Project 2003 Good Choice for Tracking Computer Hardware?

[Martin]

Hi,

I'm new to Project 2003 and wonder if it would be a good choice to track
servers for the life of the server, and budget for upcoming fees and
replacement costs. As a simple example, I'm imagining a 24-hour Calendar and
Gantt chart with finish-to-start tasks something like this:

1. Spec and order server (1 week)
2. Build, test and put in production (2 weeks)
3. Server in production (3 years)
4. Retire server (1 week)

This basic sequence of tasks would be repeated for each server. Then for my
budgeting needs, some tasks would have costs. For example, 1. would have the
inital purchase price, and 3. would have recurring sub-tasks with annual
costs for software maintenance, license fees, etc. Near the end of 3 years,
I would add another set of tasks to budget for server replacement, and the
life-cycle would repeat. Besides the Gantt chart, I found the 'Task Usage'
view which looks like it can be configured to show Cost, so I can see future
budget requirements.

I've searched for pre-configured templates, and newsgroup discussions on
this topic, but so far have been unsuccessful. The Microsoft 'Infrastructure
Deployment Template' looked promising, but appears to be designed for setting
up a datacenter, not for on-going server life-cycle management.

What do you think? Is Project overkill, unsuited, just right? Should I
consider other Project features? Should I change my concept to work more
effectively with Project?

Thanks,
- Martin

 

[Jim Aksel]

In all honesty, I think Excel might be the better tool here. I don't see you
statusing and changing the plan much unless there is a lot of server
maintenance along the 3 year production phase.

What you have sounds more like a production environment, not a project
environment. Sure, a server refresh is a project. But you;ve got 3 years
of "Box runs and makes the room warm" That does not meet the definition of a
project.

Are you going to status this schedule at all? As in take a %Complete and
report that up to someone? At that point, maybe project is OK. Do you intend
to create a time phased budget with the data? Do you need it for resource
planning, etc? If these are "Yes" answers Project can greatly assist you....
even if it is just to get a master plan together.

If these are the only tasks, I might consider a timeline example in
something like Visio or PowerPoint. Then use an Excel workbook (or maybe
Access) to track the real data.

I am not in the IT arena, but it seems to me that you would probably want a
"Server Refresh" file where they can all be statused and scheduled. The
production portion of it may be some other group's responsibility. I am
thinking of a big ISP like Earthlink or AOL where they have thousands of
servers all needing refresh, etc. For example my web hosting company has
about 4000 servers in Hong Kong and they have a refresh schedule no doubt.
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim

Visit http://project.mvps.org/ for FAQs and more information
about Microsoft Project

 

[Dave]

From your description I think Project would be a significant overkill.

Your server lifecycle isn't really a project. The Project application
is only really useful in a project-orientated environment. From your
description, you want to capture half-a-dozen or so milestones and
capture some costs.

The problem is that, as you have described it, somebody would have to
access Project to look at the key dates for the server lifecycle, but
would apparently not use that application for other milestones that will
undoubtedly exist in your organisation.

Project could do what you ask, but unless people are trained to look at
project plans to know what they should be doing it is unlikely to be an
effective solution for your problem.

Dave

 

[Martin]

Dave,

Thank you. I was wondering if I had a solution looking for a problem.

Best regards,
- Martin

 

[Martin]

Jim,

Thank you. I like your idea of a database with Excel presenting the data.

Best regards,
- Martin