Re: Catch-All Task to capture remaining work performed
- From: "Steve House" <sjhouse at hotmail dot com>
- Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2009 08:32:38 -0400
I have to urge caution with your approach. Remember that MS Projects prime function is not accounting, it is work scheduling and cost estimating. It's really designed for you to use it to determine who should be doing what when and to what end, then the PM communicates the assignments to the resources who do the work as directed.. There really should be no work that is not associated with a task since a proper project plans schedules EVERYTHING that has to happen in order to drive the project to completion. If there is unaccounted work that is actually part of the project, the project plan was not done properly.
--
Steve House
MS Project Trainer & Consultant
"Richard Quinn" <quinn.richard@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:44e67476-2fe0-4925-83c7-e10fcfe7bf98@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hello,
I have a tricky question based around accounting for reality in a
project plan, using MS-Project. Work which is done but not directly
attributable to any of the planned tasks usually falls below my
tracking radar. The team members can never attribute 100% of their
working day to the tasks, and yet I must shoulder 100% of the cost for
a working day.
Let's assume that a project manager is given a team of 6 engineers,
plus himself, making a 7 person project team. Let's assume that all of
these people cost $50 / hr, each and every hour they work, and that
they all work 8 hrs /day on the project. Let's assume that this is a
research project, and it has a fixed duration of 14 weeks.
This gives us a fixed staffing cost of 7 (people) * 8 (hours/day) *5
(weekdays) * 14 (weeks) * $50 = $196,000. As a project manager, we
now know that, irrespective of which tasks people are assigned to, the
staffing costs will be $196.000 - unless of course the team changes or
the project duration changes.
Let's also assume that the project manager schedules tasks and assigns
people to tasks, creates a baseline, adjusts task duration, updates
task completion regularly and all the other work necessary to enable
EVA. But at the same time, he knows that he can't capture every
activity in a task, and that only 40% - 60% of an engineer's workday
will be directly attritutable to a planned task.
How can I plan the project in MS-Project, so that the total cost of
$196.000 is accurately reflected, whilst at the same time being able
to plan and analyse work which is directely attributable to a planned
task?
I was thinking of a "catch-all" task, to which each team member is
assigned as a ressource, but has a lower priority than the other
tasks, thus not interrupting them or their scheduling.
Thanks for any pointers,
-Richard
.
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