0
votes

My questions is as follows:

Is there a way to make a master project plan incorporating multiple projects (not necessarily sub projects) in Microsoft office. As our resources get pushed around due to parts and items not arriving and shipping dates being moved forward amongst other things etc, sometimes the resource plan has to be changed regularly. I want to be able to pull all current projects into a master project plan so that I can identify where project resources are overlapping. Not necessarily by task but more by employee.

To try and explain a bit better:

Project 1:
Project Manager: John
Project Engineer: Jack. Task - Drawing

John assigns Jack to work on a task in Project 1.

Project 2:
Project Manager: Mark
Project Engineer: Jack. Task - Documentation

Jack wasn't supposed to be working on Project 2 for a further 2 weeks but the deadline has been moved forward and Mark has also assigned Jack to work on a task on his project.

I'd like to create a master project where I can pull in Project 1 and Project 2 and find a way for it to identify the resource overlap, regardless of the fact that Jack has been assigned to 2 different tasks, but more because he as an employee has been assigned to two projects at once.

Is this possible?

On a larger scale realistically I'll need this to incorporate about 6 Projects and about 20 staff members across, so I can find all the overlaps.

I am aware that there is a way to split a person between 2 tasks by assigning a percentage that they will work on both, i.e 90% on task 1 and 10% on task 2 but obviously this won't be project exclusive and my aim is to identify the overlaps rather than create them on purpose for resource sharing.

3

3 Answers

0
votes

You are basically looking for software to support your "resource leveling" process.

The ]project-open[ open-source PPM software is capable of importing MS-Project schedules. After the import, you can get Resource Management reports from the system that allow you to perform manual resource leveling.

Another interesting open-source tool is TaskJuggler. TJ actually does multi-project scheduling or automatic resource leveling. However, TJ does not include a MS-Project integration at the moment AFAIK.

Affiliation note: I'm a member of the ]project-open[ team.

0
votes

Depending on how you want to approach this, you can have a single master project and make all of your other project files sub projects in that master file. You can work in this master file and it will save your updates to the other files. It is sort of like having Project server on your desktop. You can create veiws for each project, or simply roll them up and they show as a single summary task.

-1
votes

You can do this by using a shared resource file but the best way now would be to just get a Project Online subscription and do your projects there.