Project Management Institute (PMI)® Professional Development Units (PDUs): This Webinar is eligible for 1 PMI® PDUs in the Technical category of the Talent Triangle.   Event Description: Microsoft has recently launched a very impressive update to its PPM Power BI Content Pack, which allows organizations to get started quickly with dashboards and reports without requiring…

Content Pack Overview If you are using Project Online (PJO) then you are probably using the OData feed for reporting purposes, the two most common options being to bring the data into Excel or Power BI. Both applications have their pros and cons, though one of the big advantages with Power BI is that Microsoft…

Some projects are just disruptive. This is especially the case when you are replacing an old technology with a new one. There usually isn’t a “good” time to move from one enterprise solution to another, so many IT project teams schedule the transition over a weekend. Bad for the people doing the work, but better…

Working as a PPM consultant offers me opportunities to interact with many different clients, all of which have diverse needs and requirements. A couple of weeks ago, I received a very interesting request from a company I am engaged with regarding the utilization of custom calendars by their project managers. Before we deep dive into…

Microsoft just announced an updated Power BI Content Pack for Microsoft PPM, which allows organizations to get started quickly with dashboards and reports without requiring any customizations in Project Online.  This content pack utilizes the latest visualizations and features available in Power BI and contains 13 pages supporting portfolio, resource, and project reporting: Portfolio reporting…

Recently I was building an old standard view in a new project. The view spec displayed the grouped custom field name in the group bar. When I grouped by Work Area (Fig. 1), the field name disappeared (Fig. 2)! When I asked a couple of proficient users, what am I doing wrong? They gave a…

Some of the largest and most expensive projects completed of late have been fraught with huge time & cost overruns. These unexpected delays and expenses cause partial or full project failures with much hardship for all involved! Yet there have been a few cases where multi-billion dollar projects have been completed on time, under budget…

Project Management Institute (PMI)® Professional Development Units (PDUs): This Webinar is eligible for 1 PMI® PDU in the Technical category of the Talent Triangle. Event Description: Join MPUG author Daryl Deffler as he continues the journey through his latest series of articles on Resource Leveling. Slide Deck: MPUG Project 2013 Resource Leveling Part II Watch Part One Read…

I love this topic because it elicits a higher level of thought around designing the data visualizations we need in planning, in a way that my simple mind can consume. In her book “Storytelling with Data,” Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic points out very early on that there are really two kinds of data visualizations: exploratory and explanatory. Exploratory visuals…

Every time a new version of Microsoft Project was launched, there were a mix of excitement and enthusiasm to discover, explore and understand the new features that were made available with the new software. Personally speaking, I remember the level of satisfaction I had when Microsoft Project 2013 was first released, because it finally had…