How to account for professional and software costs in an activity?

Stuart M. shared this question 19 months ago
Answered

Hi there,

I'm using MM22 and am trying it out on some project planning, scheduling and costing.

I have many tasks in my plan, many of which involve use of software, but the amount of hours of use isn't consistently related to my personal hours.

For example, Task A might take me 8 hours of my time and I need to use a software for 4 hours of that time, whereas Task B might take me 12 hours of my time but I only need to use the software for 2 hours.

How to best represent a situation like this in MM22 so that the costs are correctly calculated?


Regards,


Stuart

Replies (3)

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You could add a numeric Topic Property to these tasks that shows how many software hours are required, then use a Formula either across the whole map or a tree of tasks to sum them and multiply by a cost rate.

Another formula could then be used to add this to a rolled-up project cost derived from working hours, giving a total project cost.

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Thanks Nick

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It appears that you are doing 2 or more tasks combined in your Task A, B, etc.

Split them up into sub tasks Aa the part without software use and Ab with software. Etc.

That is the way it should be done following project management conventions

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An idea for another approach (which I have not tested in detail) would be to add a separate resource for the software, give it a cost rate, and edit the efforts separately on each task where the software is used. (Right-click on the resource name to edit efforts separately). You would then get a total cost that can be rolled up, and a breakdown by resource in the Gantt chart. I haven't checked whether there are any downsides as a result of MindManager conflating hours from multiple resources.

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Thank Nick, that seems to work and it's nicer to be able see to see the efforts on the same sub-topic.

Cheers,

Stuart

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