Project Manager assignment

[Jeff Cecil]

As we evaluate Project Server 2003 I have an issue with Project Manager
assignment.

All of our projects are created out of a central office and the projects are
assigned to a project manager who is then responsible for approving time,
entering actuals and producing status reports etc. The project managers do
not create plans, nor will they have MS Project installed.

It looks to me as if the person who creates the plan is the project manager,
which would have the effect of having hundreds of plans all have the same
manager here. Is this correct? I also saw an FAQ that explained an
incredibly stupid method for changing the Project Manager on a plan by
opening a project and highliting all the tasks. I hope that isn't for real?

So, understanding the fact that our project managers will NOT have MS
Project and the person who creates the projects/plans will not have rights to
approve time or actuals, is there a configuration in which this is viable
with Project Server 2003?

 

[mark.everett]

Jeff -

The Owner is the person who saves the plan first. There is an
administrative way to change the owner which is very simple - you
change the Owner using the Edit feature in PWA's Project Center. The
method you refer to is for taking control of specific tasks, or of an
entire project for an interim period of time.

However, some of your comments make me wonder about whether you should
be using Project Server or about whether the organization understands
how Project Server works.

**All of our projects are created out of a central office and the
projects are
assigned to a project manager who is then responsible for approving
time,
entering actuals and producing status reports etc. The project
managers do
not create plans, nor will they have MS Project installed.**

The first part of the statement is a fairly common way to initiate
projects in an organization. A central office or PMO initates the
project, using some enterprise template.

Approving time is a basic responsibility of a PM. In Project Server,
approving time submitted by team members pushes the actuals to the
project plan. For that to happen, the PM must have Project
Professional 2003.

**So, understanding the fact that our project managers will NOT have MS

Project and the person who creates the projects/plans will not have
rights to
approve time or actuals, is there a configuration in which this is
viable
with Project Server 2003?**

The simple answer is no - at least not in the current version. It
seems that you want to be able to have a bunch of PM's manage project
schedules created in Microsoft Project, without actually going to the
expense of purchasing Microsoft Project for them. Project Server was
not developed in order to encourage companies to spend less money on
Microsoft products.

The PM needs Project Professional in order to assign resources to a
task, to publish tasks, republish plans to populate the views. The PM
also needs Project Professional in order to analyze project
performance. You will, potentially, be spending a lot of time defining
PWA and OLAP views to give the PM's the information they need in order
to publish status reports.

So if your organization's requirements are as you state, then I would
suggest you keep looking because Project Server won't meet those
requirements.

Hope this helps,
Mark Everett | PMP
www.quantumpm.com

 

[Jeff Cecil]

Thanks for the reply mark. We are not trying to get out of licenses for
project. However we have an existing project system in place. We are simply
looking into the possibility of replacing a custom setup with a COTS product
to ease upkeep and maintenance.

There are many reasons why the PMs don't do resource management, but one of
them is that the rates are actually restricted data. The Project Managers in
our configuration do not assign resources, they manage the ones that are on
the project they are assigned to manage. They would only have the ability
to re-assign tasks to resources already assigned to the project. Any other
modification would require coming back to the "PMO".

After reading your reply I am still trying to find out the distinction
between the project owner and the project manager. As long as the group
rights for a PM are enforced does the project owner come into play? This
might be a total non-issue if the group rights will allow the PMs to manage
the timesheets.

 

[mark.everett]

Jeff -

The Project Owner is the person who first saves the project. In your
scenario, that would be the PMO. This can be changed to the PM either
manually or through a PDS call. The person to whom the time approval
is submitted is the person who publishes the project and resource
assignments. You can have an Owner and a PM be different people using
the the method you describes in your first post, about "Becoming the
manager of these assignments".

You are correct that the PM approves time submissions in PWA, using the
Update page. However, when the PM accepts and processes the updates,
Project Server opens Project Pro, applies the actual values, and waits
for it to be saved. This won't happen if they don't have Project Pro,
so that just won't work. I really can't think of a way to configure
Project Server to allow it to work without giving the PM's Project Pro.

I have worked with clients who had similar restrictions regarding rate
data. They either used categroy rates, or they used an external
reporting process to match the resource with a rate against the work.
This gave them greater flexibility in allowing people to use Project
Pro and PWA and the Project and Resource Analysis tools.

Best Regards,
Mark

 

[Jeff Cecil]

Mark,

I appreciate your time on this. I can't seem to find a reference on what an
owner can/can't do and why that is different than being the PM. I see lots
of places telling me how to pass ownership of projects/tasks/todos, but
nothing that says what the rights/obligations of the owner is. Can you point
me to a reference? I have all of the guides from the resource kit but they
don't define an owner. I also have 2 books on 2003 server. None of them
seem to address this aspect of the process.

In our existing system the "owner" can be at a task level (team members), at
a group of tasks level (team lead), the project status level (PM) and the
resources/financial level (PMO). I think I'm having a little trouble
thinking of it in MS terms.

 

[mark.everett]

Jeff -

Don't get hung up on the "owner". The owner, by default, is the first
person to save the project schedule to project server. So let's say
that you create the plan, assign resources to the plan or to the tasks,
and save the plan. The owner is Jeff Cecil. If you then publish the
plan and then publish the resource assignments, and resources update
and submit their time, those time submissions will come to you.

But you don't want that. You want Mark Everett to manage the plan. So
you tell me to get the plan from the server and become the manager of
the assignments. So I get the plan from the server and use the
Collaboration feature to republish the resource assignments and I
select the checkbox that says "Become the manager of these
assignments." It takes about as long as it took me to type that.

Now, the time reports come to me. I can see the project in the Project
Center, etc. In the Project Center, it still says you are the Owner,
which doesn't matter until I screw it up and some executive decides to
call you at 9PM to find out why her pet project is a day late.

So the next morning, you log into PWA, highlight that project, click
Edit, and change the Owner field from Jeff Cecil to Mark Everett. Now,
I am identified as the Owner too and the executive can call me at 9PM
instead of you.

Friday rolls around and it's time for people to enter time. They enter
time and update it, and I get the update notification. I accept the
time, click the Update button, and....

....nothing happens, because Jeff Cecil hasn't authorized my license for
Microsoft Office Project Professional 2003 so the time has no place to
update to, since I have no way to open the project schedule, so I can't
do my job. When the executive calls me Friday night at 11PM, I tell
her to call you.

I am not trying to be sarcastic, just tell the story and keep it
light.....If you still have questions, I would recommend that you give
me a call and we can discuss.

Best Regards,
Mark

 

[Jeff Cecil]

Mark,

Thanks for the insight. Don't worry about me, I take this all in stride. I
appologize if I am coming off in a disgruntled manner. I think it is mostly
because the posts are always negative operational limitation/reorientation in
nature in conjunction with trying to keep the posts short.

I still think that it is silly to expose resource data unnecessarily for
example. However, I am not "mad" about it. It will just go into the
viability review as a short coming(including possible work-arounds). And I'm
appreciative that you shared ideas on the matter.

I'm trying to make sure I understand the product completely though, and you
have been a big help in getting me there. If I'm truly going to evaluate the
product I believe I need to dang near have it operational. I might change my
story later, but at the moment there seem to be a number of common
maintanence things that should be simple, that are far too cumbersome for a
large operation. We already have a cumbersome (but very customized for us)
solution. If we need to keep a staff of programmers just to keep it going,
then it would be defeating the purpose of replacing the existing system.

Again, thanks for your comments
Jeff

 

[mark.everett]

Jeff -

No problem. The offer still stands if you have further questions /
complex scenarios you want to discuss. You can email me at
markdoteverettATgmaildotcom and I will reply back with a phone number.


Exposing resource data is an issue. We can limit that to an extent,
but if someone really wants to know, then they simply put in a 1 hour
task and get that person's hourly rate. That might be a raw rate, rate
with overhead, fully loaded, average or whatever. It might be a rate
code that is used with another system in order to develop the full
cost.

You can get a trial of Project Server from Microsoft. I believe the
trial lasts 120 days or so. You could install it and load some
resources and be playing with it in a day or so, using the default
settings. You should also pay attention to the news coming out of
Seattle as the new version is being previewed as I believe some of your
concerns are addressed.

As far as keeping a staff of programmers occupied....there is no
reason, unless you do a lot of customization, that you will need to
have any programmers involved. Initially, the server folks and dbas
should be involved. After that, you probably just need an Application
Admin.

Good luck!
Mark

 

[Gary L. Chefetz [MVP]]

Jeff:

I want to add a couple thoughts that might help you.

1) You can't hide resource rates from Project Managers in this version of
Project Server. If you don't want your PMs to see resource rates, then don't
put them in the system.

2) Project owner is more than the just the person who first saved the file.
The project owner and the Project Manager does not have to be the same
person. In fact, you can have one project owner and more than one project
manager managing tasks in a project plan, although I don't generally
recommend this.

3) In order to update progress on Projects, everyone who updates project
plans by accepting updates or time must have a copy of Project Professional.

If you really want to clearly understand how Project Server works from the
Project Manager's perspective, you should obtain a copy of Managing
Enterprise Projects using Microsoft Office Project Server 2003. Indeed, I am
a co-author of this book and certainly biased on the subject, however it's
not only the best reference for project managers, it's the only one.

 

[Shri Ram Soni]

How a Project Manager can see the tasks for which (s)he made the assignments?