Great Pete, we are all here to happily answer your questions. Just a note, I
am currently in the midst of a Project/Project Server/SharePoint
recommendation for my customer.... I feel your pain.
To answer your question, there are reports in the client (desktop) version
of project that create "To Do" lists for assigned resources. That will give
you exactly what you want. In P2007 (Reports/Reports/Assignments/To Do
List). The default is by resource by week. That is easy to change.
Now for the boring stuff. You can assign Fred to a group of tasks to be
done in one week. For the sake of argument, let's just use 5 tasks and each
is scheduled for 5 days. Assume each one takes 8 hours and that can be done
in any order (I can clean the garage before or after I mow the lawn, etc.).
So, I happen to have 5 tasks, each 8 hours of duration and that just so
happens to total up to my 40 hours for the week (my, how convenient).
Project is going to peanut butter those 8 hours for each 5 day task accross
the entire week. It is going to assume that Fred mows the lawn for 1.6 hours
per day for 5 days totaling 8 hours. Same for clean garage.
So, if Fred cleans the garage on Monday, he claims 8 hours actual work,
remaining duration is 0, remaining work is 0. The world continues to spin
clockwise and the task automatically shortens itself to 1 day. Since he will
start Mow Lawn on Tuesday, he can key an *actual start* (different than
*start*) for Tuesday, say his remaing work is 8 hours, remaining duration is
1 day. His task shrinks to one day, etc.
However, while we did all this, the world does start to spin counter
clockwise. The reason why is all that "unstarted work" is piling up and is
showing Fred to be overloaded. He may say he can work 8 hours on Mow Lawn,
but he also has "Wash the cars" and Project thinks he's doing this for 1.6
hours that same day. So Fred shows up overalloacted... and the world turns
the wrong way.
So, the way we do this is to look only at reporting periods. We report
progress every week. As long as Fred only has 40 hours of work assigned to
him during the week period, we just don't care that it is peanut buttered
over the whole duration of the task. Come Friday he will say, "I got all
this done" and we give hime 100% (as of the status date (Project/Project
Information...) and not concern ourselves with the peanut butter and
durations. His to do list gave hime 5 tasks and they were all done.
When this becomes important is when you assign him that 6th task and he
becomes overloaded. The way I would handle that is to change the six tasks to
1 day duration, 8 hours each with Fred Assigned. Since they do not have to
be worked serially, then they will all stack up based on predcessors. For
example, they may all be on Monday and poor Fred has to work 48 hours that
day.
Now you can use the resource leveling features of Project. You can set
priorities for the tasks and then tell project .... "Go Level Fred so he does
not have more than 8 hours in any one day"... all of a sudden, the tasks get
moved out in accordance with the priorities and he has 6 tasks, each one day.
You use the priority to determine the order (Yes, Fred has to tell you the
order he will work them this week).
This topic gets involved and since you are starting, it may be more useful
to just talk for 10 minutes or so...becuase it takes so long to type this
stuff... So, if you go out to my blog, you can poke around and you should be
able to find 10 digits that will work nicely. If you catch my drift. Don't
usually do that, but I am not all that busy today.
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.
Jim Aksel, MVP
Check out my blog for more information:
http://www.msprojectblog.com