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Microsoft Project Task Usage View

What is the Task Usage view in Microsoft Project?  The simple answer is: a daily breakdown of the hours for each employee. You’re probably familiar with the ‘Work’ and ‘Actual work’ columns in the Gantt view, right?  The Task Usage view just breaks those numbers down by day.  The video below illustrates that perfectly.


Standard Time® with MSP Task Usage

So let’s assume you have a task with 100 hours scheduled to you and another employee.  That 100 hours is in the ‘Work’ column in the Gantt view.  (Ignore the ‘Duration’ column for sake of easy explanation for now.  It has a different purpose.)  The ‘Work’ field tells how many hours the resources are supposed to work.  Here’s a picture of how that task looks in the Gantt view and Task usage view.

Gant View with Work Hours

And Task Usage View:

Task Usage View with Work Hours

 

These two screenshots clearly show the 100 hours for our example.  The Gantt view shows the aggregate while the Task usage view shows the daily breakdown.  Now watch what happens when we add ‘Actual work’ to the mix.  The Task usage view lets you enter hours for the exact day they occurred.  And again, the Gantt view shows the aggregate hours.  (The video above shows an automated way to enter those actual work hours.)

Gantt View with Actual Work

Task Usage view with actual work

 

Of course the automated way to enter these actual work hours is a timesheet.  (I like Standard Time® at www.stdtime.com.)  Employees use a variety of tools to enter and check their own timesheets.  Once correct, all the actual work hours from the timesheet are transferred to the Microsoft Project Task usage view in one quick session – all employees, all at once.  Pretty cool, huh?

–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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Homemade Products Don’t Sell

Here’s just a quick reminder that homemade products stick out like a sore thumb.  Have you ever encountered a product that was clearly not professionally produced?  They just look awful, and one look at them screams, “Homemade!” or “Unprofessional!”  It doesn’t take long for consumers to sniff you out and flee.

Epic Fail

This past weekend, my wife and I stayed at a little ‘mom and pop’ motel in a little town in Colorado.  With one step into the room, I got a good reminder of this issue.  (See the pics below from my crap phone)  The entertainment cabinet was hand-painted, and looked awful.  I nearly fled the room, but decided the cost was cheap enough to entice me to stay.  It turned out fine.  But ugly little piece of artwork really drove this point home to me.

Consumers do not like hand-crafted products.

Epic Fail 

Let’s face it… we live in a consumer-oriented world.  Almost every product we touch is machine made, and professionally crafted for maximum emotional indulgence.  Think about the indulgent products you use on a daily basis: $50,000 automobiles… iPhones… stylish eyeglasses… jewelry… and more.  Every product we use it slick and well-designed.  So consumers are used to those kinds of products.  Now slap and homemade software product in front of them, and watch them flee!  Or a poorly polished plastic drinking cup… or any other product you can imagine.  Consumers expect high quality.

This issue is especially true in software, where programmers are sometimes responsible for developing the entire product from code to help files to graphics.  Software developers just don’t have the talents for all those jobs, and it’s very obvious when they try.  The results are a lot like the Riviera Motel.  Can you guess where it’s located?

Epic Fail

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You Can Never Leave Your First Love

I do not believe a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night.

— Henry Ford

That has certainly been true in my life.  To me, business has been something deeply ingrained in my life.  For many years, I wrote code on Christmas Day, New Years Day, Independance Day, and many other holidays.

Yes, I loved it that much.

I would do events I called “24-hour weekends” where I would start coding at 7 AM each morning and go straight until 7 PM on both Saturday and Sunday — two twelve hours days.  And then I would resume my normal 60-hour week on Monday morning at 5:30 AM.  That’s how much I loved my business.

Things have changed a little since I’ve gotten older.  Economic downturns turn you hard.  Turn you bitter.  Make you cynical.  And you say, “What good was all that work?”  So yes… I’ve had times where I’ve quit and vowed never to do that again.  I’ve actually quit my business several times.  But like a dog to his vomit, I’ve always returned.  And after doing that a dozen times, I guess I’m here for the duration — a lifer.

I still love my business.  The current economic doldrums put a severe throttle on my work efforts.  It’s awfully hard to put your life into something (and that’s what Henry was really saying in the quote above) when customers don’t reciprocate with any degree of appreciation.  But I still work hard.  I might even pull a few of those 24-hour weekends from time to time just to remind myself of the love I still have for my business.

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10 Best Teams – My Comments

Below is a short commentary on a fun article I recently read.  (See link below.)  The Online Business Degree put together a list of the best teams ever assembled.  I read through the list and agreed with most.  Some sounded a little contrived, but workable.  Here are my reactions.

http://www.onlinebusinessdegree.org/2012/08/29/the-10-best-teams-ever-assembled-and-what-we-can-learn-from-them/

I’ll take each team in order:

1. The Dream Team:
Yes, they were the finest basketball team ever assembled, but they were also professionals.  I thought the Olympics was supposed to be amateur.  I vaguely remembered a guy named Jim Thorpe losing his metals because he was accused of accepting gifts.  I’m behind the curve on this; maybe The Olympics has turned pro, and I missed it.  But the Dream Team always seemed odd to me.

2. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson:
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson as fictional characters.  They weren’t real.  But they sure had some fun adventures, and the recent Hollywood film is pretty good.  Doyle presented them as pretty good team, I must admit.  Still… it’s hard to get behind them as a real team.

3. Rogers and Hammerstein:
Now here’s a great team!  Nothing fake about them.  This was some of the greatest music of the Twentieth Century.

4. SEAL Team Six:
Worthy of our worship (figuratively speaking).  Have you seen how SEAL teams are trained and formed?  Watch the documentary some time…  It’s amazing!!!

5. The Beatles:
Yep, I’d go with them too!  Millions of people around the world still listen to their music.  But “more famous than Jesus”?  I don’t think so.

6. 1985 Chicago Bears:
Don’t know much about sports, so I can’t comment much.  But hey… if they won a Super Bowl they had to be pretty good.

7. The Justice League:
Another fictional team.  Humm…  I’m not convinced fictional teams work for me.  It’s easy to write fiction because the characters don’t actually have to accomplish anything.  You can just write up a bunch of cool scenes and you’re done.  Can I learn anything from fiction?  Yes.  But generally, non-fiction is the most inspiring to me.

8. The Apollo 11 team:
Now here’s a real super hero team!  These guys went to the moon with less computing power then an iPod.  Pretty amazing when you think about it!

9. The Not Ready for Primetime Players:
Wonderful team of comedians!  I’ve always enjoyed them.

10. The Manhattan Project:
Yes!  Another great team of scientists that I can get behind.  Most people don’t know how great these guys actually were, and how they literally saved the world.  But sadly… most people don’t know history.

If I had created the list, I would have dropped the fictional teams.  Sure, they sound great, but it’s debatable how much they actually inspire.  For instance, Sherlock Holmes was a pretty smart character, but most people find it difficult to pattern their lives after a character in a novel.  It’s like trying to be more like Huck Finn or Indiana Jones.  It’s entertaining, but not inspiring.

Lastly, I would have liked to see “The 12 Disciples” listed as a team.  Jesus didn’t pick them for their skills and awesome speaking abilities, but in the end they changed the world.  That kind of power can’t be ignored, and they are men you can comfortably pattern your life after.

Overall… it was a fun article.  It was well thought out, and fun to read.

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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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Taking Baby Steps

I ran across a nice video of how to take baby steps to implementing time tracking within your organization.  It’s worth watching.  Follow the link below for the video.

The theory is that you can get immediate value from a time tracking product like Standard Time® with minimal input.  And then after implementing the product, you can take several baby steps to gaining incremental value.  It’s up to you when you reach the point of diminishing returns (when more employee participation yields less value).  But this program has enough upward latitude to allow you to explore the upper limits of your company’s needs.

Follow the steps and see what you think!

Baby Steps For Time Tracking

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There are no big problems; there are just a lot of little problems.

There are no big problems; there are just a lot of little problems.

— Henry Ford

Henry Ford was the genius of the 20th Century assembly line.  He almost singlehandedly designed the Model T and Model A Fords.  Those two cars were the workhorses of the early 1900’s.  So when Henry speaks of “little problems” he’s talking about inventing the entire automobile industry.  But that’s big enough for anyone.

His point, though, is that in engineering you have dozens of little issues to deal with.  And they stay with you indefinitely.  In other words, engineering is a constant fight with little problems that you must work out with patience and perseverance.  If you don’t have the aptitude, don’t get into engineering!

1. One of the biggest problems engineering people have is balancing quality with cost.  Any engineer can tackle the myriad of little problems before them.  But can they do it cost effectively?  In other words, does it take forever to solve them, thus costing a fortune?  Or can they resolve each one rapidly and without expensive solutions.  The balance between polishing your work in a craftsmanship style, and pumping product after product out the door is a big, big problem that requires a lot of thought.

2. The next biggest problem engineers face is collateral damage from engineering fixes.  I.e. bugs.  Here’s an example: Say you are an electrical engineer designing a printed circuit board.  And in your haste to produce a cost effective product, you forget a circuit trace.  The manufacturing department is now forced to hand-wire that trace.  It now costs your company much more in the long run.  That’s a bug that must be retooled.  Things like that happen in every engineering discipline.  It’s definitely the next biggest problem you must face.

3. The final big problem engineers face is time estimates and project schedules.  Engineers do not think like other human beings.  They cannot estimate time with any degree of accuracy.  And they do not like being interrogated about how long their work will take.  You’ll just have to wait until it’s done, they’ll say.  I’m working as fast as I can.  Problem is, big money is riding on their engineering work.  Sometimes the company just can’t wait.  It the engineer that has to hurry up and product the product on the company’s timeline.  And that can lead to big battles.  So this is a fairly big problem facing engineering departments and company executives.

And then after those three, there are just a lot of little problems.  🙂

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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