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.

Do we manage costs through the tool?

Do you track costs and budget through the project scheduling tool or do you use something else to manage that aspect of the project?  65% indicated that they do not use their chosen project scheduling tool to actually load and track project costs.  They use a separate tool to handle this critical project management activity.  For me it’s Excel.  22% said it depends on the project while the remaining 13% said that they do, indeed, track project costs through the project scheduling tool.

How do we manage project resources?

Finally, how do we manage the project resources on our project?  Do we fully utilize the capabilities of our project scheduling tool to load, spread and level resources or do we just input names, assign them to tasks and actually manage resource usage and forecasts through another tool?

35% stated that they fully use their chosen project scheduling tool to manage resource usage and forecasting.  48% load resources and assign them to tasks, but to fully manage the resource forecast they use another tool.  The remaining 17% stated that it depends on the spe

Related posts:

1. July 2010 PM Survey – The Project Schedule
2. Considerations when integrating Microsoft Project and PPM solutions
3. April Survey – PMO Effectiveness

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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?

Finally, question #5 – how do you use the project scheduling tool to manage resources?  Do you assign one or more resources to a task just to show ownership in the schedule?  Or do you actually use resource leveling and track resource hours in the tool?  Or does it depend on the size and complexity of the project or possibly even the requirements of the customer?

Thanks again – in advance – for participating.  I will anxiously await the results and please feel free to email me or post comments on any of the questions or future questions or topics that you’d like to see as part of an upcoming survey.  Look for results from the July PM survey here on PM Tips later in July.  Also check @begeland and @pmtips on Twitter for a heads-up on when the survey is complete.  And as always, final results will be posted at bradegeland.com.

Related posts:

1. July 2010 PM Survey Results – The Project Schedule
2. February Survey: PMP Certification
3. April Survey – PMO Effectiveness

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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.

An organization can save thousands of dollars by migrating from MS Project to Project Planner without sacrificing functionality or compatibility with MS Project users.

A few Pros for making the switch to Seavus’ Project Planner are:

• Project Planner costs about one-tenth of what a full MS Project user license costs
• Teams are empowered to collaborate through Google Apps
• Users can connect to other system using the open API
• Project Planner is available for installation on CITRIX presentation server
• The software is available in 4 languages: English, French, German and Spanish
• Project Planner has an integration piece to seamless work with existing MS Project users

For more information on Seavus’ Project Planner desktop project management software or to purchase a user license, go to seavusprojectplanner.com.

Related posts:

1. Share Microsoft Project Files with Seavus Project Viewer
2. ProjectOffice.net: Getting Started – Part 1
3. Creating a realistic budget

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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.

Related posts:

1. 2009 Project Resource Management Survey Reveals Surprising Insights
2. The Value of the Project Management Office – a Study
3. Sensitive Data Often Exits with Employees

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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.

Related posts:

1. Project Management from a Distance – Part 5
2. Equipping Your Mobile Project Staff – Part 2
3. Project Management from a Distance – Intro

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I like what Jason Charvat has presented in terms of Project Management methodologies in his book “Project Management Methodologies – Selecting, Implementing, and Supporting Methodologies and Processes for Projects.” He basically goes by the same premise that I do – there can really be no standard methodology to be utilitized to fit most or all projects – hybrid methodology must exist. Your methodology must fit what you do, who your customers are, and what your capabilities are.

Project Methodology Overview

Key decision makers must often determine whether a universalized project life-cycle methodology is sufficient for all their projects. The answer to that question is an unequivocal no! Very few people are capable of creating a state of-the-art, concisely defined, phenomenally small, highly prescriptive, measurement-intensive, fast, and cost-efficient methodology allowing project managers greater performance improvement (consisting of an expertly designed/optimized family of policies, procedures, plans, specifications, forms, logs, and metrics). Every company has its own process flow diagram. This flow originated from a methodology created to ease implementations of new technologies or new project ideas. These process flow diagrams have many different stages, all similar in nature.

Even dynamic project-based organizations such as Accenture, KPMG, Deloitte Touche, RCG Information Technology, Bechtel, and Keane are far more than a collection of individual projects. If that were all they were, they wouldn’t be multimillion-dollar organizations. They all use various arsenals of project methodologies for each solution they undertake. Companies are becoming very much like small film studios. Each project is a “movie” all by itself and has its own “director” and “script.” The movie needs project funding to begin and is short lived; project teams are also short lived, and, amazingly, in this brave new model, they follow a unique project methodology, because if they don’t, no one will invest in a “movie” or project. Therefore, projects need to be innovative, they need process, and they need to adhere to the “script” or methodology. Each movie script is different from the next; this is where we focus our efforts throughout the book.

By simply assessing those project methodologies that exist today, we see that a universal project approach simply won’t work. The main reasons that a single “be-all-and-end-all” methodology won’t work from industry to industry are differences in:

• Life cycle
• Market sector
• Product
• Size
• Technology
• Situation

For instance, a nuclear plant or space shuttle project has very specific heavyweight life-cycle components (e.g., work breakdown structure, activities, tasks, task durations, priorities, skill sets, and economics) compared to a small construction project. In other words, they use different phases and activities on their projects (i.e., communications and navigation equipment, operating systems, and a variety of technologies).

In addition, the life cycles for construction projects (e.g., bridge building), compared to information systems projects (e.g., three-tier architectures), may be vastly different from one another. This means much tweaking is needed if you have to accommodate every kind of project. Hence, different methodologies are needed. Therefore, we have a catch-22 situation—various technologies and industries make it very challenging to design a one-size-fits-all project life cycle. It does not seem likely that an individual project manager or executive can actually design a highly operational, functional project methodology that meets the needs of every single project—irrespective of its technology or industry. Hence, some creative genius is needed to bridge this gap. A project life cycle is, therefore, a collection of project phases. Project phases vary by project or industry, but some general phases include:

• Concept
• Development
• Implementation
• Support

Remember that products also have life cycles. Many companies have project managers or executives who are unwilling to follow systematic project methodologies all of the time. Instead, they tend to rely on standard business activities to get them through the project. They are simply trying to keep up with all this talk of project methodologies and associated processes and techniques. Questions such as “Why are there so many methodologies?” and “Which one do we use?” often arise. Over the years, even those involved in managing projects have observed that projects have common characteristics that can be formalized into a structural process, which allows them to manage projects more effectively.

Each phase can typically be brought to closure in some logical way before the next project phase begins; and each phase results in discrete milestones or deliverables, which provide the starting point for the next phase. Project methodologies should be structured to take advantage of the natural phases that occur as work progresses. The phases should be defined in terms of schedule and specific accomplishments. Define how you will know when you have finished each phase and what you will have to show for it.

Cost and schedule estimates, plans, requirements, and specifications should be updated and evaluated at the end of each phase, sometimes before deciding whether to continue with the project. At times, you may want to hold off or cancel the project. Large projects are usually structured to have major program reviews at the conclusion of significant project phases. These decision points in the life of a project are called major milestones. The figure below shows how project phases are somehow linked to one another. This is the basis of how project phases, once incorporated, form a typical project development methodology.

Figure: Depiction of general project methodology phases.

Milestone decisions are made after conducting a major program review in which the project manager presents the approved statement of requirements, acquisition strategy, design progress, test results, updated cost and schedule estimates, and risk assessments, together with a request for authorization to proceed to the next phase. The early project phases tend to shape the direction for all further efforts on the project. They provide requirement definitions, evaluation of alternative approaches, assessment of maturity of technologies, review of cost, schedule and staffing estimates, and development of specifications.

A relatively short-term or technically straightforward project may have only a few basic milestones or deliverables following a (1) proposal, (2) feasibility study, or (3) business case. Nevertheless, the project manager should report to clients and executives at intervals to keep them up-to-date on project progress, thus ensuring project direction.

On small projects, if no formal agreements are written, the project manager should deal with clients and executives in an informal, yet somewhat structured and logical, manner. This means managing expectations and making clear agreements about what will be produced and when. You simply cannot do this on the fly.

On long-term projects, you may find project phases take place over many months or even years, and, in this case, it is vital to provide interim deliverables to give the clients and executives a sense that work is being accomplished, to provide an opportunity for feedback, and to capture project successes in documented form. This is exactly why a project methodology works. How else are you going to do this?

It is wise that the project processes be built around the specific project methodology. Particular care should be given to defining the work to be accomplished in each phase. This should include definition of the deliverables to be produced, identifying testing and demonstrations to be completed, preparing updates of cost and schedule estimates, reassessing risks, and conducting formal technical and management reviews.

Related posts:

1. Phases of a Construction Project Life Cycle – Part 1
2. Performing a Market Analysis for Your Software Project Solution – Part 5
3. Project Management: Is PMP Certification Worth It?

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This post is basically the intended “Part 2” that I never got around to back in February when I published “Project Management and Startups: Resource Allocation and Usage – Part 1.”

In all of my years of Project Management one of the most frustrating parts has been managing resources. It’s hard enough managing resources on your own project or projects, but the bigger issue is that usually those resources are working on another project as well. And here I’m only talking about the ‘people resources.’ These are the living, breathing resources that can tell you what they’re doing and the other projects they’re working on for other PMs. At least when you hear it verbalized like that, you can do so compartmentalizing in your head of what they have going on, what their current priorities are, and what their general availability is to perform next week’s critical task for you on Project ‘Y’.

When you’re dealing with equipment resources, then you’ve brought into view an entirely different variable…and problem…that makes resource management an even more difficult task. Equipment resources can speak for themselves, don’t understand what critical tasks you have assigned to them and certainly can’t work harder and faster to make it seem like they’re doing two tasks at once. In fact, equipment resources can never multi-task.

Case Study – Privately Owned Las Vegas Company

A couple of years ago I connected with a Las Vegas company that is sort of in the entertainment industry. They supply mechanical automation and control equipment to the theatrical, themed attractions, motion pictures, and touring production markets. So there were two things different for me about this type of project management consulting work….

• It wasn’t a typical IT project – in fact it really wasn’t IT at all. The PMs were not your typical PMs…they were more like project administrators or even gate keepers. Operations had accountability to the CEO for the projects. The PMs did not really ‘own’ the projects like we would think of PMs owning projects.
• It had a strange cool factor. Their equipment was used for shows I had been to on the strip, movie stunts I had watched in theatres, and theme park rides I had been on.

At any rate, it definitely forced me to change some of my thought processes as I tried to build processes around what they were trying to do project-wise and for resource management. They lacked project templates, that’s for sure, and I helped them build those by first reviewing their open projects, then understanding the project flows, and finally understanding what a ‘typical’ project usually consists of.

The Issue

The bigger issue – and the real reason they called me in – was to help them figure out how to manage their resources. The great sales guy up front was the CEO and he was good at making sales…which meant he was also good at over-committing resources. They had a great reputation of supplying a great product on time and when show and movie releases depend on it your reputation can sink fast if you don’t deliver.

This may seem simple to some of the readers here, but it was news to them. First we inventoried all of their resources – people and equipment. As you can imagine, with this type of operation most of their resources were equipment. Both the equipment for the productions and the equipment to make the equipment for the productions had to be managed – since they actually made most of their own equipment in-house.

The Solution

To do this, I utilized MS Project – as I had done for their other projects and future projects as we crammed them into the templates I had created for them. I then loaded all resources, with cost rates, codes, etc. into a separate MS Project schedule to be utilized as a shared resource pool. We then linked all current projects to this pool meaning that the projects themselves did not have resources loaded – they were tracked in the separate shared resource pool MS Project file.

It worked great and it gave the PMs, the Operations Manager, and the CEO excellent insight into where their resource commitments were today and two months down the road as they were looking to had more customers and projects.

Other Possibilities

There are other solutions and I priced doing the whole MS Project Server and MS Project Professional combination for full collaboration. They’re a profitable shop, but something like that was more than they needed at the time. And web-based tools like ProjectOffice.net can offer good, cheap collaboration among PMs and personnel, but that wasn’t on my radar at that point in time either.

Related posts:

1. Project Management and Startups: How Can PM Help? – Case Study 2
2. ProjectOffice.net: Getting Started – Part 2
3. Project Management and Startups: Resource Allocation and Usage – Part 1

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This is one of those topics that might draw some emotions from individuals so let me first tell you my situation and my thoughts. First, I’m not PMP certified, but I was headed in that direction…more on that in a moment. I applaud those who have taken the time and effort to get certified. In my experience and interactions with PMs, I’ve not seen any instance where a PMP certified PM was any ‘better’ than an experienced PM. Real experience is always the key. PMP certification means you passed the test, but it does also mean that you have training and some experience for certain and that you have the drive and dedication to get it done and achieve the certification and that’s a project in itself.

I was a PMI member back in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s when I worked at Rockwell Collins. It was something they provided for their PMs, but pushing for actual PMP certification wasn’t something they cared about. I was also managing up to 20 live projects at a time so I had no opportunity to move forward with the certification.

When I came to Las Vegas, a company I began working for in late 2004 did think it was important and wrote a clause into my hiring agreement calling for a $10k bump in pay within 6 months if I acquired my PMP certification. Naturally, I jumped on that idea and started to document my training and experience so that I could sit for the test. Unfortunately, some issues at the top of the company – which I will write about very soon in another article to be entitled “You Think YOUR Project is in Trouble!” – caused that organization to shut down and with it went my $10k incentive to get certified. Now it was time to find another position…fast.

I digress. Back to the topic at hand. Is PMP certification worth it? I personally think that the PMP designation after your name is a nice thing to have, but is no indication of how good a project manager you are or will be. Having PMP certification means that you have the proper amount of experience and training to sit for the test, and then that you correctly answered 61% of the answers on the exam. 61%.

Employers

The most frustrating thing about the PMP certification to me is the weight that employers place on this designation when looking for Project Managers. I hear this again and again from PMs looking for work. To these organizations, it’s an easy screening mechanism for their HR personnel. Unfortunately, that will screen out PMs with many years of very busy and successful management of projects who worked for organizations that placed no emphasis on PMP cert and therefore didn’t pay for PMI and the tests or PMs who just didn’t have the time it takes to document the info and sit for the test. That is wrong.

PMI

I’m not trying to knock PMP certication completely and I definitely applaud the efforts of the PMs out there who have successfully studied for and attained the PMP designation. However, I think that PMI has done a very good job of ensuring their own financially viability with this certification. If they wanted to take it a step further, they could easily triple their organization’s income if they were to create different levels of PMP certification. Let’s consider this scenario:

• 91-100% correct answers = PMP Black Belt
• 81-90% correct answers = PMP Brown Belt
• 71-80% correct answers = PMP Green Belt
• 61-70% correct answers = PMP Yellow Belt

Imagine if you took the PMP exam and got 90% right….how much would you pay or how many times would you gladly retake the test to get 91% or above and achieve black belt certification? Employers would be jumping on this and start requiring a certain level of certification or they won’t even consider you. PMI’s profits would soar.

PMI Processes / Real Life

PMI bases everything on the following 6 separate, but overlapping processes:

• Initiating
• Planning
• Executing
• Montoring
• Controlling
• Closing

These are great and there are PM and project activities that occur within each phase. However, here’s a frustrating thing for me. I write for a website that is designed to help out project managers with real-life tips culled from experience. I wrote a detailed article on each of the 8 phases of a general project management methodology that I use. I then wrote one article that contained a “quick guide” to this methodology. It outlines what the purpose of each phase is, what activities happen in each of those phases and what deliverables are generally expected out of each of those phases. This quick guide I wrote can be used by an inexperienced project manager to very quickly setup a project schedule shell for their project in MS Project or a web-based project tool like ProjectOffice.net.

However, when I published the article, I received a comment from someone saying that they had no idea what it was I was documenting…they couldn’t see past the 6 PMI processes. The 6 PMI processes won’t setup a project plan for you…they just tell you the ‘duh’ of what is involved in managing a project. They don’t tell you what phases need to occur and what you need to deliver and get signed off in order to be successful. In other words, they don’t give you real-life experience to help someone with. The concern was that this person read my quick guide and didn’t even understand it.

Summary

This article will probably offend some. Remember, I’m not saying PMP certification is a bad thing at all. I sometimes wish I had my PMP cert. But what is bad is that employers are quickly screening out experienced individuals up front for much less experienced PMP certified project managers. It should be a ‘nice-to-have.’ It’s a test, not real life and it should not be an in-or-out screening mechanism but I’m hearing repeatedly from PMs and organizations that it is. That’s frustrating for our industry. And it’s sad that it’s become such big business.

Related posts:

1. The Misconception of PMP Certification
2. Is PMP Certification Worth It? – My Analysis So Far
3. February Survey: PMP Certification

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It’s hard to tell a project manager that not everything that comes their way is a project.  When I first started using Project Workbench – a few years before I started using MS Project – I took a copy home and tried to figure out a way to use it for tasks around the house.  My wife nearly killed me so that experiment was short-lived, thankfully.  But still, my brain was working that way which is the point I’m trying to get across.

I’ve since come to the realization that not everything is a project.  I don’t mean that for everyday life – that’s obvious.  But what I’m referring to is the work that we do as PMs, the customers we work with, the tasks that we lead.  Not all of them are typical projects needing project schedules, status reports, budget management, etc.  Some just need leadership and management.  Since it’s all I have experience with, I’ll examine a couple of examples from my career that were large undertakings that I was in charge of, but that didn’t really need detailed schedules and status reporting and detailed resource loading and management.

Government Program

My first experience with project management was actually more like program management leading significant portions of long-term government contracts processing student financial aid records.  These contracts were 3 to 5 years long worth $30-50 million.  They weren’t typical projects – they were on-going production processing, customer support and occasional contract modifications.  It was really only the contract modifications that involved some of the regular tasks that I would call part of normal project management.  These were the portions of the project/program that would necessitate creating a project plan and managing resources and tasks.

Everything else on the program was management of on-going production processing, customer service activities, configuration management and change control, and financial management of the all of the billing and costs.  None of these activities fit well into any type of project management activities – aside from providing the government with formal weekly status reports and leading face to face quarterly project reviews, there really no other needs for regular project management activities.

Business Unit Sell-Off

While working for a major aviation and engineering firm I was asked to lead a project that involved transferring all documents, records, test info and drawings to an external organization that had purchased an internal business unit.

Leading this activity required that I gain knowledge of the business unit that was being sold so I understood what records and information could potentially be transferred.  It also required that I meet extensively with the purchasing company so I understood what records and information they were expecting.  The plan was to only transfer what was necessary – what the purchasing company was interested in.  But I needed to know what they could potentially be requesting. 

Actually, I entered this process well after it originally started.  At the point I came on board, the purchasing company was withholding nearly $250k from the purchase till they obtained all of the materials they thought they were due.  It was my job to make them happy and get that money from them.  By engaging the purchasing organization and thoroughly understanding their needs, I was able to extract exactly what their needs were and then mobilize teams internally in my organization to get that data, records, etc. for them as quickly as possible. 

This engagement ended well, but the nature of the activities and the work that needed to be done did not necessitate the creation of project schedules and status reports.  It was too chaotic because the information coming from the purchasing organization was sketchy – mostly because they really didn’t know or understand what they wanted – which is why making them happy enough to pay was not an easy task.

Summary

These two scenarios were both large efforts worth significant amounts of money.  However, in my best professional opinion they were not set up in such a way to lend themselves well to regular project management practices.  What they required was good investigation, excellent communication and customer management, and solid leadership.  Most things we encounter as PMs will require the regular tools of the trade – but I’ve learned that not everything is a project.

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In this post, I’m not really hitting on anything too interesting or relevant about Project Management.  I’ve just been feeling led to look into PM’ing without Windows.  I know it’s possible…I’m doing it.  But it does seem to freak some people out.

My Decision

My wife has been a Mac user for nearly two years now.  She loves it – but she’s a photographer, among other things, so she’s a Photoshop pro and has found all things Photoshop have been much easier to perform on a Mac.  I’m her tech support, and I can say that my job has definitely been much easier since she got her Macbook Pro.  However, I was on the outside looking in and ‘winging it’ on everything until I was sort of forced into the world of Mac in March of this year.

My Windows Vista laptop blew through its third hard drive in just over a year (meaning, of course that it was no out of warranty!).  My wife went through her same speech again…”Why don’t you just get a Mac?”  Frustrated with my Gateway and all things Windows and knowing that I still have my backup HP laptop running Windows XP as a crutch, I decided to “just do it.”  I must say I haven’t looked back yet.

The Backlash

The backlash from my colleagues was immediate.  “How can you PM with a Mac?”  “What about running MS Project?”  “How can you survive?”  And my favorite one from my 19 yr-old son (because I had been a Windows lifer), “It’s sort of like turning an atheist to Christianity!”

Seriously though, I’ve loved it and I’ve had no loss in productivity.  My IT consulting right now is not requiring extensive use of project management scheduling software.  I have MS Office for Mac so running Word, Excel, and PowerPoint has not been an issue.  They work pretty much seamlessly with the Mac just like I’m used to in the Windows environment.

Other Options

That leaves us with the question of how to manage your projects.  How does the Project Manager survive without MS Project – especially if you’ve been using it for as many years as I have?  For me, thankfully as I said I’m not into heavy MS Project use at the moment.  That has allowed me to explore replacement options.  Open Project as a stand-alone application seems so far like a suitable replacement.  It works will both importing and exporting MS Project files and I’ve then used my XP laptop to confirm that my customers can read my project plans on their Windows machines using MS Project.

There are also many options from a web-based perspective.  These often offer more collaboration options allowing team members full insight into the project portfolios with dashboards, shared status information and resource usage across many projects.  ProjectOffice.net is my favorite so far – it’s full-featured, has built-in viewers for MS Project files and can import/export MS Project files.  There are other options out there like LiquidPlanner, Basecamp, etc. 

Summary

The Mac transition has been good for me.  For one thing, I’m now a much better and more knowledgeable tech support person for my wife.  I’ve broadened my horizons and had zero viruses at the same time.  Hopefully, I’ve evangelized a few individuals along the way who previously thought like me.  But I know I’ve cheated somewhat and may not have taken the leap without the backup XP laptop as a barely used crutch.

If you’ve recently converted, share your story.  If you’re a Windows diehard who thinks they could never live without it, then let me know.

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