ProjectLoad Blog

Each project can be broken into distinct phases to track the work or to organize the project into distinct deliverables. It is now possible to further subdivide a phase by creating phases within the phase. This capability is particularly useful when control of a phase has been delegated to another manager. The phase manager can then divide her or her portion of the project into more phases if needed.

Activities can only be assigned to a phase that had no sub phases. This means that once activities are attached to a phase, that phase may not be broken into sub phases. Conversely, once a phase has sub phases underneath it, activities may not be attached directly to the upper phase.

The administrator controls how many layers of phases are available from the System Settings page of the Administrator Menu. Note that changing this setting controls how many layers of new phases may be created, but does not modify existing phase structures.

It is usually best to keep a project hierarchy as flat as possible. When a project has too many layers of depth, it is more difficult to maintain and track compared to projects that have simpler, flatter hierarchies. This new capability should be used with caution to avoid unnecessary complications. The most common use for sub phases would be when a phase is assigned to another manager or on very large projects where a phase may represent several different functions or deliverables.

ProjectLoad supports a variety of reports, each with a wide range of search options. The system will automatically remember the most recent search options you used, but it also provides a way for you to record the options to be reused whenever you wish. After you select a report and get the search conditions set, you can choose to save the search options by clicking on the “Save As” button on the report. The system will ask you to provide a name for the report and record the settings you established in the database under the name you provide. The next time you go to the report menu, the custom version of the report will be listed in the menu with the standard reports. The system will organize the custom reports in lists under each report type. These custom reports form a private library of reports that you can reproduce as needed.

For example, if you need to regularly produce a report showing the exact hours spent on each project of a particular type in the prior month (perhaps for billing purposes), you can set the search conditions, run the report, and use the Save As button to record the settings under a name such as “Prior Month Billing”. The report menu will then contain an extra line under the “Work Hours By Project” labeled “Prior Month Billing”. You can create this report simply by using the Report button on the menu. Note that if you set the search dates to be customized and manually supply a date range, then rerunning the report will produce that same date range each time. If you set the search dates to something more generic such as “Last Month”, the report will change report periods automatically based on the date you run it. You can edit the saved search conditions if you wish to tweak your search options and save the report again under the same or another name. Saved reports may be deleted by running the report and using the “Delete” button.

Each project can be broken into distinct phases to track the work or to organize the project into distinct deliverables. Phases have always been under the direct control of the project manager and inherited the security level of the project. Project managers may now choose to delegate control over phases to other authorized personnel and to change the security level of phases independent of the project level. If a person is assigned to oversee the phase (a phase manager), they will have the same level of control over their phase as the project manager holds over the project. The phase manager may assign personnel, change the phase schedule, set the security level of the phase, and report progress of the phase against the estimates.

Phases that have been assigned to someone other than the project manager are called “managed phases”. They may be included in the search results on the project page by choosing a new option in the search conditions. Managed phases will also show up in reports as regular phases and all scheduling and actual information will be included in higher level reports as normal. In phase level reports, managed phases are identified in the title as a managed phase of a particular project.

To encourage users to estimate their workload, the Daily Timesheets were changed in August 2004 to include columns for updating the “target date” and the “hours left” on each activity. On activities that had no estimates the extra input fields were blank and sometimes users accidentally input the daily hours in those columns instead of placing them in the “Today’s Hours” column. Since activities that are marked as “Do not forecast” seldom use estimates, the system has been changed to prevent a user from typing into the estimate columns on those activities. This should greatly reduce the chance that someone will type their daily hours in the estimate columns by mistake. If someone wishes to place estimates on an activity and yet flag it as “Do not forecast”, they can still do so by editing the activity.

Another benefit of this change will be to highlight those activities that are not being forecasted. When a user adds a new activity to the timesheet, if it defaults to “Do not forecast”, the user will be aware of this immediately and can correct it by editing the activity. Previous to this change, the user might type estimates into the timesheet and never realize they had not activated the forecasting option on the activity.