Project as a Staff-tracking Tool

[Kerry]

I work in an organization that is project-orientied. Specifically, we manage construction projects. Naturally, we use MS Project for some aspects of our project work.

We also have a need to manage staff resources in our organization but not on a project-by-project basis. We want to look at staff resources distributed across projects to see where we might be short overall, rather on a single project basis.

We are wondering if Project can be used to do that sort of thing. My thinking was to setup projects as tasks, with "Lead," "Lead Backup," and "Assistant" being sub-tasks of each. So, you'd have Project 1 with Lead, Backup, & Assistant being subtasks. Project 2 would be the same and so-on.

Has anyone used Project for this purpose? I've looked for templates that might suit this use but haven't found anything.



Or, would something like Access or Excel be better suited to the task?

[JulieS]

Hello Kerry,

I don't see any compelling reason why you can't use Project as you mention. I'm guessing the staff you need to track are not currently assigned to any tasks in the individual project files? You are creating those project files to track the actual construction tasks?

The downside is you now have to maintain two items for each project -- but if you don't want to add the "project management" tasks to each construction project, your idea sounds fine.

I don't think you'd need to spend time searching for a template -- if you just need to track staff allocation - set up one task for each project and then assign the 3 resources -- lead, lead backup, and assistant to the long task. Estimate how many hours per week and then assign the resources at the appropriate assignment units. Alternatively, initially create the tasks as fixed duration, non-effort driven -- enter the work estimate for each resource across the duration and let Project calculate the assignment units.

I hope this helps.

Julie