July 2010 PM Survey Results – The Project Schedule

The July PM survey on the tools we use to manage the project schedule and how we go about using those tools is now complete.  The results aren’t too surprising – at least not to me.  As always, the detailed results will be posted on my site (www.bradegeland.com) under Past Survey Results.  For some spin analysis on the results, read on….

What tool are we using?

The results in this category didn’t surprise me too much – except maybe for the overall domination of the clear winner.  A far majority of survey responders indicated that they use MS Project in some form (2003, 2007, 2010, Project Server, etc.) to put together and manage their project schedule.  In all, 85% indicated that MS Project is either theirs or their company’s tool of choice.  9% indicated they use some version of Primavera.  2% actually indicated that they use Excel to manage the project schedule.

Do we allow our teams to update the schedule?

This is another category that didn’t surprise me – at least not according to my own practices.  Do you allow your team members update access to the project schedule?  74% indicated that they do not.  13% do allow team members to revise the project schedule and another 13% indicated that it they allow it on some projects.

Do we allow our customers to update the schedule?

A full 87% of survey responders said that they never allow customers update access to the project schedule – which I personally feel is a wise decision.  Only 4% indicated that they do allow customers update access and 9% said that it depended on the project.

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July 2010 PM Survey – The Project Schedule

It’s hard to believe it’s July already, but a new month means it’s time for a new survey.  This month, I’d like to get a feel for what we use for project scheduling and how we use it.

The survey is available now through late July at this address:

www.bradegeland.com/july-2010-survey.html

So, for question #1 – I want to know what tool you’re using.  There are a lot of tools out there so I’m just looking for the name.  You don’t have to tell me if it’s web-based or not – I think we’ll get into more of that in the next month or so.

Questions #2 & #3 – let the readers know how close to the vest you keep the project schedule.  Does just the project manager revise and distribute the schedule?  Is it a collaborative effort with the project team – do you let others go in and revise task status on percent completes and effort estimates?  And do you let the customer do anything but look at it?  Are there ever any projects where you allow update capability for the customer?  I’m assuming this is probably almost never, but who knows.

Question #4 – Do you use the project schedule to actually track project costs?  Are the hourly rates of the project resources and costs for materials entered into the project schedule or do you track project costs through a different mechanism?

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Project Planner – A Desktop Project Management Alternative to MS Project

No one will dispute the fact that Microsoft rules supreme in the desktop project management software industry.  There really isn’t even a close second in terms of sales and usage.  Everyone everywhere wants project managers with MS Project experience and most have used it at one time or another – and many use it daily.

Thankfully, as the economy tightens and organizations are looking to save, rather than recklessly spend money, stiff competition is rising and we have both web-based and desktop software alternatives to MS Project.  And, thankfully, they all come at a fraction of the price of a Microsoft Project full license.

There is one, in particular, that I would like to address in this column – Seavus’ Project Planner.

Project Planner is the desktop software offering from Seavus.  Just like MS Project, Project Planner allows the project manager to plan and track projects, manage resources, link dependent tasks, create critical paths, and track and manage project costs.

With Seavus’ Project Planner, project managers and project team members are able to fully manage the entire project schedule and utilize that schedule to create useful and meaningful reports for themselves, the customer and executive management.

There is also an MS Project integration piece that allows project managers to seamlessly collaborate and share project schedules with customers, team members and management who are still using MS Project.

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The Importance of Project Management Software

Have you ever wondered how important software is for managing projects? How much time does it save? How much it can help you in delivering a successful project? What parts of it are lifesavers and what parts can you live without?

Having these questions ourselves, our company has conducted a research with a subject “Project management on an enterprise level”, during the past month, supported by Seavus Project Planner and Seavus DropMind™. The main purpose of the research was to identify the needs and requirements of people who are faced with project challenges everyday.

The research has shown some very interesting results that we would like your input on.

Part I

First, let’s share the statistics about the respondents. The first part of the survey was dedicated to analyzing industry the companies operate in, company’ size, location and job title of the respondent.

From the responses provided, most respondents work in companies within Manufacturing (13.40%) and Consulting (11.34%) industries, directly followed by Business / Professional Services (8.25%), Construction / Home Improvement (8.25%) and Government / Military (7.22%). Other industries presented have less than 7 % of respondents.

Regarding the companies size, most respondents work in SME (24.74%) directly followed by companies with 1000-10000 employees (18.56%). However most of these companies have between 1 and 3 offices (51.55%).

The job title of the respondents is summarized in the graphic below:

We believe this reach provides an accurate sample of the PM market, and that the conclusions can be trusted.

Part II

Next part of the survey was connected to the actual usage of the project management software that is chosen within the responders’ company.

We wanted to explore the usage of the Microsoft® EPM within these companies and more or less we were surprised by the answers. It is interesting to see that large number of companies that have been using MS Project Standard are not using Microsoft® EPM and do not even consider implementing this solution within their companies.

However, it was also interesting to see the importance of different parts constituting the project management solutions for the people using Microsoft® EPM (or for those that are considering using it in the future) and for the people who haven’t been using it or are not considering using it in the future. We have divided the most important features in 4 categories: Project Management, Resource Management, Time Management and Collaboration. Follow up the appropriate responses in the tables below:

(The green colored cells are related to respondents who are or will be using Microsoft® EPM and the orange colored cells are related to people who are not or will not be using Microsoft® EPM).

As you can notice all of the features above are important and very important for the biggest number of the respondents, except for the wikis which both groups has indicated as not important feature. Moreover, almost 79% of respondents stated that it is very important or critical for them to track project progress. Assigning privileges/roles is valued with 3, (on a scale from 1 as useless and 5 as critically important), from almost 50% of the respondents and for all respondents is important to know that their project is on budget and on schedule.

Other interesting answers were given on questions such as where the respondents store important documents (.mpp files; general documents and project related documents). The answers were diverse, since this was an open question. However, some of the most frequent answers were: on the Server, SharePoint, Network, and File Server and it is more than obvious that people want to have their pm solution installed on the server in the company (89%) than to have it hosted (10.81%). Moreover, they prefer to install the solution from their own IT department (75.68%) than to have the installation from the solution provider (24.32%), but almost 57% of the respondents are ready to pay for installation and support from third party.

The answers on the question “How the teams update task progress?” were expected. 37.55% of the respondents stated that e-mail is used for updating task progress. Surprising 18.18% of respondents verbally update tasks and 15.58% use MS® Excel. Software programs were mentioned by a small number of people.

Same answers were given on the question “How do you share info about late tasks, risks, or general project related knowledge?” with 75.32% for e-mail, 48.05% verbally and 28.57% MS® Excel.

This survey provided many valuable answers, but as you can notice, there are some conflict areas. We encourage you to share your opinion on the results and moreover your experience in the field. Let’s create together the big picture of this survey.

Project Management from a Distance – Part 4

In Part 3 of this six-part series, we covered the concept of what type of project and IT work seems to work best for telecommuting. In Part 4, we’ll discuss what setup you need to make it work for you if you choose to try to go with the telecommuting option for managing your projects:

Part 1 – Why remote?

Part 2 – Will it work for you?

Part 3 – What type of job enables remote PM?

Part 4 – What setup do you need?

Part 5 – Negotiating when it’s not an obvious move

Part 6 – Staying the course

Basic Setup

There is not likely to be anything groundbreaking discussed here. What you probably assume you need is exactly what I’m going to list here. In fact, if I leave something out, I’d appreciate hearing from you, but I’ll list what’s worked for me:

• High-speed cable modem or similar internet connection
• Secured wireless router
• Laptop (or two…I’ll explain)
• Mobile phone (go Blackberry or similar if you can with access to email)
• Regular phone with a good speaker phone option connected either to a land-line or to a VoiP option
• All-in-one printer for printing, scanning and the rare need to fax
• Free online fax sending (easier than using your all-in-one)
• Freeconferencecall.com account (good for a backup if your company conference line is tied up or if you are independent)

I won’t go into detail on all of these…most are pretty self-explanatory. However, there are a few I’ll touch on in a little more detail:

Laptop(s)

I’ve gone Mac and love it. But I hang on to my XP machine just in case. And I probably will always make sure I have one around as a backup. MS Project isn’t made for the Mac at this point and it may never be. There are other options available to the PM like Open Projects and many web-based options including ProjectOffice.net. However, having that option – just in case there’s a problem and I’m at the 11^th hour – to utilize a legit copy of MS Project on a Windows machine makes me feel more comfortable. I’ve not needed to do that since I purchased my Macbook in March of this year, but it’s nice to know I can if I ever have to.

Free Online Faxing

I hate using my HP All-in-one printer for faxing because I only have one home line – no dedicated fax line. Using one of the free sending services where you’re essentially uploading a pdf file and faxing it is very easy and it’s never let me down. I highly recommend it. Receiving faxes can be a little trickier – I usually have to talk the sender into scanning it in and sending it as a pdf or an image file. If they want me to have it bad enough, they’ll usually do it.

Home Phones with a Good Speaker Phone Option

This one was on my critical list. I was recently on a six-month project that required nearly daily conference calls. Some were vendor demos through webex meetings with associated conference calls and they could last up to six hours. I needed a good speaker phone option so that I could hear and sound like I was on a regular phone. There was no way I was going to wear a headset for that long! I found a setup – ultimately going with an offering from Philips.

Summary

The key is to have all the communication methods available to you just as you would if you were at the office. It doesn’t need to be high-end, it just needs to work. This is basically the setup I’ve had for the past three years and it’s not let me down yet.