Hi,

Microsoft [Project Web Access] Timesheet does not fit my company way of working. We do not want to rely on people updating their timesheet in order to get an estimated %work complete for each project. In addition, we do not want to force project managers to micro-manage resource availability. Dealing with leveling resources is nice in an ideal world where you have one project to manage and it takes 2 years.

In my company we have 15 small 3 - 6 months projects that are running in parallel. In addition, people are engaged with their recurring daily work. We find it impossible to get a real picture of our resource availability.

Any Ideas?

R S:

My company is looking at eProject "Dynamic Applications" as a possible way to capture timesheet (i.e. ticketed word orders) reporting and tracking.

This would be a somewhat more automated version of the Excel suggestion by Vinod.

Perhaps I can update you when we progress on this potential solution.

When I work with companies on this subject, I usually find they ask one thing when they mean another. What is availability?  It is really how much time people have to work on other tasks.  I would rather know resource utilization or resource application. 

If I were to create a spreadsheet of all of your projects and let each PM fill in their best estimate of hours per week they were going to utilize each resource; and then asked each team member to put in their commitments including seeing the doctor, going to their kids sporting event, etc., I would have a good idea of what time a person had available.  If I were able to know the following, I can make many, well-informed management decisions:

Hi All,

I assume when you said Microsoft PWA that your company is using EPM. From my expereicne (I'm the Lead EPM Consultant at my company) I'm sure that you can use EPM timesheet and resource mangement to your likeing. its just matter of what and how to use it.

One solution can be to have a resource manager. The resource manager would be responsible to aasigning resources to projects and hence, he would be responsible for their avialability.

Another solution would be (if your are using EPM) is to use Administrative template along with the project itself to track the resources vacations, seeing a doctor, training, etc.. (off project time). This way when you check the resource availability you will have all the variables.

What John mentioned in his comment is actually what MS EPM does. After creating the project plan and saving a baseline for it, you can always have baseline (planned) and actual task duration for each resource. add administrative tasks to it and you will get the full resource time on daily bases :)

I'm sorry if I sound like I'm marketing a product but its something I'm pretty good at and know of ;)

Sam,

I was also an EPM/PWA consultant for a while. While you can do some nice timesheet functions, I think RS was asking for more.  RS, can you post your Excel spreadsheet somewhere and put a link in your reply or send it directly to me at jfilicetti@eproject.com and I will see if I can help you with a Dyanmic App or other solution. 

EPM and PWA do a great job with timesheet and time tracking.  eProject also does a great job.  I had one client wanting to use the check complete function of eProject to just mark tasks complete.  It was a great solution and they didn't care about tracking time. 

RS, if I knew your requirements better, I could help with a solution. 

I was just throwing my 2 cents :)

with coding anything can be done.

In my part of the world only EPM and Primavera exist, and EPM is cheaper solution compared to the states.

Again I'm not marketing anything :)

RS,

Please send me your full requirements and I will either provide a simple solution or give this to the Professional Services team for a more in-depth analysis and maybe some PS time to solve.  eProject has a ton of capability most people don't use. 

I also use MS Project Web Access 2003.

We selected the middle option for timesheets when we set up PWA.

Option 1- Percent of work complete

Option 2 - Acutal work - we use Actual Start, Actual Finish, Actual Work and Remaining Work.

Option 3 - Hours of work per day or week.

We are still low on the learning curve for all our resources, still making sure that everyone uses all four fields, but we still like our choice.

Gil,

Any entry in a dynamic or standard application can be linked to another application. 

You can create data in a dynamic app and link it to a task in the task list.  You can also import any data created in a spreadsheet into a dynamic app (you will need to Save As a CSV file first) and when complete, export it to a spreadsheet. 

The key thing I have found with eProject is if you can white board or conceptualize the solution on a white board or pad of paper, you can create the solution using aspects of eProject...without spending money on consulting. 

Any word on how eProject can get managers and time trackers to submit their times to begin with…  That is the first obstacle we run into. 

Ben,

I will share a trick I used with earlier versions.  I used to have eProject up on the projector for status meetings.  I would go through issues and tasks to be sure we were up to date.  When people saw the impact to the project by not updating their tasks, they would get going due to peer pressure. 

Depending on how you have your projects set up and what your expectations are, for one team, I just had them us the "Check box" to show the task was complete.  Then I used workflow to notify the next task owner to start.  I didn't worry about % complete or hours to get people used to updating tasks. 

Another trick is to use is to create project teams and let individuals lead a team for a particular focus area of the project.  As they see the need for feedback, they will become much more consciencious about their time entry.  Raising awareness for the need and how the resultatnt information is used is the best way to get buy in.  If I am not getting feedback, it usually returns to me because I haven't given the information on why it is important.  Knowledge is power!

In our org I have found that the timesheet function in eProject is more than enough for tracking % complete and actual hours against project tasks. We use a shared resource pool and the one thing I am having difficulty fitting into the eProject time tracking is hours spent doing things like R&D and support etc. These are not specific project tasks but I would like to have them tracked and have them roll up into a persons utilization stats.

I'm getting the feeling that this is outside the box that eProject was designed to do and there is not really an uncomplicated way of doing this.

Any suggestions?

Jeff

Jeff,

Just like with other solutions, I would create an operations or maintenance project and assign all team members to the "Support" task.  You can make it a small % per week for the whole year.  When they do support activities, the record their hours and specifics in the comments area.  All your time is tracked in this way.

We currently have these meetings showing an Excel spreadsheet with the times (or lack there of).  Ideally, the layout and simplicity of eProject will better communicate the need to report times.  This is the first year for much of the capacity planning, as we mature we will hopefully develop that sense of peer pressure you mentioned.