Re: Using Project for a Time & Materials contract

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From: Steve House [MVP] (sjhouse.remove.this_at_to.send.hotmail.com)
Date: 01/30/05 

Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2005 08:36:36 -0500

What exactly are you trying to track by entering this information in Project
and why? Project's primary focus is on planning, scheduling, and costing
the work required to achieve a certain concrete objective and only
coincidently paying attention to the people doing the work in so far as
their availability, etc, impacts the work schedule. It doesn't track
employee hours per se except as they impact the progress and cost of the
tasks those hours are applied against. MSP is really not very good for
staff scheduling, time tracking, staff budgeting, or time-and-billing
applications even though it does incorporate certain elements of those
management activities as part of its project progress monitoring functions.

That being said, for the tasks you are having trouble with, my first thought
is to enter them with a duration that takes them to the end of their
contracted period. I'd then split the screen and in the bottom window I'd
make the task fixed duration and non-effort driven. If your resources work
a 40 hour week, an estimated work requirement of a couple of hours a week
translates to 2/40 or about 5% assignment units. Assigning at that level
gives a workload distributed evenly over the task that averages 2 hours a
week - Whether it's 1 hour this week and 3 hours next week or 2 hours all on
Tuesday or 30 minutes a day for the whole week can be taken into account
when you put in actuals later on. The actual distribution of the work
doesn't really affect either the total cost or overall schedule of the task
in question and so is of no consequence. For the last task, you'll just
have to make an educated guess as to what work will be required of those two
part-timers and use that as the basis of your assignment.

Remember, in any project plan it's only an estimate until you do the work.
If it works out your resources end up doing more or less work than your
Project file calls for, well, that's why it's called "estimating" rather
than "exacting." <grin> Some estimates turn out better than others but they
all are guesses with some degree of uncertainty until the planned events
actually happen.

What are you referring to with the abbrevs "PoP" and "PoS"?

HTH 

-- 
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs
"Brown" <fbrown@knology.net> wrote in message 
news:OD4p6fsBFHA.3376@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
> These are task orders on contracts that call for providing something 
> like - two systems analysts, one programmer and admin support with a 
> period of performance that runs to a fixed calendar date, no specific 
> tangible deliverable.  One of the analysts, the programmer and the admin 
> support have hours to cover the PoP, the other analyst has small ptos of 
> hours that are split into specific task periods.  I can get these 
> programmed in.  There are task leader hours ancontract admin that run 
> around 2 hours a week, I have not been able to get these set up.  Another 
> task has a fixed PoP but two people that are "part time and will only work 
> as required, need to spread their hours somehow.
>
> Thanks
> Brown
>
>
>
> "Steve House [MVP]" <sjhouse.remove.this@to.send.hotmail.com> wrote in 
> message news:uNzOjPlBFHA.1004@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
>> Just as an aside, a project consisting of tasks with a fixed length of 
>> time seem to be exactly the opposite of a Time and Materials contract to 
>> me. When I work time and materials I don't know in advance how long it 
>> will take, so the bid is "You agree to pay me $XX per day for however 
>> long it takes until it is done.  We agree it's done when YY deliverable 
>> has been created, tested, and accepted.  For planning purposes I estimate 
>> that it will take 6 months +/- 15% to produce that deliverable."
>>
>> The schedule and budget that is the standard way of setting up a project 
>> in MSP is almost a textbook example of a time and materials contract. 
>> Hopefully you create the project plan BEFORE the contract is negotiated 
>> since it provides the basis of the negotiation and estimates.  In a 
>> signifigant project, the planning phase is itself a major phase of the 
>> project and if you're doing this on the behalf of a client preparation of 
>> the plan may itself be a billable service to the client, perhaps even a 
>> separate deliverable from the project per se.  After all, how can you 
>> possibly bid on a project to produce new line of Wonder Widgets without 
>> having a detailed product specification of those widgets and that may 
>> involve a lot of research which you certainly wouldn't do for free.  Once 
>> you have the specifications in hand, you can analyse them as to the 
>> specific work activities that will be required and estimate how long each 
>> part of it will take, again, in an extensive project something you might 
>> not choose to do for free.  Even if preparing a preliminary plan is not 
>> going to be billable, how can the contract be negotiated from any 
>> rational basis if your side doesn't know ahead of time what the project 
>> is likely to cost and how long it's likely to take?  Coming up with those 
>> numbers is part of why we do the plan in the first place.
>>
>> You say you are having trouble getting the tasks set up.  That covers a 
>> LOT of territory <grin>.  Where specifically are you running into your 
>> problems?
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Steve House [MVP]
>> MS Project Trainer & Consultant
>> Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs
>>
>>
>>
>> "Brown" <fbrown@mta-inc.com> wrote in message 
>> news:eAecDdVBFHA.3820@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
>>>I have been using Project to manage "tangible" contracts for years.  I 
>>>have not needed all the features and capabilities available, so I am not 
>>>fully knowledgable about all it's capabilities.  I am using Project 2003 
>>>Premium, we are soon going to add Project server.
>>> I have been hit with a requirement to track and manage a Time and 
>>> Materials contract using Project.  Can anyone wind me up and point me to 
>>> a reference/course/guru that can enlighten me as to how to do this.  I 
>>> can't seem to get the tasks set up with multiple people working multiple 
>>> tasks, for a fixed length of time.  (Some full time, some not, etc.).
>>>
>>> Brown
>>>
>>
>
>

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