Task Level Reporting - Pros and Cons

[Dee]

We have been thinking about implementing Task Level Reporting (
Extending the OLAP Cube). We have lots of projects (a coule of hundred)
and resources and it already seems to be a complex system.

I would appreciate some Pros / Cons of doing this from the experts in
this group. I would also like to hear user experiences from those who
have already implemented this.

TIA

Best Regards,
Dee

 

[Guest]

Hi Dee,

It kind of depends on your business... The potential gain is that you will be
able to analyze individual (or groups of) tasks in one project with those in
another project. The question to explore is will this make a difference in
your organization.

I have had a few clients with complex projects that followed a consistent
planning methology. For these clients the ability to compare Phase X of one
project with Phase X of another might make sense. I have worked with other
clients where every project manager did their own thing. It didn't make much
sense in this environment.

I wrote a white paper "Extending The Cube" that will give you a better idea of
what might be involved from the tools, development, and deployment perspective.
It can be downloaded from my web site at http://bsege.com/white_papers.htm.

Bob Segrest, PMP
Microsoft Project Blackbelt

 

[Dee]

Hi Bob,

Thanks for your reply. We are trying to separate tasks as "Strategic" ,
"tactical", " Keeping the lights on" etc. SO basically we just need a
task level enterprise ouline code to be able to slice and dice the task
data in the analyzer. It does seem beyond our capacity to do it at this
point.

Would you ( or anyone else in this group) know if this will be an OOB
feature in P12.

Thanks,
Dee

 

[John M.]

One thing to keep in mind is that you don't need to extend the OLAP cube in
order to get the result that you want. The OOB process includes resource
assignment outline codes as a dimension in addition to the resource outline
codes. It may seem confusing at first, but here is what you can do:

1. Define a Resource Outline Code to be something like "Task Type"
2. On a Resource Usage view, add the new resource outline code column
3. At the assignment level (not the resource level), set the value of the
task type code

You can further automate this process by defining a Task Outline code with
the same name and instead of manually setting the value for each assignment,
you can set it for each task. You will then run a macro to copy the task
outline code information into the assignment resource outline code.

Hope this helps.

John

 

[Dee]

Thanks Bob and John. This will surely help!!

Best Regards,
Dee