Projects vs Operations in project server

[marc.gordon]

Hello,

I am working in a company that is starting to roll out project server.
The company currently has a seperate time tracking tool but will
require those working on projects to add their time to the project
plan.

This company also has a number of old projects that are now in the
operations phase.

How are other companies handling operations vs projects to keep track
of their resource usage. eg. If one person is working on multiple
projects plus operations, do you create a project plan in MS project
for operations so that you can keep track of all the time the resourse
is using? Or do you just enter the resources project availablity in
project server to be 50%. The second point seems more difficult to
manage since projects come and go.

Any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks,

Marc

 

[Marc Soester]

Hi Marc,
we implement EPM and both points you mentioned have worked in the past for
organisations.
If you know that each day a person is only available on projects for 6 hours
then to the units.

Operations is difficult, but a work arround is to create Projects and assign
people to it. We have operational projects which we closed every 4 weeks and
recreate a new project. ( We created a template which we use). This will
ensure that all members can enter time and gives you more accurate
inforamtion in regards to time spent.
The new release of Project Server will actually allow you to maintain not
only Project, but also maintenance and admin work. Microsoft has intecreated
a "work timesheet" not only a project timesheet as it is in 2003.
We have been playing with it and so far it looks quite good.
I hope this helps

 

[marc.gordon]

Thanks Marc (great name by the way!!)

If you have an operations 'project' every four weeks, do you Archive
your operations projects. If so, how do you manange such a large
Archive of projects?

Thanks,

Marc

 

[Marc Soester]

hi marc,
ACtually we dont archive the Projects off. We give them a different Status (
e.g. completed) and our PWS views exclude completed proejcts. This means you
dont see them on "day to day" work anymore, but still can analyse them and
compare them if required.
Should you really need to archive them, you will need to backup the Project
Server DB and then Delete the Projects. If you ever need to revisit the
projects you deleted, you will need to extract them from the DB backup.
I hope this helps
Marc ( yes very good choise of name