How to stop playing games with your project schedule Most baselined project plans are inaccurate because they have unrealistic start dates, finish dates, work hours, costs, and/or durations. The following are examples of this age old problem and how the 20% startup solution can be applied to build more accuracy and creditability into your project…

  Download the Microsoft Project sample file.   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: There are plenty of organizations out there that use Microsoft Project stand alone to manage and control their projects. When…

Sharpen the Saw No doubt you know the story of the man in the forest who is too busy sawing to stop and sharpen the saw. Every day we come across project managers who are too busy updating their schedules and running their projects to stop and learn new techniques and disciplines that would greatly…

Think Win-Win While the project schedule is an important tool for many project managers, it is often misunderstood (or not understood at all) by project team members. When building the work breakdown structure (WBS) for the project, you will get a more accurate definition of scope (and as a result, the schedule) by involving the…

Have you ever had a situation where a tested, tried and true formula was producing an “incorrect” result? Recently one of my client schedulers wanted to know, “How can a formula produce correct results for 500 other tasks, but produce an obviously incorrect result for only one task?” In her schedule she was using this…

Project proposals come to the PMO in many ways: as a phone call, text message, email, or initiated on the project server. In all cases, the governance for capturing resource estimate needs to be defined, published, and followed. Streamlining the resource demand process will make estimating demand easier and more manageable. Project server provides several…

The great Stephen R. Covey inspired so many of us.  His teachings are integrated into every aspect of my personal and professional life.  I recently took some time to pause and reflect on how the ‘7 Habits’ have impacted my own career as a scheduler and project manager.  Specifically, here are some thoughts on how…

Angelo of Rochester, NY: When managing project schedules I need to produce a count of various tasks. For example, how many late tasks are in a schedule, how many critical tasks, how many milestones, etc. Typically, I have copied or exported data to Excel and used Excel to calculate the counts for me. Is there…

Planning and controlling projects through Microsoft Project schedules that use precedence diagramming method and critical path method for all of your major initiatives is itself a major accomplishment that proves that your organization is maturing in its project management practice. However, a purely deterministic scheduling approach tends to yield schedules that represent best-case scenarios. Overruns…

JP-PM asks: I was wondering why Microsoft Project creates a conflict right off the bat in this example: Task 1: 2 hrs work assigned to Jack and Jane Task 2: 0.5 hrs work assigned to Jack It creates both tasks starting at 8:00 AM today (10/31/11) and right away Jack is overallocated. My question is,…