Hi to all,
I have to monitor & manage resource assignments of a team of software development (about 15 person).
Those persons could be allocated to several project (also overlapping) (about 20 project).
Each project manager (of each project) first specifies in the plan general resource allocation (for example : ARCHITECT, PROGRAMMER, etc...) (to tasks and work).
Then I have to manage that request and manage resource availability of "real persone" resource team member.
After that planning, me and the Team Leader, allocate resource of team on projects and we communicate to PM the name of resource.
Those request are indipendent, not syncronous and steady (ongoing, perpetual...).
But...
- Each PM have a indipendent microsoft project plan (not integrated in a project server) where specify general resource (after our allocation...he will change general name in the plan with real world name of programmer, or architect, ....).
I would like automatize as more as possible this process.
I'm thinking to use report from each plan...export in cubes, importing cube in excel...agreggate the excels...ufff..I think that is an error-prone procedure.
In the procedure - obviously - is necessary to foresee and consider also future modification to each plans
If I understood correctly you are responsible for assigning resources [people with specific competencies] to projects. These resources can be working on more than one project at any one time.
My thinking is:
1. Do you have an establlished Resource Management framework [this should be made up with you and other senior managers] where it discusses lets say every 2 weeks all the projects in the pipeline and for future demand resource planning. This will enable you to see the whole picture determining what resources with the correct competencies are available vs demand and whether you will need to recruit any contructural staff for project assignments or not as a temporary measure. Also the request for resources received from Project Managers should clearly state the duration timescales they think is required to their projects, this way, resources and time is managed and therefore more than one resource can be assigned to more than one project. This needs to be recorded using a method of which people including names and departments have been assigned and are currently working on projects to determine if there is any spare capacity, which resources are likely to be available within one month prior to project closure and which projects in the pipeline will require resources etc. This process is key and can be modified to suit your organisation.
2. The Project Manager and resource must be formally notified from Resource Management the assignment specifying the duration, i.e. start date and end date. This could mean either full time because the project demands it and it is justified or it can be 2 days per week or 3 days per week etc again depending on the project in question.
3.Each Project Manager is responsible for producing their own Project Plans with resource allocation, this should be treated separately to your Resource Management plan as the two are distinctly different.
4. Resource Management must at all times be fully aware of resource availability from up coming project closures. An automated tool can be used and there are systems on the market specifically for resource allocation that flag up resource availability.
5. If the company does not want to automate for what ever reasons then depending on the size of your organisation other methods can be applied even using excell spreadsheet that will allow you manage and track progress providing . Resource Management is a proactive role and needs to be on top of things to make good use of resource in a timely way.
Daniele - it would be helpful to know the resolution you need to plan to. Do you need to track and plan by the hour, day, week? Also, are the team members expected to multitask and address issues from more than one project during the course of a workday?
As a quick and dirty solution, if your projects are not overly complex and were to have a project id as a task prefix or sufix you could cut and paste them into a single project file and use the Resource Form view to see conflicts. Saving Changes...
George JucanManaging Partner| Organizational Perfomance Enablers NetworkWoodbridge, Ontario, Canada
Hi Daniele,
The easiest solution I can think of is to set up a global/shared resource pool in a shared folder, and have each project manager link their own project plan to the resource pool. Briefly, you can create a .mpp with no tasks but with all resources defined (individuals, not roles). Place it in a shared folder, and each project manager can include those resources from the pool in own .mpp. Not only that you will not have to type it again, but each PM can see the resources allocation across all other projects, even without having direct access at the .mpp files of other PMs.
Hope it helps,
George Jucan
Saving Changes...
Anonymous
I’ve used George Jucan’s approach in the past and found it pretty effective. It takes a little extra discipline and structure from your project managers. I might add that you can then also create project plans that reflect overhead, or maintenance, or other ongoing activities that take away from project availability. Just create a project plan that has the overhead work in it, and allocate enough hours to those tasks to extend their duration out as far as you need, and use the Resource Pool for those overhead plans as well. (You have to periodically add more hours to the overhead projects as the hours are consumed). Beyond that, you have explained exactly why many organizations have implemented tools like MS Project Server. It takes George’s approach and my additional thoughts to the next level so that you can get nice graphs and OLAP cubes showing who is working on what project/activity, and for how long Saving Changes...
Vladimir LiberzonR&D Director| Spider Project TeamMoscow, Russian Federation
What you discuss is called Skill scheduling and is supported by Spider Project software.
Using this package you define different resource Skills (ARCHITECT, PROGRAMMER, etc...) and create a list of resources that have corresponding skills. Each resource can have its own productivity (production rate).
Then assign to tasks not resources but skills.
Calculating resource constrained scheduling Spider Project assigns resources basing on their skills and user-defined priorities. These prioriries define the way the package selects resources from the Skill list. Resource priorities may be defined manually or as some criterion - like cost or duration minimization.
In portfolio scheduling it is necessary to define project priorities to avoid multi-tasking.
You can try this approach using Spider Project Demo that can be downloaded http://www.spiderproject.ru/demo_e.php Best Regards,
Vladimir Saving Changes...
