Welcome back to our course on Project 2013 Advanced.
In the previous section, we took our NFF Master project and we separated out the resource
pool completely, and then we made sure that the master project uses the resource pool,
and then that the three subprojects within the master project also used that same resource
pool.
In this way, we’ve truly got a common sharing of resources throughout the project.
Now in this section what we’re going to do is to look at the practicalities of working
in this situation.
Let’s begin by supposing that I’m the project manager for the overall project and
what I want to do now is to simply open the master project.
Now when I try to open the master project, I immediately come across one of the key points
that’s necessary to understand when it comes to sharing resources.
So if I click on File and then from the Open, I click on NFF Master; I see a message.
Now you can already see the master project there, the Gantt Chart View in the background
but what happens is that Project 2013 realizes that this particular project is using a resource
pool and it gives me two choices.
Now one choice, as you can see from the selected radio button there, is Open resource pool
to see assignments across all sharer files.
Now if I’m interested in looking at resourcing and in particular if I may want to look at
resource leveling or resource overallocation, in order to really see what’s going on it’s
going to be necessary for me to open the resource pool.
In opening the resource pool, that will give me the ability to look at resource assignments
throughout all of the projects that share that resource pool.
Now, I did mention earlier on that it’s not necessarily the case that that resource
pool is only being used by the projects you’ve seen before.
What if one of the other project managers in my company has been told to use the same
resource pool?
That other project manager may be using those resources and making assignments in those
resources as well.
So what it’s really saying to me here is if you want to be able to look at resource
assignments and know how your resource assignments are looking, you need to open the pool itself
so that you can see assignments across all of the projects that are sharing that resource
pool.
Now as you’ll see, when I come to open this project and the resource pool in a little
while, it will actually be opened in Read Only mode so I won’t be able to make changes
to the resource pool as such.
We’re going to look at that a little bit later on.
But it does enable me to see assignments.
Now the second option says “Do not open other files.”
So in this case, I’m not going to be able to see the assignments.
So in what sort of situation might I choose that option?
Well, clearly I’m not going to choose that when I’ve got resource assignments to make
or change because I won’t be able to check the availability of resources even.
But I might choose it in situations such as one where what I really want to do is to add
a load of tasks to a project and I’m not doing resource assignments at the moment.
I’m just basically entering the task, maybe even importing them from another source.
I’m going to deal with resources later on.
Now in that situation, it would actually be a bad idea to tie up the resource pool unnecessarily.
So then I might choose the “Do not open other files option.”
Another situation in which I might choose “Do not open other files” would be if
I were say running off a report, maybe a report that doesn’t really involve resourcing.
Possibly just some sort of cost summary or maybe a report on costs against budget over
a period of time where I don’t specifically need to the resource pool and I only need
to look at specific aspects of costs.
So there are some situations where I wouldn’t need to open the resource pool and that’s
really what that other option is there for.
Now on this occasion, I’m going to stick with that first option and see what everything
looks like when I click on the OK button.
So the NFF Master project is now open.
If I go to the Window Group on the View Tab and click up here at the top right hand, obviously
the resource pool project is open, click on that.
It looks empty but of course I’m looking at the tasks so let’s go in and take a look
at the resource sheet.
And, of course, we can see the resource sheet.
I’ve left the project column in there so that you can see that each of those resources
is a resource within the NFF Resource Pool.
And if I click on the Resource Usage View, even though I don’t have the individual
projects open, I can see where each of the resources is used and this is particularly
useful if you’re dealing with a very large project with perhaps with many subprojects.
If you were to just pull over here within the Resource Usage View and click on Add New
Column, go down and select Project, and you can actually see which of the projects each
of these resource assignments relates to.
So that can be pretty useful.
It can save you the trouble of fishing around to find out where a particular assignment
has been made.
So let’s just flip back to the main project again, back to NFF Master.
The three subprojects are just shown as subproject, individual rows on the Gantt Chart here.
Watch what happens if I expand NFF Requirements.
Let’s just now get the project in view.
Now let me expand NFF Design and Development then.
As before, I can then see all the dependencies to again to help me get a full view of the
whole project.
But it also enables me again to just focus in on the particular part that I’m interested
in.
So here I am the overall project manager.
I’m still looking at the overall project.
What if I want to do a bit of resource assignment at this stage?
Let’s suppose I decide here that I really need to give Toby a bit of work on the tendering
process.
So select, right click, go into Assign Resources.
All of those resources are available to me.
I can choose Toby Arnott.
I can give him 10%, click on Assign.
Toby is now assigned.
Click on Close.
Now let’s go back into the resource pool again and you can see that Toby has been assigned
and you can see that that assignment is in the NFF Master.
So let’s now just switch back to the main project and let’s say, okay I’ve finished
working on that now.
Let me just close the main project and it says “Do you want to save changes to NFF
Master?”
And then even though I haven’t consciously made any changes to NFF Requirements, I’m
asked if I want to save changes to that and to the other one and to the other one.
And then finally it says “Do you want to update the resource pool to reflect changes
for all open sharer projects?
When updating the pool file Project will save the resource pool that is memory.
This copy reflects the changes for all the sharer projects that you have open in memory.”
Now if I want to save the changes to the resource pool and bear in mind that I’ve actually
made an assignment there that wasn’t there before, click on OK, and even though it has
been open in Read Only mode what now happens is that change is saved.
So in that scenario the project manager for the overall project opened the overall project
and the resource pool, had available the information in the resource pool and was able to therefore
make an assignment.
And Project 2013 realized an assignment had been made, realized that the resourcing of
the project was changing, and even though the resource pool had been opened read-only,
I was still able to make that change because it basically said “Do you want to save this
change in the resource pool even though you’ve only got it open Read Only?”
So that’s a perfectly effective and valid way of going about things.
Now let’s look at a different scenario and one that happens quite a bit.
Let’s suppose I’m the manager on the testing project and I want to make one or two changes
to my project, so I decide to put the MPP file on to a laptop and take it home with
me.
I’m going to just do a bit of work on the laptop on my project.
So I open the testing project and it comes up with a question, “Do I want to open the
resource pool?”
And then I go, “Ah, hang on a minute.
I haven’t got the resource pool.
I forgot to bring that with me and in fact I’m really not supposed to take the resource
pool away from work because everybody else uses it.
I’ll just say Do not open other files and I can do what I need to do without the resource
pool.”
Now when I click on OK, and bear in mind that I haven’t now got the resource pool open,
let’s just click on the Resource Tab, Resource Pool, Share Resources.
It still knows that it’s sharing resources.
I haven’t actually got that resource pool but it knows it’s there.
That’s fine.
What I’m going to do is I’m going to assign one of the other people to one of my tasks.
So let me just go back into the Gantt.
I want to assign one of those other people to the test script task.
So right click, Assign Resources, oh hang on, I can only see Northern Farm Foods and
Toby Arnott.
Why is that?
Well, the reason that I can only see Northern Farm Foods and Toby Arnott is that I haven’t
got a copy of the resource pool and the only resources that my project is aware of are
the ones that I’ve used before.
So if I just scroll through the existing tasks of this project, of course, they’re the
two that I’ve used before.
So it’s aware of those two resources but it doesn’t have the full resource pool.
So I could even assign Toby now at the moment.
In fact, why don’t I do that?
Why don’t I assign Toby as say a 10% on this and click on Assign.
I can even assign Toby but I can’t assign any of the other resources because I don’t
have a copy of the resource pool.
So now let me close, make change to testing, my project is closed.
But, of course, the resource pool is unaware of the change I’ve just made.
Okay, so I get back to work the next day and I copy the MPP file from my laptop back on
to the network or the shared location that we’re using and I’m going to once again
open testing.
This time when I open testing, I’m going to open the resource pool as well, click on
OK, and now of course within the testing project itself, I’ve got that Toby Arnott assignment.
Let’s switch into the resource pool.
Let’s look at resources in the resource pool.
Let’s look at resource usage.
Let’s look at Toby Arnott and he has been updated automatically because as soon as I
open the file with the resource pool open as well then the resource pool is updated
with that assignment.
Now let me just quickly flick back to the testing project again.
Now let me do the same thing.
Let’s put somebody else on the scripting this time.
Let’s say Assign Resources again.
This time, of course, I get a full list.
Let me say that Lorraine here is going to be very much involved in the testing.
So I’m going to put Lorraine there as a 50% resource.
I’m going to assign her.
Click on Close.
Then I’m going to close and I’m going to say yes to changing anything and everything.
Now let’s suppose that I’ve taken this project home again and I’ve still not got
my resource pool with me.
Open the testing project; say no to opening other files.
Let’s suppose I want to do an assignment to acceptance.
Click on Assign Resources, see if you can guess what I’m going to see.
Yes, of course, now it’s aware of three resources, the three resources that have been
used and only those three.
So that’s pretty much how it works when you’re one of the project managers who is
using the shared resource pool.
Now the problem you have and this is a problem that there isn’t one universal solution
to, is how do you manage to have several people working on different subprojects and all having
the same resource pool open at the same time?
Well, one way of doing this is to use a truly shared location.
So whether you’re using SkyDrive, whether you’re using some sort of SharePoint based
or Project Server solution, really the only satisfactory way is to have the resource pool
truly shared.
But within the context of what we’re doing here, what I’m trying to do is to make you
aware of the issues that you’re going to get if you don’t have a completely shared
resource pool in the sense that it can be shared pretty much all the time.
But as you can see if you don’t have a fully shared location for your projects and your
resource pool, then you can see the sort of problems that you come up against.
Although to be fair, if you use Project 2013 correctly and pretty much follow the sort
of things that I’ve done in this section, you’ll find that you can pretty much cope
with any situation provided you’re aware of the shortcomings and constraints on the
way that Project 2013 works when you don’t have fully shared projects and resource pools.
Now in the next section I’m going to look at actually making changes to the resource
pool itself and then we’re going to create a new consolidated project.
So please join me for that.