Microsoft Project 2010 : Creating Master Schedules with Inserted Projects - Reporting and Analyzing Across Projects

This section covers how to report and analyze information in a master plan. This includes looking at resource utilization across multiple projects.

1. Sharing Resources Across Projects

You can set up a resource pool for sharing across projects. To do so, you create a separate file that contains only the resources used for assignments across multiple projects. This file typically doesn't contain any tasks or milestones—just resources in the resource sheet.

As shown in Figure 1, you can save the shared resources in a separate .mpp file and name it something like Resource Pool.mpp. Usually, I add the name of the organization, department, or group at the beginning of the name. This illustrates that the master file is a separate .mpp file that stakeholders can access or use to generate cross-project reports.

Figure 1. Master files and shared resources

Each project manager who creates a new project file points to the resource pool, as shown in Figure 2, by following these steps:

MPP files don't have multiuser access. This means only one person at a time can open each file as read/write. Whoever opens the master file may inadvertently open the source files by clicking the details of that project, which is why it's wise to insert projects as read-only—doing so keeps this from happening. If the project manager who owns the file tries to open it when the master file is open, they will only be able to open it as read only and essentially will be locked out from making changes.

Figure 2. Sharing resources across projects

The resource-pool file behaves differently. When you open a file that shares resources, you're given the option to open the resource pool to see how the resource are being shared .

Figure 3. Opening sharer files to view resources across multiple projects

This option lets you view resource assignments across multiple projects. Also, as shown in Figure 4, when you open the resource pool file, you have three options: to open it as read-only, so others can continue to use it; to open it as read/write, so you can make changes but prevent others from using it; or to open the pool and all sharer files in a new master automatically.

Figure 4. Open Resource Pool dialog box

2. Analyzing Resources Across Projects

After you make assignments from a shared resource pool across projects, you can analyze how each resource is being used. In Figure 5, you can see that Engineer and David Blair are over-allocated on assignments across multiple projects. In this example, I clicked the Resource Usage view from the resource pool file . You can access the same information from any of the source files, depending on how you open the resource pool.

Figure 5. Resource usage across multiple projects

In this view, I added the Project column to help distinguish where tasks came from. David and the engineer are being used across two projects, resulting in over-allocations for both resources. You aren't limited to the Resource Usage view; you can access all the other resource views, if needed, and make changes to the assignments. For example, Figure 6 applies the Team Planner view: you can analyze over-allocations and click and drag to change assignments.

Figure 6. Team Planner view across multiple projects

3. Roll-Up Reports

Having all your projects loaded in one master file lets you create more effective roll-up type reports (one pagers). Rolling up everything into one nice neat report can be very handy when you're communicating with stakeholders, particularly senior management.

With a master file, Project's powerful communication and reporting tools are still available. For example, you can use filtering to display milestones across projects, display only line items that need to be finished next week, or show only critical paths across the entire program. In the previous section, you learned how to view resources across multiple projects. Figure 7 shows an example of viewing milestones across multiple projects.

Figure 7. Filtering milestones across multiple projects

As shown in the figure, you can access the Filter tool in the View tab's Data group . You can use built-in or custom filters to zero in on a specific set of line items across projects, to create dashboard-type rolled-up views. Note that for filters to work across projects, they must be fully expanded. If you run a filter while certain projects are collapsed, then the filter doesn't apply to that section.

You can also apply other tools, such as grouping. You can access groups under via the View tab's Data group, much like the filtering tool. As shown in Figure 8, you can create a high-level overview of milestones across all projects.

All these filters and groups can apply to not only task views but also resource views. For example, in Figure 9 I clicked the Resource Usage view and applied the Resource group to roll up by department how many hours, dollars, and units are needed, by quarter.

Figure 8. Grouping milestones across projects

Figure 9. Grouping by department

I added Peak Units and Cost to the time-phased portion of the view and changed the timescale to show months and quarters. Doing so lets you determine how many resources you need from each department across all the projects being shared. If you need a refresher on how to apply groups and filters.