Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation

If our everyday work involves implementing various projects, we may consider Project Service Automation as a potentially useful tool. The Implementation of the project requires us to plan the team’s work, manage our resources (human, capital and technical resources), manage the timetable, risk and changes. The project manager always has his hands full. And, unfortunately for him, in our company:

• there are more project managers,
• his project isn’t the only one,
• his team members are in fact members of other teams too.

Project management may and is eased by tools such as MS Project, but as we are speaking about managing projects in the whole company, with many shared resources, many project managers, a local instance of our favourite management software is not sufficient enough.

Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation lets us:

• manage projects,
• schedule resources,
• managing costs and schedule.

At first sight, Project Service Automation looks intimidating. It is filled with functions and it takes time to get to know its possibilities.

Scheduling – MS Project vs Project Service Automation

Well, Project Service Automation isn’t the exact copy of MS Project solution but has some functions we know quite well from it. What we get is Project Service Automation? We can:

• decompose the project into smaller task, thus creating the WBS, and create a Gantt diagram out of it,
• plan project costs and schedule the timetable,
• track the project timeline (based on the real execution time and costs),
• book resources and assign tasks to team members,
• set up requirements for the team members.

What is more, we can export the data from Dynamics 365 to local instance of MS Project.

Resource management

At some point, Project Service Automation resembles Field Service solution – it eases resource management. When assigning team members to tasks (or tasks to team members) we can set up search filters to find employees who match the criteria such as availability, team role and skills.

The system manages resource booking and shows us how effectively our team members are managed. For example, we can see whom we assign most tasks to and who has some free time.

Work reporting

As a matter of fact, amidst project manager responsibilities, beside assigning tasks, there is accepting work reports. In other words, a team member should report what he did during the day per project and per project task. The project manager, on the other hand, has access to his team members reports and can accept or reject the job done. He has a control over the time entries in the system.

What about a real life use? 

Lucas, nutrition and dietetics specialist, is a member of a product team responsible for development of new cereal. His team consist of 5 persons in total: him, Christine – nutritionist, Karl – food quality control specialist, Josephine – another nutrition and dietetics specialist and Antony – team leader and main nutrition specialist.

Lucas reports to and receives tasks from Antony. Antony is responsible for contacts with clients – mostly cereal distributor. Based on their requirements he is to schedule work of his team. Sometimes, besides collecting the requirements that applies to cereals (their structure, sweetness, colour, additional ingredients such as nuts, cranberries, mulberry etc.) Antony collects the information on packaging requirements. When this happens, he informs the marketing dept., particularly Clara – chief marketing officer. Clara has her own team that is mostly responsible for creating new packaging that fulfils customer’s requirements and displays his product well enough to attach consumer’s attention.

Departments’ cooperation

When scheduling work and preparing projects’ timetables, Clara and Antony have to cooperate and mutually establish a time frame and milestones of their projects. For instance, Clara’s team cannot present product not knowing its final look. Antony is responsible for providing customer with the product on time, that is by August 31^st. This is the deadline for Antony to fully develop the product so that it can be mass produced. Luckily, when planning the timetable, both may share data in order that Clara can access Antony’s project’s status and be able to react on time to changes (should delays happen).

When returning to work after meeting with customer, Antony creates a new project record: “Cereal development for Milkies Ltd.” He sets up planned end date for August 25^th (giving himself a margin because we never know what may happen) and initially plan his resources: he books Lucas, Christine, Karl and Josephine for next 3 months. It turns out, Lucas in engaged as a specialist in another project (muesli for diabetics) and is one of most important persons in the project. He will be able to take part in Antony’s project in May. Antony divides the project into milestones, tasks and activities and assigns them to his team members. He introduces his team to the project and announces the kick-off!

Everyday life of Lucas

Lucas, when logging into the system (or checking his mail) in April, will get notifications about muesli project tasks. All he does for that project will be reported as muesli project work entries. Nonetheless, he has to attend the kick-off meeting with Antony’s team. and will report this as “Milkies” work entry. He will be reporting full time on “Milkies” in May after he fully joins Antony’s team. So, the second week of April, Lucas will report 20 hours of work for muesli project and another 20 h for “Milkies”. The third week will be reported as leave due to his son illness.

Who will be accepting Lucas’ work entries?

Lucas reports directly to Antony. But he is responsible for muesli project. As nutrition and dietetics specialist, he also consults other projects (from time to time, if needed) and reports his consulting hours depending on the project.

All the work entries connected to muesli project will be accepted by muesli project manager. The work he will do for “Milkies” project should be accepted by Antony. What is more, Antony, as direct supervisor will be to one to accept or deny Lucas’ leave and absence. In result, all of project managers will have control over time spent on their project and thus, will be able to properly invoice customer for Lucas’ work.

What is the role of Project Service Automation?

• It has control over data access in the system: it controls whether Clara can access Antony’s project data.
• It collects the data: no client’s data shall be missing. We can easily attach documents, meeting notes, cereals formulas to projects.
• It let us plan team work: it eases managing human resources for project managers.
• It allows us to manage employee skills and abilities: Clara won’t be assigned to the cereal development task whereas Lucas will be working only as nutrition specialist and consultant due to his broad competences and years of experience.