Managing project master plans

Hello Maria

Yes, creating a master program of projects or master plan by inserting sub projects has many advantages.

It allows more than one program manager to make updates at same time.

Errors may be reduced by working on smaller manageable units rather than one big program.

Even though there are several sub projects you can have one separate project containing all the resources as a pool for assigning to the others. If saved to a common folder MS Project allows the resource pool to be accessed as follows:
Select Resource tab
Resource Pool
Select the project containing the resources (must be open)

Once this is done and all the files saved Project Managers can open their own project and work on it as normal. They will be prompted to open the Resource Pool as read only, allowing others to do the same. This allows several project managers to make resource assigning at the same time.

A further option is to make the sub projects inserted on the master plan or program Read Only. This might avoid accidental errors being made when viewing the whole plan. To do that:
Double click on the title of an inserted sub project
Select the Advanced Tab
Click the Read Only check box under the heading source project.

See also the section on Multiple Projects in your Project Intermediate reference guide for further help and instructions.

Regards
Doug Dunn
Best STL