A project management blog for manufacturing and engineering
Hey, nerds! Did you actually watch the Nerve Center Part 1 video?
You did? Seriously? Then you are a nerd.
You will love Part 2 below. It expands upon the nerdishly nerdish capabilities in Standard Time. You’ll need every last drop of this for your staff meetings and weekly tech-drops. Nobody will be more informed than you. Nobody will have more manufacturing job info than you. You are nerd king.
Tell us what you think!
Here’s what to do when the PMO office is asking for a timesheet on every desk. (Yes, it’s not really PMO Office is it? It’s Project Management Office, so I don’t need the extra office after it. Well gosh, it just sounds better that way. 🙂 )
Okay, with that out of the way… The PMO is probably wanting to get employee hours so they can compare with task estimates. After all, there’s not much point in predicting task completions, and scheduling tasks without timesheet hours from employees.
Scroll down for a video (it’s a long ways down there)
Huge things happen when you inject actual employee hours into project schedules. It’s turning loose a basket of cats. Things happen you never thought of. Employees work on projects and tasks you didn’t expect. They finish up tasks, or cancel them altogether. They spend ten times as long as they should on others. Tasks get switched to other employees. And those employees send them back because they don’t have the resources to complete them. Sometimes team leaders jump into tasks they aren’t assigned to. Or split tasks into two or three new ones.
See how confusing this can get?
A project schedule alone is almost useless. It needs employee hours to bring it to life. And, it needs employee input. Employees should have the ability to modify tasks, create tasks, and delete them. If they don’t get that privilege, they should at least have the ability to suggest such changes, because they are the boots on the ground and usually know best what’s going on.
Now, this is what the PMO office needs. Have you seen this?
The video below lists ten cool tools for the project management office. (Actually the term “PMO Office” is a little redundant.) But I really liked this set of tools. You start with a database that displays all your projects as peers — no more discreet files on your hard drive. Under each project is a list of assigned to employees. Those employees see only their projects and tasks in the timesheet where they record actual hours. Go back to the project task view and you can compare estimates with actuals.
Of course, the PMO office wants more than a simple task list. They want resource allocation, project revenue projects, utilization reports with percentages and effective rates. And they want some daily scrum status. To me… it all seems to be here. Take a look!
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVJ1AYCJ9Rw