Summarize effort for subset of tasks and subset of resources?

[Guest]

Hi,

I want to answer the simple question, whether my projects stays in
budget. I am limited to tracking hours (not cost). So I need to know,
whether my total hours keep in budget. The challenge is: some of my
resources are free (and can thus use as many hours as they want) and
some cost money. My focus now is to keep the hours
for the non-free resources in budget.

Is there a way to summarize the effort of only a subset of the entire
plan and only a subset
of resources?

Google and the various FAQs were sadly of no help, yet.

Thanks,
-S.

 

[JulieS]

Hello S,

You could use the Group field on the resource sheet to note whether
your resources are "free" or ones you need to track. Then view the
Task Usage view and create a custom group to group first by Name
(task) then group by Resource Group (Assignment). For each task you
should now see two groups, each with the sum of the work for each
group.

If you need more details on how to create the group, let us know.

I hope this helps. Let us know how you get along.

Julie
Project MVP

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

 

[Guest]

Hi Julie,

thanks for the quick feedback. I fiddled around with the group
definition and the result
looked promising at first. I tried

Resource Group
Project
Outline Number
Name

and

Project
Outline Number
Name
Resource Group

Both did not correctly summarize. MSP splits into sections cash, cash/
nocash and nocash. The section cash/nocash lists tasks where both
types of resources work. I solved only part of the problem ;-) Then I
thought, assignment or task could work and I set everything to filter
by assignment. Oh well, MSP crashed ;-)

-S

 

[JulieS]

Hi S,

Here's a quick rundown of what I did to create the group. In the
Resource Sheet view I used "tracked" and "not tracked" in the
resource group field. To be able to see both the name of the task
as well as keep the tasks in the correct order, I added a spare text
field to the Gantt chart and created a formula to combine the ID and
the task name:

[ID] & " " & [Name]
I renamed the field ID and Name
I set the group or summary rows to use the formula

You can remove the field from the Gantt chart view.

On the Task Usage view I created the following Group:

Check the option "Group assignments, not tasks"

First row:
Group By:
Field: ID and Name (Text1 field created in earlier step)
Field Type: Task
Order Ascending

Second row:
Then By:
Field Name: Resource Group
Field Type: Assignment
Order Ascending

By grouping by the Assignment Resource Group you should not see the
combination of cash and no cash as you did.

I'm not sure why you included the Project field -- is your project a
master or consolidated project made up of multiple projects?

I also suggest checking your service pack level. Project 2007 is
now at SP-2 and Project 2003 is at SP-3.

I've tested the above on both releases.

I hope this helps.
Julie

 

[Guest]

Hi Julie,

again thanks for the answer - that did the trick. I've complemented
the grouping also with "outline number". My plan is made up of several
sub-projects and I can now see by sub-project the efforts split into
two and only two categories

-S

 

[JulieS]

Super. Glad to hear all is well and thanks for the feedback.
Julie