Calendars in Microsoft Project are used to indicate the working time for resources. Working time is determined by the hours that a resource is available and the impact of what MS Project calls an exception. Exceptions are usually holidays, vacations, or other scheduled time off but they can be time on for what is normally time off like working on a weekend. An exception is any deviation from a resource’s normal, assigned, calendar. The combination of the work hours adjusted for exceptions tells Project how many hours, and when, a resource is available for work on a specific calendar.
To make things more interesting, calendars are independent entities and are managed separately from resources. Once created, calendars are applied to resources and determine when a resource is available. In addition to a default, or explicitly assigned calendar, a resource has an individual calendar. Working time is determined by a combination of these two calendars.
Four Layers of Project Calendar Management
A single calendar can be managed across an entire project, but for any project that goes beyond a handful of resources, using a single calendar becomes complicated and error prone. Managing working time for complex sets of resources is better performed through layers of calendars. Using layered calendars allows a project manager to apply calendars across larger numbers of resources, thereby making the task of managing calendars easier, and then applying deviating changes closer to affected resources, allowing more precision.
Project calculates working time by combining the assigned calendar with the resource’s individual calendar. To extend calendar management, Project provides a rich feature set of calendar types. Essentially, these types of calendars give the project manager four layers of calendar management:
- Base Calendars – Built in calendars are part of every schedule and are created by MS Project with each new schedule. These are the Standard, 24 Hour, and Night Shift calendars. The working times set on these calendars reflect what one would expect from their titles, for example: the Night Shift calendar has working time defined as 11:00 PM to 8:00 AM with an hour off for lunch.
- Project Calendar – The project calendar defines the working time and exceptions for the entire project schedule. The Standard base calendar is set as the project calendar by default for new schedules. The project calendar is generally derived from one of the base calendars and then used as the default calendar for the project and as a template to create other calendars. The default project calendar can be changed in the Project Information dialog.
- Group Calendars – A group calendar is generally created from either a base or template project calendar. Group calendars encapsulate the working time and exceptions for a larger group of resources. Such a group might be staff within a country or unique to a specialized department. Group calendars are assigned to resources in the Resource Sheet and define the working time and exceptions for any resource that is assigned to one.
- Resource Calendars – Every resource has a calendar associated with it. A resource calendar allows variations from the assigned calendar for a particular resource. The project manager can use the resource calendar to override the working time and exceptions of the assigned calendar.
Strategy for Layered Calendars Management
A layered strategy iteratively builds layers of calendars that are increasingly more detailed. The project manager will start with the work time that most staff and resources will use, then add exceptions and other non-working days that apply to the project performing organizations as a whole. Next, they analyze the stakeholders, staff, and resources for groupings of common work availability. Typically, exceptions for groups will be distinctions of national holidays, specific work hours for different departments (e.g. certain types of staff may have government regulated work limitations), scheduled department level training for all members of an organization, and the like. Thereafter, they determine working hours and time off for individuals. Personal vacations, individual training events, and non-standard work hours, are typical of individual calendar requirements.
The workflow for creating a layered calendar strategy is:
- Determine the most common hours worked and exceptions that apply to most, if not all, resources. For Project Management Institute PMBOK projects this will be part of the Identify Stakeholders and Acquire Project Team processes. For agile projects, even though these processes may not be formally defined, they are essentially the same as for classically managed projects. The project manager, scrum master/project owner, or whoever else is responsible for time estimation needs to have an idea about staff and resource capacity to be able to make statements concerning how long things will take to get done.
- Create a project calendar that contains the work time and exceptions determined in step 1. Base this calendar on the project base calendar that most closely matches the work time and exception requirements.
- Set the new calendar as the project calendar.
- Determine group calendars based on different countries, work schedule for a department that differs from the project calendar, or other organizational sub-groups that similar working time or time off. Each of these separate group calendars should cover a number of resources.
- Create new calendars using the project calendar, or other base calendars, as a template. Add modifications as determined in step 4.
- Create resource records, assigning the most appropriate group calendar to each of the resources.
- Determine variations to working time and exceptions for individual resources and apply them to the individual resource calendars.
Note that the above workflow may not happen all at once. Portions of the flow may occur at different times in a project and may even be repeated, as more details are understood concerning resources and project activities. It is recommended, however, that the process be started as early in the project as possible. The Identifying Stakeholders process is likely where the task of determining calendars can commence.
Next Time: Executing Layered Calendar Management
We will continue the subject of Layered Calendar Management in the next installment: “How To Execute Layered Calendar Management”. The article will be published shortly. Sign up for the PointProx mailing list to make sure you get a notification as soon as the article is published. Part 2 of this article is a practical “how to” that walks you through implementing the strategy of Layered Calendar Management for your own schedule.
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