Allocating Hours per Project instead of per Task?

[NicoleMe]

A question for you all- Is there a way to assign and allocate hours needed to complete a project ONLY on a project level and not on the task level? We resource our team hours per project and then assign them time to work on their part of their project on a weekly basis. We don't necessarily break down their hours on a daily basis, but more of a weekly basis. Our team can work on anywhere between 5 to 30 projects at a time and we do not delegate their daily time, instead we let them choose which projects (based on need and deadline) they work on daily, as long as they complete the amount of hours per Project that week assigned them for the week. What I am thinking is somehow using the tasks more like a checklist feature, and then the project itself being where hours are resourced and logged. Nicole Medenilla Intuitive Surgical, Inc.

[PatriciaMo1]

I would love to know if there is a way. I've been looking into that too! Patricia Moreno McCann Health

[MattCo1]

This would be an AWESOME feature.

[SusanGo1]

Go to update in the Project (not a specific task) and ask your project managers to log hours -- their best guess for actual hours spent -- when the project is complete. You then create a new view that includes a column showing Project Actual Hours . Each task in that view will then show the total number of hours worked on the project (but not the hours worked on each task) even though the number shows up next to the task. You could then produce a report that shows all completed projects and actual hours spent.using that total number. I work in the marketing/comm group and detailing hours by task is too granular for our needs so this is a good workaround. Susan Godstone University of California, San Francisco

[StuartLl1]

I'd quite like to do that too! In the end I created a super-project in which the real projects existed as Tasks. Then I allocate roles, teams, people etc. to the 'projects' with an appropriate number of hours. Hours can be logged to the task so you can see how much actual time is being spent on the task (aka project). I've also then added some sub-tasks (without allocating people or hours) which act as a project action list and we mark them as complete when they have been to enable us to have some idea of progress. This approach feeds well into our capacity planning and resource utilization and gives us a workable pragmatic solution to exactly your issue. Stuart Lloyd Alberta Energy Regulator

[MichelleYa]

That sounds like a more agile approach to workflow, so I'm wondering if you could use bulk tasks on the project: Copy, Design, Development -- really big buckets. Then the team member could just log hours against that bulk task on the project, at the end of each day or week. If you use the time sheet view, they don't even have to go to the specific project to log the hours. We train team members to use the time sheet view as an alternate way to enter hours in one place, once a day (ideally). If you have only three or four tasks on a project: Copy, Design, Completion, that's pretty simple. Then if you ever want to pull any data on how much time you spend on copy-related tasks, you can easily do that. Michelle Yard Insperity

[MichelleYa]

Susan, I'm interested in this workaround, but where in the updates do you log hours? Maybe it's a semantics thing, but I'm not understanding where you'd do this. Using this approach, I would think you could enter planned hours, as well, right? So let's say you want to start the project with a baseline of planned hours before any resources have been assigned, could you do this by resource type (Design=20 hours, Videographer=10 hours, etc) and use that as a baseline throughout the life of the project? Or am I way off here? Michelle Yard Insperity