portfolio management

[ScottC55]

My company is looking to use MS project server to track all IS work - project
and non project time. We basically want to be able to show anyone on the
business side all of the work we are doing - tactically and strategically
through projects. Obviously doing so requires us to refine how we manage the
smaller "to do" type projects vs the larger strategic projects, but I was
wondering whether anyone has been able to successfully do this with project
server? In particular, did you go about setting the enterprise codes at the
project level or the task level? This is an important question for many of
the one offs where you will have various project types
(discretionary,essential, compliance, etc). Would you just need to have
different mpp files for each project type or would it be a better practice to
identify these fields as tasks are created? The latter seems to be a big
pain and difficult to ensure it happens correctly. Thanks for your thoughts!

-Scott

 

[rroszko]

This is not a technical question. It's a question on philosophy on how to
build your project portfolio... Here's my thoughts on it, not knowning any
of the details. I assume you can mod my answer to fit your needs, or at
least give you some thoughts... Here goes:

One admin project (non-work time)
Let's the easy ones out of the way. Admin project containsnon-project time,
be it vacation, holiday or company picnic.

Real Projects
Let's say you have real projects, so you know what to do there.

Maitnenance Projects
Let's say it's a one task compliance fix (or it could be multiple lines but
let's keep it simple) to an existing software module. Just create a projet
called "00000 Compliance' with one dummy task in it. The PM for the project
can create the task or summary task user tasks under it and assign resources;
or you can have your users create tasks via PWA.

Create another one for 'bug fixes" or however you handle those. Create one
for "Quick Projects" - such as a task with 40 hours of work over a 2 week
duration.

Anything under 10 tasks with one or two resources, use the method above.
Anything that's over a 50 tasks with many resources, create a 'real' project.
The grey stuff between the two, you'll have to figure out waht's bet for
you...