Help needed for Resource utilization

[Irfan]

Hi There, in my company, we've got plenty of projects being delivered each
week and we do not follow any PM tool at all. We do not have any Project
plans either. We only make use of our own way, mostly MS Excel, where in we
have the PROJECTNAME, TECHLEAD FOR THIS PROJECT, DEVELOPMENT COMPLETIONDATE &
CURRENT STATUS

I now have a need of maintaining all the resource info. viz which resource
is working on which project, for how long, and when is a resource free to be
placed into another project.

You'd laugh at me, that I'm currently using MS Excel, but at any given
instance, I need to search for a person's name within the sheet to know who
is free, when.. I thought of MS Project & Project Server. I remember of
something called as Resource Center within... How can I make use of MS
Project & Project Server to know the resource utilization?

Thanks for your time in reading my long question!!
irfan

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Irfan ,

Try posting on the server newsgroup. 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

 

[Dave]

It would be straightforward to step up to Project from the way you are
currently using Excel. You may not actually end up using Project the
way it is intended to be used, but one step at a time.

I think to go to Project Server from where you are now would be overkill
and involve too much work and you wouldn't be able to see the wood for
the trees.

In its simplest form, you could have simple lines (tasks in Project
parlance) representing your current projects. These would show start
and end times and you could assign resources to them. You could add
columns to represent the completion date and technical lead and the
current status.

Having done that, it would be straightforward to see who becomes free
and when.

Following on from that, you could start to plan your projects in more
detail and break them down into smaller tasks and use that as a way to
start to improve your project management.

You don't say what the nature of your projects are or how many resources
you have but I am sure that you can relatively easily represent what you
do in Excel with Project.

The easiest way forward may be to spend a few hours with one of the self
teaching Project books. These will go through the fundamentals of
creating your resource sheet (list of resources), the task bars
(representing your projects), assigning your resources to the projects
and inserting columns to represent the other information you want.