Creating assignments

[Inquisit1]

Hello good community!

The nature of our projects make it very difficult to foresee who will be
working on what task until that task is ready to start. Ideally, because of
this we would like to be able to create our timelines with tasks in place
without any assignments ahead of time. Once the project is published and
resources are ready to start work, they will be given their assignments by
their direct supervisor (resource manager). We'd also like them to be able
to do this from PWA. From my research and experience, this is not as easy as
it is said.

There does not seem to be a way for Resource Managers to make these
assignments unless it is through the "Build Team" feature, in which case
there has to already be a generic assignment that can be "replaced" with an
actual resource. This method also does not allow a resource manager to
assign multiple resources to one task.

I guess what I'm asking can be done either through MS Office Project 2007,
or resources can use the "New Task" creation method, but neither of these
seem to be good solutions for us.

We have thought about having a 'generic' resource for each 'actual' that our
PM's can use for initial assignments, and once a task is ready to start the
resource manager can replace the generic with the actual (whomever that ends
up being), but this assumes the PM's know how many resources will be needed
for each task, and this isn't always known.

Is there a way to do what I'm asking, or a 'best practice' for handling
assignments in this way? Is project even intended to allow assignments
on-the-fly like this?

Please let me know if I need to clarify anything that I'm trying to do, but
otherwise I appreciate any suggestions, and thanks in advance!

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Inquisit1,

Try posting on the microsoft.public.project.server newsgroup (forum). Please see FAQ Item: 24. Project Newsgroups. FAQs, companion products and other useful Project information can be seen at this web address: http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm

Mike Glen
Project MVP


Hello good community!

The nature of our projects make it very difficult to foresee who will be
working on what task until that task is ready to start. Ideally, because of
this we would like to be able to create our timelines with tasks in place
without any assignments ahead of time. Once the project is published and
resources are ready to start work, they will be given their assignments by
their direct supervisor (resource manager). We'd also like them to be able
to do this from PWA. From my research and experience, this is not as easy as
it is said.

There does not seem to be a way for Resource Managers to make these
assignments unless it is through the "Build Team" feature, in which case
there has to already be a generic assignment that can be "replaced" with an
actual resource. This method also does not allow a resource manager to
assign multiple resources to one task.

I guess what I'm asking can be done either through MS Office Project 2007,
or resources can use the "New Task" creation method, but neither of these
seem to be good solutions for us.

We have thought about having a 'generic' resource for each 'actual' that our
PM's can use for initial assignments, and once a task is ready to start the
resource manager can replace the generic with the actual (whomever that ends
up being), but this assumes the PM's know how many resources will be needed
for each task, and this isn't always known.

Is there a way to do what I'm asking, or a 'best practice' for handling
assignments in this way? Is project even intended to allow assignments
on-the-fly like this?

Please let me know if I need to clarify anything that I'm trying to do, but
otherwise I appreciate any suggestions, and thanks in advance!

 

[Inquisit1]

Trevor,

Thank you for your input. I agree that the PM's will need to do their best
to anticipate the task assignments; however, in our case the resource
managers will have a better idea of this, and will be at the forefront of any
changes to assignments... for his reason our RM's need to take on some of the
PM responsibility concerning assignments.

I'm wondering if using 'team tasks' might be beneficial here?

 

[Steve House]

It's not that the PM's should anticipate the assignments, it's the PMs who
should DETERMINE the assignments. That's not to say that out of the 5
engineers on staff they will designate Joe and Bill to be assigned. In a
fully projectized organization where the resources are detached from their
home departments and report to the PM they would but that's not always the
case. But even if they're not directly responsible for deciding which
engineers are to be assigned, they SHOULD be responsible for deciding how
many engineers will be assigned to what task and when and then communicating
that to the engineer's functional manager, making sure that two out of the 5
ARE assigned. It could be the engineer's direct supervisor who decides which
two out of the five are assigned but it's the PM's job to deterimine that
two MUST be assigned if that's what on-schedule completion of the task
requires and the organization's senior management needs to insure that the
functional managers comply with the PM's requirements.