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Why the PMO Needs a Timesheet

Here’s what to do when the PMO office is asking for a timesheet on every desk.  (Yes, it’s not really PMO Office is it? It’s Project Management Office, so I don’t need the extra office after it. Well gosh, it just sounds better that way. 🙂 )

Okay, with that out of the way… The PMO is probably wanting to get employee hours so they can compare with task estimates. After all, there’s not much point in predicting task completions, and scheduling tasks without timesheet hours from employees.

Scroll down for a video (it’s a long ways down there)

Huge things happen when you inject actual employee hours into project schedules. It’s turning loose a basket of cats. Things happen you never thought of. Employees work on projects and tasks you didn’t expect. They finish up tasks, or cancel them altogether. They spend ten times as long as they should on others. Tasks get switched to other employees. And those employees send them back because they don’t have the resources to complete them. Sometimes team leaders jump into tasks they aren’t assigned to. Or split tasks into two or three new ones.

See how confusing this can get?

A project schedule alone is almost useless. It needs employee hours to bring it to life. And, it needs employee input. Employees should have the ability to modify tasks, create tasks, and delete them. If they don’t get that privilege, they should at least have the ability to suggest such changes, because they are the boots on the ground and usually know best what’s going on.

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Timesheet or Project Management

What if you had a time tracking and project management app you could run your whole business from? That would be pretty unique. A lot of people do it. Of course, you’ll need a lot of other software like browsers and word processors and spreadsheets, but ST can be used for the core processes. Here are those processes that can be run from a timesheet with PM.

  1. Collecting client hours
  2. Tracking tasks and projects
  3. Collecting time and expenses
  4. Handling PTO and time off accruals
  5. Approving timesheets and client billables
  6. Invoicing clients
  7. Receiving client payments
  8. Viewing future project revenue

That’s a lot of core business processes. You can run a lot of your business from this timesheet.

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Animated: Why Project Managers Like Standard Time

Project managers, check out this pretty young chick in the video below!  haha  We’ll use anything to sell software.  🙂

But seriously, there is a lot to like in ST. This is more than just an employee timesheet. Project managers get tools to set up, organize, and manage projects.

Just building a task list and assigning employee is a big deal. How do you know if employees are busy when you’ve assigned them to tasks? Working on other projects… working on other tasks… or for other teams. That’s why there’s a nice resource allocation bar chart. You see at a glance who is over-allocated or under-allocated.

How about predicting project revenue. Got a chart for that?  Yep?  And project triangles, and project analytics.

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Quick Questions: Project Assignments By Skill

Find the right employee for your project. Search by skill, certification or discipline and find out if the employee is available at the time you need them.

Project managers use the technique in this video to find employees to add to their projects. Each employee has a list of comma-separated skills, disciplines, or certifications. Project managers can search for employees by those skills. Their availability is shown, which helps the PM decide if that person is right for the job.

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Quick Questions: Client Billing Rates

Clients use a variety of models when billing clients.  The most common is rates by employee.  In other words, each employee gets their own billing rate for each project.  The collection of rates on Project A are different than Project B.

Why is this?

Because consulting firms provide a lot services, and offer the specific talents of many individuals.  Plus, they have a lot of clients.  That is a recipe for complex billing arrangements.  The sales department gets what they can.  The client pays what their willing to.  And we meet in the middle.  When the dust clears, there are specific rates for each project.

Other less frequently used models are “By category,” “By role,” “Option Year contracts,” or flat project rates.  Fixed-fee project are quite common, where the client is billed a percentage of the total on a milestone basis.  For example: one-third upon signing, one-third at beta, and one-third at delivery.

You’ll see the most common billing method in this video.

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Interview: Project Portfolios

What is a project portfolio?

It is a collection of projects with some common element you care about.  For instance, you might have a collection of consulting projects.  Or a collection of in-house jobs.  Those collections are portfolios.

Look down for a video

Think of the portfolio as a packing crate.  Inside the crate are many projects.  But you can’t see them.  They are packed tightly inside.  All you can see is the crate… the portfolio.  So you manage the crate, not the contents.

What is project portfolio management?

Project portfolio management is handling entire collections of projects for the purposes of proper execution and education.

You are managing the whole collection, not just individual projects.  Your reporting, your graphing, your searches, and even setting status is done on the entire collection.  The portfolio is a ‘black box’.  You don’t look inside at the individual projects.  You don’t manage individuals, you manage the entire portfolio as if it were a packing crate.

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Interview: Microsoft Project

MS Project schedules without ‘Actual Work’ from employees are dead.  They are little more than a list of tasks, and soon become out of date because employees complete some or portions of them, and the schedule doesn’t reflect that input.

You need a timesheet to supply those employee hours.

Take a look at this video.  It describes the issue and suggest a possible solution.

 

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Interview: Five Timesheet Features

Project tasks, graphical timesheet, track expenses, client invoicing and time off accruals. Five favorite features available in Standard Time®.

Scroll down for the video.

This product is more than a timesheet.  It is more than a project management app.  In fact, there is enough here to run a good portion of your business.  That is, if your business is engineering, manufacturing, or consulting.

Start by jumping into project tasks.  Build projects that represent your client jobs.  The tasks will show up in employee timesheet.  Track hours to them with the graphical timesheet, or spreadsheet-style interface.  Track expenses to those same projects.  Add your mileage and vehicles.  When you’re done, invoice your clients, all within the same software.

Did I forget project proposals?  Or project revenue estimates?  Or resource allocation?  Yep, sure did… but that’s for another day.  🙂

Actually, it doesn’t end there.  Employees can enter time off and PTO requests.  When their vacation or personal or sick time is approved, those hours are subtracted from their bank.  But… wait a few weeks, and those hours are automatically replenished by the time off accural mechanism.  Now you’re ready for some more time off!

Take a look here.

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How To Integrate MS Project with Timesheet

Follow these steps to integrate Microsoft Project with Standard Time®.  (scroll down for the video)

  1. Start by choosing File, Projects.
  2. Right-click on a project and choose Microsoft Project Integration Wizard
  3. Navigate to your MPP file
  4. Finish the Wizard

MS Project will open the MPP file and pull down your tasks into Standard Time®.  You won’t see them in the timesheet right away.  There is one step you must take first.

Click the Project Tasks tab to see the new tasks from the MPP file.  At the far right, you will see a columns labeled Timesheet.  Check the boxes for each task you wish to see in the timesheet.  Any task without this checked will not show up in the timesheet.

Now that you have integrated the timesheet with MSP, you can send your ‘Actual’ hours back.

Choose View, Refresh Project Tasks.  That will open a dialog that lets you send your timesheet hours to MSP.

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Employee Availability Chart

Do you have an engineer available for a project?  How do you know?  What tasks are they working on?  Are they over-worked?  Or under?

There are answers to all these questions.  Scroll down and watch this video for some ideas.

Get a bar chart of upcoming work an engineer is assigned to.  How is the chart built?  It comes from projects the employee is assigned to, and specific tasks.

Here are a few other videos to learn more:

http://www.stdtime.com/videos/resourceallocation.htm

http://www.stdtime.com/videos/employeeavailability.htm