My boss and I share the task of tracking the project tasks and maintenance work that my directs (software developers) work on. He provides the timings, I provide the resourcing. We use a shared Excel spreadsheet that maps out tasks and associated resources across a horizontal time line (each column being a week of the year). All the projects we need to deliver are stacked vertically. We use this both for coordinating with other people outside of our own team, and to ensure steady utilisation of our team (my directs).
This works pretty well but it is somewhat cumbersome and also does not provide the best view of resource utilisation. I find gantt charts too structured in the volatile space we're operating in - timelines and project priorities change fairly often to realign with changing clients' priorities / readiness.
Anybody else using a decent software tool for planning resourcing?
See Manager Tools' guidance on Project Management here.
your spreadsheet can work
I use a similar spreadsheet approach. It's great for showing that projects are staffed, but it is tougher to see who is busy and who has free time.
All you need to do is take the sheet you already have, and add an extra tab which summarizes by person by month, to show how many hours are allocated per person per month. You can code it to subtract from the total hours per month if you want to see free time instead of allocated time. I also keep a third tab which simply lists all proposed projects and the initial estimate I submitted - so that when they are approved, I have the estimates handy and can add them into the mix easily.
PM me if you like and I can send you an example from mine.
This might be overwhelming, but ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_project_management_software
Many are open source and this list gives a breakdown on which ones state "Resource Management". If you have the cash, I'm a big fan of MS Project together with MS Sharepoint. Project gets a bad name a lot of the time - mostly from people who try to get everything out of it and put ultra complicated resource allocation to it. A little bit of KISS principle goes a long way.
@Maura - that's what I'm
@Maura - that's what I'm currently doing, but unf finding there's a toss up in terms of effort required. The toss up is between ease of maintaining task and resouce information in one easily visible place versus the ease of reporting on task allocation and resouce allocation.
What I was thinking is that there should be some software out there that does this.
@Dude95 - I hear you on MS Project and I think it's great for planning projects along a time line. However, our timelines shift often, and the strong dependency in Gantt-based tools between task and timing doesn't serve the needs that I have.
In short my focus is task+resource and resource utilisation, whereas Gannt charts are "more" focussed on task and time, with resources tacked on.
Do you use Sharepoint
If you already use Sharepoint, or can get a site on a share server for not very much, you could use that. The basic team site templatge includes a task list which you can use to manage resources much like you would in project but without being tied to a Gantt style timeline. You can give tasks a priority and due date and assign them to someone, use work flows to notify people by email when something has been assigned and set up views to give basic MI (e.g. "All tasks coming due in the next 7 days grouped by priority"). If a due date or priority changes you can change it on Sharepoint and have a workflow set to send the user a notification email. For more complex reporting you can either hire a developer to implement it on Sharepoint or export the list to Excel or Access and crunch your numbers there.
I recently set something similar up for one of our teams here, they seem to like it and senior management are really happy that they can get visibility of process and quickly see the overall state of play due to the use of graphical alerters (lots of red and orange = bad, lots of green and blue = good, our senior managers tend to be visually oriented).
Stephen
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Skype: stephenbooth_uk | DiSC: 6137
"Start with the customer and work backwards, not with the tools and work forwards" - James Womack
we use activeCollab
I work for an engineering company, and we use activeCollab for some of our companies project planning and we have recently adquire an add-on which also shows resource utilisation planning (if you add estimated manhous for each activity), and another one that shows the gantt charts. People can also login and you can check graphically which project your resources are planned to work and are actually working (loggin in). It is quite good value for money. I think the base module is cheaper than MS project. It doesn´t have all the funcionalities of MS project, but everybody (or the people you asigned to the project) can see the project planning and execution status.
For detail project planning we use the primavera company, but it is quite expensive, so only few people can see all the planned projects. And it is definetely not as nearly as intuitive as activeCollab which people can just start using it!
Nara
Another note about
Another note about SharePoint, if you're interested in giving it a try and don't currently have access to a SharePoint server, you can get a SharePoint-only plan with Office 365 for just a few dollars / month.
Hi David, What are the
Hi David,
What are the features of the software & installation requirements ?