Introduction There has been a lot written over the last year regarding Microsoft’s foray into the world of Agile Project Management by way of new improvements in Microsoft Project. This article provides an update based upon one of the latest versions. We’ll discuss what’s changed recently and provide a walkthrough on setting up and using…

Picture this: You started work an hour ago and decide to check emails on your phone. You don’t want to miss an important question from a stakeholder or a status update from your staff, after all. As is often the case; however, a glance at your email turns into a “quick” scroll through Twitter, and…

Remember that time you established a new goal, knowing that a solid plan would help you accomplish it, but not knowing how to start?  Industry-leading software app, Microsoft Project, has many great qualities, but getting your project off the ground may not be one of them. Enter Design Flags: the simple, visual tool that can…

Project Management Institute’s (PMI®) Professional in Business Analysis (PBA®) is relatively a new certification as compared to others. Though young, it is one of the fastest growing areas of certification. As of June 2018, over 2,650 professionals hold PBA certification globally. Business analysis is increasingly considered to be an important area of competency needed by…

Scenario Connie Campaign is a fellow project manager who will be taking paid time off for three weeks beginning next week. During the time she is out, you will take over and manage her Collateral for Credit Card Reader R200 project. You cannot currently see her project in either Microsoft Project Professional or in the…

In Part 1 of this series, we looked at a few high-level differences between private sector and public sector project management work. Basically, we considered the differences between projects geared to make a buck vs. those that are trying to save the world! We also looked at the framework of various configurations of private-public partnerships…

You have probably noticed that some of the most powerful views in Project have an upper part and a lower part. These two part views are called Combination Views. The upper part is called the Primary. It is for identifying a single component such as a resource or a task. The bottom part is called…

When working within a new project, have you ever noticed those question marks in the Duration column for every task that has the default duration of 1 day? If memory serves me correctly, Microsoft introduced a new feature called Estimated Durations in Microsoft Project 2000. In fact, I distinctly remember how very experienced users of…

Working environments have undergone quite a transformation in recent history. One of the most prevalent illustrations of this is the remote or virtual team. Your project sponsor could be in New York City and your business analyst in Tokyo, while you manage the project from Missouri. If you’ve ever worked as part of a remote…

Dear Elizabeth: I work on a remote team that’s spread all over the world practically! Both coasts of the U.S., Europe and Asia. Even though we have a cloud-based project management system that anyone can access from anywhere, there’s still a lot lost in translation. Sometimes I feel like we spend more time trying to…