Support Projects - activity or project

[Michelle Hotz]

We are in the process of implementing Project Server 2007 and contemplating
how to handle our support projects. We want to track time spent on support
on an annual basis. In the past we've created a project and given each
resource a fixed duration task with .02 hours of work to get them allocated
at 0%. We don't know when support work will hit, but want to see when it
does and how much time is spent. Does this seem like a candidate for
activity plans? Reading through posts here I'm not sure.

Thank you in advance for any suggestions and/or advice.
Michelle

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Michelle --

I think you will find Activity plans a big disappointment, no matter how you
might want to use them. This is because of two severe limitations with
using Activity plans in Project Server 2007:

1. You can only assign one resource per task.
2. When you assign a resource to a task, the system sets the Units to 100%
(indicating full-time work) and you cannot specify any other value.

Because of these limitations, I would recommend that you use an enterprise
project for tracking support work instead. If your organization uses Team
resources, you can assign a Team resource to each task instead of assigning
individual resources. When you publish the project, the system will display
the task(s) on the My Tasks page for each resource represented by the team
resource. From there, your resources can report their support time on the
My Tasks page. Hope this helps.

 

[Michelle Hotz]

Thanks - appreciate your help.

Michelle

Michelle --

I think you will find Activity plans a big disappointment, no matter how you
might want to use them. This is because of two severe limitations with
using Activity plans in Project Server 2007:

1. You can only assign one resource per task.
2. When you assign a resource to a task, the system sets the Units to 100%
(indicating full-time work) and you cannot specify any other value.

Because of these limitations, I would recommend that you use an enterprise
project for tracking support work instead. If your organization uses Team
resources, you can assign a Team resource to each task instead of assigning
individual resources. When you publish the project, the system will display
the task(s) on the My Tasks page for each resource represented by the team
resource. From there, your resources can report their support time on the
My Tasks page. Hope this helps.

 

[Brian H]

Dale,
Thanks for you insight into this issue as I have been trying to create a
work-around to the removal of "Administrative Projects" in PS2007. The
problem I have had trying to emulate a PS2003 admin project in PS2007 is
assigning work to keep the task on a resource's My Task page. I have noticed
that if too little work is assigned, once the hours are complete, the task
will drop off of My Tasks. If a lot of hours are assigned, it shows up on
the My Task page as 8 hours of planned work and often creates confusion for
the resource. While I have incorporated Resource Plans to keep these hours
out of a resource's available time, this "assigned work" still seems to show
up for the resource. Will the use of Team Resources fix this issue?

Any suggestions and best practices for accounting for unplanned work would
be appreciated.

By the way... love your books!

Thanks again,
Brian

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Brian --

Thanks for purchasing our books, and for sharing your kind comments. As you
now know, Activity plans are practically useless, given the two major
limitations. Using an administrative-like project is really the only
workaround. When you assign resources to tasks in an administrative-like
project, you do need to assign some hours of Work for each resource. I
recommend that you look back at your historical record to determine the
average number of hours per week that a resource spends on these non-project
tasks. Then, based on your historical record, you can set a Units value.
For example, a resouce typically spends 4 hours per week in meetings.
Therefore, on a Meetings task, I would assign resources at 10% Units.

Regarding the Team resource issue, this is simply a fast way to assign a
group of resources to a task without having to assign each resource
individually. It won't solve any of your previous issues. If your
organization does not use Team resources, then you will need to assign
resources individually. Hope this helps.

 

[Brian H]

Dale,
Thanks for the advice. I will give it a try.

Any suggestions on using PS2007's Adminstrative Time functionality?

We first attempted to use PS2007's Administrative Time to replace the PS2003
Admin projects but again it fell way too short of the mark, custom fields
could not be attributed to an item in Admin Time and I believe that the data
in Timesheets and Tasksheets could not be merged easily; they have different
OLAP cubes. Also, some of our PS2003 Admin projects had as many as 75 to 100
tasks and there was no way to assign these to particular resources, so they
would have to be on everybodys timesheet. Can you verify that my findings
are correct?

TIA,
Brian

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Brian --

Given your requirements, I think that attempting to use the Administrative
Time functionality would be an exercise in futility. Hope this helps.

 

[Brian H]

Dale,
Just the confirmation I needed... from the Experts!

Keep up the great work,
Brian

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Brian H --

Thanks for the kind comment. We try awfully hard.