Tracking non-project administration time (vacation, sick, training, etc.)

J

Jack Kohn

I'd like to poll the group and the experts about how to best handle
our need to track team members' non-project-related time.

When I say "non-project-related," I am referring to things like sick
time, vacation time, training time, jury duty, etc.

We, of course, need to plan for this time. We make the assumiption it
accounts for 20% off the top of schedules as overhead. We have done
that by setting our Standard enterprise calendar to 7 hrs/day and 35
hrs/week.

We would also like to track non-project-related time with some degree
of detail looking backwards. That is, we like to be able to track that
person X spent four-days at training; a development project fell
behind due to sick time, etc. Throwing it all in Project's non-project
time won't give us the granularity we want.

So, we have set up "General Administration" projects for each group
with tasks for each bucket of time to track. We have tasked the PMs
with inputting non-project-related time for their staff. (We are
currently piloting Project 2002 Pro and Server.)

Now comes our uncertainty: Initially, we thought we'd use the options
to import non-working time from Outlook, or have team members report
schedule changes/non-working time via PWA. But, if we're having
managers account for people's non-project-realted time in the General
Administration projects, won't adding non-working time to their
schedules cause "double-dipping" as far as a person's availability?

It seems like we should forget importing non-working time from
Outlook/PWA and just use tasks in the Gen Admin project.

By the way, the explanation on p.216-217 of Gary Chefetz's book gave
us some good insight that we might be making a mistake here (I think!)
and also gave us a clue about using "demand" resource assignments
here.

Also - we plan to move to Project 2003, which I hear will handle Gen
Admin tasks much better. How will our scenarios change in 2003?

Any advice? Thanks in advance.

-jmk
 
S

Steve House

Just commenting on one of your points. I'd suggest you re-think the notion
of adjusting your Standard calendar to correct for overhead. I'm a believer
that the calendar should reflect the times and dates a resource is scheduled
to be on the property. The problem is insuring you are comparing apples to
apples and oranges to oranges when viewing project data over time. I'm
estimating how long it will take to wax the widgets in this year's big
project. When I look at last years project I see it took three weeks. But
that three weeks already includes the overhead. If I put it into this
year's project without backing out that overhead, I'll give it a double
weighting in the estimates for this time around. Now, it is a fairly safe
assumption that the incidence of sick call, jury duty, etc this year is
going to be similar to last years. So if it took 3 weeks last year it will
probably take 3 weeks this year and what portion of that time is overhead is
not really relevant to the estimate of the duration. It's saying that if I
assign someone to the task 100% this year it will take the same time as it
did when I assigned him 100% last year - the fact that he really is only
productive 90% of that time isn't important. As long as the productivity is
about the same from year to year, we get a reliable estimate of what it will
take to complete our project. IMHO, trying to adjust the calendar for
overheard paradoxically gives us a less reliable measure than simply
ignoring it.
 
G

Gary Chefetz [MVP]

Jack:

I wish I had the time to write a chapter on this topic, although I do
mention it repeatedly in the sense that it's integral to the much broader
topic of determining how your organization wants to track and view resource
availability. What matters most is that whatever you elect to do, you do it
consistently and it meets your organization's availability tracking
requirements.

I agree with Steve that you should not adust your official working calendar
to account for overhead. To predictively depict overhead/administrative
tasks at the level of detail you desire, you must show it on a plan, or use
the built-in non-working time categories. The former approach is much more
powerful, but more to manage.
 
J

Jack Kohn

Steve / Gary -

Thanks for your replies. They are thought-provoking and we'll review
how we have set up our calendar.

We've now got "Change Working Time" reflecting (actual) 7.5 hr days,
but our Tools > Options > Calendar settings for the Enterprise Global
is using 7.0 hr/days & 35 hr/weeks. After pondering your comments, it
seems obvious this is wrong: we have to make them sync up. Gary makes
this point very effectively in his book. I'm having a "how did we miss
that?" moment right now.

It also sounds like we'll be best off tracking non-project-related
work solely through project assignments. We should NOT have people
change resource calendars to reflect out-of-office days, etc.

And, after reading Dale Howard's posts (header: "Tasks in
Administrative Projects") it looks like this strategy will migrate
effectively to the Admin tasks available in Project 2003.

Thanks again for your very helpful feedback.

-jmk
 
M

Margaret Gaster

-----Original Message-----
Steve / Gary -

Thanks for your replies. They are thought-provoking and we'll review
how we have set up our calendar.

We've now got "Change Working Time" reflecting (actual) 7.5 hr days,
but our Tools > Options > Calendar settings for the Enterprise Global
is using 7.0 hr/days & 35 hr/weeks. After pondering your comments, it
seems obvious this is wrong: we have to make them sync up. Gary makes
this point very effectively in his book. I'm having a "how did we miss
that?" moment right now.

It also sounds like we'll be best off tracking non- project-related
work solely through project assignments. We should NOT have people
change resource calendars to reflect out-of-office days, etc.

And, after reading Dale Howard's posts (header: "Tasks in
Administrative Projects") it looks like this strategy will migrate
effectively to the Admin tasks available in Project 2003.

Thanks again for your very helpful feedback.

-jmk




.
What about holidays? Do you suggest we use the built-in
Click to expand...
non-working time categories for holidays, or have each
manager plan for that time?
 
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