po gantt timesheet user guide.070609a

8/13/2019 PO Gantt Timesheet User Guide.070609a

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] po [ Gantt & Timesheet Guide Frank Bergmann, 2007-06-09

This guide contains informationabout Project Planning, ProjectTracking, Timesheet and Ganttscheduling.


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Contents

Concepts Project (Gantt-) Task

Bug Forum Item

Timesheet Management Trust Configurations Timesheet Logging Scope

Timesheet Logging Interval Time Overrun Handling Absences Management

GanttProject IntegrationInvoicing


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Concepts


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Concept: Projects

We think of projects as "containers" of tasks, timesheetinformation and are the base for group collaboration. Only setup anew project if you have a new group of people collaborating.Projects are carrying permission information for the tasks belowthe project. A member of a subproject can log hours on all tasks

below the project (by default).Projects are the base unit for financial controlling. A projectshould have a quote (external) or a budget attached that definethe amount of resources available to spend. On the cost sidethere are "Provider Bills" (external invoices), "Expenses & TravelCosts" (small external expenses) and timesheet costs (internalcosts).Project are the base for team collaboration. Each project has afilestorage and a forum attached and there is a direct link into theWiki.


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Concept: (Gantt-) Task

A (Gantt-) task defines a specific piece of work that can(potentially) billed to a customer.Tasks are associated with three different measures of time:

Extimated hours: The PMs estimate how long it will take to completethe task

Billable hours: How many hours can be billed to a customer.

Logged hours: The actually spent number of hours logged via theTimesheet module.

Tasks are associated with a single type of service ("material").Materials are linked with the price list module, so that you canspecifiy a price per customer and material.Tasks are the base for Gantt scheduling algorithms. Tasks maydepend on each other and may have different ways to be startedand ended.


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Concept: Bugs & Forum Items

Bug: A bug (bug-tracker item) is a communication measure amongstemployees customer contacts.

Bugs are associated with "Bug Tracker Container" subprojects forpermission and financial management. The hours spent to fix a bugare logged to the Bug Tracker Container.

Forum Item The ]po[ forum is a versatile communication measure designed tosupport a variety of special processes such as CRM (customerconversation notes and reminders to call a customer), providermanagement (leave comments about the provider's deliveredquality), ...


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Concept: Project vs. Task

The difference between Sub-Projects & Tasks Projects are thought to be "containers" of tasks, timesheet

information and are the base for group collaboration. Only

setup a new project if you have a new group of peoplecollaborating. Otherwise we recommend you to use tasksThe project planning & tracking cycleWhen to open up a subproject?

If you want to delegate responsability to a different projectmanager

If you want to separate access to two different subprojects.Example: You don't want to let developers (executionsubproject) access the contents of the "acquisitionsubproject" with contract and sales information.

The GanttProject export only exports the tasks of a project,not subprojects.


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TimesheetManagement


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Trust Configurations

] po [ supports a number of different "trust configurations" to fit projectorganizations of different type:

Trusting Organizations: Every "Employee" (=in-house staff or equivalent) has read access to all projects and

tasks in the system. You can configure this option by granting the "view projects all"privilege to the group "Employees".

Similarly, all Employees may have read access to all companies (customers andproviders) in the system by granting the "view companies all" privilege to theEmployees group.

External users (Freelancers and Customers) are lacking the "view all xxx" privileges.They don't see any project or company in the system unless the project manager or keyaccount has made them a "member" of the specific object.

Competitive Organizations: Only the members of "Accounting" and "Senior Managers" (or a similar group) have

access to all projects and companies. Employees are treated here just like external users (Freelancers and Customers) in the

trusing organization. Trusting vs. Competitive Organizations:

The "competitve" setting carries a considerable overhead for managing project andcompany memberships.

Knowledge Management is considerably restricted in a competitive organizations,because the full-text search engine will only return matches from projects with explicitemembership in the competitive setting.


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Timesheet Logging Scope

A similar decision affects the scope of projects on which a usermay log his hours. There are three main configuration options:

"Main Project Scope":A user may log hours to any subproject or task if he or she ismember of the "main project" (the ones listed in the "Projects" tab).This option is useful in organizations without many subprojects or toreduce administrative overhead.

"Sub Project Scope":A variant of "Main Project Scope": In multi-level project hierarchies,the user can only log hours to sub-projects where he or she is amember. Or to express it negatively: A user can not log hours to asubproject, unless he or she is explicitely included as a member ofthe subproject.

"Task Scope":This is the finest granularity of timesheet logging: A user can only loghours to the tasks (of a sub-project) that he or she has explicitelybeen assigned to.

The three options come with increasing administrative overhead.] po [ default configuration is "Sub Project Scope".


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Timesheet Logging Interval

] po [ supports "strict" vs. "permissive" timesheet logging: The "permissive" policy (default) allows users to log hours their

projects (according to permissions, see section above) withoutrestriction in the past and in the future.

The "strict" policy restricts the time range to log hours to the current

month, except for a configurable number of first days in the month(default 7) where they can still log hours for the last month.

The ] po [ default configuration is "permissive". This policy isuseful if an organization just introduces timesheet logging andyou don't want to give users any reason to complain about thesystem that they are not able to log their hours.


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Time Overrun Handling

What happens if users log more hours to a task or a project thenallowed by the project budget or the "extimated hours" of a task?

] po [ currently doesn't restrict time overrun situations. Instead,] po [ provides the reporting measures in order to detect such asituation:

The "Profit & Loss" view of the "Projects" tab allows the PM todetermine budget overruns on the level of main projects.

The "Tasks Component" of the main project lists estimated vs.billable hours, so that the PM can easily detect overruns

In the future, ] po [ may include an option to restrict the numberof logged hours to the number of extimated hours of a task.


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Absences Management

The Absences module is complementary to the Timesheetmodule. It captures vacation, sickness, training and travel timesthat are not assignable to a specific project.Project related travel should not be logged as an absence, but asnormal working time for a project.Currently, only a user himself may add or remove absences.There is no limit to what the user enters into the absences list.Future versions ] po [ may include more sophisticated controlmechanisms such as a confirmation workflow for vacation andtravel requests etc.


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Timesheet Invoicing


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Timesheet Invoicing Overview

] po [ allows to automate invoice creation based on project and timesheetinformation. There are several options:Closed Offer Invoicing:This invoicing mode starts off with a quote detailing the costs of a projectand ends with one or more invoices that are to be paid by the customer.Effort Based Invoicing:The provider bills his customer based on the number of hours delivered tothe customer. Thanks to Timesheet management, all employee's hoursare tracked and associated to the right project and the right tasks. An"invoicing wizard" then allows to sum up the delivered hours and tomultiply them with the price of the task's "material" (service type) for thespecific customer. For automation, ] po [ allows to maintain a separateprice list for each customer.

Estimation Based Invoicing/Quoting:This is a variant of "Effort Based Invoicing" and may actually be moreinteresting for quoting then for invoicing. The PM designs a project planbased on the customer's requirements and plans a project. Once the planhas been approved, the ] po [ invoicing wizard automatically creates aquote from the estimated number of hours per task, multiplied with thecustomer's price list.


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Timesheet Invoicing

Managing the customer's price listManageing the list of "materials"Assigning materials to tasksExecuting the Invoicing Wizard


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Budget Management

Top-down budget planningBottom-up budget planningProject progress tracking

Base line tracking Advance vs. Time consumption Advance vs. Resource consumption

Budget tracking


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GanttProjectIntegration


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GanttProject Integration

Round-Trip PlanningSeparation of Tasks from Subprojects

The function "Download GanttProject File" returns a set of gantt-tasks for thecurrent project, excluding any sub-projects "in parallel". This is because eachproject manager is assumed to be responsible for the tasks below his project.So the PM of the subproject is responsible for his tasks, and the super-project'sPM would interfer with the work of the sub-project's PM.

Removing Tasks from a schedule Removing a task in GanttProject causes difficulties in ] po [ because tasks in

] po [ in general contain logged hours and other objects. For this reasons ] po [ forces the user to take a decision about where to assign

the timesheet information before deleting a task. Logged hours are moved to the new task. Conflicting timesheet entries (when the same

user has logged hours to both the old and the new task for the same day) are merged. Cost items and sub-tasks are moved from the old to the new task. Task dependencies and resource assignations to the old task are simply discarded. It

wouldn't make sense to pass them on to another task. Deleting a task may break up a dependency chain if the deleted task represents the

connection between two sections of the schedule.


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Frank [email protected]

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