Cost/Resources to Support/Sustain Microsoft Project Server Environ

[Mark D]

Anyone care to chime in on the cost or effort required to support and sustain
a Microsoft Project Server environment?

We're a project management group of 4-ish people supporting an initial
install of about 8 pro users and 70-ish web users. We understand that our
group will provide functional support for the tools but I'm wondering about
the technical support required. I'm being asked how much technical support
will be required over a typical year assuming that we're set up and going.

I'm thinking:
- provisioning of projects, security/users
- sharepoint sites? and related maintenance
- others???

Any rules of thumb here? 1FTE / x users?

 

[Marc Soester [MVP]]

Mark, that is a very hard one to answer since it very much depends what
features you will use ( e.g. timesheet, task update, collaboration, risk /
issue management, status report generation, maybe even custom development).
Generally you will need to differenciate between an EPM Administrator ( or
superuser as I typically refer it to) which administers and supports the
users in PRoject Server. You will also need to ensure that your system stays
clean and maintained. That means Database and Windows Server support /
maintenance. I guess ( and please dont nail me down here ) I would think
you will need a full time superuser to ensure that the right support is there
for users (maybe 0.5FTE if it is a simple deployment). This user can often be
a PMO staff member. The database backup and windows maintenance is only a
fraction of a FTE (unless you have issues ), so maybe 0.2 FTE's for the
system maintenance.
As I mentioned this is only a very high level guestimate based on prevous
experience for simple Project Server deployements. This number increases
based on the usage and of course based on the PMO size.
I hope that will give you at least some direction.