What's the Best Way to Track Hours for On Going Service

[David]

Hello,

I know Project is mostly used for tracking projects with a begining and an
end, managing resources etc. to meet deadlines.

But I want to use Project Server 2007 to track the time my employees spend
working with each client. The service they give the client is on-going and
doesn't have a known ending.

What would be the best methodology to go about this?


Thanks!

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

David --

One approach would be to create a project called Client Work with a task for
each client. Name each task something like Client Work for XXX Client.
Make the Duration of each task a long Duration, such as 6 months or a year.
Assign the resources to each task who will actually do work for the client
and set the Units for each resource to approximate how much work you
estimate each resource will do for the client. As your resources enter
Actual Work on each client task, ask them to pay special attention to the
Remaining Work on the task. If the Remaining Work hits 0 hours, and the
resource knows he/she has more client work yet to do, then ask the resource
to increase the Remaining Work appropriately. Just one idea. Hope this
helps.

 

[Ziebarth]

I actually use project to do this on what I call Maintenance and Support. I
have a large scale project for each team termed maintenance and support,
based on a team member or group of team members previous hours I make a rough
estimate at thier monthly hours and go from there. we have found this very
effective at capturing that information request sort of time. Also we
maintain Quarterly projects for those tasks that will take place with over a
quarter and might involve multiple teams.