Microsoft Project 2010 team building
Levels of responsibility
Normally a RACI chart would be created showing individuals or teams and their responsibilities with relationship to the task or work package.
The term RACI refers to responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed.
It is important therefore that you understand the precise definitions of each of those four levels when using Microsoft Project 2010:
Responsible
This represents ownership of performing the actual work for a task or work package of the project. In Microsoft Project 2010, this will normally by the individual who is assigned to actual tasks or work packages.
Accountable
This refers to an individual or group who can make decisions, delegate work, and approved deliverables or make decisions for other individuals or groups. In Microsoft Project 2010, this individual may only be included in a resource’s field simply because they need to be communicated with. It may be that they do not need to be included as a resource’s at all.
Consulted
This indicates that the group participants or individuals are involved in discussions and decisions made, but is not in and of themselves accountable for the outcome of such decisions. With regards to Microsoft Project 2010, this individual will only be included in a resource’s field if they were taking part within a meeting with similar, and hence consuming work hours.
Informed
This refers to the individual or group who receives information, and as such it is a one way conversation as they do not get involved in any way. Whether these individuals are included within Microsoft Project 2010 or not, is a decision taken similar to the advice given in the Accountable paragraph above.
Obtaining resources within Microsoft Project 2010
Microsoft Project 2010 is not the problem here, simply the fact that in today’s world resources whether human or otherwise, are scarce and hard to obtain.
The project manager has a particular challenge in that they must obtain the right human resources’ read regard to an individual’s knowledge, skills, and experience. There may be other factors such as security, certification and approval. For example if the project is taking place within a commercially secure environment, it may be that contract is would not be allowed to take part in the work.
Of course, there are non-human resources to consider as well. These would include materials, equipment, tools, and facilities. These too, may be scares to obtain as it is unlikely that the project owns these resources itself, and would need to negotiate, much like the human resources, with other groups or individuals.
As a result of the above, it is vital that the project manager provides a complete and thorough description of the work to be carried out so that the right individual or non-human resource can be chosen.
Most projects take place in a multi-project environment, and so another challenge will be competing project managers who are also after the same or similar resources.
It may be that the project manager needs to obtain the resources from a third party, or even have a contract setup for a third party to not only supply the resources, but also create the products needed for all or part of, the project.
But it doesn’t stop there. Microsoft Project 2010 will be used to assign the appropriate resources to the tasks within the project once that has been agreed. The main challenge is to ensure that the resources remain on the project until their responsibilities are fully completed.
Apart from the fact that resources may be pulled off the project by the resource’s owners, it is important for the project manage to keep the resources is fully committed and assigned to each task.
This is where the Microsoft Project 2010 levelling and smoothing functions can come into play.
You see, it is important that the resource’s is given sufficient work on a continuous basis, but they do not become over allocated at any point.
It may be acceptable for the project manager to approve overtime for an individual on an occasional basis, but the individual should not be performing overtime hours on a regular basis as this may cause them to become inefficient, make mistakes, or worse, request that they are removed from the project.
Resource’s schedule impacts within Microsoft Project 2010
The project manager would initially create a realistic schedule of the tasks and their dependencies. However, the schedule cannot be said to be realistic and achievable until the appropriate resources have been assigned within Microsoft Project 2010.
Resource assignment within Microsoft Project 2010 will help you manage your project in several ways:
Defining the project schedule
In Microsoft Project 2010 you can specify work schedules for resources according to when they are available. This will mean that your project schedule is more accurate since it will calculate task durations based on when such resources are available to perform the work.
Managing resources
Within Microsoft Project 2010, resource assignment will tell you whether resources are too much work or too little. So the as you plan the project, you can balance the work to make schedule more realistic as well as keeping your team members happy.
The main power here of Microsoft Project 2010, is that you can use it as a “what if” tool. You could for example assigned more or less resources to a particular task, or perhaps use less expensive resources when the budget is more important than the finish date.
Preventing ownership problems
Resource assignments within Microsoft Project 2010 also ensures that someone is working on every project pass one at the same time assignments can prevent overly enthusiastic team members from getting involved with someone else’s work.
Tracking progress within Microsoft Project 2010
By updating your schedule with the actual progress people make (in terms of percentage complete or actual work verses remaining work), you can see whether or not the project remains on track.
This information is vital later on when you want evaluate your estimating skills and use the results as part of lessons learned for future projects.
Tracking spending
You will have costs accrued for work effort, material cost and resource course and hence within Microsoft Project 2010 you can not only estimate the budget project, but also track actual course is the project progress
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