Hopefully I'm not breaching any discussion forum etiquette here!
Can anyone recommend a good project planning tool for a small (6 people) internal development team please? We've got access to MS Project 2010 & server if suitable (via MS Partnership), but will happily consider other programs. (We are 100% MS Windows based and use MS Exchange 2007.)
We just want to be able to manage a number of concurrent dev projects across a number of team members, allowing all to have access to tasks and be able to update task status.
Ideally, we'd like to specify people and their skillsets. Then have the software consider all projects' requirements and deadlines and recommend who to deploy where to achieve the most efficient workload and hit the deadlines. We tried this with MS Project 2007 Server, but it couldn't do it and Microsoft confirmed that it wasn't possible in their app. FOr info, here is the problem that we hit with MS Project 2007 Enterprise Server...
* Create a new project with 3 linked tasks
* Build a team for the project - adding all 6 enterprise resources
- all 6 resources all have the "Internal Testing" custom field setting
* Assign the resource "ADAM" for all 3 tasks
* Select the same Skill "Internal Testing" (from a enterprise custom field lookup table) for each task
* Save and publish the project
* Repeat the above 5 steps for 3 other projects.
* In total I now have 4 exactly the same projects.
* Open all 4 projects within MS Project Professional 2007using the PWA website
* Run the Substitution Resource Wizard
* It will attempt to replace"ADAM" with "BRIAN" on 2 of the projects
- this means that "ADAM" is double booked on Project 1 and Project 2
- this means that "BRIAN" is double booked on Project 3 and Project 4
* Why did it not use some of the other 4 resources who all have the necessary skill?
- It is logically possible to have 4 resources simultaneously allocated to ensure that there are no double bookings.
Thanks for any help/advice/comments. Saving Changes...
Jiju NairSenior Manager| Fannie MaeReston, Va, United States
Gordon, From your post, it appears as if you are looking for a strong resource management tool for projects. Planview's Project Portfolio Management tool might be a good fit for your requirements.
In your example with the MS Project, were the Max Units defined to be 100% for all the 6 resources? Also, were any constraints set for the resource calendar for some resources? Saving Changes...
