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My Manager, When Projects are Late

Being consistent in your management style and personality is important for success. One of the first lessons in parenting is being consistent.  If you discipline your child one time for something, but then ignore that same thing a different time, you are sending a confusing mixed message.  Obviously, your project team members are not children, but the principle still applies.

Our teams depend on us for leadership and direction. As managers, if we are on a roller-coaster of emotion, our project teams will be all mixed up.


My manager when projects are late

Inconsistent behavior stifles creativity and does not allow a tolerable environment for ideas to be exchanged.  If a team member is not sure how you will react from one day to the next, they are less likely to be forthcoming with ideas and suggestions.

No matter how crazy a project becomes or how much stress leaders are under, we must be the model of consistency.  Like the commercial says, “never let them see you sweat.”

 

–Warren

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Define: Feature Creep

Feature Creep: Small product feature additions that unexpentantly expand a project scope.

 

Feature creep is one of the big reasons projects ship late.  Some people simply cannot deny themselves.  They want more and more features in their great new product, and can’t stop adding them  Here’s how it happens.

When a new product feature is complete, there are oohs and aahs from all the project stakeholders.  They love it!  Why?  Because they are sure customers will find it useful and reward the company with more business.  That’s only natural.  But then something else happens…  One of the stakeholders steps up and says, “That’s cool, but can it do one more little thing?”

All the other stakeholders agree.  The new feature you added is nice, but the product should do one more thing to be complete.  And they may be right.  So you add that.  And a few more things.  And a few more things after that.  That’s feature creep.

Little additions creep into your product features until they consume a major part of the project timeframe.  The extra features are nice, but can you afford the extra time?  After all, you now have less time to implement all the other cool features you were asked to do.

Stakeholders often don’t understand this problem.  Later, they’ll come around and ask why your project is behind schedule.  You can’t say that it’s because of all the little things they asked for.  Why?  Because they won’t remember those or they don’t see them as a major time sink.  See the problem?  You can’t win with feature creep.  🙁

 

–ray

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The Bluebird: Model of Efficiency

Just for fun, I’ve posted a picture of a bluebird one of my customers sent me.  This picture was taken with a nest-cam outside one of his birdhouses.  Did you know that baby bluebirds go from hatchling to flying machine in only 18 days!  That’s a model of efficiency!

 

That’s right!  This bluebird is only 18 days old!  Like a machine, every cell in its body knows whether to contribute to flesh, bone, or feather within three weeks.  And then it’s off.

I want our project management organization to work this efficiently – like a machine.  Ever hear of Intelligent Design?  The theory essencially says that when a thing looks like it was designed, then it was designed.  To me, the bluebird looks like it was designed.  So who was the designer?

Can our projects run like they were designed?  Like a grand plan set forth in seven days and then implemented with flawless execution?  That’s the way I want our products to flow.  Wasting time “figuring things out” slows growth and limits potential.  Instead, let’s model our projects after the bluebird!

Okay, that’s a litte simplistic…  Which one among us is God?  We are flawed beings, and our products and projects reflect our limitations.  But we can still strive for it, can we not?  Flawless project execution…  That’s my new goal.  🙂

 

–newshirt

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How To: Calculate Costs in Microsoft Project

This post will illustrate how to calculate costs in Microsoft Project.  As you will see below, each tasks has a total cost and an actual cost.  The actual cost are those costs that have actually been incurred during the execution of the project.

Costs in Microsoft Project and Standard Time® are very different.  Each task in Microsoft Project may have an arbitrary dollar value.  We’ll assign some below to demonstrate.  This is not true of Standard Time®.  Standard Time calculates task costs by multiplying hours times rates.  (C = H * R)  There are various rates a project may have, but the formula is always true.  Microsoft Project is different.  Follow the steps below to calculate costs in MSP.

Create some tasks:

  1. Add a task named “Task 1”
  2. Add a task named “Task 2”
  3. Set the Duration to 100h and 40h respectively
  4. Remove all columns by the Duration column (right-click and choose Hide Column)

 

The results look like this:

 

Insert the following columns:

  1. Cost
  2. Actual Work
  3. % Complete
  4. Actual Cost

 

The results will look like this:


Microsoft Project Cost Fields

 

Experiment with the Duration, Cost, and Actual Work fields, and you will see updates costs values.  The image below illustrates this.


Updated Microsoft Project Cost Values

–ray

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Advice: Get Corporate Buy-in

Project Management Advice: Get Corporate buy-in for your projects.

In other words, make sure the corporate executives are active stakeholders in your project.  I suppose this goes without saying, but I’ve seen lots of projects where this is not the case.  Project teams somehow come to the conclusion that their project will be funded and accepted, even though corporate has not explicitly said so.

Just because your team is developing a new product or in-house tool, doesn’t mean corporate will stand by you.  Without vested stakeholders at the highest level, your project could easily be canceled.

The name “Harold” comes to mind when thinking of this subject.  I worked with a man named Harold who was researchinig a product for his company.  Months went by as he studied the features and benefits.  He eventually took a job with another company and I discussed the project with his boss.  His boss said he never knew what Harold was up to, and had no intention of adopting the product!

 

–ray

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Project Managers are Coaches Too

Many people know that Phil Jackson coached 9 teams to NBA titles and Bill Walsh was a football genius with many Superbowl wins.

Do you ever hear about Project Managers who take multiple million-dollar projects to the finish line and bring home the victory?  Of course not, but they are critical in setting the tone of a project, defining clear objectives, and pushing all the right buttons to get a Project Team on the same page to accomplish their project goals.

People alone, with all of their various personalities, are tough to manage.  Project Managers are responsible for setting project task dependencies, trying to stay within project budgets, and work to keep a pulse on all the project resources.  Man, that is a lot of responsibility!

In sports, coaches use video tape, advanced scouts, and many other tools to accomplish their goals. In the project world, we use tools like MS Project or a good time tracking/project management tool such as Standard Time® software. Standard Time automatically e-mails Project Managers if a timesheet is insufficient and will warn a project team if a project is over budget.  It allows you to visually manage your resource allocation. It is a very effective tool.

The bottom line is that championships are not only won by pushing the right buttons. The foundation for winning starts with having the right tools. Are you still using antiquated spreadsheets and verbal discussions to win your championship?  If so, you may be setting yourself up for failure.

–Warren

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How To: Display WBS Codes in MS Project

This post discusses how to display WBS codes in Microsoft Project.  WBS stands for Work Breakdown Structure.  It is an (arguably cryptic) way to number tasks in a project so you can tell the hierarchy position.  The first number in the sequence represents the task id.  Each dot represents a subtask.  Follow the steps below to show the WBS number.

  1. Enter three tasks
  2. Right-click in the column header area
  3. Choose Insert Column
  4. Choose the WBS column
  5. The results will look like this

 


WBS Codes

 Next, we’ll insert some new tasks and demote them.

  1. Right-click in row #2
  2. Choose New Task
  3. Enter some tasks
  4. Demote them
  5. The results will look like this (notice the WBS codes)

 


Indented WBS Codes

 

If you really want to make your WBS codes exotic, try these steps.

  1. Choose Project, WBS Codes…
  2. Enter a prefix
  3. Choose a custom numbering scheme
  4. Click OK
  5. The results may look something like this

 


WBS Prefix

 

–ray

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Question: Why Do Projects Cost More Than Expected?

There are a lot of possible reasons for this.  I’ll enumerate the reasons why I think projects cost more than expected, and then discuss the most probable ones.  Let me know what you think!  Got a few more reasons?

  1. Forgotten tasks
  2. Unknown tasks
  3. Customer expectations change
  4. Feature creep

My biggest issue is always ‘forgotten tasks’.  In my experience, forgotten tasks results in project cost overruns more often than any other reason.  People tend to throw out a cost before they have listed all the work involved.  Halfway down the road, they remember 25 – 50% more tasks.  That adds up!

Sometimes, one thing leads to another.  Tasks that you didn’t know about pop up.  What are you going to do when that happens?  You can’t just abandon the project.  You have to eat the extra work and absorb the cost overrun.

Once your customer gets a look at the product, he may have a few new ideas of his own.  He may see something he likes, and feel free suggest some additions.  Those add up too.  Just make sure he knows that he must absorb the additional project costs.  Otherwise, you’ll end up eating that too.

Feature creep happens when customers and developers like what they see and want a little more, and little more, and a little more.  Before you know it, there’s an extra 10% cost in the project.  Yikes!

–ray

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Computer Jobs Hit Record High

Last week CIO Insight reported that IT jobs had reached a record high (four million IT workers), and IT unemployment had fallen (2.3 percent).  That’s phenomenal!  See the link below.

 

http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Workplace/Computer-Jobs-Hit-Record-High/

 

Okay, great news, but why is IT spending down?  While I have no hard facts, I have my theories.  Bear with my madness while I explain.  Post a comment if you don’t agree!

1. It’s summertime.  IT spending falls when the temperature rises, and rises when it falls.  November, December, and January are traditionally big months.  June and July…  Well, they are another story.  🙁  People are out and about, and they don’t want to worry about buying stuff.  They’re too busy checking out the next vacation spot on the web.  Yikes.

 

2. Gas prices.  People bring their personal woes to work.  Got trouble filling your tank?  Then you won’t spend money at work either.  What, you say?  There’s no hard connection between the two.  No, but there is an indirect one.  If you’re worried about finances at home, you’ll worry at work as well.

 

3. Too many salaries.  Or, perhaps spending is down because there are too many mouths to feed.  That’s always a possibility, but I suspect it’s the other two reasons.  We’ve had other times with low unemployment, and high spending.

 

–ray

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Green is Just Plain Dumb

The ‘Green Fad’ really bothers me, especially in the IT biz.  CIO Insight had a big article in eWeek on ‘How to estimate energy efficiency.”  The upshot was that a single Intel server consumes 29 KWhs  (that’s 29 kilowatt hours of electricity) per week.  Yikes!  29,000 watts!  That’s a lot, right!!!  That’s what the article wants you to believe.  Until you think about it…

One kilowatt of electricity costs about 7 cents.  29 x .07 = $2.03 per week.  Huh?  Two dollars a week?  That’s all?  So what’s all the fuss about?

Check this out:  http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080624182135AAmXpHF

The article left out this little bit of information.  But it did say that all the data centers in the world consume $2.5 billion per year.  That big number is supposed to scare you.  As if you had to pay the full bill yourself.  You can handle $105 per year, but not $2.5 billion.  What are we going to do???

I say, focus on things that matter.  $2 per week doesn’t matter compared with the thousands of dollars per week we pay for salaries, advertising, operations, shrinkage, etc.  But we like to talk about the ‘cool’ things like ‘Green Initiatives.”  Bunk.

 

–ray