Communicating Schedule Status PMI Scheduling Forum April 3, 2012 Presented by: Ric Albani, PMP, PMI-SP, MCTS

Purpose Demonstrate a method to report schedule status using MS Project by: Reviewing the structure of a sample Master Project Schedule and Master Resource Pool Reviewing the format of a sample Weekly Status Report Showing how to build the Weekly Status Report by exporting data from the Master Schedule and Resource Pool 2

Background Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) BreEZe Project Custom Off-the-Shelf (COTS) implementation of an on-line licensing, registration, enforcement, and reporting system. Implementation Phase began October Includes three 10-month production releases (deployments). Target for Full System Acceptance is December

Master Project Schedule Consists of State work plan and Solution Vendor (System Integrator) work plan. – State (and Master) work plan use MSP 2007 – Vendor work plan uses MSP 2010 Using rolling wave planning between Releases. Populated with ~2600 activities and will increase as other Releases are planned. WBS’ between the two works plans are aligned. No physical dependencies exist between the two work plans; deadlines are used instead. 4

Master Project Schedule Resource Loaded (from Resource Pool), but progress is not resource-driven. Progress is task-driven using fixed-duration task type. Vendor work plan is base-lined and portions of State work plan are base-lined. Use of Task Owners is integral. Updated Weekly (Wed-Tue update cycle) 5

Master Resource Pool Consists of State resources and Solution Vendor (System Integrator) resources. Uses MSP 2007 Populated with 330 resources. Includes the use of custom fields for filtering and reporting purposes. 6

Master Resource Pool State and Vendor resources use different base calendar; however, Vendor work plan assigns calendar at task level. No resource calendars are being used. Levelling is done manually, as needed. 7

Conceptual View 8

Weekly Status Report Task Owners are given a two-week look ahead from the Master Schedule. (Wed) Task Owners meet with PM each week to provide schedule updates. (Tue) PM uses a working copy of the Master Schedule to input notes for Scheduler. (Tue) Vendor provides Scheduler with updated work plan. (Wed) Scheduler applies updates to State work plan and inserts updated Vendor work plan. (Wed) Scheduler performs analysis and produces Weekly Status Report. (Wed) 9

Demonstration Review format of Weekly Status Report Export content from Master Schedule to Excel Copy/Paste Excel content into Status Report Copy/Paste content from Resource Pool into Status Report 10

Ric Albani