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Standard Time Android and iOS apps

Here’s a new video showing the Standard Time Android and iOS apps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIbkf4SEXzc

All your time and expenses sync with the cloud or desktop.  So you can track project hours on the mobile device and it will find it’s way up to the big database in the sky.    Project managers like that because they get more accurate project time.  Remember, the more frequently employees enter hours, the accurate the project is.

Project schedules depend on accurate actuals.  So if you can get them to update their timesheets on a regular basis, then you’re farther ahead.  That’s what this app does.  It encourages employee input when the actual work is performed.

 

 

 

 

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What is a project milestone?

Good question!  What is a project milestone?

Think of a project milestone as a marker in time where you stop and evaluate your project.

How is your project going?  Have you completed everything necessary to move on to the next level?  Have you finished everything in this milestone?  And are you ready to move forward to the next one?

The video below shows what milestones look like in a Gantt chart, and how to track time to them.  But normally you don’t actually track time to milestones.  They are just markers in time, not actual tasks.  But you can if you want to.  In fact, you could set up a project with nothing but milestones!  Just track hours to them and compare against your original estimates.  That’s a simple way to track projects.

In the old days, a milestones was a physical stone erected by the road.  There would be one stone every mile.  Just count the stones as you waked along, and you would know how far you had traveled, and how far the next town was.  They were just like our interstate mile markers now.

Project milestones are very similar.  They tell you how far into the project you have traveled.  Got a big project?  Put up a milestone every so often and you’ll know where you are.

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8 Dirty Secrets of Project Tracking

The video below may be useful for some.  Ray White of the Standard Time® Timesheet team outlines eight dirty secrets of project tracking.  These make a lot of sense.  Take a look!

 

What did you think?  Project tracking is a slippery game.  You’ve literally got thousands of enemies and obstacles that will bring your project down.  It takes a watchful individual to make sure those things don’t happen.  And a project manager who can do that is worth their money.

I was once on a project where the manager made us all sign a paper that said we’d finish the project by a certain date.  It was a big event where the paper was passed around for all to sign.  Honestly, most just laughed, signed, and mocked him later.  Here’s why: he never followed up with any real management.  He committed virtually every sin in this video.

Even though we signed the paper, he had no real end-game plan.  We just all worked on stuff we thought was cool.  The project blew through the ship date and died an ugly death from suffocation.  He didn’t track our hours.  He let the cool kids camp out on tasks they liked, which left the rotten tasks unfinished.

I never really know when the product would ship because it was always a moving target.  And like I said, the project died of suffocation months later.  Hummph.

Hey, I found the video transcription on this page.  Hope it helps!http://www.stdtime.com/videos/dirtysecretsofprojecttracking.htm

–newshirt

 

 

 

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Feature Delays Mean Reallocating Resources

Has a customer of yours ever forgotten to get back with you about a feature you were developing for them?  They were hot to finish, but then weeks went by and no word.  Maybe the feature was almost finished, and you just needed a little more information to complete it.  One phone call or email and it would be finished.

But guess what happens when these delays occur?

All the feature nuances you kept in your head are now slipping…  A week goes by… Two weeks…  A month…  By now you’ve forgotten some of the little details that made finishing the feature so simple.  You’ll have to relearn some of those and get the feature back on track.  What would have taken a short time to complete will now take four times as longs.

When this happens, you are essentially reallocating resources to complete the job.  In some cases when too much time has elapsed, you might just as well restart the project and reschedule hours to come up to speed.  All that admin scheduling take time too.

Moral of the story: Don’t let these little delays creep in in first place.  Stay on top of your dependent resources so they don’t leave you with a long forgetful delay.

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Ten Tools For the PMO Office

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

 

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The Harmonious Project Management Trinity

Regardless of the role you play in company projects, you will likely see three primary personalities in the project management and executive teams.  In other words, if you are involved in engineering a product, or managing the development of a new product or service, holding the executive reins of a company with project management, you will likely see individuals with the following three personality drives.  These three primary issues drive their thinking.

1. The “On Time” Person
The time conscience “On Time” person primarily worries about project schedules.  When will each subsystem be finished?  Each milestone?  Each Phase?  And when will the project ship?  This person studies and observes all the team interaction with dates and times in mind.  Is the project going to be late?  If so, what can we do to fix that?  His first suggestions are to defer features for a later release, cut the scope to something more manageable, and to create a smaller, foundational release that can be improved upon later.  In other words, meet the agreed-upon ship dates at all cost, and defer more advanced things until later.

2. The “On Budget” Person
The cost conscience “On Budget” person thinks much like the On Timer.  He thinks primarily about project costs.  Blow the budget by a dollar, and he freaks out!  And since the biggest cost in most project is human resources and salaries, he’s thinking the same thing as the time conscience person, “get the project done on time so you don’t blow my budget.  And if you don’t think you can get it done on time, cut something so my budget isn’t wrecked.”  Time and budget go closely hand in hand.

3. The “Quality” Person
The quality conscience person primarily thinks about the consequences of releasing a bad product.  What will the marketplace say?  How will customers receive it?  And the Press?  It’s hard to recover from bad press or a mainstream revolt against your product.  You could lose millions of dollars just from a Facebook uprising.  It would be far better to spend an extra month getting right, or an extra $100K, than to suffer a marketplace meltdown.

So you see that these personalities can be in conflict from time to time – not exactly harmonious at all times.  The Quality person doesn’t want to witness a total user-base revolt because of a poor product.  The budget person doesn’t want to sink the company in debt.  And the schedule person doesn’t want customers to walk away all because the product took too long to deliver.

The best hope a company has is to recognize that these personalities can all exist in one project management team.  Recognizing each one for its merits goes a long way.  Sometimes people just want their input valued.  The next step is to work together toward mutually agreeable compromise that includes input from each driving force.  Hopefully, the result is a good quality product that doesn’t ruin the company in debt and unresponsiveness.

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Small to Midsize Business Going To The Cloud

The CIO Insight article below explains that SMB’s are going to the cloud for simple apps like email and storage.  And they are not necessarily asking IT for permission.  I suppose that is because the cloud provider supplies all the support they need, and users feel they can get by without their own internal IT department.  Probably so…

http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Messaging-and-Collaboration/Cloud-Computing-Plays-Big-Role-in-Small-MidSized-Businesses-539145/

Inexpensive cloud solutions are getting more and more attractive.  Not only do you get a great app, but you get external hosting and support.  So instead of spending your in-house resources on server hosting, patches, backup, upgrades, and babysitting, you can spend it on your core competencies.

Another up-and-coming cloud app is timesheets – check out a product named Standard Time®.  Their cloud-based timesheet is superb.  And just like the simpler apps described above, all the support is handled by the vendor.  But this is no simple app like storage or email.  This thing is loaded!  Check out some of the features you get for $13 a month!

Here are two videos on the Standard Time dynamic duo – Timesheet and Project Management

Cloud-based Timesheet

Cloud-based Timesheet

Cloud-based Project Management

Cloud-based Project Management

 

Timesheet
Of course you would expect this.  It’s a timesheet, after all!  But the timesheet is extremely flexible and comprehensive.  Employees only see projects assigned to them.  Project tasks are included.  Sub-projects and phases show a full hierarchical breakdown.  There is an expense sheet, and time off tracking.

Project Management
In addition to the timesheet, Standard Time gives you project rollups.  (Yes, this is all on the cloud!  Pinch yourself!!!)  They let you track actual work verses estimates.  Track percent complete.  Attach documents to tasks.

PTO Accruals
Need to track comp time for employees working over their scheduled hours?  Got it.  Need vacation tracking?  Got it.  How about automatic time off accruals on a daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or yearly basis.  That’s in there too!

Expense Tracking
What would a consulting tool be without cloud-based expense tracking?  It’s in there too.  In fact, you can run a client invoice that contains all the timesheet hours plus expenses.  Or, you can run a report that includes them both.  Or separately.  There are even custom reporting capabilities.

It’s a little hard to believe that cloud-based hosted services have evolved this far.  I guess somebody’s been hard at work.  Check out Standard Time if you’re a consulting firm, manufacturer, or government office.  Here’s a link to their YouTube channel.  New videos are posted all the time, so subscribing is a good itea.

http://www.youtube.com/user/scoutwestinc

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Epic Fail: Why Projects Go Off the Rails

Are you beginning to think your project may be a total wreck?  Is it way over budget?  And does anybody but you care about that?  Does it bother anybody that there’s no end in sight?  And feature-creep never seems to end?  If so, that’s a sign that your project has gone off the rails, and is doomed for failure.

Chances are you’re not the only one who’s noticed.

A dark cloud of failure sometimes descends upon project from time to time.  I’m not sure if anybody really knows why.  It just happens.  I suppose you could call it a “perfect storm” of incompetence, wrong choices, and apathy.  When those circumstances form up into that dark cloud over your project, forget it!  You’re done!

Epic Fail

 

This begs the question of whether there should be an assigned person whose responsibility it is to watch for telltale signs of failure.  Such a person should first of all have been involved in a few epic failures so he knows the signs.  Peering into the hazy fog doesn’t do anybody any good.

Here are some signs to look for:

Missing half your milestones
If your project is consistently blowing past half the milestones (evaluation points), then you clearly haven’t identified all the work required.  And if that’s the case, your project may last 2 – 3 times longer than expected.  Is that okay?  Can the budget hold that much water?

Cynical Team Members
Are your project team members gossiping about management?  Has water cooler talk all gone negative?  If so, the team may have lost its moral.  Employees can’t always pinpoint the problems, but they sure can gripe.  If that’s happening a lot, then you project may be in trouble.

No End In Sight
Can team members see the light at the end of the tunnel?  Are you making progress, or just spinning your wheels.  You had better see some progress or you might be in a death march.

The Death March
This is when overtime rises to 60 – 80 hours per week.  You’re working weekends to meet a vague deadline that has no obvious payoff.  And you get the distinct impression that you’re still climbing the hill rather than sledding down the other side.  Project leads say you’re just about finished, but you get the sense that that isn’t true.  Why else would the work keep piling up?

Pulling Out
As we said earlier, the only way to pull out of the situation like this is for a whistleblower to call it.  Do you have one on your team?  If so, chop the product into quarters.  Deliver what little you have done now.  Take a big break.  And then take up the monumental challenge of boiling the ocean.  Maybe your project is just four times bigger than you first imagined.

A Helpful Timesheet Product: Standard Time®
Here’s a link to YouTube video that could help.  This is a timesheet project that may have a few answers, and may impose some order to your project.  It’s worth a look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJRKTBye2j4

 

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Define: Preleveled Start

Preleveled Start: The starting dates of all tasks in a project plan before a resource leveling operation was performed.

If you use the resource leveling feature in Microsoft Project, you might consider adding the “Preleveled Start” and “Leveling Delay” columns.  These two columns help explain the effects of a leveling operation in MS Project.  The Preleveled Start field shows the dates that the tasks were before the level, and the Leveling Delay tells the amount of time each task was shifted to avoid over-allocation.

Consider the screenshots below.  They demonstrate the Preleveled Start field and Leveling Delay.

The first screenshot shows the fields before the resource leveling operation.  In this example, we have two tasks that occupy the same calendar date range.  Obviously the resource cannot complete both tasks at the same time.  We must move one, or split the tasks so they both can be completed.  But here you have a decision to make… can the resource multitask or must the second task follow only after the first has been completed?  Certain tasks like “Foundation” and “Framing” and “Roofing” cannot be multitasked.  They must be completed in sequence.  In this case, the normal leveling choices are best.

Preleveled Start before leveling
Preleveled Start is NA before leveling

 

 

In actual life, the resource will probably multitask both project tasks, which has the effect of pushing them both out.  The screenshot below shows the resource working 50% of his time on both tasks.  That doubles the amount of time the tasks take, but allows the resource the luxury to spend whatever time they want on the tasks.  This only works when the tasks are not mutually exclusive.  In other words, the second task can be performed at the same time as the first.  Or, they don’t have to be performed serially.

Resource at 50%Multitasking means working both tasks during the same calendar date range

 

But if you really want to use resource leveling, you’ll find that MS Project pushes one task out past the first one to that it starts when the first one ends.  Use this approach when you cannot work on the second task until the first is completed.  In other words, multitasking is not possible for these two tasks.  The screenshot below illustrates this.

Preleveled Start after leveling
Results of Leveling: Preleveled Start and Leveling Delay

 

Follow these steps to level resources:

  • 1. Choose Tools, Level Resources…
  • 2. Click Level Now

This dialog box is displayed to help choose the leveling options.

Resource Leveling Options 

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Project Management Doesn’t Have to be Hardcore

When most people think of project management, they think of crusty PMI propeller-heads sitting in a back office analyzing complex columns of project metrics and arriving at lofty strategic conclusions.  (Did I pitch that nerdy enough?)  In other words, project management is out of most people’s realm of understanding.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Consider a simpler model, as demonstrated by the videos below.  The stuff I’m seeing here is simple – something any average manager can wrap their brains around.

 

How to Read a Gantt Chart:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-GZLfFPWvI

Project Management:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E26M3Igh204

Resource Allocation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-qfsuft6Ak

 

Really, this is pretty simple project management.  From what I see, you’ve got a simple hierarchy of tasks that employees can track time to.  For each task you set up an estimated duration that you think the task will take.  Then you release it to the wild for employees to enter time against.  When they do, it puts the actual work into the task so you can compare it with the estimates.  Pretty simple so far… no propeller beanies required.

Another video showed how you can give each task a starting date that tells when employees should work on the task.  Since you have a duration for each task, and you have a proposed starting date, you can then see how much work has piled up for any given employees.  After all, you are telling how long and when his work should occur.  The video shows a nice graph telling how much work is scheduled for each time period (week, month, or quarter).  It may have a fancy name (resource allocation) but it’s really pretty simple from my perspective.

Why not give these tools a try?  You don’t have to be a propeller-head to set up a few tasks and start tracking time to them.  You don’ t need a degree in project management or sit in a PMO office with all the bean counters.  To me, this looks like project management for the non-project managers.

You don’t have to be hardcore to manage a few tasks.  Give it a try!

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