How do you report on total 'Actual Effort' or 'Time Worked' for a project?

[kellykaufmann]

Part 1:

We are setting up 'Time Worked' and 'Time Cards' right now. For a Project, we want to be able to capture & report on Time Worked against the Project as well as the Project's: tasks, requirements, issues, defects, decisions, risks, and Story Tasks. Our plan is to have 'Time Worked' for each of these populate the 'Actual Effort' field for each, so nobody will actually type into the 'Actual Effort' field. Currently, Actual Effort on Project Tasks rolls into the Project's Actual Effort value. We want Time Worked / Actual Effort for each of these to also roll up to the Project's Actual Effort value, so you can see a rollup of all time reported against project things.

Has anyone done this? What was your approach?

It seems it's tricky to get the Actual Effort from all these different tables to roll up into one field (the Project's total Actual Effort). Any suggestions on doing this? Or do I just need to remove 'Actual Effort' from the Project form so people don't think it's a rollup of all the project's hours, and have them instead rely on creating a report on that project?

Part 2:

Speaking of reporting...how do you report time on a specific project for all that project's different time areas captured (requirements, issues, defects, decisions, risks, etc)? If I run the report against the Time Worked table, I can't use Top Task to pull in all those areas with the same Top Task (which is the Project number). If I use the Project table, it will just pull time reported directly against the parent project (and not against requirements, issues, defects, decisions, risks, etc).

[kellykaufmann]

Thank you, Arun Vydianathan. You are right, Requirements could be managed via a task. Risk isn't required. Defect & Issue would make sense to charge time to.

Yup for Story tasks referring to Agile within Project. Today we're trying to find a way to make sure the Story Task, Story, Sprint are related to a Project (can mention everything about that in a separate post).

"our principle is that one Project Team works on different Projects in same Sprint" > That explains a lot about the setup! (Sorry I'm traditionally Waterfall, not Agile). I'll pass this along.

Passing this along to our SN Admin, will post any questions she has. Thank you so much!

[kellykaufmann]

Updates:

My understanding of what is OOTB for Time Worked, and Time Worked rollups:

• No OOTB 'Time Worked' rollup to the parent Project.
• 'Actual Effort' OOTB is manual where person manually types in how much time they worked. Actual Effort for project tasks & requirements etc (all but project Risks & Issues) does roll up to their parent tasks as well as the parent project. If you track 'Actual Effort' at the Project level, there is a disconnect between the Project's 'Actual Effort' total of Actual Effort rolled up to it, and the Actual Effort reported at the PRJ level. So if you want 'Actual Effort' on the PRJ form to reflect 'Actual Effort' reported at the PRJ level + at the project task/defect/decision etc time, you need to do coding.
• OOTB, Time Worked does not roll into the 'Actual Effort' field. But you can make this happen with coding.

What we did:

• We created a connection between the Time Worked & Actual Effort, so 'Time Worked' populates 'Actual Effort' on all the different Project forms (project tasks, defects, decisions and at the PRJ level). Any changes to the Time Worked entry will also update the Actual Effort field. This was a code change (java script).
• Actual Effort for all project tasks, defects, decisions etc. roll up to the parent PRJ's 'Actual Effort' field (this took coding). We also made it so the PRJ's 'Actual Effort' field pulls both the PRJ 'Actual Effort' and 'Actual Effort' for all project tasks, defects, decisions, etc. (this took coding as well).
• We had 'Time Worked' on a Scrum Task roll up to the parent Story, roll up to the parent Sprint (this took coding). Also had Remaining Hours go to Story Points (we're doing hours not points at this point in time).
• We created a 'Sprint' and 'Stories' tab on the PRJ form (took coding to get Sprint, didn't take coding to get Stories). You can show the 'Actual Effort' column to see the total 'Actual Effort' rollup for each Sprint.

Summary: 'Time Worked' tab and timer will be enabled on the following forms starting 8/7/15:

—Waterfall Project: Project, project task, project defects, project decisions

•Project tasks, defects, and decision time will automatically roll up into the Project's 'Actual effort' value.

•Report at the Project level the Time Worked for project risks, issues, requirements

—Agile Project: Scrum Task, Story.

•Scrum Task & Story rolls up into the Sprint's 'Actual Effort' value.

Ryan Manning, Anthony Okumura can you confirm there was no non-coding way to do this?

Our open Problem: Can't roll up Agile 'Actual Effort' into the total Project 'Actual Effort'. So for a Waterscrum project (or whatever you call it) with time reported on Scrum Tasks, Stories, etc. - we have it rolling up to the Sprint but can't get the PRJ to show the total Sprint time + the total time reported against the PRJ, requirements, defects, etc. So we have to ask PM's to look at the PRJ 'Actual Effort' field + look in the Sprint tab at the 'Actual Effort' column. Ryan Manning, Anthony Okumura or anyone else - is there a way to do this?

[arun_vydianatha]

Kelly Kaufmann

• OOTB, Time Worked does not roll into the 'Actual Effort' field. But you can make this happen with coding

That understanding is not fully correct. If you use Time Cards - TIme Worked will go and update Time Cards. And Time Cards goes back and update the Actual Effort in Task. So you could have achieved - updating work_effort from time_worked without coding.

• Actual Effort for all project tasks, defects, decisions etc. roll up to the parent PRJ's 'Actual Effort' field (this took coding). We also made it so the PRJ's 'Actual Effort' field pulls both the PRJ 'Actual Effort' and 'Actual Effort' for all project tasks, defects, decisions, etc. (this took coding as well).

Are you saying that some one would enter actual effort at Project (level) or Project Record. And you will add up all the task actual_effort and add it to the actual_effort in Project? If it is then aren't you losing the actual_effort entered by the user in Project record. And how can user come and update it frequently (today i update 1hour, tomorrow 2hours etc in Project record because actual_effort would keep changing based on real time rollups from tasks)        

• We had 'Time Worked' on a Scrum Task roll up to the parent Story, roll up to the parent Sprint (this took coding). Also had Remaining Hours go to Story Points (we're doing hours not points at this point in time).

One caveat here we do percent complete calculation based on story points for Story. If you start putting remaining hours into Story Points I think percent complete calculation will be go wrong at Sprint level. If you are not interested in percent complete of Sprint - it is fine

• Our open Problem: Can't roll up Agile 'Actual Effort' into the total Project 'Actual Effort'. So for a Waterscrum project (or whatever you call it) with time reported on Scrum Tasks, Stories, etc. - we have it rolling up to the Sprint but can't get the PRJ to show the total Sprint time + the total time reported against the PRJ, requirements, defects, etc. So we have to ask PM's to look at the PRJ 'Actual Effort' field + look in the Sprint tab at the 'Actual Effort' column.

This is something I had outlined in my previous reply. Our design is that Sprint is shared by Projects. And Sprints are for Teams and not for Projects. The best bet for you here is rollup the Story effort directly into Project Phase. Our Story table has Project and Project Task reference keys and Stories are tied to a Project Phase. So it would be easy for you to take Story effort to Project Phase instead of taking it to Sprint.

Great effort from you to share so much of your learnings in these forums - Thanks!

[kellykaufmann]

Thanks Arun!

"If you use Time Cards - TIme Worked will go and update Time Cards. And Time Cards goes back and update the Actual Effort in Task. So you could have achieved - updating work_effort from time_worked without coding." > Our SN Admin is looking into this. I think when we tried this it didn't work...

"Are you saying that some one would enter actual effort at Project (level) or Project Record. And you will add up all the task actual_effort and add it to the actual_effort in Project? If it is then aren't you losing the actual_effort entered by the user in Project record. And how can user come and update it frequently (today i update 1hour, tomorrow 2hours etc in Project record because actual_effort would keep changing based on real time rollups from tasks)" > Yes...for example we're using Agile within project, and the person who will be creating Stories will put her time against the PRJ...also for lighter projects without a formal PM, it was easier to just have them track time at the PRJ level instead of having them create a task just so they can report time against that PRJ. Baby steps!

Thank you for the % complete caveat. I asked, and it seems the Agile team isn't using % complete and since they aren't using points (just hours) at this point (again, baby steps!) this isn't an issue at this point but may be in the future. They're keeping that info in their back pocket for the future.

Yup we're having Scrum Task hours roll up to the Story roll up to the Sprint roll up to the Phase.... we'll see how to get that to roll up into the PRJ Actual Effort.

In more testing of what we put in place.... we learned a lot more.

Long story short: Anything without a child task can roll up into the PRJ's 'Actual Effort' rollup.

'Time Worked' at the PRJ level does not roll into the PRJ's 'Actual Effort' rollup because tasks in the project schedule are treated as it's child tasks. We can't find a way to do this easily, so aren't going to end up allowing Time Worked at the PRJ level.

Defects, Decisions, Requirements are treated as tasks (with no children) therefore their time does roll up into the PRJ's 'Actual Effort' (This is why frustratingly, Defects, Decisions, and Requirements end up in the project task list, but Issues & Risks do not.), and Issue & Risk are different from the rest of the project schema therefore time does not roll up into the PRJ's 'Actual Effort' UNLESS the Issue & Risk are created against a child task (but I think that's hard to control).  

[arun_vydianatha]

Hey Kelly Kaufmann Please go through the Properties in Time Card plugin

You may have to turn on a couple of them to do rollups

Please see wiki for details of the following properties

Update the task's 'Actual effort' based on the hours entered in the time card

Update the project/user's resource allocation record based on the hours entered in the time card