The project plan is updated using time-phased updates provided by the resources. Automatic resource leveling is used level resources once the updates are input into the project plan thus providing a new schedule. For many tasks, multiple resources are assigned. The plan has tasks ranging is effort from 400 to 4 hours.
The problem is that we are trying to account for all time spent on the plan by all the resources without getting too granular. We already have some tasks with three resources assigned to the task. Some of the tasks are also quite small, as little as 4 hours in effort. We would like to capture as much effort as possible spent against the plan without being overwhelmed by the tracking process. What are some of the ways other small organizations track their time? Do they use time card systems? How do they setup their project plans? Do they have full-time project managers? How do they setup tasks in MS Project with multiple resources – is there a maximum that is effective? Do they just assign one resource to the task to manage the task? Please keep in mind that resources are our biggest constraint and that we use automatic resource leveling.
The other issue is that MS Project seems to function in a linear fashion and our process is iterative as are most development processes. What are some of the best ways to setup project plans to model an iterative process? How do you setup your dependencies? Do you just break the process down further to indicate the iterative nature of the process? I would like to know how other managers have developed their plans. Examples would be great.
Until recently, I worked for a small 11-person company (we were recently acquired) as project manager. Because I did a lot of other jobs as well, I didn't spend 100% of my time on project management, but it was my primary role.
Even though we were small, we had a rather robust and well-defined project methodology, including SOPs, templates, forms, etc. This methodology pulled our project delivery practices together so that project management flowed from everything else we did.
Employees reported their time each week using an Excel spreadsheet. For every project they worked on (internal or external) they recorded the project number, activity code, and time (in 15 minute increments). The project number was centrally assigned. The activity codes were pre-defined, and covered the activities we'd perform on a typical project (e.g., Prepare Functional Specification, Coding and Unit Testing, Conduct User Training, etc.) This list of activities was also the same list we used to estimate a project, as well as the activities we defined in our Project Schedule template - so everything flowed from Sales through project execution.
The weekly timesheets were entered in QuickBooks, and then reports generated for the project manager listing the prior week's activities per project. This made it fairly easy for the project manager to evaluate actual time spent per activity with the budget estimate, even if several people worked on the same task over a several week timeframe.
As for project activities, we used MS-Project 2003 as well. I had a Resource Pool with all of our resources, and then each project would get its own individual schedule. The resource pool let me evaluate resource assignment across multiple projects, because we also had the same limited resources working on several projects simultaneously. I did not user automatic resource leveling because some dates are customer-driven, and if I need to change them, I'd rather it be a conscious decision. I also sometimes let a resource be more than 100% allocated. For example, if I have the same resource assigned to 2 2-hour tasks on the same day, Project thinks they're 200% allocated on that day, which is untrue of course.
For iterative processes, I build that into the schedule, including reviews, revisions, etc. From a scheduling standpoint, it's rare that I'd have something less than 4 hours in the schedule, but I'd never have a task more than 2 weeks in length, either.
I don't know if it's the "best" way, but it works for us.