PWA Time Tracking Efficiency Help

[Laury Hackett]

I’d appreciate ideas and feedback regarding PWA time tracking efficiencies. We are using MS Project Server 2019. Currently resource timesheets are populated with tasks assigned to them by project managers on project schedules. Although the PM assigns the task and work according to educated estimates, often tasks take more or less work hours than planned. In our current process the resource must reach out to the PM of the project if they need more work added to their assignment. If they don’t do this, the task falls off their timesheet. Conversely, if the resource completes the tasks in less work hours, they have to reach out to the PM to set their assigned remaining work to 0 so the task does fall off their timesheet. This is a very manual process that takes a lot of time for both the PM and the resource. We currently do not let resources add tasks to their own timesheet, nor are they allowed to change the remaining work. When we did have the security set to allow users to add tasks, they often added tasks for the wrong project. (we have never allowed them to add tasks that didn’t already exist on the project schedules) In the past we had one task line per project for all time tracking, but that did not allow us to do effective capacity/demand planning. Can anyone share an effective process that takes less manual updates, or even processes that did not work because of allowing resources to update their own information? Input is greatly appreciated. (we have about 500 resources tracking time, and have about 80 active projects at any one time)

[jeff Heath]

I have set the following resource management process in PWA 2016.
1) PMs use resource engagements to request resources from IT teams. The approval of the resource engagements establishes the resource budget (Committed hours) for the duration of the request.
2) PM can assign resource(s) to tasks (work), as long as the Work does not exceed Committed Work (Use Resource Usage View for Validation).
3) PM approves the application of timesheet submission to the schedule for progression. However, the PM should perform a reclamation process at the end of every month.
4) Reclamation Process involves going to the Resource Usage view adjust the time-phased view to show Work vs Actual work. For the month that just ended, either zero out the work (forecasted) hours if the resource didn’t bill anytime for the task or adjust the work hours to match the actual hours on the task. Unused hours should be pushed to the finish date period.
5) After Reclamation, compare Baseline work to Work. If baseline work is > work, the diff should be the number of hours available for the PM to re-distribute on the task by increasing the remaining work. This should give the PM an indication as to whether additional hours should be requested via increasing engagement % or whether the task can be completed with the existing forecast.

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