Other Work for Non-Project Work?

[Linda Grant]

Our company uses CA PPM, currently they keep all non-project work: vacation time, departmental support meetings, service requests, training etc. are all done as projects.  They are looking to start using resource planning and want to continue to use projects for the above items.  Should those items be classified as other work instead?  Also, if so, are they reportable in CA PPM?  Any suggestions/advice for setting up "other work" would be greatly appreciated.

 

I'd rather have the system setup correctly, instead of incorrectly if possible.

 

Thank you!

[Legacy User]

We use Other Work for many of the topics you raised.  Projects, by definition, are tactical, have specified goals and set start/finish.  Many of the topics you raised don’t have the attributes of a project.

 

Yes, one can use a project in CA PPM to do these things, but

 

 

   

•   Projects, whether through partitions or blue printing, often have a lot more stuff to fill out

   

•   If there is more stuff,

      

•   the stuff will be used (people will add tasks to one’s vacation plan, adding complexity to reporting and timesheets

      

•   Or, you will have to design screens on another partition to make them simple – why do this when Other Work is already simple?

   

•   Typically, no one manages this stuff –

      

•   projects require a manager, or they get filled with junk

      

•   this is simple stuff – doesn’t need a manager to manage quality – keep it simple so fields, subpages that should not be filled in can’t be, because they don’t exist on Other Work

 

For service type work, may want to consider using Services object.  I like keeping things organized – Project object for projects, Services object for services, Other Work for ‘stuff,’ etc.  In the end, having the data segregated, organized, is better than pooling all different types of work into projects – very difficult to “un-pool,” later.  Can always combine segregated data in reporting.

 

Dale

[ChrisYardin]

We are quite similar to Dale_Stockman in that we use Other Work in a similar vein where it is not Project or Service related. Our Other Work investments are used for Resource Capacity planning but are not actively financially managed and the allocation is automated through a daily job that adds every applicable resource to those investment team plans.

 

Where we have differed from what Dale's company does is that we have a special classification of Project for managing services because the Services investment does not have a work breakdown structure - i.e. you can only timesheet to the RMW task. 

 

I am quite keen to see how we can further refine this through the use of blueprints in the new UX because there are a lot of standard elements from the old UX for a project that are just not applicable for a multi-year service investment.

 

We don't do things like track "departmental support meetings" as a separate activity because we don't have the financial maturity or agreement from our business customers to receive charged back cost for what is quite explicit administration time.