Re: Commenting work hours
- From: "Steve House [Project MVP]" <sjhouse.remove.this@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 17:38:25 -0400
Not really - if your activity doesn't fit into the realm of a true project being managed through the Critical Path Methodology I'm afraid MSP is of limited usefulness.
-- Steve House [MVP] MS Project Trainer & Consultant Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs
"Vlad Wax" <VladWax@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:14F70B75-3CF7-41CC-9A0B-B7C367A86F04@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Steve, thank you for such a detailed answer.
My question was put in such way because our company has support projects as
well as development ones. If we receive a request from the client to fix
something and it takes just 10 minutes, MS Project will make us spend another
5 minutes creating a new task and commenting it.
Well, may be you're right, support is not a project, but does MS Project offer anything to deal with such cases?
-- Vlad
"Steve House [MVP - MS Project]" wrote:
A "task" in project management - not just as far as MS Project is concerned
but the PM discipline itself - is defined as a *single* specific activity
performed by a resource, with definite beginning and end points, that
results in a single deliverable. So if Joe Resource spends today taking 2
hours debugging module X, 1 hour meeting with a client, 2 hours designing
module Y, 2 hours coding module Y, and 1 hour debugging module Y, he has
worked on 5 tasks, not just one or three. If your tasks are broken out
properly before pubishing the work plan to the server you don't need an
additional note field to detail what the resource did specifically because
each task is cohesive single activity in its own right and the task name
itself serves that purpose. To help them keep focused on that principle, I
teach my students to begin each task name in their task list with an action
verb - dig the hole, paint the wall, write the report, etc. So yes, you
should be creating a sub-task for every specific activity the resource is
doing.
I'm confused though because the tone of your post suggests that you are
doing the task lists after the fact. Project planning software - or for
that matter creating project plans with paper and pencil methods, not even
using software - is future oriented. It's designed for the manager to
*plan* what the resources are supposed to be doing when, plotting out what
needs to be done when in order to complete a project and not simply
accumulating information about what they have been doing. The plan should
be sufficiently detailed before publishing that if it was followed to the
letter, the end result would be the successful completion of the required
deliverable. All of the work that needs to be done to complete the project
should be detailed (that's the project scope) and nothing should be listed
that's not part of the work required to produce the project's deliverable.
Viewed another way, if the resources do nothing else except what is detailed
in the task list, they still will get done everything that is needed.
--
Steve House [MVP]
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
Visit http://www.mvps.org/project/faqs.htm for the FAQs
"Vlad Wax" <Vlad Wax@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:029B64EE-C9B7-46AC-A0AE-CA35D01A4B30@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Hello, everyone.
>
> Say, as an IT project manager, I use Project 2003 to publish project > info
> on
> a Project Server. Developers use Web Access to log actual time they've
> spent
> on a task, but they also need to indicate what they've spent those > hours
> for.
> Thus, there is a great need for something like a text field, logging > data
> in
> time. When presenting a report to a client it is required to show what
> hours
> were spent on what.
>
> To my mind, this is a very natural task and it seems strange that it
> doesn't
> have a simple solution, like a text field near Act.Work field in the > right
> table at the Task page of the Project Web Access. Comments (notes) are > not
> the way out, since time of a comment is not recorded.
>
> May be the MS Project approach requires to create a new sub-task every
> time
> for every small sub-problem? If so, it is not very effective.
>
> Maybe I just miss something?
> I would greatly appreciate any ideas.
> Thanks in advance
>
.
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- From: Vlad Wax
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- From: Steve House [MVP - MS Project]
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