Multiple Resource Calendar Questions

[PenE]

Does anyone have any tips and tricks for handling calendars in MS Project?
Or a best practice guide?

We have a senior level manager at my organization that insists that the only
way to get an accurate schedule out of MS Project is to create a calendar for
every schedule that is worked in the company in every country. We have 10
alternate work schedules alone in the US, and then at least 10 more each in 6
different countries. That would mean creating 70 separate calendars on MS
Project Server with the holidays and nonworking times for each and assigning
each resource to each calendar with the project calendar remaining at
"standard". Here's the kicker, most, if not all of these alternate work
schedules average out to 40 hours per week between Sunday-Saturday.

This is mainly for a large IT project that is not scheduled to end until the
end of 2008 and has a project team of over 200. The tasks aren't even
tracked on a day to day basis, rather a weekly basis.

Anyone have any tips or tricks to handle this situation? Our PMO is not
staffed to handle the setup and maint. that this would require.

Thx.

 

[Catfish Hunter]

Are your durations in days, weeks.....?
Maybe you don't need 70 calendars. Can't one calendar be shared by several
groups?
Building a calendar is not that much of a deal. Each one takes between 2 to
5 minutes.
Once you have a calendar built you can drop it in your global and it's
available for all schedules.
What do you think?

 

[PenE]

Durations are in weeks.
The calendars can only be shared by several people as (they want me) to
setup calendars for each country. Each country has different holidays and
work hours. Also, each group within that country has alternate work
schedules. So for instance: the US has 10 alternate work schedules that
someone can be on, as well as the standard company holidays. Alternate work
schedules means 4/10s, 9/80s - with varying days off and varying working
hours (7-6, 7:30-5).

Singapore has different holidays than the US, then 6 different alternate
work schedules within that, with different hours. So each of those calendars
would have to be separately maintained as well. So different countries can't
share schedules, because they work different hours and have different
holidays.

When tracking the durations weekly, it shouldn't matter to that level of
detail anyway, but this particular manager is convinced that unless everyone
has their hours tracked to the minute worked, the project schedule is never
up to date.

 

[Catfish Hunter]

When I say share a calendar I mean by region. One you build on calendar with
all the correct hoildays for that region, you can copy it and change the
working hours in minutes.
Here's what I know about calendars. Set up a calendar for a region. This
includes telling it all the holidays. To do this you go to Tools, Change
working Time. I always give it a name that means something to me. By clicking
on the days of the week (S,M,T,W,T,F,S) at the top of the calendar you are
setting this working or non-working time for ever for that day(s). You can
grab several days at a time.
I've had managers that did not understand what I do, scheduling. Rather than
admitting that they shoot holes in the schedule.
One thing I know for a fact is if you aim for nothing, you're sure to hit it.
Good Luck with this manager.

 

[PenE]

Yep, but then I still have to assign everyone to the schedules, and maintain
them year to year.

And it's more likely that he doesn't understand project scheduling. I think
I've got him convinced that to track a project of this scale to that level of
detail would be a waste of time and energy on all our parts. We're hitting
our milestones and delivering our deliverables so I'm not sure what his
concern is.

Thx for the assistance.