THOMAS HOBBSManaging Director| Myers Media GroupSan Diego, Ca, United States
I'm working with my finance and HR departments to roll-out a timecharging system so that we can start capturing project costs (in terms of labor hours and dollars), and I need to set up the taxonomy for the four-digit project codes against which specific groups will being recording their time.
Because we're limited to a four-digit (numeric) system, I want to set up a hierarchy or structure that's scalable (meaning, we won't run out of numbers for new projects within a certain classification) as well as provides some clear information about the projects for reporting.
I'm considering, for example, that the first digit represent the platform - i.e., feature phone projects start with "1" as the first of four digits, and smartphone application projects' codes lead with a "3" in the first spot, and "overhead" (non-project specific work) is charged to a code that begins with a zero, etc. This would allow me to have up to 999 subtypes or variants within each.
Does anyone have any specific experience with this that they'd like to share? Any pitfalls or gotcha's? Obviously, I can't go into too much detail about specific projects, but I also know that there are probably a million questions coming up from my admittedly-ambiguous problem statement.
Thanks in advance for any tips or suggestions!
Tom Saving Changes...
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Mark KennyHippo Solutions Founder, Catalyst for Change in Project Management Teams| Hippo SolutionsFranklin, Tn, United States
Whew, that's restrictive. It seems to me that even with 999 possibilities, you would eventually run out (unless you are not talking about that many projects). What happens if you have more than 9 classifications some day?
But given your restrictions, I cannot think of another hierarchy that would work any better than the one you laid out. It sounds like you are making good with what you are given.
The only suggestion would be to have a second field that represents the classification. For example, Project Classification is a 3 digit field to represent feature phone projects, etc. Project Code is your 4 digit field. The project would be identified by its Project Classification and Project Code together. That would provide a lot more flexibility and still provide reporting capabilities. But I'm guessing that's not an option either?
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THOMAS HOBBSManaging Director| Myers Media GroupSan Diego, Ca, United States
Hi Mark,
Thanks for your post! Unfortunately, you're correct - my timecharging system restricts me to a four-digit code.
Fortunately, I think it'd take a long time to "run out" of available numbers for a given platform, as we don't release that many new phones in a year - put it this way, we're currently releasing the fourth generation of our feature phone (flip phone) in about seven years of operation. Granted, we're likely to roll out more value-added services, smartphone applications, and web-based, infrastructure, or 'other' projects in a given year, but after pondering over the weekend, I think the taxonomy I've started will probably work.
Thanks again for reading and posting, I appreciate it!
Tom Saving Changes...
Elizabeth HarrinDirector| RebelsGuideToPM.comLondon, England, United Kingdom
Is it more important that the project cost type i.e. line item such as 'planning', 'meetings', 'travel' are captured or the project type, such as 'feature phone', 'overhead' etc? In our system, it's more important to be able to pull reports on the line items (travel is always the top spend, unfortunately) and we just use sequential, 4-digit numbers to identify the project. Everyone knows what project 2486 is, for example, we've just learned the codes. We did use 4-digit numbers beginning 2 for big projects and 6 for pieces of work lasting less than a week, but we've scrapped that now. In fact, we've pretty much scrapped time recording completely, but that's another story! Saving Changes...
Mark KennyHippo Solutions Founder, Catalyst for Change in Project Management Teams| Hippo SolutionsFranklin, Tn, United States
Tom - you're welcome. It sounds like its a case where you have something that works, why make it overly complicated. Good luck! Saving Changes...
Wai Mun KooPMO Director| Intergraph PP&MSingapore, Singapore
You might want to consider matching your project code up with a year indicator for the start date of your project so that you will be able to recycle and have a fresh new 999 subtypes to be used each year. Saving Changes...
Shoaib AhmedProgram Manager| Eagle Technology GroupWellington, New Zealand
In my experience artificial numbering systems fall flat too quickly, as you cannot accommodate real business process thinking in such an environment. You are also relying on people correctly doing data entry to get some intelligence out of it. If you have more than one person doing it, you will definitely get diverging codes. If the system you are using is imposing artificial restrictions, then it is a good time to think if this is what you should be going with. Are you sure there isn't a way where you can do classification on types and not have to interpret this? Saving Changes...
THOMAS HOBBSManaging Director| Myers Media GroupSan Diego, Ca, United States
Wai Mun - good thinking, that may work.
Shoaib - I think there's some confusion... there won't be "diverging codes" - these are 4-digit codes for project charge numbers in our timekeeping system. People will be looking at a web interface and entering time spent on a given project. The interface will have project names and descriptions, too - I'm just trying to come up with the taxonomy for set-up that makes sense. Heck, I could just run them sequentially starting at "0001" and go from there, but that wouldn't provide me any added value or make life any easier for anyone.
Elizabeth - scrapped time recording, huh? Sounds like a blog-post-worthy tale! You've piqued my curiosity now, as to how you handle monitoring/controlling costs... hmmm... Saving Changes...
Elizabeth HarrinDirector| RebelsGuideToPM.comLondon, England, United Kingdom
Thomas, we don't handle monitoring and controlling costs. We only run internal projects and the team are considered an overhead, a cost of running the project. So while I asked for timesheets for a while, it was really to see how much support/business as usual stuff they were doing prior to handing the project over to the operational team. If all you are doing is moving wooden dollars between one department and another, what's the point of timesheets? Saving Changes...
