3rd party add on or

[Graziano Gnocchi]

Hi guys,
everyone knows of a 3rd party tool (or something like that) that extends the
resource management included in MS Project?

I explain myself better: We allready use a EPM (Project Server) solution;
It is very well suited for the estimating phase of a project, not so bad for
the consumptive too.
We tried to use it very hard for task and resource management to maximize
the allocation but we were not so satisfied (graphic visualization, bottom-up
feedback from resources, ...)

We want to understand if allready exists something that fit this need or we
have to extend ourselve the EPM solution with the SDK.

Sorry if this is a "not so clever" question ;-)

Thanks in advance.
Regards
Graziano

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

Just what exactly is it you want the software to accomplish that Project
isn't doing for you?

You are correct that MSP does not provide services to maximize resource
usage - that's because the project is an isolated world unto itself,
completely separate from the rest of the activities of your firm, and the
fact that Joe Resource is only being used in the project for part of his
hours this week doesn't mean he could be used more - he could be very well
fully booked up on other items that are not part of the project universe and
thus as far as it is concerned don't exist. That's where human managers
come in, to manually provide that information and so the maximization of
resource utilization is a human, not software, function. Project
management software is essentially task scheduling and budgeting software -
human resources management is a part of it in so far as it effects the
scheduling of the project's work but to the best of my knowledge there is no
project managment software that also provides a comprehensive resource
scheduling and optimization solution, including non-project activities, as
well.

 

[Graziano Gnocchi]

Thank you Steve for the answer.
The question that you're pointing out is right: the human control is needed
in this kind of things.

But...
The troubles starts with a very high mix of planned and unplanned activities.
Some tasks are part of projects and the others are not but interfere with
the schedule.
So we would like to know if there are some addons that threats this
scenario: with a best view on the table of the Project Server that can be
useful to the human scheduler or with a external solution linked and sync'ed
to that database that threats this kind of unplanned tasks, or anything
else...

Obviously we found some workaround for this in using MS Project but in my
mind I was looking for something that manipulate in a very flexible way
resources, tasks and time more like a multidimensional calendar than a Gantt
chart.

I don't know if this kind of thing (could) exist

Thank you!
Regards,
Graziano

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

I'm not aware of any products that do this - that doesn't mean they don't
exist but due to the nature of project work I doubt you'll find it in any PM
products.

 

[Halfdan]

I don't know if this will help you, but it's worth investigating. We use MSP
for resource planning. We are about 120 employees, and all our business is
project based. We have continously about 8 projects running in parallel. For
both project planning and reporting, as well as resource planning we use a
3rd party add-on called "Safran for MS Project". By defining and adding text
colomns in MSP, we can sort and report on contracts/ prospects, projects,
department, discipline etc. You can also get reports e.g. with one page per
project, and resources stacked on discipline (or any other defined criteria).
For more info see www.safran.no

Best regards
Halfdan Millang
Tech.Dir.
Hamworthy Gas Systems

Graziano Gnocchi skrev: