Create projects

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Topic Last Modified: 2016-11-14

In this article:

• Plan proposals

• Plan Resource Breakdown Structure (RBS)

• Plan resources

• Plan custom fields

• Plan categories

The creative process is dynamic and ever-changing. Project creation is no exception. Projects have many ways of moving from concept to reality. Sometimes the process is informal and may be the result of a brainstorm on a whiteboard that happened in under an hour. Other times a project is created after years of study and careful analysis. If it isn't planned and managed, this creation process can become chaotic. This chaos can cost your organization in many ways: reduced efficiency, misallocated resources, misaligned priorities, duplication of effort, conflicting approaches, and missed opportunities, to name a few. What follows are some key points to consider when using Microsoft Office Project 2007 to create projects for your organization.

Plan proposals

The project proposal feature provides a mechanism for controlling the entry of projects into Project Server. It provides added value for business decision makers by storing proposal data along with project data. This feature provides better reporting, modeling, and pipeline analysis and helps automate proposal management business processes.

Proposals are projects that are limited in nature. They are limited because all of the features available when using Office Project Professional 2007 are not available when using proposals. Project proposals are not enterprise projects. This limited or lighter type of project is beneficial and useful to many users. The proposal allows users to submit project proposals (aided with simple project and resource planning features) — and provides a simple gating mechanism for projects to be added to Office Project Server 2007. Project proposals are subject to a review before they can be transformed into enterprise projects. Project proposals contain basic information that allows a business decision-maker to approve or reject the proposal. The proposal may contain information such as:

• Project name

• Project description

• Proposed start and end date

• Proposed cost

• Resource requirements

Proposals are created in Microsoft Office Project Web Access. Proposals are accessed from the Office Project Web Access home page. The Proposals and Activity Plans link is found in the menu on the left under Projects. This link takes you to the Proposals and Activity Plans Web page. From this page, users can view, create, and manage proposals. Anyone who has access to Office Project Web Access can view proposals. To create project proposals, you must be assigned the Create New Maintenance Project permission. Members of the Team Members security group have the Create New Maintenance Project permission, by default.

Project proposals have a State field. The State field can have the following values:

The Project State field can be modified only in Office Project Web Access or by using the Project Server Interface. The Project State field can be edited by users who have the appropriate category permissions to modify the proposals and have the Change Project State global permission. The Project State field is workflow-aware. This means that proposals can be configured to work with workflows that are available in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. To use workflows, Office Project Server 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 would need to be installed on the same farm, and the administrative setting for Project State field would need to be set. If the "State" field is governed by an external workflow, then the "State" field is always disabled in Office Project Web Access. If it is not governed by an external workflow, then it is enabled when the users have the appropriate permission. If the Project State field is not governed by an external workflow, then workflow will be done manually.

To configure the Project State Field to use workflow

1. Log on to Office Project Web Access as a user who is a member of the Administrators security group.

2. In the menu on the left side of the home page, click Server Settings.

3. On the Project Server Administration Web page, under the Operational Policies menu, click Additional Server Settings.

4. On the Additional Server Settings Web page, in the Project State Field section, select Yes.

When the proposal workflow is done manually, State field changes and notifications are no longer automated and must be done by the proposal creators and reviewers. For example, the proposal owner creates a proposal and manually sets the State field to Proposed. The proposal owner then contacts the proposal reviewers, who must review the proposal, accept or reject it, and then notify the proposal owner of the decision.

When the proposal feature is configured for a workflow, the workflow automatically does much of the work. When a proposal is created, the workflow generates task assignments for proposal reviewers and the proposal creator as the proposal makes its way through the proposal process. These tasks are shown to their owners through the Web part for Proposal Workflow Tasks.

If you are installing Office SharePoint Server 2007 to an existing Office Project Server 2007 deployment, there are additional configuration procedures you must do to use the workflow-enabled proposals feature. For more information, see Deploy Office SharePoint Server 2007 to an existing deployment of Project Server 2007.

Plan Resource Breakdown Structure (RBS)

Enterprise Resource custom fields are used to enforce standardization across all projects, tasks, and resources within an organization. You can define as many Enterprise Resource custom fields as you need in Office Project Server 2007. Because these custom fields are hierarchical, they help to facilitate detailed reporting and modeling of common organizational structures.

Given the importance of RBS in application security and resource management for Project Server, properly defining an RBS code for your organization is a very important part of configuring Office Project Server 2007 for your organization. The following three factors affect the RBS that you define for your organization:

• The process that you use for resource assignment in your organization. Are project managers or resource managers responsible for staffing projects? If project managers staff projects in your organization, you are probably using a matrix style of resource management. If resource managers staff projects, you are probably using a hierarchical style.

  
  

• The goals of your organization for securing the project management environment.

• The method that you use in your organization to determine whether a resource is appropriate for an assignment

RBS is a predefined Enterprise Resource custom field and is used in the same way that other Enterprise custom fields are used. You can use RBS to define the reporting relationships among users and resources in your organization. Office Project Server 2007 uses the relationships that are defined in RBS to simplify the management of access for users and groups. This is an integral component of resource management and application security.

You can use RBS to define five security rules when you are creating security categories in Office Project Web Access. RBS is also used in the following features: Resource Substitution Wizard, Portfolio Analyzer, Build Team from Enterprise in Office Project Professional 2007 and Build Team in Office Project Web Access, and two default security categories, My Direct Reports and My Resources. If you plan to use these features and you plan to use the Enterprise Resource Pool, then you should consider using RBS.

Determine the process

To plan an effective RBS, first determine the process that you use for resource assignment in your organization. For example:

• Does the resource manager assign resources?

• Does a project manager select a team and then assign resources to tasks?

• Do both occur?

• Is the process collaborative?

• Does an organization or group make staffing decisions?

RBS has the greatest impact on the resource assignment process when a resource manager is responsible for assigning resources. RBS is less important when the assignment process is collaborative or is the responsibility of a group within your organization. RBS has a small to minimal effect on the resource assignment process when project managers are responsible for resource management.

Determine the goals

Next, determine what your organization's goals are for securing your project management environment. For example:

• Is minimal administration a goal for your organization?

• Does your organization generally allow people to view and edit all project and resource data or does your organization prefer to limit access and editing privileges?

• If you want to limit access to data, do users within the same group or division of the organization need to be able to view each other’s data?

If your organization wants a secure system that is also easy to administer, then RBS will play an integral role. If your organization’s project management style is generally less defined or is decentralized, then RBS might play a less important role in your organization’s security model.

Determine the method

Finally, identify the method that your organization uses to determine whether a resource is appropriate for a project. For example:

• Does the departmental or organizational structure matter?

• Does the geographic location of a resource matter?

• Are the skills of a resource an important factor in determining resource assignments?

• How are the above three items prioritized?

The answers to these questions can help you to determine the appropriate structure for your organization’s RBS code. Most organizations can use one of the following three options:

• An organization-based RBS

• A geographic-based RBS

• A modified organization-based RBS

Because you can only implement one RBS code, it is important to identify the structure that is most appropriate for your organization. You can modify your RBS over time, but implementing a new RBS after you are already using Office Project Server 2007 to manage projects is a major adjustment.

Plan resources

Enterprise resources are the people, equipment, and materials that are used to complete tasks in an enterprise project. Enterprise resources are part of your organization's pool of resources and are stored centrally in the Office Project Server 2007 database. You can create the Enterprise Resource Pool that project managers will use when assigning resources to tasks in projects by adding resources to the Enterprise Resource Pool or by importing resources. You should define the contents of the Enterprise Global Template before adding resources to the Enterprise Resource Pool.

When you install Office Project Server 2007, only one Project Server user account is stored within the Project Server database: the Windows user account that was identified as the Farm Administrator during setup. All other user accounts must be added to the Project Server database.

Before you can properly create and maintain the Enterprise Resource Pool for your organization, you must carefully define and document your Enterprise Resource custom fields and create them. In addition, for large organizations, the process of initially populating the Enterprise Resource Pool is just as important as the process of keeping the Enterprise Resource Pool accurate and up-to-date. Tracking significant changes to the resource information that is stored and managed in the Enterprise Resource Pool can be a full-time activity.

Before you create your Enterprise Resource Pool for Office Project Server 2007, you must determine your starting point. The process of adding resources to the Enterprise Resource Pool varies according to whether you are:

• Starting with new projects — Minimal preparation is necessary for this scenario. The process is simplified if you can gather all required resource information in a single document. You could make a list on paper. Then you would import your identified resources from Active Directory, or from a membership store if you were using forms authentication. Alternatively, you can gather this information by using Microsoft Office Excel 2007. Then you would import the resulting spreadsheet into Office Project Professional 2007 and save it to the Project Server database.

• Migrating active projects — In this scenario, multiple projects are currently managed with Microsoft Project 2000, Microsoft Project 2002, or Microsoft Project 2003, and projects are usually saved to a database. Each project might use a different resource name, rate schedule, or calendar for the same resource. To simplify the migration of these projects to Office Project Server 2007, it can be helpful to standardize the use of resources in your organization and to ensure that all projects use a consistent definition of resources.

• Creating the enterprise resource pool — In this scenario, you are creating the Enterprise Resource Pool in Office Project Professional 2007. Using Project Professional, connect to Office Project Server 2007 and check out the Enterprise Resource Pool. Enter the resources and save the Enterprise Resource Pool.

Plan custom fields

Office Project 2007 includes extra fields that can be customized. A field is a location in a sheet, form, or chart that contains a specific kind of information about a task, resource, or assignment. For example, in a sheet, each column is a field. In a form, a field is a named box or a place in a column. In Office Project 2007, fields that can contain customized data are text, flags, numbers, dates, cost, start and finish dates, and durations. You can customize these fields to obtain the information you want using formulas, specific value calculations, or graphical indicators.

For instance, you can write your own formulas, including references to other fields, to be calculated in a custom field. You can create a list of values for a custom field to ensure fast and accurate data entry. You can display a graphical indicator in a custom field instead of the actual data. That way, you can quickly see when the data in that field meets certain criteria, such as when the data exceeds a specified range or when resources are over-allocated. You can also create a hierarchical structure of custom fields for information in your project. For instance, you might want to associate your company's cost codes with your project data. After you create this structure and apply these custom fields to your data, you can easily use them to filter, sort, and group project data.

In Office Project 2007 there are two types of custom fields — local and enterprise. Local custom fields are used by the project manager within the scope of a particular project. Enterprise custom fields are used by the Project Management Office (PMO) to collect data for rollup reporting across the organization. For enterprise task and project custom fields, Office Project Server 2007 supports the notion of scoping to a specific program (collection of projects). In this way, an enterprise custom field can be defined that applies to a subset of projects.

Plan categories

Categories define common sets of data access needs, usually aligned with business units, departments, or other project boundaries. Categories are collections of projects, resources, assignments, and views. Categories define the scope of the information accessed, providing multiple types of access to data for groups or users. Categories are collections of security objects. It is a good idea to use categories sparingly. When you do use categories, augment their use with security rules. Security rules are used to define the members of a category. These rules can be enabled in each category. When enabled, the rules examine each user's granted permissions on the category and apply permissions to all projects returned by the rule for that user. Rules enable a category and permissions to be dynamic. You can create custom categories to provide new ways to access project, resource, and view data. Project Web Access includes the following default categories:

• My Tasks — This category is intended for the individual team members who are assigned to tasks in one or more enterprise projects. It grants users permission to view Microsoft Windows SharePoint™ Services Documents, Issues, Risks, and timesheets and status reports for the projects to which they are assigned.

• My Projects — This category is intended for project managers. This category grants project managers read and write access to project plans that they have created. By default, project managers can view all enterprise resources.

• My Resources — This category is intended for resource managers. This category uses a security rule that is based on RBS and is useful only when RBS is defined.

• My Direct Reports — This category is intended for resource managers who need to be able to approve timesheets.

• My Organization — This category is used to grant access to all information in the organization. This category is intended for members of a Project Management Office (PMO), executives in an organization, and other key users who require the ability to view projects and resources across the entire organization.

You can add custom security categories as necessary to create a Office Project Server 2007 security model that meets the specific needs of users and groups in your organization. An example of when a custom category might be needed is when your RBS is configured such that two people working on the same project would not both be able to access it. This might occur if your RBS was arranged by geography and the users were from different locations. Creating a custom category would enable users from different locations to access the project.

Download this book

This topic is included in the following downloadable book for easier reading and printing:

• Planning and architecture for Office Project Server 2007

See the full list of available books at Downloadable content for Project Server 2007.