Problem: Forecast Hours Amended without Plan Changes

[MPerks]

Hello All,

I work for a fairly large company here in the UK and we have been experiencing a continual problem with our Project Plans which are stored centrally on EPM servers.

We have enterprise resources allocated to the plans and tasks. I then typically modify the views to month views and allocate hours for the resources on the tasks monthly so a task may look like this:
Task - Resource - Oct - Nov - Dec - Jan - Feb
Create Plan - Project Manager - 40 - 40 - 40 - 40 - 40

What tends to happen is that somehow (without ANY plan changes being made in the intervening period) the hours profile becomes modified like so:
Create Plan - Project Manager - 28 - 42 - 38 - 44 - 42 - 6

Especially annoying when it slips the excess effort out to the subsequent month (Mar in the above example). This actually often happens to be decimal places but for the sake of the example i've kept it simple.

I've tried having the task effort driven or not, manually scheduled or auto scheduled, I don't accept timesheet actuals into the plan so they shouldn't be influencing it either. I'm out of things to try and would really appreciate it if anyone can help.

Thanks in advance.

 

[johnherman]

Here's an idea, although I did not test it. Create a recurring task for the last day of the month (pick 1st or 31st, although you may need to manually change a few). That should force the hours into that month.

Other possibilities depending on your situation: assign a calendar that only has one working day each month, that being the last day (or first day). Assign that calendar to your resource and that resource to the task. Start no earlier than constraint or must finish on constraint.

If you get a solution, please post it. If you're getting close to what you want, post where you are and maybe we can fine-tune it.

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[MPerks]

Thanks John,

On the recurring task I can try this but typically we use one task per enterprise resoruce allocated wherever possible to reduce the number of lines on a users timesheet, i'm a little unsure how the users main task might be reigned in by this as I feel it's more likely to be an errant setting somewhere.

On the working calendar we can't change those as they are set at the enterprise level both for the plan and for the resources I am allocating.

I'll definitely keep posting, really keen to try and find a way to resolve this. Thanks very much for your input and i'll let you know if the recurring task helps.

 

[JulieInMaine]

What version of Project and Project Server are you using? What service packs and cumulative updates are installed?

 

[MPerks]

Hi Julie,

We are using MSP 2010 Version 14.0.7015.1000, we are not using Project Server but are using instead EPM (Enterprise Project Management Server Tool) supplied by a company called pcubed.

 

[JulieInMaine]

Is the movement of data only shown in the PCubed tool or does it appear natively in Project? I suggest a conversation with the folks at PCubed. You appear to have the latest SP (SP-2) installed to Project 2010.

 

[MPerks]

Hi again Julie, it's in the Project plan itself rather than the server tool that the data gets manipulated. I'm unsure if this is being forced by the server tool or not though as it's so hard to specifically replicate.

 

[JulieInMaine]

If the data is fine before storing in the EPM tool, I would say it is something (perhaps a configuration within the tool) that is changing your data. Assuming you are not automatically leveling the resources, Project should not be shifting data around. If you create a test project not stored in the EPM - does the issue occur?