Timesheets and Fixed Duration

[MartynF]

I have looked all over for help in understanding a couple of issues, here
and elsewhere, to no avail. I think to myself "if only Fixed Duration meant
Fixed Duration rather than Sort of Fixed Some of the Time"...

We have Project Server 2007 SP2 and Project Professional SP2 and I run the
PMO such as it is here.

Aside from IT projects, I create a "Support Activity project" with tasks for
various support and maintenance activities. When planning ahead, the work
and assignment time is estimated but the requirement is to report and plan
on a monthly basis. A resource might be "planned" to spend 40% of time on a
support activity in month 1 but only 20% in month 2, etc. so I create Fixed
Duration Tasks for these - of a one month duration and not effort driven.
Users use the timesheet completion and import functionality to update the
hours spent on the "monthly task" on a weekly timesheet basis.

My issues are:

1. As the tasks get updated with actual hours spent, sometimes the Fixed
Duration task changes duration extending beyond the month end. I can not for
the life of me work out why? I think it is when the actual work numbers
reported weekly are less than the inital schedule says. e.g. the planned
schedule says resource1, week 1, 10 hours, resource 1, week 2 10 hours etc.
but only 2 hours gets reported in week 1 as actual work. What seems to
happen is the Project takes the initial "planned work" as Fixed Work and
changes the duration to match the assignment rate. I need the server to
respect the fixed duration and at least prompt whther or not to changed the
planned work total or planned assignment rate. If I adjust the schedule
manually I get these options via the smart tag.

2. Almost as a reverse, in the above case if resource 1 reported spending
all 40 hours on the activity in week 1 Project would automatically mark the
task as complete. but of course it may not be - only the duration should be
fixed, not the work. The plan is only a plan. Why cannot project server
respect the fixed duration and understand that more work may be necessary
and adjust the assignment rate or planned work for the monthly task?

I'm sorry if this is confusing but I am on the point of ditching Project
Server completely.

Martyn Forbes

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

1) There's an issue (or a feature) with Fixed Duration tasks where if the
Actual Work is initially not booked on the first day of the task, it will
shift out the task. I am not entirely sure, but that may be the culprit
for item #1.

2) Is an impossibility. There are three variables in the equation: Duration,
Units, Work. You have Fixed Duration and assigned Work. That leaves Units
as the only variable - which in fact is what your resources are doing by
entering their time - they're reporting how many units are actually worked.
One option is to add the Remaining Work field to the My Tasks sheet and
train the resources to modify that manually. Note that the last I checked
(and it's been a little while since I touched Timesheets), you can't add
an editable Remaining Work field to the Timesheets interface.

What you've hit on is that are some of the classic issues with using Project
Server to track Admin time. The best option in my opinion is to book out
resources for support time either using Max Units, or using Resource Plans,
then track their Admin Time in a trouble ticket system like Remedy. If you're
ambitious enough, companies like HMS sell 3rd party timesheet apps that will
then feed input time into Project Server or into the Trouble Ticket system
depending on how the timesheet is coded.

- Andrew Lavinsky
Blog: http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/epm

 

[MartynF]

Thank you very much!

Your response to item 1 sounds very possible - I will check on that but if
that is the case it is extremely annoying.
For item 2 I'm not really sure I understand. What you are implying is that
if you when you assign resources, at an assignment rate you think might be
about right, to a fixed duration task, you are automatically fixing the work
effort as well. The fact that you may not be 100% certain of the work effort
needed is ..well...tough? Also, I thought the users were reporting their
(Actual) Work not their Units in the Timesheet.

M

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

For item 2 I'm not really sure I understand. What you are implying is
that if you when you assign resources, at an assignment rate you think
might be about right, to a fixed duration task, you are automatically
fixing the work effort as well.

Not really implying that. I am stating it.

The fact that you may not be 100%

certain of the work effort needed is ..well...tough? Also, I thought
the users were reporting their (Actual) Work not their Units in the
Timesheet.

They are reporting the Actual Work, but when you plug that into the update
equation of D X U = W, then the Actual Work translates into how many units
they actually applied to the task. From my perspective, the timesheet update
really is modifying the units variable in that equation - unless they also
update the Remaining Work field as part of your methodology.

In your case, you're budgeting a specific number of hours, so yeah, I guess
it is a bit inflexible. On the other hand, if you changed the task types
to Fixed Units, then as the duration fluctuated up and down, work would fluctuate
as well.

At the end of the day, you set the estimated budget for each task, then the
resources provide feedback as to whether or not that estimate is correct.
That feedback would generally take the form of Remaining Work

 

[MartynF]

OK Thank you again.

Fundamentally we are using the wrong tool for the job then.
/sadface

PS is not a resource managment tool in the sense I need because it does not
allow for reactive work i.e a variable amount of effort over a fixed period
of time. It assumes all such work is administrative time but management and
users do not see it like that - it is still productive work just not project
work. I may estimate they will spend 25% of their time commitment in a
month, which project says is therefore 10 hours of work. But I cannot exceed
this without the task marking complete.
I can't fix units because I do not want the duration to change - that is
what is fixed.
I can't tell users to update remaining work because there is none - or
rather there may be or may not be but nobody knows yet.

So its looking at 3rd party tools then but that won't go down well in a
public sector organization.

M

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

Speaking as an ex-ITIL instructor that used to work with a number of state
government agencies, public universities, military IT support organizations,
etc. there's really no substitute for a good relational database to manage
help desk tickets to which employees can log issues and track time against
issues - reactively.

Now, there are ways to tie something like that to a project management system,
but I don't think anyone would claim a project management system is appropriate
for doing that kind of work.

The easiest thing I've seen is to just add a help desk webpart to the same
page as My Timesheet. Then you can enter time as appropriate in either of
the interfaces. It's a bit kludgey, but adequate for the public sector.

- Andrew Lavinsky
Blog: http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/epm

 

[Gary L. Chefetz]

Martyn:

When you setup your admin tasks, set an actual start date on the task. this
will anchor the start. After that, you need to add remaining work to tasks
where resources consume the allotted work, or, as you have discovered, the
task will become complete and the duration may change. Conversely, if you
allocate a lot of work and the resources report very little, over time, the
durations can become extended. The changing durations should not bother you,
as you're modeling something that isn't real to begin with. This is
something you need to learn to manage. Hundreds, if not thousands of
organizations are using the tool successfully for this type of tracking.

 

[DogLBer]

Let me chime in with my observations. We have a Fixed Duration project with a
Duration set for one yearwhich we use to report Admin time. We are seeing the
similiar results as reported here. Start, Duration and Finish change
sporatically with each update. At least one of those three attributes should
hold constant. We have entered a case with MS. They have confirmed our
results and are working on a fix. At least thats what they say. However since
we entered the case in Feb and we haven't seen anything yet I am beginning to
question the validitity of their statements.