How to schedule tasks for workers in MS Project?

[feedel]

Hello,

I lead a team of programmers and I use MS Project to schedule their work. And I'm not managing projects actually, but managing a team, doing projects. I'm responsible for resources for each project. I want to have my workers work on a gantts graph so I can easily see who is finishing what and when. Is there a better software to do it than MS Project?

And the other thing is - where should I place new tasks for my workers? I have about 5 workers and I want to keep everything in one file. Should I place new tasks simply in the bottom or group them by time/worker? What to do with tasks, that were already finished - but have end to start relation with new ones?

Kuba

 

[PDQBach]

I think your questions go a bit beyond the scope of something I'm comfortable handling in a single reply here. I think you should give serious consideration to taking a course in MS Project (lots of organizations such as IIL, LearningTree, community college, etc. -- and I have no involvement with any of them) would be a better place to start.

You might even want to check out the local PMI Chapter (yes, I am a member) to see if they have either a recommendation or if they run a course such as the one you need.

As for one file or many ... the answer is yes. If you have to share the file with others then remember that if someone can open the file then that person can change it. If you've got multiple projects in a single file then anyone opening the file can change any of the projects. If, on the other hand, only you will be opening the file then maybe you should keep all projects in a single file but tht assumes that they are all small (20-50 tasks/deliverables each). This is very much a matter of personal preference.

I expect that this isn't the answer you were looking for so perhaps others (JohnHerman, BPNMike ... where are you?) may have additional comments that may help you out.

In conclusion, as I have often said here: Project is not the easiest piece of software to learn (it's not like Word, a simple text entry and formatting program where you can be productive out-of-the-box). A structured learning environment for initial training is often the best approach to Project education.

 

[feedel]

Thanks. It's hard to write what I exactly mean as long as english is not my first language.

I'm not managing projects, I'm managing 5 people's work, and I wonder how can I do it using MS Project. This work never ends, their task are about 3, 4 weeks long, and their work is continous. I want to manage it using MS Project...

 

[johnherman]

Well, do your workers have interdependencies? For instance, does what Worker 1 do depend on or influence what Worker 2 does (or any other worker)? Example, you are building a house and Worker 1 is a carpenter and Worker 2 is a roofer. Worker 2 can't start the roof until the carpenter builds the frame.

I sense from your writing that you are mostly interested in tracking work by worker (resource) rather than by tasks in a project. I think you can use Project to do this, although that's not what it was intended to do. If your workers are mostly independent, you can have one "Project" with all five workers on it, working independently and rolling up into their own summary task. Or you could keep one "Project" for each worker. If you have many dependencies between the workers, I would recommend only having 1 "project".

Project will be able to provide the Gantt chart(s) and Resource Usage charts you probably are trying to get. But it seems to me that you could probably do this just as easily in a spreadsheet.

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The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was - Steven Wright