EPM - time tracking actual hours work vs baseline work hours

[PM]

With server 2003, can we track each person's actual hours spent vs. what was
baselined as their work hours. E.g. I am a project manager, and I have
resources from IT and various other depts that report to me for my project.
DeveloperA is assgined to my project at 80% allocation of his time. Before
we begin work on my project, I baseline his and the rest of my team member's
allocations (so now I have my baseline work hours & allocation %). When he
begins, I want him to track his time every day (Not sure what tool to use
here). So I would want to see # of actual hours spent on my project t vs
whatever else he may do during the day (production support, training, sick
time). At the end of the month, I want to see his actual work hours & actual
allocation % vs. the Baselined work hours & allocation%.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

PM --

You need to have your Project Server administrator set the default method of
tracking to Hours of Work Done Per Day or Per Week and set on a Daily basis.
Your team members will enter their actual progress on a daily basis on the
View My Tasks page in PWA, and submit their progress for approval on a
weekly basis. You, as the PM of the project, will need to approve the task
updates on the Updates page in PWA. When you update the progress into the
Microsoft Project plan, you can begin tracking variance after the first week
of progress. You can view task and project variance in the following
locations:

1. Tracking Gantt view (View - Tracking Gantt)
2. Cost table (View - Table - Cost)
3. Work table (View - Table - Work)
4. Variance table (View - Table - Variance)

In each of the previous tables, you will need to examine the Variance
column, such as Cost Variance, Work Variance, Start Variance, or Finish
Variance. In the Tracking Gantt view, you can compare the current project
schedule (blue and red Gantt bars) against the original Baseline schedule
(gray Gantt bars). Hope this helps.

 

[PM]

Hi Dale - Thank you for your response. The challenge that I am running into
is when we start a project, we enter the 'forecast' allocations for each of
my resources in EPM. We then 'baseline' those allocation %'s. However, once
I start entering in actual work hours through Project Web Access, it
'changes' the 'projected' or 'forecasted' allocations in EPM - which is the
part that I don't want to change. I'm wondering if there is a way to create
a new calculated field and have the 'actual work hours' feed to that field so
that my forecast doesn't change. I know it sounds strange when I say we
wouldn't want the forecase to not change...but it's due to our internal
process that we use today.
In other words,
1) We have a resource pool that is maintained in server
2) We have a “project file†per project that people allocate their time to
by month to a specific project (e.g., 50% in Feb on SharePoint Pilot, 100% in
March on SharePoint Pilot, etc.)
3) We have a “project file†per application area where people allocate their
time by month to production support and planned maintenance activities (again
% by month)
4) We do not currently allocate admin time (it is “assumed’)
5) We want to capture actual hours but NOT impact the forecasts that are
already set
6) Keep the forecast & actuals separate from each other for now, but have
the raw data all available in project server for reporting.
I hope I'm making sense...?

 

[Noble Acuff]

One of my clients is running into exactly the same issue. I'd love to know if
there's a straightfoward way to accomplish this, or if forecasted actuals
will always change based on team members entering actual work in the timecard
view.

 

[Noble Acuff]

One of my clients is running into exactly the same issue. I'd love to know if
there's a straightfoward way to accomplish this, or if forecasted actuals
will always change based on team members entering actual work in the timecard
view.

 

[Gary L. Chefetz]

PM and Noble:

I think you are misunderstanding the allocation percentages in Project.
After people enter their hours, the percent units value reflects the "peak
usage" for the resource, not the initial forecast. You are incorrectly
assuming that this alters the baseline or the allocation values set on the
task for future work. Neither is the case. The baseline values will always
be retained in the system unless you reset them. However, when you do not
complete the work in the time given, Project will reschedule the work into
the future when you process updates to your tasks. IOW, Mary is scheduled to
work 50% on the SharePoint pilot in March. You apply Mary to the task
assignment at 50% and the system calculates the work value for the month.
Based on a 40 hour week, this would be around 86 hours. If Mary works only
30 hours on that project during March, the system will push the incomplete
work into the future unless Mary also posts in her update that there is no
more remaining work. At this point the work will be added to the next month
and may cause over-allocations and new work contours, but the baseline will
always retain the original work contour. If Mary happens to post 10 hours in
one day, then the system will show a peak usage value of 125%, but it will
not change the baseline schedule. Remember that you are dealing with a
scheduling engine that uses an algorithm based on units, duration and work.
If you're saying that you expect the work to "evaporate" if Mary doesn't
meet her allocation, well that's just not going to happen. Either the
resource or the Project Manager must reduce the remaining work to make it go
away, otherwise the system is designed to push it forward in time, not to
make decisions whether the work still needs to be done.

--
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Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
MSProjectExperts
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