Timesheet Reporting-best practices ?

[Andy Novak]

I have read Dale Howard's very helpful comments about best practices
in timesheet reporting. Dale, I have a few follow-up questions for
you (or any one else for that matter):

1. You were discussing the % complete method in one thread a while
back but it did not mention entering REM WORK (just task name, actual
start, % work complete, and actual finish). How would you be able to
generate new forecasted finish dates for things that may not have
finished this week but may have gotten behind?

2. When doing time reporting via web, what are ALL the correct
settings under Tools | Options | Calculation ?

3. Anyone used the method where team members enter total hours worked
in the week rather than worked each day? What are the ups and downs
to that?

4. When you use web reporting, regarding the finish dates being
adjusted as a result of a higher/lower rem work figure, by WHAT DATE
are they adjusted? The day the team member enters the data via web,
the day they submit the report, or the day the data is actually
approved and the project files are updated (there could be some lag
time in there)?

5. When we tried web progress reporting in the past, VERY OFTEN the
project data became out of sync with the information in the
timesheets. Almost at the point of being unmanageable. Does one need
to republish frequently in order to keep them in sync? What's the
best way to manage this? Often times I would have team members using
the timesheet as the "plan" (which isn't correct anyway). But it was
so easy for the timesheet to reflect incorrect % complete, etc.,
especially if ANY manual updates were made to the plans.

Thanks,
Andy Novak
University of North Texas

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Andy --

Weren't you the one who posted the "Timesheets - Yuck!" message a few months
back? If so, it is nice to see that you are seriously contemplating how to
use the Project Server timesheet system to your organization's best
advantage. Following are some thoughts in response to your questions:

1. When using the % Work Complete methodology for tracking progress, the %
Work Complete and Remaining Work fields are unlocked for data entry in the
task sheet portion of each user's timesheet. When the user enters a % Work
Complete value, he/she is giving an estimate of how much work is completed
on the task. The user can also increase the Remaining Work estimate to
indicate that the task will finish late. The greater that the user
increased the Remaining Work estimate, the later the task will finish. If
the user adjusts the Remaining Work, the % Work Complete estimate will also
be recalculated accordingly.

2. Concerning the options on the Calculation page in Microsoft Project, I
would recommend that you leave the default settings in place. These are:

- Calculation mode: Automatic
- Calculate: All open projects
- Updating task status updates resource status: Selected
- Inserted projects are calculated like summary tasks: Selected
- Actual costs are always calculated by Microsoft Project: Selected

I do not recommend selecting either the "Move end of completed parts after
status date back to status date" option or the "Move start of remaining
parts before status date forward to status date" option due to the confusion
that these settings would probably cause your organization if you are using
the % Work Complete method of tracking progress.

3. If you enter total hours worked for the week, the hours will be
apportioned across the week in a flat pattern, which may or may not reflect
the reality of the situation. I think a better method is to enter actual
hours worked on a daily basis. If you are using this method for tracking
progress, you should also teach your team members to adjust the Remaining
Work estimate, if necessary.

4. Adjusting the Remaining Work for a task will adjust the scheduled Finish
Date of the resource assignment on the task. If I am working on a task
full-time and increase the Remaining Work on a task assignment by 16 hours,
the Finish Date of my assignment will be two days later than currently
scheduled. If I am the only resource working on the task, then the Finish
date for the task will be two days later than currently scheduled.

5. After processing task updates from your resources into the Microsoft
Project plan, I recommend that you always click Collaborate - Publish - All
Information. Doing so will keep the data "in synch" between the project
tables and the Web tables.

These are just my opinions. Perhaps the others will have some ideas for
you, too. Hope this helps.

--
Dale A. Howard [MVP]
Enterprise Project Trainer/Consultant
Denver, Colorado
http://www.msprojectexperts.com
"We wrote the book on Project Server"

 

[Andy Novak]

Yes, I'm the one. I'm still skeptical, but I'm hopeful that our
failure in the past was based on limited knowledge at the time.

Thanks Dale. So, regarding #4, this has nothing to do with the
"Status Date" then? If a team member overrides 8 hours remaining with
16 hours remaining, the scheduled finish date is increased by one
business day FROM THE last finish date, NOT the current status
date...regardless of WHEN the plan is actually updated from the
timesheet? In other words, if the finish date is 01/24/04 with
remaining work of 8 hours and the team member enters 16 hours, the new
finish date will be 01/26/04 even if the plan is updated sometime past
that date?

Regarding #2 (recommended settings for Tools | Options | Calculation),
would you EVER recommend "Move end of completed parts after status
date back to status date" option or the "Move start of remaining parts
before status date forward to status date" options, even if you were
entering time rather than % complete? Make any difference if you were
entering time per day or time per week?

Regarding the update of plans from the timesheets, do you always
recommend going through an approval process by the project mgr prior
to update or has anyone been brave enough to set it up to where the
updates automatically get applied to the plans when the team member
submits?

Somewhere I remember someone commenting on the "Save" vs. "Submit"
buttons on the timesheet. Is there some type of quirky order in which
the team members need to operate in order for the data to "stick"?

As I update plan progress manually, I usually update the % complete
(based on what the user thinks the amount of task is complete), then
if the scheduled finish date is later, I will adjust that. But, if I
change the finish date manually, project changes the % complete. So,
I gather that % complete isn't really what we THINK it is (the actual
amount of the task that is done), but the amount of work that has been
done relative to the total amount of work to be done?

Related to the paragraph above, any recommendations on the best way to
go about updating progress manually? In other words, I have a room
full of team member and we are going down the list, updating as we go.

Thanks again,
Andy Novak
University of North Texas

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Andy --

Yes, if the resource increases the Remaining Work value, the task will be
extended past its current Finish date.

The Tools - Options - Calculation options you ask about are meant to work in
conjunction with the % Complete method of tracking progress, in conjunction
with the use of a Status Date for each project. I believe this would be an
additional source of heartache for you, which is why I did not recommend it.

It is not possible to automatically update progress from team members into
the project plan without the intervention of the project manager. The
closest that you can come is when the project manager creates one or more
Rules to process the updates, but he/she must still click the Run Rules Now
button to activate the Rules. Frankly, I do not even recommend that project
managers create Rules, since this does not allow them to monitor the updates
from their team members. After all, how will they know if a resource
accidentally "fat fingers" a number on the keyboard, which results in bogus
actuals?

If team members are updating their progress on a daily basis, they should
click the Save Changes button, which will save the changes but will not
update the progress to the project manager. If they are entering their
progress at the end of the reporting period and are ready to submit progress
to their project manager, they should click either of the Update ____
buttons, which will both save the changes and update the progress to the
project manager.

If you enter a % complete and then change the Duration of the task, the %
Complete is adjusted automatically. This is because the % Complete field is
actually the % Duration Complete field. It measures the % of the Duration
used up on the task, although most people use it to mean the % of the work
completed. Actually, the % of the work completed is represented by the %
Work Complete field. Hope this helps.