Clarity

  • 1.  Tips on How to Use Other Work

    Posted Jun 15, 2017 10:07 AM

    Hi there, I´m looking for tips on the use of the other work object.

    Due to the replacement of "indirect row" a time ago, we have to use the other work item.

     

    What I like to know is how we can apply the community experience in this object.

    Ex: Can we create a holiday type, and 1 user can add time, o multiple user. For this kind of activities what do you recommend?

    Or

    Any user can be able to create their own "Other Work"?

     

    Cheers!

    Pablo



  • 2.  Re: Tips on How to Use Other Work

    Posted Jun 15, 2017 01:53 PM

    If users are allowed to create their own "Other Work," then you will likely end up with inability to report on it - think of "Holiday" spelled at least two dozen different ways - e.g. Vacation, Vac, Hol., Day Off, Days Off, Days Away...and I've not even started into different languages!).

     

    So, teach them to add a charge code to their Other Work - meaning regardless of spelling, everyone choose "Holiday" for charge code from dropdown list.  Possible - will be like herding cats, though - I would not want this job.

     

    Also, consider the legal rules surrounding absenteeism - what can you ask your people to answer?  In some countries, the answer is "Nothing."  For example, in Germany, we can only ask if person is absent and # of hours absent.  We cannot ask if it was vacation, holiday, sickness, jury duty - nothing.

     

    We even have variation between groups in US - some want to know all the details (Jury duty, military duty, sickness, etc.) - others don't ask because this is an HR question and our system is not used by HR. - if HR doesn't use our system, why should we ask our people detailed questions about their absence?  Their answers don't affect our management of projects or resources on those projects.

     

    So, lots of variables...even in one company.

     

    We created Other Work instances for each group that had their rules defined - e.g. Group1-Absence, Group2-Absence, Group3-Absence...  Each group is responsible for defining the rules on how to use and who should have access to them - no one gets to see everything.

     

    Since 'self allocation' is not really feasible with available rights, we setup an "Allocation Group OBS" where we assign resources to each branch depending on group, region, employee type - the factors that determine what each resource should see.  We then use the "Add/Update by OBS" for initial population of each other work instance, and refreshing periodically.  We also set their allocation to 0% when doing this.

     

    It's not perfect, but the admins are happy because now users can't book to wrong/illegal things and no longer chase resources to make corrections to such errors.

     

    Oh, and we wrote our own Jaspersoft report that queries the transactional database so that we can report on both Indirect and Other Work, going far as update Indirect labels based on Group reporting.  This does two things: 

     

    1. For this year, we have data in both the old and new ways of booking - this allows reporting on both (will become irrelevant in future)
    2. Makes reporting easier to comprehend, form pivot tables on exports to Excel (e.g. If Other Work is "Group1-Absent" then we take Indirect "Absent" booked by Group1 resources and rename it to "Group1-Absent" - therefore, in report, all absent data, whether from old or new methods, it is called the same thing.)

     

    Running now, for 3 months - all is quiet.  I've made some calls, to make sure silence was a good thing -  so far, all good.

     

    Dale



  • 3.  Re: Tips on How to Use Other Work

    Posted Jun 15, 2017 04:03 PM

    Dale, 

         I like your solution.



  • 4.  Re: Tips on How to Use Other Work

    Posted Jun 15, 2017 04:14 PM

    Thanks, Michael.

     

    Your note prompted another thing that I left out – we made this new “Allocation Group OBS” required so that it can’t be missed by an admin when creating or updating resources.  And, for those resources that are not participating in Timesheets, we have a “Not using CA PPM Timesheets” branch – that way, there is a branch for everyone.

     

    Dale



  • 5.  Re: Tips on How to Use Other Work

    Posted Jun 15, 2017 04:16 PM

    Dale, you definitely should make a tips and trick post on best practices...you have my vote!



  • 6.  Re: Tips on How to Use Other Work

    Posted Jun 16, 2017 11:26 AM

    Thanks for the vote of confidence Pablo!



  • 7.  Re: Tips on How to Use Other Work

    Posted Jun 15, 2017 04:07 PM

    Thanks Dale, that´s what I meant, ask and understand how other are using this features. In latam its very common to share this activities, like leaving, illness, study...so on...

     

    I like to leave this space open so more people can see more tips...

    cheers!

    Pablo



  • 8.  Re: Tips on How to Use Other Work

    Posted Jun 18, 2017 08:48 PM

    Hi Pablo, it looks like Dale_Stockman covered across most of the points that we had to go through in the last couple of months. Here are a couple of other things that we had to take into consideration:

    • Which employment types do we want to charge to certain 'Other Work' investments? i.e. Only employees should be charging to holiday leave, as contractors and consultants are not paid for their holidays (nor are we interested in tracking this leave).
    • How do the rate card (matrix) and financial chargebacks account for 'Other Work', and do we want to track this as actual expenditure. The specific 'Other Work' investment that has caused us challenges has been "Training", with the argument over whether the core BAU investment (tech service, business function etc.) should pick up the cost of training or whether this is isolated and tracked explicitly.
    • Which 'Other Work' investments should be used for forecasting i.e. "Personal Leave" should be able to be planned for because all employees need to register and attain approval to take leave. But something like "Emergency Volunteer Leave" can only be timesheeted after the fact.

     

    We have automated the resource allocation to the appropriate 'Other Work' investments, at a 0% allocation (like what Dale has done). This runs daily after our HR integration has completed (which is also daily).

     

    Like Dale said, we never entertained individual users being able to create 'Other Work' investments as we need to control and report on this centrally.



  • 9.  Re: Tips on How to Use Other Work

    Posted Jun 20, 2017 07:30 AM

    Hi Pablo,

     

    At my company, we use "Other Work" to demonstrate the allocation time of Support and administrative hours.

     

    One thing I have always tried to find out is which option is best, whether to use other work for vacation or unavailability of the calendar...

     

    Nowadays, we dont use a "OT" to show this, we prefer to set the indisponibility at the resource calendar.

     

    Best regards.