Project Team Blog

Do you use project planning software like Microsoft Project to develop project plans?  How’s that working for you?  I have a problem with it, and I’d like to find an elegant solution.

What’s the problem?  Well, building project plans is no trouble.  I can lay down the phases and breakdowns, add tasks, and assign them to employees just fine.  That’s the easy part.  I can even track time to tasks.  The problem I have is managing them later.

Let’s face it, project plans go obsolete the first week you create them.  Something’s bound to change, and managing all those changes is hard.  Yes, I know that’s what the PMO office does.  But keeping project schedules current rubs me like a cheese grater.  It’s an unnecessary overhead, and almost never gets done right.  Tasks move, change scope, go away, get added, etc, etc, etc.  You know what a headache it is…

Anybody have a better way?

–ray

There’s almost nothing good you can say about a plant closing.  Especially with potentially 9,000 people losing their jobs.  (See: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Desktops-and-Notebooks/Dell-Closing-Austin-PC-Plant-in-Cost-Cutting-Drive/ )

The PC vendor announced March 31 that it would begin cutting costs and improving its efficiency in the second half of 2009 fiscal year. Besides announcing the closing of the Austin plant, Dell reaffirmed that it plans to eliminate nearly 9,000 positions as part of the cost cutting.

 The only thing I’d like to say is, “fight for it!”  I remember working for a huge company, where the average workday (in our engineering department) was five hours.  Of course, this was a 8-hour shift, but nobody worked it.  We got our coffee in the morning, caught up on the previous night’s adventures, and then did a little work before lunch.  After lunch, a little more work, and then water cooler discussions of the evening’s plans.

Needless to say, that company cut 40,000 jobs in the late 80’s.  I don’t remember ever fighting for the company’s survival, or even for competitive positioning.  The culture simply wasn’t there.

I’m sure this is not the case with Dell.  They are highly competitive.  Sometimes things like this are out of our control.  But let’s fight for our positions anyway!

–ray

Thank you for visiting projectteamblog.com!  This is our inaugural post, and we’re happy you’ve joined us.

This blog is dedicated to project teams.  We work with teams every day, developing project management products for them, and supporting them.  We work with executives, project managers, engineers, and all types of employees.

Our specialties are project plans, managing resources, and tracking projects.  Companies use projects to bill clients, develop products, build in-house tools, service customers, implement software, and plenty of other reasons.  Sometimes project costs are most important, sometimes completion time, and sometimes employee allocation.  Everyone uses projects for different reasons.  We recognize that, and will try to address our readers interests.  Please feel free to suggest topics you are interested in.

We know you’re busy, so we’ll try to keep our posts brief.  Feel free to drop by any time.  And good luck in your business!

–ray