That sounds more like a social engineering issue rather than a software
issue. The simple answer is to make sure the PM checks with the resource's
manager to make sure of their availability before assigning them to their
tasks. But you really need to do some structural politicing here, getting
senior managment involved in establishing the PM's authority as coequal to
that of the resource managers. How can a PM who has the responsiblity of
bringing the project in on schedule and on budget actually *do* that if they
don't have direct control of the deployment of the only asset they have with
which to accomplish it, ie the assignment of the resources? You need to
negotiate with the functional managers of the resources for a reasonable
commitment of their staff to the project taking into account the overall
business priorities of the firm, entered as the maximum availability of the
resource, and let the PM have a free hand to deploy them up to that level.
Should the resource become needed on a higher priority situation the
functional manager can communicate, perhaps via email or memo, an updated
maximum resource availability and perhaps with an escalation procedure up to
take the decision up to the project sponsor in the event of conflict. I'd
suggest that changes to the maximum availability of a resource after the
project is underway be treated like any other change to the plan (you do
have a formal, written change request process in the project plan do you
not?) and be documented in writing so that there is an audit trail should it
seriously impact the project performance. The PM then can show the date of
the change in max avail in the table in the resource information screen and
resolve any overallocations that it may cause.
Either that or let the resource managers have access to the project files
and do the resource assignment themselves, but IMHO that is inviting
disaster as project work will quickly get back-burnered, deferred in favour
of the resource manager's own priorities. One of the most critical issues
in any organization is insuring an alignment between responsibility,
authority, and accountability. In that case the PM would have the
responsiblity and accountability for the success of the project but none of
the authority with which to carry it out. Not an enviable position. They
should make sure their resume is current and if the projects involved are
mission critical, you should update yours as well because the company is
headed up the proverbial creek.
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer/Consultant
Visit
http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs
John said:
What is the best process in microsoft project to assign resources,
utilizing a resource manager? I mean project managers can always assign
resources to their projects but in this environment the resource managers
want the control and tell pms who is available and not. How do they
communicate and what if priority changes?
