The Experts in Oracle Projects SM

Making Workplans Work for You

Tips and Pitfalls (to avoid)

Presented by Neeraj Garg

Vice President, Consulting Services

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Oracle Project Management Workplans

What are these? Tips on Implementing and Using Pitfalls to avoid

Workplans – What are these?

Project Schedule Used to plan timeline and track progress Can be separate from Financial WBS Typically used:

As the project schedule for tracking progress For integration to Staffing plan – Resource

Management As an initial estimating tool

No in-built scheduling algorithms

Workplans – What are these?

Components of Workplans Schedule activities with Rollup WBS

Full Set of Dates – Planned, Estimated, Actual, Early Start/Finish, Late Start finish

Critical and milestone activity classifications Dependencies and Constraints Deliverables (project/task level) Resource assignments

People, Equipment, Material, Financial Element

Structures - Financial v/s Workplan WBS

Fully shared

Partially shared

Non-shared, mapped

Non-shared

Financial Management Level

For Schedule Tracking – To automatically get actuals into Workplans

Workplan Versioning

Why Version? Allows PM to make changes without impacting team Earned Value Analysis – need Baseline Version Track historical versions to review how plan changed Enables workflow to get change approvals and send

notifications Issues

Unable to modify baseline version for adding new tasks – always includes any plan changes to date

Builds up tremendous volume with historical versions as any change needs a new version

Making Changes after Progress collected is cumbersome Apply progress to working version, make changes, reschedule

and then publish.

Resources in Workplans New Planning Resource Model

Centralized Resource Lists Limit Resources used in Planning Actuals mapping uses existing resources only Resources readily available for assignment to tasks Need to keep centralized list updated – difficult to

maintain Decentralized Resource Lists

No Centralized maintenance needed Actuals mapping will create new resources if not

mappable PMs to add resources to their project prior to

assigning to tasks – may be time consuming Can be mitigated by pre-defining common

resources

Resources in Workplans

An assigned resource record has all possible resource attributes like Org, Job, Type, Category, etc.

Selecting Formats to include in Resource Lists if Workplans used for Schedule Tracking

Need actuals to map into Workplan Resources for progress entry 2 Key attributes to be cognizant of

Expenditure Organization – defaults to project/task org if not specified on the resource

Expenditure Type – defaults from Resource Class setup and used in burdened cost computation for planned resources except in the case of Named People and Non-Labor Res for which the assigned resource organization is used

These attributes are both used to derive burden multipliers used in calculating burdened cost for planned resources

Resources in Workplans

Resource Formats – Expenditure Organization If Expenditure Organization of Actuals are expected to

be different from the project organization – select formats with organization in the combination

Example: Org-Job, Org-Role, etc. Forces PMs to think about which organization will provide

generic resources– Jobs, Roles, Supplier Inv, etc. – to the project

Exceptions obviously are for Named People and NL-Resource For these the organization defaults from assigned org

With Organization Attribute properly stamped on planned resources, actuals will map correctly to these resources to give you progress against plan

Resources in Workplans

Resource Formats – Expenditure Types Now Exp. Types primarily drive Burdening on Planned

Resources. If you don’t care to plan by expenditure type for Labor

resources, then don’t assign a default expenditure type to the Resource Classes

Now if your formats don’t include Expenditure Types You can use Expenditure Categories instead to plan at a

higher level grouping. Burdens will not be calculated

If you care about Burdens Use a different rate schedule for costs with fully burdened

rates as planning rates on the workplan – No Raw Cost Using planning rates disables use of project/task bill rate

overrides

Workplans – Staffing Plan Integration

Two-Way integration delivered Top Down – Define your requirements/Assignments in

PJR and these resources are automatically available to assign to tasks on Workplans

Bottom Up – Assign resources to your workplan tasks and then accumulate resource effort and duration across tasks to automatically create Requirements/ Assignments in PJR. Requirements staffed in PJR are automatically updated into the workplan

This integration works very well for the first time From subsequent updates to effort / duration made in

Workplans, only Duration is pushed back to PJR – Effort is NOT

Workplans – Progress Management

Tips on Handling Progress Need to define Progress Cycle (Daily/Weekly/Monthly)

Daily is not recommended as actuals (especially timecards) are not entered and submitted daily.

Actuals come into Workplan from Summarization Tables Keep in mind the Timecard Submission Deadlines and then

factor in time for Txn Import, Cost Distribution and Summarization

Latest Actuals should be available to the PM to get accurate progress

Actuals are brought into Workplans using the GL date of the transactions and not the EI Date

Hence if not using EPP – all monthly txns will come in at the end of the month only

EI for today 4/13 will come into workplans with an as of date of 4/30 – assuming calendar months for GL Periods

Workplans – MS-Project Integration

Standard Delivered Functionality for the Desktop edition of MS-Project

Most stable Release is RUP4 + patch for 6315190 Resources to be assigned to tasks in MSP must be

downloaded from Oracle – DO NOT CREATE NEW RESOURCES IN MSP

Use the Oracle Delivered views available from the “Oracle Projects” menu to do your work in MSP – this will ensure that you do not unknowingly override a column used by Oracle

When Downloading from Oracle into MSP, always select the option to download task numbers to ensure that you can assign your own task numbers to any new tasks that you create in MSP

Workplans – MS-Project Integration

When Integrating to Shared Structured Integration runs through Workplans Enable Time-Phased Plans to get Time-Phased data

from MSP Tasks Deleted in MSP are deleted from Workplans on

Publishing (If Versioning enabled) Only Qty is sent from MSP for Resource Assignments.

Cost is calculated in Oracle Downloading Progress brings Actuals to MSP % Complete Downloaded to Oracle % Complete Field

(Number3) in MSP

Workplans – MS-Project Integration When Integrating to Split Structured

Choice of Integration to Workplans / Financial Financial: Only Financial Attributes Uploaded.

Schedule Dates from MSP go to Transaction Dates Financial: Only Tasks Uploaded to Oracle.

Assignments can be uploaded as Budget. Financial: Actual Data can be downloaded to MSP

using the Receive from Oracle Projects -> Actuals Financial: % Complete is uploaded to Financial %

Complete tables in Oracle Workplans: Use “Calculate Costs using MSP” option to

upload costs from MSP to Oracle When creating projects from MSP, download

Resource List from Template. When uploading template selected must have same resource list

Workplans – MS-Project Integration

LOVs in MS-Project For the following fields to get LOVs in MS-P, place your cursor on

the field and then go to Oracle Projects -> Receive from Oracle Projects > List of Values

Service Type Task manager Priority Progress Status Item UOM Task Type Task Status Work Type

Fields in red show the code instead of user description

Workplans – MS-Project Integration

Actuals and Progress in MS-Project Summarization must be run to pull actuals into Workplans and

therefore to download to MSP Use the Progress Views to maintain progress in MSP Update % Complete in the MSP % Complete field. You can copy

values from Oracle % Complete to MSP fields using Oracle Projects > Tools > Copy Oracle Progress Fields to MSP

Do NOT use the reverse flow: Copy from MSP to Oracle When uploading back to Oracle, Oracle automatically copies MSP

fields into Oracle fields Change MSP Status Date to one of the five available dates in the

Task As of Date LOV before uploading The following progress fields should be appropriately updated

before uploading: % Complete, Actual Start/Finish, Task Status, Progress Status

Workplans – MS-Project Integration

Actuals and Progress in MS-Project Actual effort increases Planned Effort in MSP if Actual

> Plan Actual effort from Oracle is updated to Actual Work for

each task assignment MSP Standard functionality is

Remaining Work = (Planned) Work – Actual Work If Actual Work > Work, Then Work = Actual Work, Remaining

Work = 0 If Actual Effort downloaded from Oracle > Planned

effort for a resource in MSP, it automatically increases the Planned Effort (Work) field

Workplans – Use for Estimating

Workplans are ideal for Estimating Project Work Different Templates can provide for Different

Estimating methodologies Use Standardized WBS from Template Easily expand WBS (with resources and costs) by

copying a branch from any other project/template using Copy External feature

Standardized Resources using Resource Lists Standardized Costing applied using planning or actual

rates Multiple working versions to quickly perform What-if

Analysis Automatic integration to Financial Plans to get

Proposed Pricing – Estimate Revenue budget

Workplans - Summary

Solid functionality Ideal for Estimating Good for Schedule Tracking and providing

visibility to all Team and Key Members Use the Tips Avoid the Pitfalls

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