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.
I had a similar engagement for a Fed Government Client. What I did was pretty simple, I created a black project and inserted the other projects as the sub-projects, and saved it as the Master project. I then used Office Timeline to import the Master project into Powerpoint slides for Executive review.
Kris,
If you’re using project server, I would recommend your Resource Management Dept. start using resource engagements. The scenario goes this way:
1) Build your detailed schedule
2) Build your enterprise team
3) Submit Resource Engagements for the Summary level work. (assumes RM Dept or RMs approves resource engagements requests)
4) RM Dept. approves resource request at summary level – Results in MS Project calculating committed work. (in Resource Plan)
5) Committed Work is just a bucket of Hours, so you have to assign the resource to the detailed tasks in order for the resource to have work assigned to them
perfect example….If I submit a resource engagement for an electrical engineer, the engagement is proposed until the resource manager (approves or rejects)? I’m trying to understand what the resource manager/team lead may see in resource center.
I would attack that situation like this:
1) In the resource sheet, establish that resource’s rate as $0
2) Also in the resource sheet, establish a cost resource name them Task 1, Task 2, Task 3
3) Assign the “work” resource to the tasks
4) At the bottom of the schedule let’s create a section called Invoices
5) Under Invoices create 3 recurring milestone tasks. each milestone is aligned to the completion of the 3 tasks
6) Assign the cost resources to the corresponding Milestone task
7) Got Task Usage View, Insert cost column and plug in the resource’s expected cost for each of the cost resources
8) Progress invoice tasks when the task is complete
