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From: Alex Zimmerhaven on 13 May 2008 11:08
Hi everyone. Thank you in advance to the MVP's who answer all the questions.
You guys are truly awesome!

Here's what's going on:

We wanted to use Project to track the status of our projects as well as to
see the progress done by the person. I can't decide if we should take the
approach of a file for each project we work on or a file for each person
working on a project. Do I make sense?

Thanks,
Alex

From: John on 13 May 2008 11:40
In article <BB903B43-4212-4F0E-879F-33030C934AB0(a)microsoft.com>,
Alex Zimmerhaven <AlexZimmerhaven(a)discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

> Hi everyone. Thank you in advance to the MVP's who answer all the questions.
> You guys are truly awesome!
>
> Here's what's going on:
>
> We wanted to use Project to track the status of our projects as well as to
> see the progress done by the person. I can't decide if we should take the
> approach of a file for each project we work on or a file for each person
> working on a project. Do I make sense?
>
> Thanks,
> Alex

Alex,
It's not a black and white answer. Either way may make more sense under
the right circumstances.

Let's say you have a large development project with many different tasks
performed by resources in many different organizations. It probably
makes sense to break down the large project into several separate
project parts broken down along functional or WBS structures. Resources
working on each of the project parts may or may not be constant. Perhaps
there is an engineering staff in the functional group that will utilize
several individuals to perform various tasks within each project part.
This approach tracks individual and/or functional performance on a given
part of the overall project. A master file can be created to pull all
the individual files together for a top level look at the total project.
One advantage of breaking a large project into several smaller projects
is that each small project can be directly managed by a cost account
manager who then has responsibility and ownership of his/her piece of
the total project.

If the overall project is small to medium, and those designations are
very loose, a better approach might be to create one file for the whole
project. You can still track individual or functional performance using
Project's various filtering and grouping functions. This type of file
structure does not lend itself to direct managing by individual cost
account managers - generally a single individual must manage and track
the one large schedule.

But probably the best method is to create a WBS that tracks with your
corporate financial system. Then, whether the overall project is
contained in a single large file or multiple small files, the structure
is in place to track performance consistent with company and contract
needs.

The bottom line, it's at toss-up. It all depends on how you want to
manage/track your projects. My personal choice is that if a project has
more than a couple thousand performance tasks, it should be broken down
into multiple individual projects with a consolidated master as the
overall project file.

Hope this helps.

John
Project MVP
From: Trevor Rabey on 13 May 2008 11:47
I have never seen this suggestion about one file per person before or ever
seen it done, (maybe that tells you something) but can definitely recommend
that you don't do it.
Manage the project. That means manging the tasks.

Trevor Rabey 0407213955 61 8 92727485 PERFECT PROJECT PLANNING
www.perfectproject.com.au
"Alex Zimmerhaven" <AlexZimmerhaven(a)discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:BB903B43-4212-4F0E-879F-33030C934AB0(a)microsoft.com...
> Hi everyone. Thank you in advance to the MVP's who answer all the
> questions.
> You guys are truly awesome!
>
> Here's what's going on:
>
> We wanted to use Project to track the status of our projects as well as to
> see the progress done by the person. I can't decide if we should take the
> approach of a file for each project we work on or a file for each person
> working on a project. Do I make sense?
>
> Thanks,
> Alex
>


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