a partial kludge to use
recurring tasks whose duration is your reporting period and whose recurrance
has a new task start at the start of each successive reporting period. When
you assign the resources it will remove the time set aside for those
overheads from their availability for other activities. You still have a
problem with having to designate an ending date for the series when it
really has no end but at least each period is a discrete task that can be
reported against.

 

[Ted]

Steve,
Thanks. That is very helpful.
My first thought here was to reduce the hours available per day to cover
the overhead, but my understanding is that Project allows Time Sheet-style
data input, and I was hoping to capture data on what the overhead is actually
taking (which I can then use to forecast future overhead more accurately). I
currently have my staff fill out Excel-based timesheets, but I was hoping to
do the whole thing in Project and eliminate a lot of double-entry and manual
calculation.
In your experience, is this reasonable to expect? If I set up tasks each
week representing overhead, could people log their hours against those tasks
and could I get a report at the end of the month of how many hours went into
overhead?
I don't want to go too far down this road if my end goal is not realistic.
Thanks again!

You're running into one of the problems involved in using MS Project (or any
PM scheduling software) as a prduction scheduling tool. In a project, all
tasks have definite beginning AND ending dates, a finite duration. The
tasks you're describing have a start but they actually have no end, their
duration is infinite. The only solution is a partial kludge to use
recurring tasks whose duration is your reporting period and whose recurrance
has a new task start at the start of each successive reporting period. When
you assign the resources it will remove the time set aside for those
overheads from their availability for other activities. You still have a
problem with having to designate an ending date for the series when it
really has no end but at least each period is a discrete task that can be
reported against.
--
Steve House [Project MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

I'm a new Project user. I would like to schedule the activities of our IT
dept, and be able to get reports on how we actually used our time at the
end
of each month. Each of our 7 staff members has about 10 hpw allocated to
Overhead tasks. How should I enter this so that staff can record time
against
these overhead activities? I tried setting up Recurring Tasks, but I'm not
sure that's the right way to go. The overhead normally occurs every day,
but
not always.
Any help on this one? Thanks very much.