Ideally, MS Project file should contain each and every project activity to give the correct size of the project in terms of duration/efforts. There should not be any activity in a project not listed in the file, rather the reverse - all activities to be performed in a project should be listed in the file. A project has many very specific duration activities (viz. Coding - for 3 weeks, Testing - for 4 weeks, etc.) which are very easy to plan as they have fixed time, dependency, etc. in which it is to be executed. But there are activities like Issue Resolution, Communication, etc. which cannot be specifically planned. They happen either for some time in a day or as and when required. In our project, we do time booking in MS Project through MS Project Central. This mandatorily requires all tasks to be listed in the MS Project file for which time is to be booked. How should one plan these general activities is MS Project? Saving Changes...
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If/when you get other responses, you will discover that there are many approaches to handling this in MS project... and my guess is that there will be those who will agree or disagree with the rationale for wanting to track work that way in the first place. Since you asked *how* to do it (and not *if* you should)... here is just ONE approach.. there are others. Hopefully someone will post something that I can use too...
I create a task in MS project using Fixed Units, and assign a person to that task for a fixed percent. For example, if a person spends 4 hours a week in general meetings.. then assign that person to the task at 10% and ensure that number of hours are sufficient to take the duration of the task to the end of the project. For all other tasks, assign them at 90% (or 45/45, or 30/30/30.. depending on the level of multitasking you want). Assign the "general" task at the highest priority... (i.e. the meetings may happen whether you want them to or not). The Resource Leveler will schedule 4 hours per week for the overhead task, will bypass any vacations you may have marked on the calendar and then allocate the other "real" tasks within the remaining 90%.
Somebody... please share something even better!!! (grin) Saving Changes...
Another interesting conundrum! I like Rich Eaton's solution. It solves a lot of the problems and is fairly easy to implement. I have some suggested improvements.
Your schedule is probably broken up into high level stages (Initiate, Plan, Execute and Close or Plan, Analyse, Design, Construct and Implement or whatever). I suggest that each of these stages has their own set of "Overhead" tasks. I like to group them under a summary task of "Stage Control." The advantage in this approach is that when a stage ends, all the work ends, even the overhead work. Also, it helps in estimating. It's easier and more accurate to estimate several smaller tasks then one large one (That goes the entire length of the project). In addition, my experience shows that issues resolution is rarely a big effort at the beginning of a project, and has more impact on the later stages. To that end, I recommend that the first stages be planned with 5% overhead and the later stages with more (15% or more).
Next, be sure you have ALL overhead tasks defined. Issues resolution is one, but there is also Risk Management, Quality Management, Human Resource Management, and overall change control. There are probably more, depending on your environment.
Try to focus your Project Manager or team leaders on these tasks. That should be their main responsibility. The "workers" should be focused on the product deliverables. They may be called on as experts to resolve issues or something, but that should be a small part of their job. To that end, I would assign my PM at 90% to the Stage Control tasks, and 10% on other tasks. I'd reverse that percentage for "workers."
I think that would improve both the ability to control the overhead tasks (they tend to become black holes gobbling up a lot of the projects time) and make it easier to estimate and plan the work.
