Sharpen the Saw
You, no doubt, know the story of the man in the forest who’s
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 increase their chances of
success.
Consider these 5 simple changes you can make in your
interaction with the schedule in Microsoft Project that would provide many-fold
returns on your investment:
Options
- Carefully review and understand the detailed options as these have a direct impact on the calculations, dates and behavior of Microsoft Project. For example, your default Task Type will determine how tasks are calculated when they are updated, such as whether the date/duration changes or the work effort goes up.
Deadlines
- Start using the ‘Deadline’ feature for dates you’ve committed to rather than entering a start or finish date or setting a constraint on your tasks. This approach gives you the best of both worlds. You can see what the commitment date is, but also recognize whether that date is being met or corrective action is needed.
Remaining Work
- In addition to tracking ‘Actual Work’ against tasks in the schedule, also ask your team member to validate the Estimate To Completion through ‘Remaining Work’. Not only does this ensure better data quality, but it also helps team members buy into the estimates on a weekly basis and think about effort instead of duration.
Status Date
- Utilize the ‘Status Date’ feature to clearly communicate the date as of which the schedule is up-to-date. There should be no incomplete work or milestones prior to the status date nor any actual work after the status date. Use the ‘Update Project’ feature (below) to move work forward.
Update Project
- During project execution, it’s quite common for things to progress at a different pace or even in a different order than originally planned. In order to ensure that the project schedule stays relevant, we must make sure that the schedule is updated each week to move any incomplete work forward of the status date. The ‘Update Project’ feature does this very nicely and forces the project manager to work with resource managers and the team on how to adjust to the new reality.
Project Managers who take time to sharpen the saw and adopt
scheduling best practices such as Sensei’s Proactive Scheduling™ typically go
from spending 4-6 hours each week maintaining their project schedule to 30-60
minutes for each schedule. Proactive
Scheduling™ incorporates all the principles of the 7 Habits and also aligns
with industry standards and best practices.
The up-front investment during the planning phase is greater, but the
ROI is significant in both time savings and quality improvements.
Author:
Kenneth Steiness, PMP/PMI-SP MCP MCT
Kenneth Steiness is an industry expert on Microsoft Project
and Project Server and has worked in the project management and scheduling
field for over 16 years. He has managed
customer engagements in over 13 countries worldwide and throughout the United
States, in addition to presenting at world-wide conferences for Microsoft, PMI, and to many Microsoft Project User
Groups over the years. Kenneth is the Managing Partner & VP of Delivery of
Sensei Project Solutions, a Microsoft
Partner specializing in Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) deployments with
Microsoft Project and Project Server on the SharePoint platform. Sensei offers
a complete set of services to help an organization make their Microsoft PPM
deployment successful, including full implementation and services, training as
well as pre-configured solutions and report packs. Visit
www.senseiprojectsolutions.com
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