Tracking Non-Project Time in
an Information Systems
Department with Project
Server
Kelly Jones
PMO Manager, Information Systems
Sharp Healthcare
Agenda
 Why Track NonProject Time?
 Common Methods of
Accounting for NonProject Work
 Advantages of NonProject Time
Tracking
 Non-Project Time
Assumptions
 Non-Project
Categories
 Logistics for Tracking
Non-Project Time
 Administrative
Projects
 Reporting Examples
Why Track Non-Project
Time?
 Everyone does non-project work
 Management meetings and reports
 Operations work
 Organizing and communication activities
 If your organization is completing timesheets
already, you may as well capture all work hours
 Management wants to know what is happening
in their area
Common methods for Dealing
with Non-Project Work
 Ignore the work performed outside of
projects
 For example, assume 75% availability to
projects. Two methods:
 Change default resource calendar to 6-hour
days (e.g. 9 AM – 12 PM and 1 PM – 4 PM)
 Reduce resource maximum units (Max.
Units) to 75%
Advantages of Non-project
Time Tracking
 Non-project business indicators
 Client reports showing overall workload of
employees
 Resource management
 Look at future capacity for additional projects
 Use recent actual hours as basis for future planning
 Timesheet oversight
 Easily see FTE under-reported timesheet weeks
Non-Project Time
Assumptions
 Tasks have no end date
 Remaining Work and Duration is
irrelevant
 Individual managers may want to
customize task list for their group
 Tasks need to be categorized for highlevel reporting
Non-Project Categories
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Enhancements
Internal Management
Operations
Staff Development
Time Off
Enhancements
 “Mini-projects”—fewer than 100 work
hours in duration
 Involve improving upon the design of
something (vs. correcting a defect)
 Minor application or sub-system
improvements or upgrades
 User interface or report changes that
enhance the design of an application
Internal Management
 General communication
and/or organizational
activities that have
indirect client benefit
 Should be 10% or less of
total work hours for nonmanagement
 Work should not apply to
Operations,
Enhancements, or
Projects
 Examples:
 General staff meetings
 Management status
reports
 Organizing work area
 General email/voice mail
 Filling out timesheets
Operations
 Includes:
 Defect correction
 Application or sub-system not working as designed
 Recurring maintenance activities
 System backups
 Uptime assurance activities
 Non-IS user assistance or training on how to use
applications or equipment
 On-call activities
Staff Development
 The amount of time that the Information
Systems department spends improving
itself
 Includes:


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Receiving training
Giving training to other IS staff
Recruiting activities
Team-building initiatives
Time Off
 All non-productive time

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Sick time
Jury duty
Vacation
Holidays
 Does not include compensatory time
(“comp time”)
 This inflates our time-off statistics
Non-Project Logistics
 Every manager maintains their own non-project
schedule for their direct reports
 Each non-project schedule has one outline level only
that depicts the non-project category for tasks
belonging to it
 Managers can create custom tasks for their own group
within one of the summary tasks
 Often tasks are created by product that the group
supports e.g. HPA Operations
 Units for each assignment should be equal to previous
year’s actual values
 Custom enterprise outline code used to designate
schedule as “Non-Project”
Administrative Projects
 New feature with
Project Server 2003
 Allows user to create
schedules of nonproject tasks
 Mechanics for
creating are the
same as regular
project schedules
 Template required
 Features:
 Prevents update of
Remaining Work on
timesheet (task will
not fall off timesheet)
 User cannot hide,
reject, or create new
task for project on
timesheet
 Tasks are not
imported to Outlook
calendar
Administrative Projects
from User Perspective
 Appears at the bottom of the timesheet
 Allows user to assign themselves to
existing non-project tasks
 Time entry can only use the Hours per
Day tracking method
 Remaining Work cannot be updated
Tracking Temporary NonProject Work
 Use additional regular project schedule
(not administrative project)
 Use same “Non-Project” designation via
custom enterprise outline code
 Create tasks using same summary task
scheme
 Assign resources to tasks and publish to
user timesheets
 Time will roll-up with other non-project
work in reports
Reporting Examples
 Actual Work per Month by Category
 Department
 Resource
 Percentage FTE Utilization per Month
 Monthly Task Actual Work Hours
 Product Actual Hours per Month by
Category
 Product Committee Task Actuals
Questions?