How to setting Committed/Proposed bookings at the task/assigment l

[Kurt Petteloot]

Hi,

Currently we're working with committed bookings and proposed bookings in
separate project plans.

In our situation we deal with projects hat contain approved (committed) work
and proposed wok at the same time. In case we need the same resource (a named
resource that is, not a generic one) to be assigned accross these 'mixed'
types of bookings we see no other option than to create a second project plan
where that same enterprise resource is entered as a 'proposed' resource (in
this case the resource would already have been added to the original project
plan as a 'committed' resource for all the tasks that got approval from the
customer).

Is there any other way to allow an enterprise resource to be assigned
accross tasks within the same project as 'committed' for one part of those
tasks, while the assigments to the other 'proposed' tasks would show as
'proposed' bookings in the resource graph and availability reports for that
resource (like the MSP cube).

Kind regards,

Kurt Petteloot.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Kurt --

The Booking type for each resource is set for the entire project and cannot
be set on a task by task basis. Hope this helps.

 

[Kurt Petteloot]

Hi Dale,
thanks for your reply. This confirms what I already suspected. Any idea why
this has been set up this way?

Kind regards,
Kurt

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Kurt --

Microsoft's assumption is that we book resources as either a "soft booking"
or "tenative booking" for the entire project. using the Proposed booking
type, or we commit the resources to the entire project using the Committed
booking type. Beyond that, I don't have any insider knowledge at Microsoft
since I do not work for Microsoft.

To work around your issue, why don't you assign Generic resources to those
tasks that are not approved by the customer, and then replace them with
human resources once the tasks have been approved? Just a thought. Hope
this helps.

 

[Kurt Petteloot]

Hi Dale,

We use generic resources to indicate the required skill-set in case the
actual individual person has not been identified yet. This is an approach we
like to stick to, because it alows us to get a systematic overview of lacking
resources in a timely manner through the reporting capabilities of MSP and
MSP Server.

Currently we consider 2 alternative approaches to deal with the
proposed/committed differentation. Perhaps you may have some valuable input
to share with us here.

In the first approach we create a doublure of each enterprise resource. The
convention here is to use the doublure only for proposed bookings, while the
original one is used for committed work.

In the second approach we create a duplicate project plan but only in those
situations where we actually have a mix of committed and proposed work on a
projectplan (which is only the case in 1 out of 3 projects on average and
we're striving to minimize this ratio further down in the future). One
planning serves to schedule the proposed work (the so called 'forecast
planning') while the other contains only committed tasks.

The second approach has my preference because in order to see the level of
commiited and proposed work you can consult the Resource Graph or get to see
the figures in a pivot (based on the MSP cube) for one singe enterprise
resource, while in the first approach you would have to switch between 2
reources.


Anyway, I want to thank you for the reply you gave us already so far. It
helped us along. Thanks.

Kurt

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Kurt --

I have no idea what you mean by "doublure" but I think you might mean that
you create a second resource that is the duplicate for each resource. That
seems like an awful lot of work to go to. Here's an alternate approach:

1. Create a custom enterprise Task outline code called Customer Approval,
and set the only values in the field as Yes or No
2. Ask your PM's to set a value in the Customer Approval field for every
task
3. Extend your OLAP cube using the information in Bob Segrest's white pape
at the following URL:

http://www.projectserverexperts.com/Downloads/Forms/AllItems.aspx

If you don't want to extend the OLAP cube yourself, you can purchase a
commercial product to do so at:

http://www.bogdanov-associates.com/eng.asp

Just an alternate thought. Hope this helps.