I have a number of project running simultaneously and I'm trying to setup MS Project so that I can view a calendar showing the staffing resources and the related resulting costs. I understand that the enterprise version will permit this however I'm using the stand alone version of MS Project 2003. Any suggestions? I need a way to identify overlapping and proposed changes to an individuals schedule will have to related monthly projected costs. Saving Changes...
You can get cross-project staffing views using "resource pools". It is a little cumbersome to set up, so I will not give the details here. The MS Project Help files give the details.
I know the resource pool file will give you a cross-project view of who is working on what, and at what time. I am not sure if it will give you complete cost information. You will need to set up your resource pool carefully and experiment a bit.
From having worked with MS Project and resource pools in the past, I would guess that you could track the whole, all-in costs of all resources in the resource pool, but it might not add up to the complete project costs. Some costs might be missing, like:
* Fixed costs attached to tasks
* Resources that are in the individual project files and NOT the resource pool
You may need to pull individual project file information into a spreadsheet to get all the reports you want. You should be able to create these reports, though, even without the MS Project Server product. It might be a little more cumbersome, but it is possible to do a lot with the desktop version of MS Project. Saving Changes...
Andrea Toponi, PMPCEO & Co-founder| Allinance srlPregnana Milanese, Milano, Italy
I will add 1 more concern in using shared resource pool with project 2003. Once you have build this pool (tipically a real '.mpp' file with only resources information in resouce sheet view) and set it up to be shared along your projects and to be adopted as 'preferred pool' in these projects, you will not be able any more to create any local resources in your project files. You can verify that during the 'save' action: local resources will be deleted.
ciao!
andrea Saving Changes...
