Managing multiple, concurrent project

[KK]

My team will have on average 5 dvlp. projects active at any time. One might
be a three days of work, others two weeks, etc. I currently have all
projects loaded into a Master Project with shared resources. I have things
setup so that every resource is allocated 100% of the time to all activities.
I'm separately tracking admin, etc. which would otherwise make them only 80%
avail. Think of their admin time as "just another project". I'll tackle
changing this later.

I'm trying to gauge how to handle multiple projects. If I don't change
anything, new projects are 'likely' to schedule late, meaning after the
existing ones finish (I am not prioritizing now). In reality, what happens
is that some of our customers and their projects could be higher priority
than other work we do but not to a point of saying "finish everything for
high priority customer A 1st" then customer B. I'm thinking of using %
allocation and everything for high priority customer A is stamped with say,
25% allocation, Priority B customer tasks are 10%, 5%, so on & so on. Any
thoughts? Maybe this is why prioritization was created but I'm hesitant
since this will only move higher priority items 1st with "NO" time for any
other acitivites of lesser priority.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

You ask for thoughts so here they are.
Putting all resources on the highest priority project is the best way to
deliver as fast as possible.
(In Goldratt's TOC books there is a nice mathemathical proof of this)
Telling people to split their time between projects will not help at all.
Hope this helps,

 

[KK]

Allow me to clarify. Customer A has 3 projects, Customer B has 2 projects,
Customer C has 3 projects. We want all of A's projects to "share" 50% of
everyones time, Customer's B & C to each have 25% of the time. Each of these
percent allocations are "independent" of how many projects are within. We're
trying to allocate resources across all of the projects but in a way that
aligns to business decisions, etc. Can I somehow specify that all of
Customer A's project work contends for only 50% of the programmer's time?

Separate projects for each customer with separate resource files might work
where I would specify the 'availability' of each programmer repsectively down
to 50% or 25%, etc.

I'm also thinking of having customer-specific resources where programmer
John today would be changed to John-A, John-B and John-C with available times
or only 50%, 25% and 25% in the same, shared resource file.

I don't know of any other combination of standard MS Project features that
will allow this specific type of allocation. Keep in mind also, that once
the allocation situation is addressed, normal scheduling and leveling would
take place. Nothing fancy there.

 

[Jan De Messemaeker]

Hi,

One more original situation (in case you prefer one file) could be to attach
to each task a task calendarshowing work for A 8-12, for B 13-15 and for C
15-17. Then you can assign all resources @100% and durations will be planned
correctly as soon as you give in work.

Hope this helps,