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If you are new to TeamHeadquarters, you should first familiarize yourself with TeamHeadquarters projects, how to identify them, and how to create them.
Determine the proper location of the project within your TeamHeadquarters database. There is typically a standardized location/approach specified in your Usage Policy.
One option is to create
the project in your
personal workspace, in your
My Projects
folder. However,
keep in mind that projects found within your
My
Projects folder will not appear in Project Portfolio
Reports.
The other obvious option is to create the project in your organizational unit's projects folder.
As soon as your project has been created, you are prompted to invite yourself and others to the project roster. There are some key things to know about membership in a project roster:
When you complete a set of roster changes by clicking the OK button, each new member will receive an email notification inviting them to the project.
Anyone who is included
in the project roster will have a link to the project in
their
My Projects
folder as long as the project is open
and the member is 'Active'.
Costing is determined here. Each member can have fixed and variable (i.e. per hour) cost rates, as well as a variable billing rate.
Roles are determined here, and security permissions on the project data are automatically set based on the role. For instance, project managers have full access to create/delete information and change the roster. Observers have mostly 'read-only' access to the data.
Your project contains folders for Budgets,
Costs,
and
Benefits.
These entries
are used in project and portfolio reporting, making it possible to contrast
multiple projects using consistent metrics for both planned and actual
results. Consider
these points:
Budgets and Costs use the same configurable category table, for simplicity of reporting.
Entries in the Costs folder produce 'Capital' and Expense' items in the overall project costs. Fixed Resource costs come from the per-member entries in the project roster, and Task Resource costs come from hours charged in time sheets multiplied by each member's variable cost rate (as set in the roster).
Assuming that your organization's project management methodology and standards are documented, the mechanics and concepts of task entry are straight forward. You can enter and assign the tasks one at a time, or use the import feature for multiple tasks. Consider these points:
Tasks that are not closed
will appear in the
My Tasks
folder and in
time sheets for the people on the task roster.
The 'roll-up calculations'
done for tasks that have other
tasks underneath
are industry standard. Any
start-end dates or time estimates on the parent task are
overridden by the net effect of the
child task structure.
Resource allocation calculations divide the 'Estimated Time on Task' amongst the people assigned to the task according to their 'Percent Assigned'. For each person, those hours are divided evenly as an allocation for each day between the task's start and end dates.
If you identify a skill needed for the task, that skill will be allocated time for the task to represent the 'Percent Task Unassigned'. If included in the report, these 'skill' allocations show at the bottom of the Resource Allocation Report.
There are many different task structuring approaches supported by TeamHeadquarters. If you are unsure about the proper approach for your situation, consider the discussion starting with "How do different organizations use TeamHeadquarters".
All projects contain a specialized
ticket queue,
which shares the project roster to control costing and access to the queue.
The queue
can be used in a number of different ways as a project tool, such as:
Defect tracking, especially in the case of software development projects.
Risk or Issue tracking, taking advantage of the 'bring-forward' capabilities with the ticket's Next Action Date / Next Step fields.
Assigning work, where the ticket can take on the role of a sub-task for ease of management and project plan stability.
From the opposite perspective, a traditional support function can be enhanced by operating the ticket queue within a project. This provides benefits over the traditional 'stand-alone' queue:
The support operation can be represented as a project, and become a natural part of a project portfolio for executive reporting.
The support operation can take advantage of 'project' functions for budgets, costs, benefits, charters, task plans, associated project work, etc.
Time sheets can be automatically fed from normal ticket activity, since tickets can be 'related' to tasks. This can provide costing & reporting detail that is both more accurate and easier to obtain than under traditional 'help desk' methodologies and tools.
When planning a project, the method of work assignment and tracking will dictate how the queue is used. The queue edit function is used to configure settings for the various categorization options by identifying available selections from the master table.
Projects contain document libraries, which provide version management and sharing capabilities for project-related documents. When setting up the project, consider the need for pre-defined library folders. If there will be a large number of published documents, then it makes sense to have sub-folders for such things as Planning, Designs, Testing, etc.