Reporting/Datawareousing Task Management questions

[zephan]

Hi All,
The purpose of this thread is to find a software (combinated to a procedure)to manage a department projects AND tasks.
By manage I mean : best repartition of tasks on ressources, evaluation of time spent on tasks and projects, weekly reporting.

Is task management a sub-area of project Management ?
Anyway if it is not, this forum seems to be the best place for this question.
Here is the case :
- requirements come from other departments to provide data and reports, through a reporting client software ;
- sometimes requirements come by phone and we cannot avoid this (ie requirement from CEO!) ;
- most of people are working on long (annoying) projects ;
- some tasks are reccurent (monthly or weekly data loading, processing and check, reloading, re-processing when failure, etc.) ;
- sometimes the requirement is support or complain (wrong report, inconsistent data(!), webpage not working, etc.) ie the team does development, support, and maintainance.

We need to get a system to make the best scheduling possible for tasks. It is also necessary to make weekly reports on everyone's tasks for work assesment and compensation issues.

I wondered if MS project will be able to do all of that.

Thank you for your help.

 

[BNPMike]

MS Project can do all that but I'm not convinced it's going to help you that much. Gantt chart approaches are best where there is a predictable sequence of predictable events, and as far as possible people are working on one thing at a time.

Your situation seems to be more like a supermarket checkout. You know the sorts of things that are going to happen but not the detail. You also need something quick and responsive. Re-doing a plan all the time is a rather boring exercise.

In the past, in this kind of development/support environment, I've just used a spreadsheet, and assigned time out in crude chunks. I also briefly tried to do plans for a group in this mixed role (because that's what they wanted) and you just find nothing ever goes to plan.

 

[zephan]

Thanks Mike,
Actually I've to play with both predictable events (recurrent), planned projects (with deadlines) and "supermarket checkout". I agree with you that with such events nothing goes to plan, but if I can't plan them, at least I must be able to know on time who do what and who did what for how much time at the end of the week.
I dont't know if I can achieve that, mixture between task management system (one used in my compagny is BridgeTrak by Kemma Software) and project management one.
Ideally this system feed a knowledge base.
One more thing, with bridgetrak, end users are expected to submit issues that we'll process. Experience learned that end user at best uses email. If by fortune they use the system, whatever the pre-formatted form u give them, they fill it allways the same way; anyway you cannot avoid direct communication to get the precise requirement.
I don't know if anybody can add something over your post Mike, but I wish. Thanks again

 

[lucasnevant]

zephan,

I think you are talking about many different problems.

I agree with BNPMike regarding the dificulty of scheduling work in the kind of environment you describe. I would recommend you to try (if possible) to find trends in this kind of work.

In the issues submitting arena, the best solution is highly dependant on the kind of work you carry out in your organization and the culture. I am used to deal with these kind of situation and I would recommend that you get senior management support to make mandatory the use of the sistem to submit issues. Make sure that you explain every user affected the problems you are facing and the benefits that submitting issues via the task management application will deliver.

Lucas

http://www.nevant.com

 

[planetant]

Has anyone used SharePoint interface into Project Server for stuff like this - trouble tickets on a reactive basis + longer term project planning?

 

[zephan]

Planetant,
I did'nt but I'll talk to the sysadmin immediatly.

 

[HighWireChick]

Netsuite is also a pretty good online system...

http://www.netsuite.com.

It doesn't do everything, but we use Netsuite for everything from expense reports to work orders......