Projects vs Programs - A horror story and request for info for Dal

[Linda]

My company is trying to recover from a very poorly implemented installation
of Project Server 2003. I was assigned to maintain the projects and server
content after the fact.

We are using timesheets. Resources are responsible for entering time daily
and "updating all" weekly. Project Managers were provided a global template
that made all tasks "Fixed Duration" because the company Project
Administrator thought fixed duration meant "Fixed Dates."

Project Managers were told to stop updating projects from timesheets after
the first update. This was because the project managers clicked "Accept All"
to do their updates and missed the fact that many resources entered time on
tasks that weren't supposed to start until months later. Or the server moved
Finish dates to earlier deadlines by applying the Max units from the Resource
Pool on every project so each resource was assigned 100 percent on all tasks
for all projects (which in turn, moved the dates when the work was
recalculated).

Needless to say, we had a very short training class for Project Managers,
and no training at all for resources to complete timesheets. I was lucky to
get an hour with a consultant so I could learn how to accept timesheets as a
resource admin. I had no real project management experience (except for
putting out fires like I'm doing now).

We had invited 2 consultants to come in and help us make things right.
Unfortunately, when management heard what it would take to make it right,
they weren't open to the suggestion. My heart goes out to those consultants
because I know they were right but we couldn't convince management.

Since then, no other tools have surfaced that will help us out of this mess
(as expected) without a major dollar investment. And now, I've been asked to
suggest a timesheet program since Project "isn't working."

I'm not ready to give up on MS Project Server, or Project Professional in
terms of Project Management. I know we can make it work if I can change the
organizational culture of "Project Managers should not have to spend more
than 2 hours a week maintaining their projects."

I want to push a plan for a proper implementation. I want to introduce a
plan that suggests we hire project managers who are skilled at maintaining
server projects, so our technical resources can focus on their "real job"
instead of project management. That will solve the problem of project
managers taking 2 hours a week on project management because the current
project managers would not have to do project management.

I want to include training for project managers and resources, by training
our training staff on how we will implement the second round of Project
Server so they can training PMs and resources.

But before I do all this, I need to be sure MS Project Server will do what
we need it to do. Unfortunately, we are a date driven organization and the
dates are decided by our legislature, not by us. Therefore; if we have to
work 24-hour days to get something done to meet a date, we have to do it.
So, obviously, we are a "Fixed Date" organization. (No one will admit to
meeting a deadline early, hahaha, with our workload.)

Approximately 80% of our regular work is maintanence programs where costs
must be captured by fiscal year--again, "fixed date" programs. But we do
have projects that are very large that are divided both by sub projects and
phases. These very large projects have many deliverables and sub projects
will end before the larger "parent" project is done. A phase may consist of
multiple sub projects that could end or continue after the phase is complete.
A "parent" project could take more than a year or two to complete.

My Question: Is there a way to organize our "fixed date" maintanence
programs with our projects that have specific deliverables with an MS Project
solution? We use only one project server for our department (because there
are approximately 15 projects on the server that share the same resources -
not including maintenance programs which also share the same resources.
There is only one big project on the server, but we have 2 more we are
currently working that were mandated where we don't have a way to track them
electronically.)

Would we be able to maintain programs where the dates won't move, while
maintaining projects where they do move? I don't want to throw the baby out
with the bathwater.

This is a common scenario, I know. But is there a common way I can fix it
(and sell it to management) without bankrupting the company?

What factors are used to determine when you should have more than one
server? If you don't have more than one server, how to you manage programs
and projects on the same server with one resource pool where the server won't
update Max Units on the resources for all plans? We're obviously doing this
all wrong. How do we do it right? Are there books I can read to help me
state my case?

Help!

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Linda --

Wow! I feel for you, my friend.

Regarding your questions, here's a couple of ideas:

1. For all existing projects, set the Task Type back to the default Fixed
Units value. To do this, click the Select All button to select all tasks,
then click the Task Information button on the Standard toolbar. Click the
Advanced tab, set the Task Type value to Fixed Units, and then click OK.

2. To control date slippage, you might consider setting a Finish No Later
Than (or Must Finish On) constraint on the final milestone of the project.
When setting the contstraint, set the Constraint Date to the date the
project must finish. Make sure that all tasks are linked to produce a
"waterfall" of tasks from the beginning of the project to the end, so that
you can calculate the Critical Path, and confirm that if tasks slip
"upstream" then dependent tasks will slip "downstream" as well. If you
have Phases or Deliverable sections that have hard finish dates, make sure
each Phase or Deliverable section has a milestone at the end of it, and then
you could set a constaint on those milestones as well. You do not need to
set a constraint on every task, as that would be too much work producing too
little benefit. Using this approach, if an predecessor task slips to the
point that the project finish date will slip as well, then Microsoft Project
will display a warning dialog stating that there is a schedule conflict.
The PM in question should allow the schedule conflict, and then determine
how to reschedule the project to bring it back on schedule.

3. Regarding your plan for training your people, I think you are absolutely
right. How can your bosses expect your people to perform well with software
that is not intuitive without giving them training on how to do their job
right? To think that your first consultant(s) helped you implement this
software without providing adequate training is a shame, and to think that
your bosses rejected the second consultants' recommendations is a shame as
well.

4. Why do you think you need more than one Project Server instance? I
didn't see anything in your description that necessitated a second instance.

5. If you are interested in reference books or training manuals on Project
Server and Microsoft Project, click either URL in my signature block.

Just a few thoughts. If you are interested in using us to help with
implementing your training plan, if approved, please feel free to contact us
at either URL in my signature block. Hope this helps.

 

[Linda]

Dale, thanks for the response,

I have taken control of 2 projects in addition to the three I was updating
for other project managers. One of the project managers must reconstruct his
project plan because of legislative rejection of proposals so I will start
with his plan using your instructions in numbers 1 and 2. Gradually I think
I can sneak all the other plans over to units instead of fixed duration. I
really appreciate the advice. It will work much better for us. (Effort
driven or non-effort driven on units?)

I'm still pushing for number 3 and the PMs are assisting me with this,
especially if we can't afford to hire PMs for them.

In regard to project server instances, I can't tell if I need more than one
or not because I don't know how. I agree, I don't think I need more than one
server, but I guess my question is what indicators does MS use to recommend
multiple servers so that I can use this info to explain why we don't need
more than one?

Also, we are looking for a portfolio management solution. We cannot
accurately track resource availability because we are not accurately tracking
maintenance projects. So we want to track both maintenance tasks as well as
project tasks on the same box.

But we kept running into problems when the server would overwrite the
Assignment Units for each task in each project with the max units per
resource when updating by timesheets (throwing off the finish date).

If I can create some maintanence projects using fixed units and "must finish
on" or "finish no later" tasks and the finish dates don't move, it might
work. Although now my question is what will the start dates be when tasks
are added by support ticket tasks entered daily? I guess that I must
estimate the amount of time support will take for the fiscal year and enter a
placeholder task. Then I would remove the hours from the placeholder task as
the real tasks incurred the actual hours???)

I will definitely be ordering the books and will also recommend your expert
team for training. Too many PMs when into this implementation with extremely
inaccurate expectations of what project management should be. I need to
finally put those expectations to pasture and bring our PMs back into the
"real" world of managing the details.

I have one more question I need to get answered though, regarding Project
Server 2003.

I have finally convinced my support team that we need to update Project
Server production to SP2a (from SP1 - we were not permitted to upgrade to XP
SP2 hence I could not upgrade the server becuase I could not upgrade desktops
to Professional SP2) I am aware of the bugs in SP1 and I'm having some
problems with them. I've already tested SP2a in a test environment with the
projects.

My question is this: Must I upgrade the SQL 2000 server from SP3 to SP4 for
this upgrade? There are other dbs on the box in addition to the Project db
so we must test for impact on other projects before we upgrade the db if it
is required. I understand it would be "best practice." but if they reject my
request to upgrade SQL, am I stuck with what I have or will SP2a work with an
SP3 SQL db?








--
Linda Lawler
Project Admin
Citizens Property Insurance Corp.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Linda --

Let me try to answer the questions embedded in your response:

1. Leave "Effort driven" as the default if adding helpers to a task should
shorten the Duration of the task. Set it to "non-Effort Driven" if adding
helpers to a task does not reduce the Duration. You must decide how this
works in your own organization, so I can't tell you a "right" answer.

2. You need additional Project Server instances for either testing and/or
training purposes. You also need additional instances if you have
departments or business units that are not allowed to see either the
resources or projects of the other departments or business units. For
cross-instance reporting, you must use a third party tool such as Crystal
Reports or SQL Reporting Services.

3. When you add a new task to a project, the Start date of the task is set
to the Start date of the project.

4. I can't answer your SQL Server upgrade question. Please post that as a
new question in the newsgroup.

Thanks for considering us to do your Project Manager's training. If it
comes to fruition, you will not be disappointed!

 

[Linda]

Thanks! you answered all my questions.

L.
--
Linda Lawler
Project Admin
Citizens Property Insurance Corp.

 

[Louis K]

Linda - I am going through a similar situation over here in Tampa - please
drop me an email (e-mail address removed). I'd like to compare notes.

Thanks!

Louis Klein
Tech Data Corp.
PMO Lead