JB --
There are two approaches to the assignment of resources to Fixed Duration
tasks in an administrative project. Each has its advantages and
disadvantages.
When you assign resources to administrative tasks at 0% Units, you are
essentially assigning them to an "empty bucket" of work, and it's up to each
resource to fill the bucket with their actual hours worked during your
60-day period. Yes, a disadvantage is that it marks the task as complete,
and a further disadvantage is that the task may disappear on a team member's
timesheet if they have the "Current tasks" option selected. The advantage,
however, is that the team member can continue to enter Actual Work hours
against the task during the entire 60-day duration of the task, even though
it shows as 100% complete in your administrative project plan. And, at the
end of the 60-day time period, you will have a very clear picture about how
each of your team members is actually spending their time. You may be
shocked at what you learn, and about how little time your people have to
spend on project-related work. One of my clients used this very approach,
and learned that his team members were spending only 35% of each day on
actual project-related work because so much of their time was spent on
non-project administrative tasks!
On the other hand, you could also assign your resources at their estimated
Units for each administrative task. For example, if your people attend a
2-hour team meeting each Monday, you could have a task called "Team
Meetings" and assign each person to 5% Units on this task. The advantage of
this approach is that it "reserves" that much time each week for your team
members to attend meetings. The disadvantage is that it can show
overallocations in time periods where no true overallocation actually
exists, based on the entry of actuals. For example, team member A submits 8
hours of work each day last week on a regular task. However, the team
meeting was not held, but the resource does not enter any actuals for the
Team Meeting administrative task. Therefore, in the last week there are 40
hours of Actual Work plus 2 hours of scheduled Work, and Microsoft Project
2002 will show that team member A is overallocated, when in reality they are
not.
So, you can see that there will be disadvantages of using either method.
However, I believe the advantages of using an administrative project will
greatly outweigh any disadvantages you experience. Have I addressed your
concern? Let me know.
JLB said:
I followed Dale Howard's tips on setting up an administrative project in
MS Project Professional Server. Here's the problem I am running into....I
am using Project to track new projects within the IT Department, but also as
a way to track time allocated to existing projects and general support.
Enter the administrative projects! I have general tasks listed in the admin
projects such as "General" "Bugs" "Reports" and i have the team members
enter in the number of hours per day they are spending on these tasks. I
have a set duration for each task of 60 days and have the resources assigned
at 0%. However, every time a resource updates the task in the timesheet
view and I accept the time he is putting, it's completing the task in my
Project. Help! I though the administrative tasks would not be "complete"
because I set the duration to 60 days. Does anyone have some insight on
this?
