Remaining work updates by ressources

[Stex]

• Project Managers want to receive the « Remaining work » evaluation from
their ressources.
• They don’t agree on letting their plans to be directly impacted by a
ressource evaluation.
• Project server 2007 is configured for “Entry by timesheet onlyâ€.

If I add the “Remaining work†field on the timesheet, ressources can enter
each task remaining work. BUT IT WILL IMPACT PM’S PLANS.

How do you handle this situation ?

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Stex --

You have conflicting requirements, so I doubt there is any way to address
one requirement without violating the other. Pehaps you could create a
custom enterprise field that allows the team members to enter an estimated
Remaining Work value, which won't affect the schedule. But then what?
There is no automatic way to transfer this estimated number into the
Remaining Work field, so someone would have to do that manually, which would
require another process to back up this new procedure. Thus, I think your
situation is created by conflicting requirements. Explain this to your PMs
and get them to harmonize their requirements. Hope this helps.

 

[Stex]

It looks conflicting but more I look at it, more it make sense to prohibit
impacting the plan by ressources evaluations without a sound discussions
before going one.

From the ressources points of view, sending an evaluation is somehow
protecting them from a poor PM trying to hide the numbers.

What if, I can monitor in MS Project what was the remaining work and compare
it to the actual remaining work received from the timesheet ? Then PMs can
decide if they want to reverse it or not and finally publish the project.

Is there some technics that will help doing that ?

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Stex --

The reality is that when a team member increased Remaining Work and the PM
accepts the update, the Duration of the task will increase. In many cases,
this will impact the schedule, causing the schedule to slip. On the Task
Updates page, the PM can get a preview of the impact of a task update on the
schedule. Are your PMs actually using this feature? If not, they should
use it. In addition, I would strongly recommend that your team members add
a Note to a task whenever they increase the Remaining Work. In the Note,
they should state two things: (1) How much they increased the Remaining
Work and (2) The reason for increasing the Remaining Work. This will assist
the PMs in understanding the reasons for the potential task slippage and the
amount of slippage. Hope this helps.

 

[Stex]

Thanks, the only problem is that when I add a comment field in MyTimesheet it
never goes to Mytasks , so, PMs never get the comment.