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Sync Microsoft Project Tasks with Timesheet

Here’s a persistent problem project managers face: Their project schedules are obsolete within a week of completion. So what is your solution to that?

(scroll down for a video solution)

One solution is to get input from the boots on the ground. Get the actual employees doing the work to enter the tasks they are working on, and updating estimates. If you combine that with getting time and material “actuals” from employee timesheets, you have just about everything you need to fix this issue.

Getting input from the boots on the ground

Here’s why:

Employees may not know the full strategic direction your project is going in, but they do know the tactical maneuvers to get things done. So let them have that input into your schedule. Let employees input their project tasks and update estimates based on their understanding of the conditions on the ground. That may be entirely different than your 30,000 foot birds-eye view.

Both perspectives help.

The video below shows how to sync project tasks with your timesheet, which lets employees on the ground have their input. Give it a watch, and let us know what you think!

 

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MS Project Materials and Costs

Do you want the actual end-users of your MS Project plans to have input?

After all, what’s a project plan without input and adjustments from the boots on the ground? It’s static and lifeless. The project manager creates the plan, and minutes later it’s out of date. Why? Because the project manager doesn’t know the actual conditions on the ground. Only the actual employees know that. So you need their input.

This video describes getting input in the form of materials and costs that are synchronized with MS Project. Get a look below!

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Double the Value of Your Timesheet

Information collected in your timesheet can double the value you get from it. Especially if you are only using the basics of client billing or employee payroll. Those things are great, but they are only half what you can get.

Check this video out.

Lingering behind your timesheet is a wealth of new information. It’s behindĀ the “Project Tasks” tab. Your timesheet is feeding information to project tasks every time you enter hours or start a timer. And the information that is collected is completely free.

That is to say… completely free of managing computations like costs, percent complete, and budgets. For example: as soon as you receive an email notification that your project has reached 90% of its budget, you’ll understand “free.” You didn’t have to do anything to get that; it just happened for free.

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Define PMO Office, Project Management Office

PMO = Project Management Office. That’s all we know.

Well… not exactly. šŸ™‚

We also know which project management tool is best for the PMO. That’s Standard TimeĀ®. And we know how to manage projects and tasks. In fact, here’s a video that shows

Ten tools for the PMO office

And in case you were wondering… we also know that it’s not pronounced “PMO Office.” The extra “Office” at the end is redundant because the acronym “PMO” has the word Office in it. So if you said “PMO Office” you would really be saying “Project Management Office Office.” That’s dumb.

Watch the video, and then watch the “ten tools” video above. Comment on each one to let us know what you think. Ā Talk to you soon!

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Define Project Management

Project management is such a broad term that it can include a lot of activities. And everyone has a unique perspective or opinion of its meaning. But it’s basically everything related to doing a project. Please comment on the video below.

Define Project Management: The activities and methods used to successfully complete a project or job, usually constrained by time, cost, or scope.

The constraints listed above are the biggies! We all have an idea what the activities are. But often the constraints are not given the priorities they should. Consequently, projects go over their budgets, both from a time and cost perspective. This usually happens when the scope becomes a moving target you can never catch up to. The customer wants more and more, but forgets that it costs more and more, and that it takes time to reach that elusive goal.

Consider these two videos to learn more about project management and the constraints you’ll face:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toohN6bxImU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyDyHNz2da8

 

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Define Task Finish Date

Isn’t it crazy how nobody on your project team expects your project and task finish dates to ever come to pass? We put them out there like hazy mirages you never seems to reach. And then those dates come and go without the task being completed, and everybody forgets. Oops, we missed that date. Does that annoy you? Or aren’t you OCD enough?

Define Task Finish Date: A date for the completion of a task or project, usually Ā computed from a starting date and calendar days.

What’s weird is that project completion dates in the future never seem quite real. You throw them out there, and so far into the future that nobody can quite grasp the possible conditions of the project in that distant time. It’s like it’s unreal. But everyone agrees… yeah… we’ll definitely be done by then. That’s definitely enough time to get this thing done.

Problem is, there are either not enough steps to get you to completion, or little accountability to those steps. You just trust that this “sufficiently distant date” is so far out that you must be able to complete the project by then. How could you not finish by then? Missing a date like that would be inconceivable!

And yet we miss them every time. And forget we missed them. Ā Jeeeez, we’re dumb…

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Define Project Management Triangle

Did you know there are (at least) three competing demands on your project? And did you know that you can’t have all three? You can only pick two. (video below) Here they are:

Define Project Management Triangle: A triangular graph illustrating the three project constraints of time, cost, and scope.

So those are the three constraints that pull your project all out of shape. Time, cost, and scope. And the crazy thing is, as a project manager or project stakeholder you can only pick two. You have to let the other go where it goes. Are you ready for that.

Scenario #1: Let’s say you want your project right now, and really cheap. Guess what? You’ll get something really junky. In other words, the scope will be small and probably less than what you’re expecting. Ā You chose time and cost. You got scope handed to you.

Scenario #2: You want your project right now, and you want everything under the sun. Okay, now you’ll find that your project costs you a fortune. You chose time and scope. Cost now depends on those two, and it’s going to cost you big-time.

Scenario #3: You want this thing done cheap and you want a lot. Well, that is going to take some time. Because it’s cheap, you’ll just have to wait for some things. You chose cost and scope, and so time is the one thing you’ll have to live with.

See how these things all inter-depend? Did you know you can see a graph of your own results? Watch the video and try it out.

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What Can Project Portfolios Do For You?

First off, what is a project portfolio? The video below answers this effectively.Ā A project portfolio is just a collection of projects. It’s a “black box” filled with projects that relate to each other some way. You decide how they relate, or why they are bundled. Then you can work on the entire bundle.

The idea is that you can perform certain operations on an entire portfolio of projects rather than the individual projects themselves. Or course you can work with individual projects also. But portfolios give you a “black box” of projects that you can tinker with.

What can you do with portfolios? The video explains, but consider these possibilities.

  1. See resource allocation for an entire portfolio
  2. See revenue for a portfolio
  3. Run reports for a selected portfolio
  4. See historical time for a portfolio

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What is a Project Triangle

What are project triangles? You’ve probably visited the project triangle wiki webpage. So, you probably know that project triangles graphically illustrate the tension between time, cost, and scope. Any one of these could cause trouble for your project if not properly managed. Watch the video below.

The cool thing is that these project triangles are displayed graphically in Standard TimeĀ®. That means you can check your own projects to see how they measure up. If you see a perfect triangle with all side of equal length (equilateral triangle) then you know your project is in good shape.

But if you see one side of the triangle going off the graph, then you know something is wrong. It means either your time, cost, or scope is out of whack.

What a nice way to check the health of your project!

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Engineering Directors Dream

Don’t wake me up I’m having a great dream! All the engineers are getting Standard TimeĀ®.

See the dream below………

That’s an awesome dream for the engineering director. She’s getting a timesheet on every desk to track engineering hours. She can use that to compare actuals with estimates. That alone is valuable because project schedules without actuals are not so great schedules (real actuals, coming from real employees, that is). Forget about copying down what somebody said they worked, and typing them into the ‘Actual work’ field. That’s almost as bad as no actuals at all.

But in this awesome dream, the engineering director sees employees closing out tasks they’re finished with. It’s hard to say just how great that little advantage is. That small thing informs project managers that tasks can be set aside and not worried about anymore. Communication in any form is wonderful. But this really helps the PM keep track of stuff.

Here’s the cool thing about this director’s dream: It goes beyond just the engineering team. You have PTO and vacation tracking for the HR folks. And you’ve got reporting for the executives. Hey, that’s sounding an awful lot like an enterprise project timesheet.

Tell us your dream!