Managing an allocation of days

[AOC]

I've been tasked with setting up a project monitoring sheet, whereby we
manage the allocation of so many days support to internal projects. i.e. it
has been decided that resources exist to provide e.g. 500 days of support
over next year. That is the starting point
From there we will wish to begin allocating those days to circa 20 teams and
monitoring commited resources against actual. The key thing though is to be
able to monitor the 500 days and that they are spread evenly across the year
and the teams. Is Project a tool that can help me with this target? If so,
can you please suggest where I might start. Thanks in advance.

 

[John]

I've been tasked with setting up a project monitoring sheet, whereby we
manage the allocation of so many days support to internal projects. i.e. it
has been decided that resources exist to provide e.g. 500 days of support
over next year. That is the starting point
From there we will wish to begin allocating those days to circa 20 teams and
monitoring commited resources against actual. The key thing though is to be
able to monitor the 500 days and that they are spread evenly across the year
and the teams. Is Project a tool that can help me with this target? If so,
can you please suggest where I might start. Thanks in advance.

AOC,
Yes, Project can help with that. First however, let me clarify a couple
of things. You mention 500 days of support. I assume what you really
mean is 500 standard 8 hour workdays, or in terms of total hours, 4K
hours. Project has two basic fields that relate to time span. One is
task duration which is simply the amount of time, often expressed in
days, during which a task will be performed. The second is the work
effort, which is normally expressed in hours, and is the time that one
or more resources will take to actually perform the task. If a single
resource works full time on a single task, then duration and work for
that task will be equal.

Your first starting point should be to make a list of all the tasks that
will be supported during the next year. Normally an estimated duration
is given to each task and tasks that are dependent on each other are
linked in a logical sequence of performance. After the basic schedule is
laid out in this manner, resources can be assigned to each task, either
individually or by teams. When the assignments are made Project will
keep track of the resource hours being allocated.

Obviously there are more details on how to set all this up, but rather
than try to explain it all here, I suggest you go to our MVP website at:
http://www.mvps.org/project/links.htm and use the link to fellow MVP,
Mike Glen's tutorials. If after studying Mike's tutorials, you still
have implementation questions, please post back and we will be glad to
assist you.

John
Project MVP

 

[AOG]

Thanks John,
Yes, it is a given set amount of hours, which will come out at circa 4K.
The explanation of Work Effort is very welcome, as that is what we are
moitoring, rather than the task. But the issue for us is that we are not
overtly involved in the work breakdown structures or in the allocation of
resources; the resources of that are of our supplier and we need to check
their progress against the overall 500d.
I perhaps amn't explaining as it needs, but is there a way of inputting into
a Gantt once the resources are committed & then monitoring that against the
actual Work Effort, whilst being able to monitor overall progress against the
ultimate deadline of 500 hours?

 

[John]

Thanks John,
Yes, it is a given set amount of hours, which will come out at circa 4K.
The explanation of Work Effort is very welcome, as that is what we are
moitoring, rather than the task. But the issue for us is that we are not
overtly involved in the work breakdown structures or in the allocation of
resources; the resources of that are of our supplier and we need to check
their progress against the overall 500d.
I perhaps amn't explaining as it needs, but is there a way of inputting into
a Gantt once the resources are committed & then monitoring that against the
actual Work Effort, whilst being able to monitor overall progress against the
ultimate deadline of 500 hours?

AOG,
First of all, did you take a look at Mike's tutorials? Before you can
use Project effectively you need to understand how to create a schedule
and how Project can help with that process.

In Project there are a couple of ways to track actual effort. One is via
entries into the % Work Complete field. The other is via entries into
the Actual Work field. Either can be tracked on an overall basis (i.e.
cumulative to some point in time), or on a periodic basis (i.e. hourly,
daily, weekly, etc.). In either case the actual work effort can easily
be compared to the baseline work value. Another field that is useful is
the Remaining Work field.

John
Project MVP