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Published: April 10, 2005
Applies To: Microsoft Office Project Server 2003, Microsoft Office Project Professional 2003,
Microsoft Office Project Web Access 2003
Author: Roy Riley
Editors: Laura Graham, David Longmuir
Reviewed by: Project Product Planning
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide i
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Introduction .............................................................................. 1
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Online Books Series..................................... 1
What Will You Learn from this Book? ....................................................................... 2
Who Should Read this Book?.................................................................................... 3
Revision History.......................................................................................................... 3
Chapter 1 4
Overview of the EPM Solution...................................................... 4
Potential Benefits of the EPM Solution..................................................................... 5
Benefits for Executives ....................................................................................... 5
Benefits for Project Managers ........................................................................... 5
Benefits for Resource Managers ....................................................................... 6
Benefits for Team Members............................................................................... 6
Benefits for Administrators ................................................................................ 7
Components of an EPM Solution .............................................................................. 7
Best Practices for an EPM Solution Deployment ..................................................... 8
Chapter 2 10
Defining a Vision for Your EPM Solution Deployment ....................10
Foundation for the EPM Solution Vision .................................................................10
Creating Your EPM Solution Vision .........................................................................11
Identifying Business Needs and Opportunities...............................................12
Learning about EPM Solution Features and Capabilities...............................12
Assessing Organizational Readiness...............................................................12
Process.......................................................................................................13
People ........................................................................................................13
Organizational Goals .................................................................................13
Technology .................................................................................................14
Chapter 3 15
Learning About EPM Solution Capabilities ................................. 15
Project Management ...............................................................................................16
Note For more information about these features, see Chapter 5, Project
Server 2003 Features, later in this guide. ......................................................19
ii Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide
Chapter 4 26
Establishing Organizational Readiness ...................................... 26
Obtaining Executive Sponsorship ........................................................................... 27
Ensuring Participation ............................................................................................. 28
Assessing Project Management Process Maturity................................................. 28
Maturity Level 1: Ad Hoc .................................................................................. 29
Maturity Level 2: Repeatable Processes......................................................... 30
Maturity Level 3: Defined Processes ............................................................... 30
Maturity Level 4 – Managed Processes .......................................................... 31
Maturity Level 5 – Optimized and Continually Improving Processes............. 31
Establishing a Project Management Culture.......................................................... 31
Establishing a Communication Plan ....................................................................... 32
Establishing a Training Plan .................................................................................... 32
Planning for Rollout of Microsoft EPM Software Tools .......................................... 33
Planning Your EPM Solution Adoption .................................................................... 33
EPM Solution Adoption Roadmap.................................................................... 33
Iterative Adoption Strategy............................................................................... 34
Chapter 5 36
Project Server 2003 Features.................................................... 36
Active Directory Synchronization............................................................................. 37
Administrative Projects............................................................................................ 38
Build Team ............................................................................................................... 39
Enterprise Calendars ............................................................................................... 40
Enterprise Custom Fields ........................................................................................ 41
Enterprise Global Template..................................................................................... 42
Enterprise Outline Codes......................................................................................... 42
Enterprise Resource Pool ........................................................................................ 43
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide iii
Appendix A 49
Additional Resources ............................................................... 49
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Online Books Series...................................49
Project Server-Related Web Sites ...........................................................................50
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide 1
Introduction
The Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide is designed to help your
organization successfully adopt a Microsoft® Office Enterprise Project Management
(EPM) Solution. A critical step in a successful adoption is to create a clear vision for how
your organization will plan, deploy, and use the EPM solution. Many organizations do not
achieve the results they expect because they fail to create a vision.
This guide introduces the Microsoft EPM Solution, discusses the components, elements,
and capabilities of EPM, and provides the necessary information to begin creating an EPM
vision for your organization.
Further, this guide introduces many of the software-based features used in a Microsoft
EPM Solution, and is designed to help you to make decisions about mapping them to
specific implementation needs.
Send us your feedback. Please let us know what you think about the quality of this
content. If this text does not meet your needs, let us know how we can improve it. If this
text was helpful to you, let us know how it helped.
mailto:projdocs@microsoft.com?subject=Feedback: Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution
Planning Guide
Revision History
The following table provides the revision history for this document.
Date Revision
March 30, 2005 • Initial publication.
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide 4
1
Overview of the EPM Solution
The discipline of project management is becoming increasingly important in today’s
competitive business environment. Many types of organizations now rely on project
management software for tracking a variety of different types of work, from manufacturing
and construction, to IT system deployments, non-production-related initiatives, and other
schedule-based activities, such as mergers and acquisitions. Business success or failure is
based in part on the ability of an organization to develop a coherent project management
solution that enables it to manage multiple projects while tracking and managing resource
allocations, budgets, schedules, and status. The project management solution, then, is a
means for you to gain relevant insight into your business. This insight can help identify
resource and budget issues and provide early detection of project-related problems. The
Microsoft® Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution is designed to help
your organization to achieve business success by enabling you to implement a project
management solution that works for your business needs.
The Microsoft EPM solution integrates your people, processes, organizational goals, and
business needs with the software tools in Microsoft Office Project Server 2003. Project
Server 2003 combines with Microsoft Office Project Professional 2003, Microsoft Office
Project Web Access 2003, and other Microsoft server applications and technologies to
provide a server-based project management toolset. This guide introduces the Microsoft
EPM Solution and provides the information that you need to better understand its features
and components and how they can be mapped to the capabilities of your organization. This
ultimately leads to creating a vision for adopting an EPM Solution tailored to your
business.
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide 5
• Timesheets in Microsoft Office Project Web Access 2003 that facilitate reporting.
• Documents, Issues, and Risks features enabled by integration with Microsoft
Windows® SharePoint® Services that facilitate project collaboration.
• Administrative Projects, Enterprise Resource Pool, and Enterprise Global
Template features of Project Server 2003 that enable project managers to view
resource availability and status information across projects so that they can more
accurately analyze data and more efficiently manage projects.
Note For more information about Project Server features, see Chapter 5, Project Server 2003
Features, later in this guide.
To take advantage of all of the capabilities that the EPM Solution provides, a successful
adoption of an EPM Solution requires a thoughtful, methodical approach. To realize the
numerous benefits of a Microsoft EPM solution requires thorough vision, long-term
executive sponsorship, company-wide participation, and procuring input from and setting
expectations for all user groups. Moreover, successfully adopting Microsoft EPM involves
assessing your organization’s project management culture and process maturity, and clearly
mapping and articulating business goals and objectives.
One way to your improve your chances for successfully adopting Microsoft EPM is to
engage a Microsoft Certified Partner who specializes in this area. You will typically derive
maximum benefit from this partnership when the partner can work with key personnel in
your organization early in the planning process. In addition to being a technical expert, a
Certified Partner is experienced in the start-to-finish process of adopting an EPM
solution. A Certified Partner can help you to do the following:
• Assess business processes and analyze gaps.
• Document and prioritize organizational goals and business objectives.
• Map goals and objectives to functional and technical requirements.
• Accelerate the transition from planning to adoption.
It is important to plan for the growth and maturity of your organization in regard to
managing projects. Effective planning prior to deployment will help ensure that existing
processes are not disrupted when you begin your deployment process.
• Identify and clearly articulate the business objectives for your EPM Solution
deployment.
• Involve all stakeholders in the planning process.
• Commit to changing the project management culture of your organization.
• Commit to proactively improving the project management processes in your
organization.
• Implement a change strategy.
• Implement your EPM Solution in stages.
• Provide timely training to all user groups.
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide 10
2
Defining a Vision for Your EPM
Solution Deployment
Defining a vision for your Microsoft® Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM)
Solution is a critical first step in your deployment planning process. Defining a vision for
your EPM Solution involves identifying and prioritizing your goals—that is, the business
problems that you want to solve and the opportunities that you want to take advantage of
by using an enterprise project management system.
After you identify your goals and business needs, you must identify which EPM Solution
capabilities and features can help you to meet your goals. You must also evaluate your
organizational readiness. After you establish your vision, you then create a plan for
implementing EPM Solution features in your environment. Realizing your EPM Solution
vision might require an iterative deployment process by which new features and capabilities
are introduced in scheduled phases. Therefore, it is helpful to create a roadmap that
identifies the steps required to achieve your vision.
This chapter introduces the concept of a vision for an EPM Solution implementation and
describes the components of that vision. It then provides a high-level overview of the EPM
Solution implementation process.
the successful implementation of an EPM initiative. Commitment to the project and its
goals is necessary at the outset and during each phase of vision, planning, and
implementation. This commitment must encompass such issues as funding and resources.
More importantly, it must encompass communication about necessary cultural changes.
Being committed to adopting a Microsoft EPM Solution is only effective when that
commitment is broadly communicated within your organization. Because adopting
Microsoft EPM affects everyone in the organization, all stakeholders should strive to
understand the business reasons for adopting a Microsoft EPM Solution, and to
understand how they must contribute to ensure a successful adoption. Clearly
communicating your commitment to adopting EPM can accelerate this process and help
mitigate resistance to change. Communication should continue throughout the planning
and implementation phases to help ensure a successful adoption.
• Organizational goals
• Technology
The overall vision that you define for your EPM Solution deployment is based on the
current state of organizational readiness and the steps that are necessary for you achieve
short-term and long-term goals for your organization. Organizational readiness continues
to evolve and develop over the EPM Solution deployment lifecycle, so it is important to
reevaluate the status of your organization regularly.
Process
For your EPM Solution deployment to be successful, you must have processes in place that
support an enterprise project management system. Assessing your process readiness
involves the following:
• Identifying your current project management process maturity level.
• Determining what communication processes your organization uses.
• Identifying the processes that are in place for ensuring executive sponsorship and
participant involvement.
People
A successful EPM Solution deployment requires full participation from executives,
stakeholders, and participants. This participation begins with communication. Assessing the
readiness of people in your organization involves determining what types of
communication processes are in place, whether participants are involved in and supportive
of the initiative, and whether they understand the changes to the project management
culture of the organization that must take place. Participants must understand the roles and
responsibilities that will be required of them when the system is implemented. They must
also have the opportunity for ongoing professional development and training to support
them in their roles.
Organizational Goals
A successful EPM Solution deployment is based on clearly defined goals. Before you begin
to implement an enterprise project management system in your environment, ensure that
you have clearly established and communicated the short-term and long-term goals for
your deployment. As part of your organizational goals readiness assessment, determine
whether and how well the goals for your deployment are defined and articulated. Note that
defining the goals and for an EPM Solution deployment is often the responsibility of a
project management office (PMO) or other central authority. This central authority must
have a clearly defined role and structure.
14 Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide
Technology
The features and capabilities that an EPM Solution deployment provides are enabled by
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 and the Microsoft EPM Solution infrastructure. It is
important to ensure that your system is configured to support the Project Server features
that you plan to enable. Although configuration planning is the responsibility of your
organization’s IT department, the status of your current configuration is also an element of
organizational readiness that you must assess. You might need to upgrade or add new
hardware to your system before you can enable EPM Solution features. Note that as your
project management process maturity level increases and you begin to take advantage of
additional EPM Solution features, you will need to reevaluate your current and future
configuration needs.
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide 15
3
Learning About EPM Solution
Capabilities
Organizations deploy a Microsoft® Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM)
Solution for a variety of business reasons. It is important to identify the business needs that
your EPM Solution deployment is designed to meet early in your planning process so that
you can make effective decisions about which features you will enable. The business needs
that you define for your EPM Solution deployment identify what you expect to achieve
based on the desired level of project management process maturity that you define for your
organization.
In order to identify the goal for your EPM Solution deployment, it is helpful to understand
the range of capabilities that the EPM Solution provides. An EPM Solution deployment
can enable you to achieve any or all of the following solutions for your organization:
• Project management
• Project portfolio management
• Resource management
• Reporting and analysis
• Budgeting and cost tracking
• Communication, collaboration, and workflow
Enabling these capabilities will require different levels of project management maturity and
sophistication in your organization.
16 Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide
Project Management
A Microsoft EPM Solution deployment can help you to increase your level of project
management process maturity by introducing centralized data storage and project
management tools. This is the most basic capability that an EPM Solution provides. EPM
Solution project management features enable organizations to progress from an ad hoc
level of project management—at which project managers store files locally and might use a
variety of different types of tools—to a level at which common processes are defined for
all projects across the organization.
At this first level of EPM Solution capability, project managers and resource managers in
your organization use Microsoft Office Project Professional 2003 for scheduling, and team
members use Microsoft Office Project Web Access 2003 for status reporting. Project files
are stored in the Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 database so that all users in the
organization have central access to project-related data. This might require a gradual
evolution of your processes so that current productivity is not disrupted. You might first
centralize tools and data storage in your organization, and then implement new project
management processes gradually to your project teams.
Consider the following example of ad hoc project management. Laura is a project manager
who is responsible for completing a project and tracking project status. She is using
Microsoft Excel to track the milestones for the project, and stores the .xls files on her local
computer. Whenever new information about task status or project dates is available, she
updates the spreadsheets. She meets weekly with the two team members on the project
team to discuss project status, and also maintains ad hoc communication by e-mail.
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide 17
• Project Center
• Status reports
• Resource Center (Timesheet summary)
Note For more information about these features, see Chapter 5, Project Server 2003 Features,
later in this guide.
team members are not fully participating in the EPM Solution initiative, accurate analysis of
project portfolio data is not possible.
You can enable project portfolio management capabilities by using the following features
of Project Server 2003:
• Manage Administrative Projects
• Enterprise Custom Fields
• Enterprise Global Template
• Enterprise Outline Codes
• Portfolio Analyzer
• Project Center
• Status Reports
• Resource Center (Timesheet summary view)
• Portfolio Modeler
Resource Management
The Microsoft EPM Solution provides organizations with the ability to optimize resource
allocations across projects and project portfolios. Resource management begins at the most
basic level with the assignment of team members to project tasks, and evolves in
complexity as your organization’s project management processes mature. More advanced
resource management practices enable you to view current capacity and allocations across
projects in your organization for all resources.
You can enable resource management capabilities by using the following features of Project
Server 2003:
• Synchronization with Active Directory® directory service
• Manage Administrative Projects
• Build Team
• Enterprise Calendars
• Enterprise Custom Fields
• Enterprise Global Template
• Enterprise Resource Pool
• Portfolio Modeler
• Resource Breakdown Structure (RBS)
• Resource Center (Timesheet summary view)
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide 21
Reporting
Strategic business decisions are based on timely and meaningful information. You must
define what types of information are meaningful for your organization. This involves
deciding what and how much reporting data to collect, and from whom. Because different
user roles in your organization require different types and quantities of reporting
information, it is useful to define the data that is meaningful for various user roles, such as
executives, resource managers, and project managers. In all cases, it is important to ensure
that the reporting data that you request is aligned with your overall business objectives.
Successful data reporting requires standard processes and an established communication
system. Reporting data is collected at the task level, the project level, and the portfolio
level.
Task-Level Reporting
Task-level reporting is information provided by team members on the status of tasks
assigned to them in current projects. How team members report task status varies for
different organizations; for example, an organization might require that team members
report actual hours worked or percentage complete for a task. Successful task-level
reporting requires that task assignments be clearly scoped. Information provided at the task
level is based directly on the project schedule.
Project-Level Reporting
Project-level reporting is information provided by project managers about the status of
projects that they are managing. Accurate task-level reporting makes a variety of
information about project status available to project managers, including any of the
following:
• Critical path
22 Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide
• Project budget
• Progress against dates
• Project actuals
• Risks
• Resource over-allocations
Depending on the needs of your organization, project managers might provide reporting
information on any of these information types. The accuracy of project-level reporting is
based on the accuracy of reporting at the task level. For this reason, it is important that all
team members working on a project provide consistent and accurate task-level reporting
information.
Portfolio-Level Reporting
Portfolio-level reporting is information about the status of a collection of projects. The
type of data collected at the portfolio level should map closely to data collected at the
project level. Portfolio reporting requires consistent task-level reporting across all projects
in the portfolio. For this reason it is important that all project managers and team members
provide accurate reporting information. If data reporting is inaccurate or incomplete, your
organization cannot rely on portfolio-level reporting information to make strategic business
decisions.
Analysis
You can generate and analyze reports based on reporting information that is available in
your organization. These analyses will enable you to make business decisions that are based
on real data. For this reason, it is important to carefully define the types of reporting data
that you collect.
You can use reporting information to perform any of the following types of analyses:
• Historical analysis
• Status analysis
• Forward-looking indicator analysis
• Trend analysis
Historical Analysis
You can use historical analyses to evaluate the success of completed projects. Historical
analyses can help you answer the following questions:
• Were projects completed on time?
• If the project was completed on time, did this require any changes to project scope or
quality?
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide 23
• If the project was not completed on time, what factors contributed to the delay?
• Were projects completed within budget?
• How well were resources utilized?
This historical information can help you to better plan for current and future projects to
ensure a higher rate of success.
Status Analysis
You can use status analyses to evaluate the status of current projects. This type of analysis
can help you answer the following questions:
• How are updates affecting projects?
• Are all necessary status updates submitted?
• Is work progressing as planned?
• Have any issues or risks been identified?
This status information can help you to make adjustments to current projects as necessary
to help you to meet your business objectives.
Trend Analysis
You can use trend analyses to make projections about future performance in your
organization based on trends that you identify in baseline and historical data. This type of
analysis assumes that all future projects will be executed with the same level of efficiency
that is applied to current projects. However, it is important to keep in mind that your
organizational processes will continue to mature over time, and therefore trend analysis
information might only be partially relevant. You can use trend analyses for long-range
planning of strategic initiatives in your organization.
24 Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide
project managers might use e-mail to communicate with team members and reports or
presentations to communicate with executives and stakeholders. As your organization
achieves more advanced levels of project management process maturity, its
communication, collaboration, and workflow processes will mature and increase in
efficiency and effectiveness.
Communication, collaboration, and workflow features are enabled in part by the
integration of Windows SharePoint® Services with Project Server 2003.
Note For more information about Windows SharePoint Servers features of Project Server 2003,
see the section Windows SharePoint Services in Chapter 5, Project Server 2003 Features, later in
this guide.
26 Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide
4
Establishing Organizational
Readiness
Implementing a Microsoft® Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution in
your organization involves more than installing software and configuring servers. A
Microsoft EPM Solution is a coordinated organizational approach intended to improve
business performance. Driven by the goals and objectives you identify, Microsoft EPM can
be thought of as a change initiative that integrates your people, processes, and
organizational goals with software and technology.
Ensure participation x x
Notice that most steps actually affect more than one EPM component. This is because of
the integrated and interconnected nature of an EPM initiative. Notice also that only one of
the steps listed is a technology consideration. This shows that although Project Server 2003
is an important part of an overall implementation, deploying Project Server 2003 does not
by itself make a successful EPM initiative.
Ensuring Participation
Because the implementation of an EPM solution can potentially change processes, tools,
and methods, it should not be a surprise to your employees. Therefore, ensure that
stakeholders and individuals in your organization who will use or be affected by the EPM
Solution are involved in the planning process. Microsoft EPM should be thought of as a
solution that your organization—that is, your people—will adopt and use with increasing
efficiency and effectiveness. It should not be thought of simply as something that will be
installed, yet many organizations make this mistake to varying degrees. The development of
or changes to processes and organizational goals, necessitates the participation of
stakeholders and key individuals within the organization. Those individuals must
understand the value of the EPM solution and be able to provide feedback on the
processes that will be required for it to be successful. Additionally, if participants are
involved in the planning effort, they are more likely to comply with necessary changes to
their work processes to ensure the success of the EPM Solution initiative.
Ongoing participation in established project management processes is critical to the success
of your EPM Solution adoption. Lack of compliance can limit your ability to increase the
level of project management maturity and to establish a mature project management culture
for your organization.
can help you identify and achieve your target maturity level more quickly and more
effectively.
Several different versions of the project management process maturity model are available,
and they all share a common five-tiered scale of measurement that ranges from little to no
project management processes, to a sophisticated and continually improving set of
established project management practices.
of different scheduling tools. Project management tools are not standardized across the
organization. Other project teams might or might not be aware of projects in other areas of
the organization, and it is possible that efforts are duplicated across the organization.
Management is aware only of critical initiatives and major milestones, and does not have
ready access to information about all current projects within the organization.
Communication to management about the status of projects is informal.
The results that an organization can achieve with this level of project management maturity
are unpredictable. Failure is likely, and time and resources are often not efficiently used.
Resource management is more sophisticated, and resource managers can balance resource
allocations across projects.
Organizations at this level of project management process maturity begin to achieve
predictable results with improving consistency.
Your assessment and strategy for change should include your considering and ensuring the
following:
• Project management is an established discipline in your organization, and the role of a
project manager is clearly defined. If users in your organization currently perform
project management tasks informally, make project management a formal job function.
• Roles in your organization align with managing, tracking, and executing on project-
based work.
• Project management processes and technologies are consistent across the organization.
This might require the creation of a central authority, such as a PMO. A PMO is
responsible for establishing and maintaining project management standards and
expectations for the organization. Moreover, a PMO plays a role in assessing the overall
project management culture and driving necessary cultural change.
It might be difficult for some users to adjust to cultural changes within the organization. Be
sure to identify and communicate the changes that each user role can expect to see in the
new project management environment. Setting clear expectations, encouraging open dialog,
and providing training to users can help to ensure that establishing a project management
culture occurs smoothly.
Solution implementation. The following figure illustrates the roadmap for deploying a
Microsoft EPM Solution in your environment.
It is recommended that you revisit your EPM solution vision and implementation plan at
each phase. This enables you to measure the implementation against objectives and to
reassess the whether the objectives are realistic. Revisiting your planning information is
different from tracking the progress of the initiative. It gives you the opportunity to ensure
that the planned objectives are properly scoped for your organization.
Revisiting the initial vision at each phase of deployment enables you to continue to refine
your vision as your organization evolves. It also enables you to map your process maturity
and organizational readiness to your implementation phases and objectives, as illustrated in
the following figure.
5
Project Server 2003 Features
The capabilities that a Microsoft® Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution
provides are enabled by features of Microsoft Office Project Server 2003. This chapter
provides an overview of the Project Server features that you can use to meet your business
objectives for your EPM Solution deployment, including the requirements for enabling
each feature in your environment and—where applicable—feature interdependencies. The
following table lists the Project Server features that enable EPM Solution capabilities and
indicates the business solution or solutions with which each feature is associated.
Feature Project Portfolio Resource Budgeting Reporting &
Mgmt. Mgmt. Mgmt Analysis
Active Directory® x
synchronization
Administrative Projects x x x
Build Team x
Enterprise Calendars x
Enterprise Global x
Template
Portfolio Analyzer x x
Portfolio Modeler x x
Project Center x x
RBS x
Resource Center x
Status Reports x x
Timesheets x x x x x
Microsoft Windows® x x x x
SharePoint® Services
The Active Directory Connector in Project Server 2003 facilitates the synchronization of
users and groups from Active Directory to Project Server 2003 so long as the computers
running Active Directory and Project Server 2003 are located in trusted domains. This
component makes calls to the Project Data Service (PDS) so that Active Directory data is
written to the Enterprise Resource Pool and to security group membership information in
the Project Server database.
When the Enterprise Resource Pool and Project Server security groups are configured to
be synchronized with a security group or groups in Active Directory, you can automate
some of the most important steps in the process of creating users and associating users
with security groups in Project Server 2003.
When used with Project Server 2003, Active Directory provides a central service for
administrators to organize enterprise resources and Project Server users. Active Directory
38 Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide
• If a person’s name changes or any other key attributes about the person change, this
change is automatically applied to the Project Server database and appears in any other
projects to which the person is assigned.
Using the Active Directory synchronization feature in Project Server 2003 requires the
following:
• Active Directory–based Windows 2000 Server or Windows Server 2003 domain
structure
• Project Server 2003 running in enterprise mode
• The use of the Enterprise Resource Pool
Administrative Projects
Organizations depend on having a comprehensive view of all hours reported, not just the
hours reported against actual work assignments. The Manage Administrative Projects
feature of Project Server 2003 provides a convenient way to track non-working time and
non-project time outside of projects that are used to track progress on assignments. By
effectively using administrative projects, you can prevent the reporting of non-project time
and non-working time in actual projects. Project managers and team members use
assignments in administrative projects in the same way that they use assignments in any
other project. Administrative projects differ from regular projects only in that the process
to create them is different, and that tasks in administrative projects always default to a fixed
duration.
When you use administrative projects, resources can report non-project time and non-
working time directly in a timesheet in Microsoft Office Project Web Access 2003. Types
of non-project time and non-working time include vacation, sick leave, meetings, and
training. Project Server 2003 includes one administrative project enterprise template:
Administrative Time. This project is stored in the Project Server database and is only
available to Project Professional users who are connected to Project Server 2003. (You
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide 39
must use Project Professional to create an administrative project, but you do not need to
use it to enter time against a task in an administrative project.) You can also create your
own administrative projects.
Administrative projects have the following characteristics. They:
• Cannot be associated with a Microsoft Windows SharePoint® Services site. You
cannot associate documents, issues, and risks with an administrative project.
• Can only be created by users who are assigned Create Administrative Projects
permissions.
• Always use the Hours of work per day timesheet tracking setting to save hours,
regardless of the tracking method that you use for projects in your organization.
• Can be customized to meet the unique non-project time and non-working time periods
required by your organization.
• Measure durations as fixed, in days, and not as effort-driven.
• Can only be saved as administrative projects when they are based on the
Administrative Time enterprise template or when they are specified as an
administrative project when you initially save them by using the Administrative
project option in the Save to Project Server dialog box.
• Display non-project time and non-working time at the bottom of a resource’s
timesheet in Project Web Access. (Team members can belong to more than one
administrative project.)
• Are not available for use with Portfolio Modeler.
• Affect resource allocation and scheduling in other projects after you accept the task
update and publish the changes.
The following are the requirements for using administrative projects:
• Because administrative projects are based on enterprise templates, Project Server 2003
must be running in enterprise mode.
• In order for users to create administrative projects, they must be assigned the Create
Administrative Projects global permission.
• You must enable the New and Changed assignments option on the Collaborate
tab in the Options dialog box when you use administrative templates.
Build Team
Build Team is a Project Server 2003 feature that enables project managers and resource
managers to add resources to a project, including replacing resources in a project and
substituting generic resources with resources from the Enterprise Resource Pool.
40 Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide
The Build Team feature supports the matching of resources from the Enterprise Resource
Pool with characteristics specified in the project for the type of resource, the required skill
level, and other qualifiers. It includes a Match feature that is designed to take advantage of
Enterprise Resource Outline Codes, including Resource Breakdown Structure (RBS), and
uses Enterprise Resource Outline Codes marked with Use this code for matching
generic resources to match all resources in the Enterprise Resource Pool with the
resource in the project for which you are trying to find a match.
Users of Build Team must be granted the following permissions:
• Assign Resources To obtain the list of resources from which you can add resources
to project teams. This permission determines the resources available in the list itself.
• Build Team on Project To determine the list of projects to which the user is
allowed to add resources. This permission determines the projects available to which
resources can be assigned.
• See Enterprise Resource Data To enable viewing of resources and resource data.
• Assign Resource to Project Team To use Project Professional to assign resources
to projects.
• Build Team on New Project To add resources to a project that has not been saved
to Project Server.
Enterprise Calendars
Enterprise Calendars are the primary scheduling mechanism used to determine working
time for all projects, tasks, and resources. Project Server 2003 includes four types of
Enterprise Calendars:
• Base A base calendar is used for two purposes, either directly as a task or project
calendar or as a template for resource calendars. The Standard Enterprise Calendar is
the only base calendar type that is included in the Enterprise Global Template by
default. The Standard Enterprise Calendar is the default calendar for projects and
resources; it is based on a traditional Monday-Friday, 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. work
schedule with a one-hour break in the middle of the schedule.
• Project A project calendar is the base calendar used to designate the default work
schedule for all tasks in a project.
• Resource A resource calendar is used to reflect specific working hours, vacations,
leaves of absence, and planned personal time for individual resources. A resource
calendar can be based on any base calendar, but the default is the Standard Enterprise
Calendar. Individual resource calendars for enterprise resources are stored with other
resource information in the Enterprise Resource Pool.
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide 41
• Task A task calendar is useful for situations in which you want to schedule a task
outside of the normal working times defined by a project calendar or resource calendar.
You can select any base calendar to be a task calendar.
Note Enterprise Calendars can only be modified by users who have permissions to check
out the Enterprise Global Template.
project-related data. You can use Enterprise Outline Codes to group projects, tasks, and
resources in a variety of ways, as well as display summary information about a grouping of
data.
Project Server includes 90 Enterprise Outline Codes:
• 30 Enterprise Task Outline Codes
• 30 Enterprise Resource Outline Codes, including Resource Breakdown Structure
(Enterprise Resource Outline Code 30) and multi-value outline codes (Enterprise
Resource Outline Codes 20-29)
• 30 Enterprise Project Outline Codes
Defining an appropriate set of custom Enterprise Outline Codes (especially Project or
Resource) is an important step in planning your EPM Solution. If you do not correctly
define your Enterprise Outline Codes, your project management system might not
adequately meet the needs of your organization.
Note Only users who have permission to check out and edit the Enterprise Global Template can
create, modify, or delete Enterprise Outline Codes.
Portfolio Analyzer
Portfolio Analyzer is used to interpret data built in an online analytical processing (OLAP)
cube. When the cube is built, it reads heavily from the Project Server tables (MSP) and
writes to the Project View tables (MSP_VIEW). This activity is intense but short-lived.
Portfolio Analyzer itself causes a brief but heavy processing load on the server where it is
installed. The majority of the performance load, however, is absorbed on the client
computer.
Portfolio Analyzer takes advantage of Microsoft Office Web Components, which is a
collection of Microsoft ActiveX® components. Project Server 2003 uses two Office Web
44 Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide
Components (PivotTable and Chart) to access OLAP cube data stored in the Analysis
Services database (an Analysis Services database is created for each OLAP cube created in
Project Web Access). Users can interact with this data in Project Web Access and Project
Professional using fully interactive PivotTable and PivotChart reports. Users can sort, filter,
add, or modify data, expand and collapse details, and save their results for future reference.
To use Portfolio Analyzer, you must:
• Install and configure Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000 Analysis Services (and apply
Service Pack 3a).
• Install the Office 2003 Office Web Controls in order to modify Portfolio Analyzer
views.
• Be granted the Manage Views permission to create Portfolio Analyzer views in Project
Web Access. In addition, Project Web Access and Project Professional users must be
added to the Cube Database role in Analysis Services for each Portfolio Analyzer view.
• Be granted the View Portfolio Analyzer permission to use Portfolio Analyzer from
Project Professional or Project Web Access.
Portfolio Modeler
Portfolio Modeler is a strategic planning tool that executives and project managers can use
to evaluate the capacity of the organization to take on new projects. Because Portfolio
Modeler provides detailed, high-level analyses, its results require careful interpretation. You
can use the modeling capabilities of the Portfolio Modeler feature to analyze projects in
order to do the following:
• Determine whether resources are being over-utilized or under-utilized.
• Determine whether it is possible to staff a new project.
• View the effects of strategic reprioritization.
The scheduling engine for Portfolio Modeler is always run on the computer running
Project Server 2003.
To use Portfolio Modeler, you must be granted the following permissions:
• See Enterprise Resource Data To view resource data in Portfolio Modeler.
• Open Project To open a project from the Project Server database and load it into
Portfolio Modeler.
• View Models To use Portfolio Modeler from Project Professional and Project Web
Access.
Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide 45
Project Center
Project Center in Project Web Access enables users to view portfolios of projects or
individual projects. Users can view either summary information about multiple projects or
detailed information about individual projects. They can also create to-do lists, which are
lists of tasks that are not associated with a project.
Resource Center
Resource Center in Project Web Access enables users to view, modify, and analyze
resource information across projects and assignments published to the Project Server
database. Viewing assignment information in Resource Center enables you to have access
to information about who is doing what in which project. Resource Center displays a list of
the resources in the Enterprise Resource Pool; permissions to view items in Resource
Center are granted by the Project Server administrator.
To use Resource Center, you must be granted the following permissions:
• See Enterprise Resource Data To enable viewing of resources and resource data.
• Edit Enterprise Resource Data To edit and save resources in the Enterprise
Resource Pool using Project Professional.
• See Resource Assignments in Assignment Views To view assignment details in
Assignment Views in Resource Center.
• View Assignments View To view resource assignments in Resource Center.
• View Resource Allocation To view resource availability in Project Web Access.
46 Microsoft Office Project Server 2003 Solution Planning Guide
Status Reports
The Status Reports feature in Project Web Access enables project stakeholders to send
status reports to any individual involved with a project (so long as they are also Project
Web Access users) to provide information about the status of their tasks. Status reports
provide a simple method for team members to use to communicate descriptive information
about the status of or progress on specific assigned tasks or on an entire project. The Status
Reports feature enables you to automate the process of requesting and receiving status
information. Project managers can send team members status report requests and team
members can then respond to them by providing the information requested. Team
members can also initiate the submission of status reports.
Project managers can configure status reports so that they receive individual submissions
and a merged or compiled status report that consolidates responses into a single status
request. Users can manage status reports, including status report requests, from the Project
Web Access Status Reports page.
Timesheets
Timesheets provide a method for team members to view and work with assigned tasks, and
report task updates to project managers. Team members can use timesheets to quickly and
easily scan tasks to which they are assigned. If they are assigned to tasks in more than one
project, team members can view all of the tasks for all of the projects in their timesheets.
leads can then determine whether the issues will have an effect on the project and
identify strategies to manage the issues before they become larger problems.
• Documents A document library provides a location for team members to collaborate
and share documents outside of a project. Document types that you can use in a
document library include Microsoft Office Word 2003, Microsoft Office Excel 2003,
Microsoft Office Access 2003, and many other document types and formats. In
addition to project-specific document libraries, shared document libraries can be used
to store documents that are related to all projects in your organization.
• Project Workspace A Project Workspace can exist for each project saved to the
Project Server database. They can be automatically configured when the project is first
saved or manually created by a Project Server administrator. The Project Workspace
enables additional collaboration features (for example, announcements) by providing a
Web site for each project that makes the capabilities of Windows SharePoint Services
available to a project team.
Appendices
A
Additional Resources
If you want to learn more about Microsoft® Office Project Server 2003, Microsoft Office
Project Web Access 2003, and Microsoft Office Project Professional 2003, or how to use
these three applications as part of your organization’s Microsoft Office Enterprise Project
Management (EPM) Solution, please refer to the following online books and Web sites.