It's all in the Leveling(?)

[Beyers Konig]

Hi

I have to manage 11 projects using about 14 resources. Each project contains
about 200 tasks, giving a total of more than 1500 tasks. I use Project
Professional 2003 with its Enterprise features. The Resources enter actual
work done on Project Web interface. I use only Enterprise Resources and have
created one Global Masterproject where all the other projects are inserted as
'sub-projects' into this master project.

The projects range from Hardware, Firmware and Software Development to
Production planning and Installation Management. Because of the amount of
projects running concurrently I have to use Resource Leveling, but major
limitations in the way it works makes it virtually impossible for me to use.

The problems I am facing is this: (Keep in mind I have to use Priorities as
our featurelist and feature priorities are very dynamic)

A) How to handle what I call 'Monitor Tasks'.
To explain: Say for instance we order our BOM. The orders for the hundreds
of components are placed at various companies. After order placement,
somebody has to track the progress of order delivary. Thus the task would be
"Monitor/Track Order Delivery Progress". Now, the resource doing the tracking
needs a variable amount of time each day of say 1 to 2 hrs each day. This
resource hours must of course be taken into account in Project Planning.
i) If I use a Task where the resource units are entered a say 12%
(about 1hr/day) then 'Resource Leveling...' moves task with 100% allocated
units out and does a bad job of overlapping other less than 100% unit tasks
for the same resource. (I can allow for splitting of task only for certain
tasks, but not for all tasks throughout, i.e. I cannot split a code
development task, and Project does not allow me to specifay which tasks can
be split and which not)
ii) If I use a "Recurring Task" then I run into the problem that
these tasks have priorities of 1000 and I cannot level

B) Our development are done on a feature by feature basis. Every feature has
a number of tasks to complete that feature. I want to Prioritise and Plan the
development of these features (by using "resource Leveling"). When work on a
feature starts then all the (sub)tasks for that feature must be carried out,
without delay between these tasks or splitting of these tasks, untill all
work on the feature is done. Thus, "Resource Leveleing must "move" (or delay)
features (which in essence is a summary task) rather than moving the tasks
themselves. Another way of saying this is: Project must allow me to 'group'
tasks, and then thes groupings will be prioritised and moved/delayed in order
to Level the Resource allocations. (Note: There are not (normally)
depandancies between the tasks of different features)

I have found no way Project can do this.
I hope someone can help.
Thanks
Beyers

 

[Mike Glen]

Hi Beyers ,

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

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

Recurring tasks are a very very good solution.
"Open" the summary tasks to show the details, Insert the priority column and
change away from 1000 as desired.

As for grouping the tasks, except maybe manually playing around with
priorities, the only solution I see is a VBA procedure to be run before
leveling, where tasks from a started summary task automatically get a high
priority.

Hope this helps

 

[Beyers Konig]

Thanks for the replies. Yes, the answers are not easy. I think this is more a
problem for Agile Project Management, but one way I have decided to tackle it
for now with MS is to only have the features as tasks, then work on that
feature starts to expand the scope of work for that feature by addidng the
subtasks at that point in time. (If I have a template for tasks normally
ascosiated with completion of a feature it will to be too onerous a task)
Likewise, for the 'Monitor' tasks I am thinking of having a token
'timekeeper' or 'workkeeper' task, for the resource's estimated monitor time
required, that can move with the dynamic plan, and then replace it with a
recurring task (keeping 1000 pr) once the procurement actually started. (If I
change recurring tasks priority away from 1000, MS tends to level them
closely together, i.e. 1 hour every day for 6 days will now become 1h tasks
in 1 or 2 days).

This will have to do for now.
Thanks again, Beyers