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Saturday, April 30, 2011

Project/Project Server 2007/2010 - April CU released

This is to announce the release of  April CU of Project and Project Server 2007/2010, which is now available for download. There is one KB for server roll-out package still need to be published, for further details see the Brian Smith blog about the CU and to download browse the MS admin blog.

The webcast, Information About Microsoft Project and Project Server Cumulative February Update, about the Cumulative Update detail will be on 10th May and you can click here to register to attend the webcast.

NOTE: Microsoft strongly recommends testing within a NON-Production environment prior to rollout. Feel free to open a support incident at http://support.microsoft.com if you run into any issues with the installation.

Happy patching!

Friday, April 29, 2011

Microsoft Community Contributor Award 2011

This morning, the start of the day was not so great, was also feeling down and lazy. Opened my inbox without much interest, and there you go - there was an email from Microsoft with an announcement that i have been given a "Microsoft Community Contributor" award in recognition to my contribution to the online forums.

Although it was never intended, but hence proved that a little appreciation always helps you to fuel up with new energies. Thank you Microsoft and all the readers/fellows to help me achieve this, really humbled to be part of this great community.

Lot more to go - because i can, and i will.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Project Server - Project hand-over process from PMO to PM

Recently i was creating a Project hand-over process for PMO, where after performing required PMO activities the Project has to hand-over to the Project Manager for the execution. The process comprises of list of activities that Project Managers have to perform to accept the project from PMO so that he/she can continue with the execution of the Project. These activities involves the Project Owner and Status Manager fields of the Project and i thought this of a good share as i haven't seen much about the use/advantages of Status Manager and Owner field of the Project. I also can see more and more organization in my region tend to establish PMO for better Project Management, and that requires the users to understand the role of the Status Manager and Owner of the Project.



Microsoft Project Server 2010/2007 uses two fields to track the leadership of any enterprise project. The Owner field lists the person who created the project and saved it initially in the Project Server database. The Status Manager fields lists the person who initially published the resource assignments in the project using the Publish button. The Status Manager is the person who receives task updates in PWA from team members assigned to the tasks in the project. Now depending on your organization policy and requirement, you can change either the Owner of the project, the Status Manager of the project, or both the Owner and Status Manager of the project as part of the hand-over process.

PMO Role:

After receiving the Project Schedule along with any other required documents, Project Charter etc., following activities PMO could do:
  • Baseline the Project, to identify any variance later with the current values.
  • Fill-in any PMO required Project custom fields
  • Save and Publish the project to the server
  • Change the owner of the Project to the respective Project Manager of the Project from the PWA
    Project Manager Role:

    Once received notification from the PMO about the Project been saved on the server, following activities should be performed by the Project Manager to make sure that he/she wont miss any task updates from the resources.
    • Open the project in Project Professional 2010.
    • (If required) Change any generic/local resources with the enterprise resources in the project.
    • Apply any Task view, such as the Gantt Chart view. 
    • Right-click on the column header to the right of the Task Name column and select Insert Column from the shortcut menu.

    • Select the Status Manager field from the list of available fields.
    • Click the Status Manager pick list and select your name from the list for every regular task that you must manage.

    • Save and Publish the Project so that the changes can take effect.

      There are few interesting points you will observe when you insert the status manager field in the Ms Project, the field drop down will list all the previous status managers of the project in-addition to your name. Any of your Project user with the open/save/publish project to the server permission, when open the project can able to set themselves as the status manager of the activities belongs to them. This is one of another awesome advantage of the Status Manager, alteast i rate it awesome and always highlight this to my users/attendees, that it let you have more than one approver in the same project plan. This particularly applies to the large projects where more than one Project Manager are involved, and each one of them is responsible for their set of activities in the project.

      As usual your comments, feedback are widely welcome.

      Sunday, April 17, 2011

      Microsoft Tech.ed North America 2011

      The 19th annual Microsoft Tech·Ed North America conference provides developers and IT professionals the most comprehensive technical education across Microsoft's current and soon-to-be-released suite of products, solutions and services.

      The four day event at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia offers hands-on learning, deep product exploration and opportunities to connect with industry and Microsoft experts one-to-one. If you are developing, deploying, managing, securing and mobilizing Microsoft solutions, Tech·Ed is the conference that will help you solve today's real-world IT challenges and prepare for tomorrow's innovations.



      Below are the Project and Project server sessions going to be held in the event:

      Topics
      Speakers
      SharePoint Governance and Lifecycle Management with Microsoft Project Server 2010
      Scott Jamison, Christophe Fiessinger
      Application Lifecycle Management: Microsoft Project Server 2010 and Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010, Better Together
      Ed Blankenship, Christophe Fiessinger
      INT Best Practices Troubleshooting Microsoft Project Server 2010 Deployments

      For more details of the event, please browse: Tech.Ed North America 2011

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