Using Project for a Time & Materials contract

[Brown]

I have been using Project to manage "tangible" contracts for years. I have
not needed all the features and capabilities available, so I am not fully
knowledgable about all it's capabilities. I am using Project 2003 Premium,
we are soon going to add Project server.
I have been hit with a requirement to track and manage a Time and Materials
contract using Project. Can anyone wind me up and point me to a
reference/course/guru that can enlighten me as to how to do this. I can't
seem to get the tasks set up with multiple people working multiple tasks,
for a fixed length of time. (Some full time, some not, etc.).

Brown

 

[davegb]

Without knowing more specifics, it's hard to know what you're looking
for. I'm not sure where I'd schedule a T&M contract any different than
a lump sum job. Certainly there are cost factors in doing T&M that
complicate the cost tracking some. Don't know of any references what
would help specifically with this. And the gurus you seek are the
experts here. If you want to get direct help on a regular basis, I
suggest you pick one of the people who contribute here and hire them.
Many of us are private consultants.
Best of luck whatever you decide.

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

Just as an aside, a project consisting of tasks with a fixed length of time
seem to be exactly the opposite of a Time and Materials contract to me.
When I work time and materials I don't know in advance how long it will
take, so the bid is "You agree to pay me $XX per day for however long it
takes until it is done. We agree it's done when YY deliverable has been
created, tested, and accepted. For planning purposes I estimate that it
will take 6 months +/- 15% to produce that deliverable."

The schedule and budget that is the standard way of setting up a project in
MSP is almost a textbook example of a time and materials contract.
Hopefully you create the project plan BEFORE the contract is negotiated
since it provides the basis of the negotiation and estimates. In a
signifigant project, the planning phase is itself a major phase of the
project and if you're doing this on the behalf of a client preparation of
the plan may itself be a billable service to the client, perhaps even a
separate deliverable from the project per se. After all, how can you
possibly bid on a project to produce new line of Wonder Widgets without
having a detailed product specification of those widgets and that may
involve a lot of research which you certainly wouldn't do for free. Once
you have the specifications in hand, you can analyse them as to the specific
work activities that will be required and estimate how long each part of it
will take, again, in an extensive project something you might not choose to
do for free. Even if preparing a preliminary plan is not going to be
billable, how can the contract be negotiated from any rational basis if your
side doesn't know ahead of time what the project is likely to cost and how
long it's likely to take? Coming up with those numbers is part of why we do
the plan in the first place.

You say you are having trouble getting the tasks set up. That covers a LOT
of territory <grin>. Where specifically are you running into your problems?

 

[Brown]

These are task orders on contracts that call for providing something like -
two systems analysts, one programmer and admin support with a period of
performance that runs to a fixed calendar date, no specific tangible
deliverable. One of the analysts, the programmer and the admin support have
hours to cover the PoP, the other analyst has small ptos of hours that are
split into specific task periods. I can get these programmed in. There are
task leader hours ancontract admin that run around 2 hours a week, I have
not been able to get these set up. Another task has a fixed PoP but two
people that are "part time and will only work as required, need to spread
their hours somehow.

Thanks
Brown

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

What exactly are you trying to track by entering this information in Project
and why? Project's primary focus is on planning, scheduling, and costing
the work required to achieve a certain concrete objective and only
coincidently paying attention to the people doing the work in so far as
their availability, etc, impacts the work schedule. It doesn't track
employee hours per se except as they impact the progress and cost of the
tasks those hours are applied against. MSP is really not very good for
staff scheduling, time tracking, staff budgeting, or time-and-billing
applications even though it does incorporate certain elements of those
management activities as part of its project progress monitoring functions.

That being said, for the tasks you are having trouble with, my first thought
is to enter them with a duration that takes them to the end of their
contracted period. I'd then split the screen and in the bottom window I'd
make the task fixed duration and non-effort driven. If your resources work
a 40 hour week, an estimated work requirement of a couple of hours a week
translates to 2/40 or about 5% assignment units. Assigning at that level
gives a workload distributed evenly over the task that averages 2 hours a
week - Whether it's 1 hour this week and 3 hours next week or 2 hours all on
Tuesday or 30 minutes a day for the whole week can be taken into account
when you put in actuals later on. The actual distribution of the work
doesn't really affect either the total cost or overall schedule of the task
in question and so is of no consequence. For the last task, you'll just
have to make an educated guess as to what work will be required of those two
part-timers and use that as the basis of your assignment.

Remember, in any project plan it's only an estimate until you do the work.
If it works out your resources end up doing more or less work than your
Project file calls for, well, that's why it's called "estimating" rather
than "exacting." <grin> Some estimates turn out better than others but they
all are guesses with some degree of uncertainty until the planned events
actually happen.

What are you referring to with the abbrevs "PoP" and "PoS"?

HTH
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

 

[Brown]

Basically, my boss wants the hours in the task laid out in Project with cost
associated, in order to have a visual plan to look at. I proposed using an
XL spread and Access database, but he insists it will work better in MSP.
My approach was to use the task order as a task with a fixed duration, and
each staff member as a subtask with a resource that equates to that
individual (some folks work at diferent rates on different tasks, so I have
to have multiple resources for them). Is ther a better approach?

Brown

 

[Brown]

Also - PoP is period of performance, ptos is my fat fingers trying to type
pot (sorry)
Brown

 

[Steve House [MVP]]

I suspect your present strategy is eventually going to paint you into a
corner. You might be able to get it to work but I'm skeptical. Summary
tasks and subtasks detail out the physical activities involved in completing
the project and are not a breakdown of the people doing them. A subtask
represents one of a set of activities that goes into whatever project phase
or module is summarized by the summary task. There certainly may be a
one-to-one correspondence of a task and the resource doing it, in fact that
is one of the ways you can decide how far to decompose the project's work,
but the subtask represents the thing they're doing and not the resource that
is doing it. The position of the taskbar in the Gantt chart represents
when they're doing that particular thing and shows its start and the end,
after which the resource goes home never to do that same task again. He
might repeatedly do other identical tasks with the same name but each
occurance is a different task. MS Project's primary focus is on scheduling
when those various tasks will occur within the overall scope of the project.

Your multiple rates are easily handled with the rate information in the
resource definitions without resorting to creating multiple occurances of
the same resource. After you put in Joe Blow in the resource sheet, double
click on the ID number to the left of his name. In the Resource Information
page that opens there's a costs tab. Clicking that will show you 5 rate
tables designated A through E. When you asssign Joe to a task, you can
switch to the resource usage view and see the day-by-day workhours spread
out on the timeline. It will show the resource name and indented under it
will be the tasks to which he is assigned. Clicking on the ID number
associated with the specific task assignment gives you a details page that
includes which rate table for the resource that should be applied to that
task. In my classes I use an example of filming a movie - Betty's basic
function on our crew is as an assistant director but she can also serve as a
camera operator if needed. Her rate table A shows a standard rate of $25
per hr while rate table B shows $20 per hour. The task is "Shoot scene 3"
and Betty is assigned as one of the resources. If she's acting as an AD,
her assignment details show using rate table A. If she's acting as a second
camera operator, the assignment details will set to show rate table B is to
be applied.

A project is defined as a "time limited undertaking producing a unique
product or result." So far you haven't mentioned having done any analysis
of what that result is to be or breaking down the work into the specific
tasks required to achieve it. From what you've said so far, you don't
really have a project at all. You mentioned, for example, "two people that
are part time and will only work as required, need to spread their hours
somehow." But what work exactly will they do, what will trigger their being
required, how will you know when that requirement has begun or ended? You
need to explicitly define and quantify those variables before you can even
begin to schedule and distribute their work.

As I said before, if you're contracted just to supply manpower for 6 months,
without a clearly defined deliverable resulting from their work, and you're
looking to track their work schedules and report on contract hours by
activity consumed over time, MS Project or any project management
application for that matter is a less than optimal choice.

HTH
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs

 

[Brown]

Steve,
Thanks for the info. Now to play with it some and see if I can molify my
boss.

Brown