Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Analyzing Project Performance with CA Clarity

Today's post... and we all know it's been a "long time" since I've posted... is on analyzing your results in CA Clarity project management.  Part of this is a description of how to download data, and the rest... time permitting... will be a link to a lesson on another of my blogs with steps necessary to create a high level overview using pivot tables and pivot charts... oooo... scary, I know... and sOOOOO close to Halloween!


Ok - let's get moving on this...I am using CA Clarity™ PPM version 13... and like any good software... you can definitely track a lot of information.  We try and do this pretty high level for my team... after all... tracking project time should NEVER take a majority of your project time.  Think about a squirrel packing up acorns for winter... does he keep constantly counting each individual nut?  No, I think he's probably got a link in the tree - when the acorns reach the line - he knows he's done... he's not link 4,324 - five more to go... or was it four... hold on, I need to pull out the acorns and recount... that would be absolutely NUTZ!!!!  Project Management is like that too... track with enough granularity that you have a good idea of status... but not so close that you delay your project by microscopically tracking the status.

So... the steps.... drum roll...

Oh... and the safe harbour statement before you start... I'm an idiot, all software is different, and if you follow my notes, it could cause you to break something or lose data.  Understand anything and read it closely before you follow the notes.  I've already told you that I'm an idiot... and if you follow my instructions blindly without understanding and taking responsibility for your actions... it's your own fault... and we all know... you can't trust an idiot.  This is "buyer"... or blogger beware... there are absolutely no warranties at all (expressed or implied)... use the information below at your own risk.

Now that the pleasantries are out of the way... and you know I'm an idiot... I'll review my steps...
  1. I created a tab just for this report... and you can too!
  2. From Clarity's Home tab - select the General Tab
  3. Click the odd looking icon on the upper right - it's a +/- icon that has a folder picture under the +/-.  On hover it will pop-up "Manage My Tabs"
  4. Click New - which will bring up a new window with four tabs... Page Properties, Content, Page Filters, and Layout.
    1. Click on Page Properties, Enter a tab name, and description, then click save and continue.
    2. You now see... "There is no content to display. Click add to add content"
      1.  Click add -- 
      2. When the select content window appears, type "timesheet review" in the title, and click the filter button - this will save paging through all of the different reports that can be added.  Make a mental note to come back and check these out again later.
      3. Click the check box in front of "Timesheet Review" so it's selected.
      4. Click the "add" button.
      5. Click Return
    3. Congratulations, if all went well, you should now see under Manage Tabs - the new tab you created... if not... try again...  I did tell you I was an idiot, and not to follow my directions, right?
    4. Click Return
  5. Click on the new tab that you created... at least for our implementation and use.. there are a couple of caveats...
    1. Only time reported on ACTIVE projects is shown - so I'll do another blog post on how to efficiently change these using some of the new features of Release 13.
    2. You have to create filters for your staff, unless you want to download results for EVERYONE you can access - this is an institutional preference.
    3. Don't make the assumption, as I did... again... I'm an idiot... that the pretty excel icon, and powerpoint icons will generate a nice export of what you see.  This isn't WYSIWYG - and in my case... these buttons generate something I don't need.
  6. Filter the data you need.
    1. Ok this should be easy if you're a pro, but for a newbie... there's a little PLUS sign beside the name of the report "TimeSheet Review" in the upper left (not top... uppper).
    2. Click it to expose the "filter capability"
    3. You can either page through, and select the employees to analyze.. by 
      1. Search and filter...
        1. Clicking the binoculars to start the search process
        2. Click the check box beside each name you want to include on each page
        3. Clicking "add and select more" prior to going to the next page.
        4. Clicking "return" when you're finished.
      2. Typing and selecting each resource individually
    4. I choose to only filter for "posted" time cards -- it's your preference.  I select "posted" from Timesheet Status.
    5. For time period... in my case, because of what I assume are our institutional preferences, the binoculars limit me to timesheet periods that are currently open, so I don't use these.  I click the "X" in time period and let this blank to return all periods - the Pivot table will get rid of what I don't want... no worries.
    6. Save your filter by clicking the "save filter" button.
      1. Give it a name.
      2. If it should be the default filter view when you enter, click the little check box for the default and click save and return.
    7.  Click the filter button - it's pretty straight forward now!
  7. Congratulations - you should have a view of the filter you need!
  8. Exporting the data
    1. Ok - this can be a little confusing... on the SAME LINE as  title "timesheet review"... there is a little gear.. no, not the one with the paper behind it... the same line as the title.
    2. Click it
    3. Select Export to excel - DATA Only
    4. Open or Save it somewhere you can use the data
  9.  This will open the data in excel.
I will do another post on how to clean up the data, and do pivot tables and pivot charts to build a template to speed evaluation of the data.

That's all of the time I have for now... I'm going back to bed.

Watch for the link to the blog post on my MS Office Blog... provided I can get moving on blogging on this...http://msoffice4dummies.blogspot.com/