Emmanuel,

Not a problem, I’ve gone through a similar process before so it was pretty much off the top of my head. At the very least it’ll give you a basic approach to work from and fine-tune as you go along.

How easy this is to set-up is directly proportional to the preparation you do, as MS Project doesn’t handle conflict very well… by conflict I mean inconsistencies.

All the schedules (IMS and individual projects), have to be formatted the same, so it’s essential that you do the ground work to set this up correctly.

If you bear that in mind, it should be a doddle to keep on top of. Every week you just have to insert the projects into the template, link the summary milestones to the project milestones and then use the ‘Save As’ command to make sure you keep the template clean for the next round.

Regards,

Darren

Hi Everyone,

When at Schlumberger, I used X-Pert from MPI Ltd for over twelve years.

It can handle up to 200 sub-projects. Up to 250 Calendars and weekly work patterns are associated with resources, regardless of which sub-project they are used on - giving great flexibility and reflects what is actually going to happen once the project starts.

Each sub-project has its own logic network and the critical path is shown for each. So once analysed it is clear to see the bottlenecks all through the separate logic networks for each sub-project - and shows what needs to be done to clear them.

The resource analysis (RA) can be done for smoothing resources with a consequence on the end dates, or the RA can be done to achieve deadlines with the consequences on resource overloads. This two prong approach for analysing your project helps to inform your decisions on required resources.

Hope this is a helpful note when faced with multiple projects all demanding effort from a common resource pool.

Cheers
John

Emmanuel,

This is an easy, but labour intensive way. It’s relatively straightforward to maintain, but involves a fair amount of work to set-up.

So if you’re sitting comfortably...

For the 5 Project Schedules

1. Check all 5 project schedules are using the same calendar, make sure all public holidays are included.
2. Check that all the Options in the 5 project schedules are the same. The important tabs being… View, General, Edit, Calendar, Schedule and Calculation. If they aren’t, create a standard set that all the schedules will then use as their defaults.
3. If all 5 project are using different custom fields (text / numbers / flags / dates / etc.), create a standard set. Publish a list that includes custom fields available and ones that are blocked and then get the schedules owners to use / change to that set.
4. Review the schedules with the person(s) who is / are requesting the weekly status reports and get them to agree what they want reported. Ideally there will only be a few tasks in each project (e.g. ‘Start Design’ and ‘Finish Design’) that need to be highlighted in an Integrated Master Schedule (IMS).
5. Inform the schedule owners of the tasks that they will be expected to report on and get them to include a set of milestones relating to the reporting deliverables in each schedule and then link the task (SS or FS depending if the deliverable is at the start or finish of the task) to the relevant milestone.
6. Get the schedule owners to baseline their schedules and make a note of the Unique ID (Unique ID’s never change ID’s do) for each reporting milestone.
7. Agree a reporting calendar with the schedule owners. If you are giving your status report on Friday, it’s no good receiving the schedules on Thursday evening. Make sure you receive the schedules in time to collate them and generate your reports.
8. Get the schedule owners to set the status date in their schedules, so that they match that status date report and ensure they progress all of their tasks to that date. This means that they have to predict one day into the future, but if they can’t tell how their projects are progressing then something’s wrong!!
9. Set-up a common working folder that each schedule owner can save to, or you can make use of.

For the single Integrated Master Schedule

1. Create an .mpp file to use as a template for your IMS. When I say template, I don’t mean an .mpt, I just mean a file that you can use to insert the other projects into and then rename as something else.
2. Make sure the calendar options and custom fields in your ‘template’ are the same as the 5 project schedules.
3. At the top of the IMS, list the 5 projects as summary tasks and include the milestones as sub-tasks. Make sure that the text for the task / milestone names are the same in the IMS as in the original schedules. This will then become an programme overview you can use as a quick show and tell.
4. In the task information for each milestone, add a note to record the Unique ID from the original project schedule so you can always keep tabs on it (It won’t be the same Unique ID in the IMS, because it’s a different schedule).
5. Save your new .mpp template as read only (so it makes it more difficult to overwrite) in the common working folder.
6. Insert each of the original project one after the other (Insert > Project) and outdent them to the same outline level as your programme overview.
7. Link each project reporting milestone to its corresponding programme milestone.

You now have a programme schedule that you can use for you weekly status reports.

Because each schedule is baselined you can filter on the slipping late tasks / milestones and you can use the Start / Finish dates from your programme overview to produce a milestone slip chart in Excel. (there are plenty to choose from via Google).

The problems with this method are there isn’t a critical path through the programme and you don’t get a true programme picture of any resource conflicts, but like I said, it’s a simple way of doing it.

Regards,

Darren

Hi!
If that is the case, I would suggest maintaining all the activities in the same master plan , with appropriate headings.
For senior management you may ’Collapse’ bars and show only the ’Top’ level activities or WBS.
The advantage of maintaining 1 file is:
1)Easy for transmitting (Thru e-format)
2)You may collapse activities of all other projects and update one.
3)Easy to change links and do modifications on any of the projects

I cant see any disadvantages except the size or length of the programme !
Another issue will be , when you want to send the programme associated with one project to a subcontractor , whom you dont want to see the other projects/details.
Then there will be alot of deletions, which is apparently not good !
I think activity specific calenders can be used , if you plan to follow different calenders for each projects (Well, this is only a remote chance !)

Anyway ,

Hi!
I would suggest separate plan for each project.
You may link them to a master plan , if any of these projects are inter related.
If these projects are totally independent , I know what management is looking for.
They want to have an overall view of all these projects.
It will be total shit , if show them all the 1000 activities in all the projects.
So I would suggest , making detailed plan for each projects and a master plan with 3-4 lines each for each projects , showing major elements only.
You may update the master plan once in a while by taking data from summary tasks of each projects.
So here you have a ’Top-down’ project plan -> a master plan which is short & crisp and detailed plans for individual project.

And Brad , I know the tax and COL at your part of world is just horrendous .. that is why I can see more and more UK-ites here every day !

Welcome to middle east! Cheers !

Sreejith

Its the IT world and Prince 2 metholdologies for you. cant stand either, and dont even want to talk about MSP. Im hopefully off the the middle east for a few yrs, big tax free salary, fully benefits package and no MSP

your talking shite again (Ive been on a PM course Blah Blah Blah!!!!!!!)

ha ha ha

I would consider how many activities you think may be in each programme before deciding whether to have 1 or 5 plans.

My personal experience is that if each of the 5 plans has over 100 lines in, then I would consider 5 seperate plans integrated into a master plan. Main thing to remember in this case is that if you have inter project links then you need to keep the files in the same computer/server directory for the links to work.

Thats my opinion for what its worth. I am sure many others have had experience of large MSP plans and can share their experiences / nightmares!