July 2010 PM Survey – The Project Schedule
Posted by Brad Egeland
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?
Better Software Conference + Agile Development Practices Conference
Posted by Brad Egeland
As we strive to deliver better projects to our customers, I am more and more intrigued by Agile development processes. Luckily, I’ve been granted a media pass to both the upcoming Better Software Conference and the Agile Development Practices Conference here in Las Vegas. For the first time ever, these two agile-focused conferences are co-located and one admission (or media pass) gets you into both conferences and their associated expos.
These conferences will be held in Las Vegas at Caesar’s Palace June 6-11.
Key reasons to attend the Better Software Conference and the Agile Development Practices Conference are to:
- Discover the latest in software development, agile software development, technologies, trends, and practices.
- Network with hundreds of your peers to problem solve, collaborate, and gain fresh ideas.
- Enjoy opportunities to meet with the speakers throughout the week.
- Benefit from real-world experiences of leading software development organizations.
- Attend the EXPO for the latest tools and services to help you build and deliver better software.
- Engage with summit participants in thoughtful discussions about leadership at the Agile Leadership Summit.
Since I’ve never worked for a company who utilizes agile development processes on the product development activities or on their projects, I’m hoping to gain useful insight and understanding on these practices and share them with our readers. As a project manager, I also plan to take away what I learn and use these concepts to both better manage my projects and to work with the development staff and my clients to provide them with better built solutions in the end.
The full conference including all sessions from both conferences runs from June 6 through June 11. Certification training will be offered and both conferences include many key note addresses, useful classes and numerous working sessions and panels.
Accidental project managers
Posted by Elizabeth
At a recent British Computer Society Project Management Specialist Group meeting in London, Miles Shepherd said that people of his generation “became project managers by accident,” often as a result of having an engineering background.
Accidental project management is the way that many project managers are created, even now. Bas de Baar has written a book called Surprise! Now You’re a Software Project Manager
I also became a project manager by accident – kind of. When I was at school I didn’t know project management as a discipline even existed. I wrote lists, I did my university work in a structured and organised manner, but no one ever told me that I was managing projects and that I could make a career out of it. And I never asked. Once I was working, I saw people doing project management jobs and realised that was what I wanted to do myself. Knowing that project management roles existed was the first part of getting into it, but once I realised that I specifically sought out roles to apply for in the business change and project management sphere.
Share Microsoft Project Files with Seavus Project Viewer
Posted by Brad Egeland
Have you ever managed projects for customers and sent them your nice Microsoft Project .mpp file only to find out during the status meeting that they can’t view it because they don’t have MS Project? I have – and it’s been too many times to count.
Now, your problems – and my problems – are solved. There’s a product on the market that will allow your non-MS Project team members and customers to seamlessly view all aspects of your MS Project .mpp files without the need to purchase the very expensive MS Project user licenses. The product is Seavus’ Project Viewer.
In the past, the solution was usually to send your non-MS Project using customer a PDF version of the schedule. That is static and provides only the view you give them. If they want something different, you have to provide it. Not so with Project Viewer …. Flexibility is built in.
With Project Viewer, there’s no need for your target audience to own a copy of MS Project – unless you plan on having them alter the file. As the project manager, that’s usually not a great idea, unless you’re running it on Project Server with educated users and are looking for full collaboration. Project Viewer gives every delivery team member and every customer team member the ability to read your detailed project files that they receive from you on a weekly basis at a fraction of the cost of owning a full MS Project license.
Using Project Viewer, your recipients can:
- Display views, charts, and tables just as the appear in MS Project
- Show tasks, milestones, and resource usage and allocation
- View multiple progress lines to maintain awareness of actual project status
Cloud Computing Standardization
Posted by Brad Egeland
This is basically just an opinion article based on what I’m seeing, reading and hearing so take it just for what it is … my thoughts. I believe that the industry is still at least two years away from truly standardizing cloud computing and understanding the full potential, the security issues, and the expenses or cost savings related to cloud computing. What that means is that we would also be a couple of years away from being able to standardize how we offer cloud computing and implement cloud computing with clients on projects with the knowledge that we’re offering the best process possible and that we’re offering a high likelihood of project success due to tried and true practices.
It was interesting to find, when attending a session at Interop 2010 in Las Vegas last month, that a handful of executives from different organizations sitting on a discussion panel on cloud computing all had basically different information and views of what cloud computing meant to their organization. And they definitely had varying degrees of successes and frustrations during and after implementation.
At the end of the day, cloud computing may still mean different things to different people. As of now, there are a variety of things that you can do to actually be computing in the cloud and utilizing cloud services. However, for the project manager or IT consultant, until the industry is able to get a better handle on what those cloud computing services really are and how far reaching the organizational benefits are, it may still be a hard sell with our customers. The keys being security, data safety, and data access.
