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What’s More Important than Web 2.0?

Blogs, wikis, and social networks top the list for collaboration tools among project team professionals, right?  After all, they bring the entire team together in ways nobody ever thought possible.  But that’s not what the latest Ziff Davis study found.  In fact, “shared project management tools” was in the top ten, up there with simple old email.  Didn’t know that?  Check out this article by Allan Alder at CIO Insite.

http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Research/Collaboration-Unlocking-the-Power-of-Teams/

It’s buried on page five, but the zinger quote below tells it all.  Check out the chart on page 5 too.  It tells us that products like Standard Time® really are important!  They are the ones bringing project teams together.  “Shared project management systems” ranked at #8, while “MySpace” was at #27, just above “None of the above.”

 

Shared project management systems, workflow systems, real-time document collaboration tools and knowledge management systems are considered more important than any Web 2.0 technology: They are widely used by project teams and, to a slightly lesser extent, by co-workers engaged in business processes.

I’d like to see the list of collaboration tools you find useful for your project team.  If you are not using Standard Time, what are you using?  I’d like to hear!

–ray

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Define: Project Phase

Project phase: A series of project tasks grouped together by time frame.

 

Project phases help you complete a portion of your project before moving on to other activities.  If your project is so big that it needs phases, good for you!  It probably means you have many resources assigned to it, and you need to break things up to manage them effectively.  This is not always so, but often the case.

Both Microsoft Project® and Standard Time® let you create phases or breakdowns.  They are called by many names: summaries, subprojects, subsystems, or just plain phases.  Anyway you look at it, they are project breakdowns that represent groups of tasks lumped into a time frame.  In other words, all the tasks are expected to be completed within a close proximity of time.

To create a summary task in Microsoft Project, simply click the task under it, and then click the Indent toolbar button.  That will cause the task above it to become bold, signifying that it summarizes the tasks below it.  As you add more tasks to the summary, certain fields (like start and finish dates) will roll up to the summary level.  You can collapse the summary to hide detail.  In Standard Time, these tasks are displayed on the timesheet.

–ray

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How To: Set Deadlines for Tasks in MS Project

This topic (how to set a deadline for an MS Project task) is so simple, it’s hardly worth mentioning.  But, it might be good to review.  It’s just another little piece of information that might help scheduling projects.

To create a task deadline:

  1. Double-click on a task  (the Task Info dialog box appears)
  2. Click the Advanced tab
  3. Click the Deadline dropdown
  4. Choose a date, sometime after the task finish date

These steps allow you to set a deadline that the task should be finished by.  A small arrow is displayed in the Gantt column at that date.  The image below shows what it looks like.

 


Arrow indicating task deadline
(normally before the task finish date)

 

If your task gets bumped (presumably because of linked predecessors) the finish date may go beyond the deadline.  When this happens, a small red indicator is shown next to the task name.  The image below shows what it looks like.  Browse your mouse over it to see a tool tip explaining the reason.


Deadline indicator

 

–ray

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You Gotta Love It

Are you the leader of a project team?  Or do you hope to be someday?  Here’s a tip for managing people.  Love what you do.  And show it.

If you are in leadership, you will not have success until you love your work so much it’s contagious.  People need to see you digging into every aspect of it.  And digging hard.  They simply will not follow until they see the passion.  Are you uncovering new ideas and methods?  Finding improvements in managing projects?  Making it look fun?

Think of things through your team member’s eyes.  Do they see someone who can take their careers to the next level?  Sure, you may be a good ol’ boy, but do they feel compelled to follow you?  Fight for new business?  Endure the pain for the pleasure of success?  Not if they don’t see you doing those things.

The point I’m making is that managing teams, projects, and products is more about leading by example than begin one of the gang.  Be a person they want to emulate.

–ray

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Define: Constraint Type

Contraint type: A task scheduling option that determines how project tasks interact with each other with respect to dates.

 

Microsoft Project allows you to set constraint types for each task.  Using task constraints can really bugger up a project, if you don’t know what you are doing.  Ever hear of scheduling conflicts?  Consider using deadlines instead.  I feel constraints can be useful when used in moderation.  But most managers do not need to dive this deeply into task management.  Why?

Most projects change rapidly from day to day.  Because of this, you may find yourself fiddling with esoteric task options, only to find that they become irrelevant next week when the schedule changes.  That’s where deadlines can be simpler.

Here are the task constraints MS Project offers:

  1. As Late As Possible (default in a project scheduled from the finish date)
  2. As Soon As Possible (default in a project scheduled from the start date)
  3. Finish No Earlier Than
  4. Finish No Later Than
  5. Must Start On
  6. Must Finish On
  7. Start No Earlier Than
  8. Start No Later Than

 Clearly, these options control the behaviour of tasks that are linked together.  Let’s say you chose the “Start No Later Than” constraint type.  In this case, you would be required to supply a date that the task cannot start after.  Let’s say you chose August 1st.

A scheduling conflict can occur if a predicessor task causes your task to start after August 1st.  Schedules change so frequently that this is likely to happen.  Actually that can be a good thing.  Consider it an alert that something has gone wrong with your project.  If your project slips so badly that these contraints become activated, it can alert you to deeper problems witn your project team.

–ray

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How to: Split Tasks in Microsoft Project

In this post we’ll discuss how to split tasks in Microsoft Project.  In other words, how to break tasks into segments representing the exact times work will be performed.

Microsoft Project tasks do not necessarily need to start on one day, and continue until the task is complete.  They can be broken up into segments.  In other words, work can be performed in a discontinguous fashion.  For instance, 16 hours in one week, 16 hours in the next week, and a final 4 hours the following week.  This technique is illustrated below.  Steps to perform it as also included.

 


Split bar, showing each segment of work


Split hours, in Task Usage view

 

I must warn you…  I feel this is a micro-management technique.  It can be good to define exactly when the work will be performed, right down to the hour, but do you really want to spend your time doing that?  That’s better left to the discretion of engineers who will actually be doing the work.

Follow these steps to split Microsoft Project tasks:

  1. Create a new task in the Gantt view (See the View menu)
  2. Right-click in the header area, and choose Insert Column
  3. Insert the Work column (it represents the planned work for a task)
  4. Enter 10 hours for the Work
  5. Choose View, Task Usage
  6. Notice the number of hours for each day (this is the time you will work on the task)
  7. Skip a few days, and enter some additional hours into the Task Usage view
  8. Choose View, Gantt Chart to return to the preview view
  9. Notice that the Gantt bar has been split to show the new hours

 

–ray

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Define: Free Slack

Free Slack: The amount of time that can be spared in a task before it begins to affect other tasks.

 

Some tasks don’t really need to be completed by the time you’ve set for them.  In other words, there’s a little slack available before they need to be finished.  That’s Free Slack.

Microsoft Project calculates free slack in tasks when they are linked to other tasks.  If a task is not linked to another, the free slack is the amount of time from the finish date until the end of the project.  Here’s a quote from MSP:

The Free Slack field contains the amount of time that a task can be delayed without delaying any successor (successor: A task that cannot start or finish until another task starts or finishes.) tasks. If the task has no successors, free slack is the amount of time that a task can be delayed without delaying the entire project’s finish date.

So, how is this valuable to you?  This only applies when a successor task is not linked directly to its predicessor.  In other words, there is some slack time between them, even though they are technically linked.  This can be valuable to offer some spare time for the resource to finish the task, or to do other things.

–ray

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How To: Use Resource Pools in MS Project

This post discusses how to use Microsoft Project resource pools.  First, let me say that you are going to find this a little kludgey.  Standard Time® has a better solution for resource pools, so you might find it a bit easier to assign users to project tasks.  But, this will discuss resource pools in MS Project.

What is a resource pool?  It is just a common set of employees or resources that will be used to assign to project tasks.  Standard Time® has all resources and projects available in one database, so the “pool” is always available.  Microsoft Project uses the technique below to meet this requirement.

To create a resource pool:

  1. Create a new Microsoft Project MPP file
  2. Choose View, Resource Sheet
  3. Enter the names of resources you will assign to tasks in your projects
  4. Save the file with a catchy name like RezPool.mpp
  5. Consider creating resource pools for each workgroup in your company
  6. Keep the file open for use in the next step

To associate the resource pool with your project:

  1. Create a new MPP file (a new project)
  2. While in the new project, choose Tools, Resource Sharing, Share Resources
  3. Choose the “Use Resources” option
  4. Choose RezPool.mpp from the dropdown list
  5. Click OK
  6. Save the new project file

To use the resource pool in task assignments:

  1. Make sure both your project file and resource file are open in Microsoft Project
  2. Click in the Resources column next to a task
  3. You should see the list of resources from the pool
  4. Choose one

This technique should allow you to share a common set of resources, which you will frequently assign to task.  As we said earlier, you should consider creating multiple resource pools representing each workgroup in your company.  But, consider using Standard Time®, where resources are always available for all projects.

–ray

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Business Driven Initiatives

What percentage of your organizational time is spent on business-driven projects?  In other words, how much time is spent working for customers?

Even a one-man operation must worry about this number – this percentage of customer-driven time.  Every organization has projects they do for customers, and projects for in-house development.  The balance between them is what I’m talking about.  Do you know your percentage?  Do you track your project time?

I’d like to think that 90-95% should be customer-related.  Any lower, and you’re probably spending too much time fiddling with non-marketable work.

I once worked for a company that wrote all their own software development tools.  At the time, Microsoft was selling full-featured compilers for $300.  Yet this company wrote all their own.  In their case, I would guess their customer-drive project time was less than 80%.  That’s too much time fooling around with internal tools.

A company with that much time on their hands won’t do well.  What say you?

–ray

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Define: Six Sigma

Six Sigma: A project management methodology used to ensure quality and lowest possible costs.

 

The more I look into Six Sigma, the more I like it.  Like all project management methodologies, it does have some heavy-handed aspects.  But, the basic philosophy is sound.

Here’s a link and a quote from Microsoft’s web site (article by John Knutsen):

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project/HA011233361033.aspx

The “hidden office” (from Microsoft’s web site)
The difference between 99.99966% efficiency (Six Sigma) and 99% efficiency can be thought of as the “hidden office.” The hidden office represents all activity that results in defects (not meeting customer expectations) or not doing things right at the first attempt. Customers don’t pay for the hidden office.

For example, say a company bills 8 million customers on a monthly basis. If the process were performing at a 99% success rate, 80,000 customers would be incorrectly billed each month. The hidden office represents the costs and resources required to find and fix incorrect billings, and to address customer dissatisfaction.

The basic philosophy of Six Sigma is that poor quality costs your company money.  Doing things wrong the first time costs money.  The best way to lower costs is to reduce defects.  In other words, do things right the first time.  That’s the driving force behind Six Sigma.

–ray