Employee Scheduling

[Hark2k]

I am looking for a way to manage the schedules for my staff of 12 against
incoming projects. We have projects that last anywhere from a day to 45
days. When a new project comes in I want to be able to tell who is available
based on what they're currently working on, the employees schedule,
meetings, holidays, etc. I also want to be able to track what we scheduled
for a particular project against what we actually worked. Ideally, I'd also
like to track project metrics like the dollar value of the project, the
customer, etc. Will project do all this? Is there something better out there?
Thanks!

 

[davegb]

I am looking for a way to manage the schedules for my staff of 12 against
incoming projects. We have projects that last anywhere from a day to 45
days. When a new project comes in I want to be able to tell who is available
based on what they're currently working on, the employees schedule,
meetings, holidays, etc. I also want to be able to track what we scheduled
for a particular project against what we actually worked. Ideally, I'd also
like to track project metrics like the dollar value of the project, the
customer, etc. Will project do all this? Is there something better out there?
Thanks!

Project will do all that you ask, and do it well. There is, as usual,
a hitch. It's not an overnight solution. To get to where you want to
be will take some time, probably a few months, unless you have little
else to do. But nothing else I know of will do it in less time.

As for something better out there - depends. Define "better". Is a
Ferrari better than a Ford? In bumper to bumper traffic on the
freeway, the Ford's probably better. In Clear Creek Canyon west of
Denver on a Sunday afternoon...

Project will do what you ask and more. Other software will do
considerably more, but support will be far more difficult, and likely
way more expensive that for M$ Project. If you want to accelerate the
learning process, take a good course in M$ Project. "Good" meaning
taught by someone who understands it. That would be someone with a PM
background who has actually used the software as opposed to someone
who is a professional software instructor who read a manual and now
tries to teach it with no understanding of how it's used. There are
also some good books, like "Using M$ Project" by Que publishing.

Finally, to paraphrase Lewis in his book, "Project Planning,
Scheduling and Control", "Giving someone sophisticated scheduling
software to manage his projects without having knowledge of Project
Management is merely to enable him to document his failures with great
accuracy". If you want to be able to use this tool to bring projects
in on time, you have to understand PM. Scheduling alone does not
resolve all the issues that contribute to late, busted projects.

Hope this helps in your world.