Administrative Projects - Dale/Gary - A Final Best Practice?

S

SJT

Dale Howard/Gary Chefetz (or others),

I must apologize for beating this dead horse, but I have read just
about every resource possible (as well as all threads) on the topic of
Administrative Projects and I am having trouble coming to a conclusion
on exactly how they work (or don't work) or how they are emulated
with normal projects. I know that there have been many posts on this
matter, but I was hoping to aggregate the solution into one thread.

Given that most people want to track non-project and non-working time
with some sort of an administrative project, what is the best practice
in doing so in Microsoft Project 2003?

If you are willing, can you please state <thoroughly> how this process
works? Again, I have read all the posts, but I still think that
solution is blurry (or it is at least still blurry to me reading the
total of the posts). I have noticed that all the posts are a few
months old, and I was hoping by now that there might be a good (proven)
way to use Administrative Projects - even if they are not actually
true "administrative projects" as MS Project 2003 presents them.

I have generated a list of all the recommended tips I have read and I
have also generated a list of all the problems I have seen people bring
up. I have verified all the problems for the most part, and most of
the tips help out nicely. I have read all your posts on the matter and
I have also read your books and your website. However, I am hoping
that there is a clearly defined best practice that people are using now
since the posts seem to have died down, but I have not run across this
final solution.

Dale/Gary - any thoughts on the final/best approach on this matter
would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks for your time,

SJT
 
D

Dale Howard [MVP]

SJT --

What you are asking is more than I have time to contribute. If you have
read every resource possible and every thread on the subject of
administrative projects, then I doubt sincerely I could convice you one way
or another with a definitive word. Instead, I will recommend you make your
decision based on the following factors:

1. If you want Project Server to automatically reschedule assignment work
around each resource's nonworking time, such as vacation and sick leave,
then you should not use an administrative project for this purpose.
Instead, enter the nonworking time on each resource's calendar in the
Enterprise Resource Pool.

2. If you wish to be able to track and analyze nonworking time or
nonproject time for a group of resources, then you should use an
administrative project for this purpose. Remember, however, that Project
Server will not reschedule work around nonworking time.

Just some thoughts. Perhaps the others will have some thoughts, too.
 
E

eswb10

I guess I have more time than Dale this morning, since I am recovering
from surgery. I will say, gently, that you are asking a lot, when you
could be using the newsgroup search along with cutting and pasting to a
text document would give you more than you could possibly want to read
about admin projects.

Admin projects can be a pain in the neck. First of
all, I would recommend that you retrieve these articles and study them:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA011038751033.aspx and
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HP010491091033.aspx


For the Microsoft Admin project to work, it must is must be a fixed
duration, non effort driven task. The Microsoft Project Server Admin
template has
them set with a single day's duration. It must also be saved using
File > Save As, and then select the Administrative project checkbox.

Also know that lots of people have various problems with the Admin
Template that Microsoft provides. Dale Howard and Gary Chefetz
recommend a better method which has been discussed many times in this
forum. Do a search for Admin projects and you will find it. I highly
recommend that you NOT use the Microsoft Admin plan.

Don't assign effort estimates in an Admin plan; it will mess up your
resource allocations. Set up your tasks as fixed duration, non effort
driven, assign the resources with 0% units for each task. When the
first entry is made against a task on a Admin plan done this way, the
task will be "complete" and will drop off the timesheet view, so train
your people to use the "All Tasks" view.

Also, if you use %Work Complete as your method of reporting progress,
this method won't work, since 100% of 0 is still 0. You need to be
using hours worked per day for the Admin plan.

One final note: putting time (even in advance) on an admin project
doesn't move work scheduled on other projects the resource is assigned
to. That must be accomplished by making changes to the resource
calendar.

Here are some other threads regarding Admin plans that you might look
at:

http://groups-beta.google.com/group..._doneTitle=Back+to+Search&&d#e8d3ad104c46c736

Hope this helped.
Mark
 
D

Dale Howard [MVP]

eswb10 --

Thanks for your comments and thanks for taking the time to present a
thorough analysis of the benefits/problems with using administrative
projects. Sorry about your surgery. Hope you are feeling better! :)
 
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