Status Manager Verses Assignment Owner

Status Manager verses Assignment Owner

What is the difference between Status Manager and Assignment Owner in Project Server 2007.

Status Manager

Status Manager is the person who manages the task andprocesses the status updates for a task (which is typically also the Project Owner). By default, the Status Manager is the same as the Project Owner.

In Project 2003, you had to implicitly become the Status Manager by opening the Project Plan, selecting the specific tasks, then republishing with the "Become owner of this assignment" checked.

In Project 2007, we've given you a way to set this explicitly in the Status Manager field. This is helpful since the field is now explicitly set and can be added to views. In order to get the person's name in the status manager list, there is still a limitation that they have to open the project plan in Project Pro and change the Status Manager Field value. However, this can be done at the beginning of a project and it will carry forward to any additional tasks from there.

The Status Owner will receive the project manager notifications for the owned tasks and will be able to accept updates to those tasks provided they have adequate security permissions.

I'm still investigating whether this information can be stored within a template so that you only have to do this operation as you add project managers to the system.

Assignment Owner

Assignment Owner is the person who providestask status on behalf of a resource (which is typically themselves). The assignment owner in the project task defaults to the value set in the Default Assignment Owner field of the resource. In most cases, the resource is it's own default assignment owner.

In certain cases,as in setting upteam resources, the default assignment owner may be changed to be the team manager. This way, the team manager can see all team assignments and manage them on behalf of the team.

The assignment owner will receive the team member notification, will see the task in their tasks views, and will be able to updatetask status provided they have the appropriate rights.

The assignment owner can also be overwritten at the project assignment level with Project Professional 2007. If you go to the Resource Usage view in Project Pro and add the Assignment Owner field to the grid view, you can change the value to another resource on the project. One use of this would be where you are using a shared resource (i.e. A front end loader) and you need different people to submit status on front-end loader tasks since there may be different people involved in different stages of the project.

This also allows you to delegate task updates to another person when the resource may not have access to the system. For example, you may be utilizing a external service for some of your project work. However, they don't have direct access to the system and you want to use a resource representing usage of XYZ Service for overall reporting purposes.

This feature allows the Project Manager tooverride the assignment owner intheirplan to someone internally to track status for theexternal servicetasks. ASourcing member can then get visibility across all projects to see where a certain external service is being used and use this information to negotiate a better rate.

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