02/17/2015 by Brad Egeland Tags: limitless project budget, project budget, project management, unlimited project budget
I realize we often don’t get to deal with the fantasy world much in project management. If we did, none of my projects would ever have issues, all would have customers that would agree with everything I presented, and none of my teams would ever have conflicts or personal issues – or personnel issues, for that matter. And that’s just to name a few (should I go on???). No? Ok.
A project without a timeframe may be a pain because I want to run other projects, lead other teams and actually have a life. So projects do need to end at some point. But a project with no budget limitations or concerns would be nice. Think about this…how would you live your life if money was never a consideration? Ok, now apply that to a project. This particular scenario may not bring about our best side in terms of best practices and strategic thinking…those little things that we do because we are challenged to stay within parameters like budget and time while also trying to fill our client’s needs properly. But let’s consider what we might do with a project that had no budget limitations.
First, let’s assume that it’s an important project – an external project that is very visible and means a lot to your career advancement and to your organization. Let’s assume that it’s a high-profile customer and possibly even a hard-to-please customer. So, again, what if your project had no budget? Let’s consider the scenario.
Continue reading “The Limitless Project Budget”
02/10/2015 by Brad Egeland Tags: project client, project engagement, project manager, project requirements, project success
Seriously. You can’t make a perfect project. You can’t just “will” a project to success. Too many variables. But you can do all that you can do to make a project engagement successful. And the two biggest ingredients to that success that the project manager can have a great deal of control over is practicing effective and efficient communication and seeing to it that no works starts without good, detailed, complete-as-possible requirements that read well and mean something to both the customer and the project team. Today, we’re going to talk about requirements.
Requirements are the lifeblood of the project
I’ve said this time and time again. And I’m going to say it here again. Requirements are the lifeblood of the project. Bad requirements = an extremely risk situation wrought with conflicts, change orders, disputes, customer dissatisfaction, budget overruns and missed deadlines. Good, detailed requirements = far less risk, much greater chance for project success, fewer change orders because the project scope is well defined, and a much happier project client.
Continue reading “Good Requirements = Good Project”
02/05/2015 by Jackie Dembinsky Tags: Announcements, Consulting, E-Training, FastTrack Schedule 10, FastTrack Schedule 10 Training, Tips and Tricks
One of the biggest hurdles when it comes to using new software is the ease of use and start-up options that a company may offer. With FastTrack Schedule 10 we know that many users want to hit the ground running and learn everything there is about the software. For this reason we offer a number of training and consulting options to choose from.
The first option that we offer is our E-Training Classes. These classes are live, instructor-led classes which are hosted through the GoToMeeting environment. They are designed to present a pre-set syllabus of information to users, to allow them to learn about the specific items they are interested in. We offer 3 types of E-Training Classes: JumpStart, Fundamentals, and Managing. In each course users are provided with schedules as well as PDF manuals for continued reference as they continue to use the software.
Continue reading “FastTrack Schedule 10 Training Options”
02/03/2015 by Brad Egeland Tags: planning for the pm exit, pm replacement, project manager transition, project transition
Most project managers will tell you that the projects they enjoy the most are the ones they get to see through from beginning to end. In the world of project management, however, it is often a rare thing…depending on your organization, of course…to get to see a project through 100%. People leave the company, new people join, more important projects kickoff needing an experienced project manager, and other factors weigh-in to often make end-to-end project management something that rarely happens.
For most of the projects that I’ve taken over it has been because a project manager was removed abruptly because the project was not going well and someone – usually the customer – was complaining. Here’s the common scenario…you’re handed a project that is on fire and you’re asked to put it out, get everything escort konya back on track, make the customer happy, and deliver a successful end solution. It sounds hard and it’s harder than it sounds.
For now we’re going to assume the opposite. Things are going well and you are the project manager who is being asked to leave a project – on very good terms – to take over a project where you are needed immediately because you have the expertise and background required for its needs. How would you make that transition as painless as possible for all involved? You want to leave everything good with the customer and team, you want the project to be running smooth, and you want the transition to end as if this was planned all along. But how? I’ve had to do this a few times…and here are the steps that I recommend to make that transition go as smooth as possible…
Continue reading “Planning Well for the PM Exit”
01/27/2015 by Brad Egeland Tags: pay attention to customer complaints, project customer relations, unhappy project customer
What do you do when a customer complains about something on the project? Are you abrasive? Defensive? Apologetic? No matter what happens, no matter whose fault it is, we should always be apologetic. Not that the customer is always right, but if they are upset at all then we need to be concerned. Twice I did not take my own advice and I lost my clients over it. Lesson learned.
But let’s go further. Let’s listen carefully. What are they complaining about? I’ve changed my way of thinking. In reality, complaints are opportunities. Either for us to improve our service and possibly create some new avenues with that client, or the basis of the complaint may a need the customer has that they do not yet recognize as a need…they are just expressing it now as a frustration…a complaint. Listen well…and then act…
Continue reading “Pay Attention to Customer Complaints – They May be Disguised Opportunities”
01/22/2015 by Jackie Dembinsky Tags: Display, FastTrack Schedule 10, Non-Work, Timeline Graph, Tips and Tricks, Work Exceptions
Accounting for and tracking non-working time in projects can be just as important as tracking when activities occur. For this reason, the way we display our non-working periods in a schedule can be key, especially when sharing schedules with other users. FastTrack Schedule 10 offers several options for how users can format and display non-working time throughout their schedules.
First let’s take a look at the default option for shading non-working periods. In the example below we are working from the default calendar, where only Saturday and Sunday are defined as non-working days. As we can see, each Saturday and Sunday that is visible is shaded gray. This shading is used to represent non-work, and the fact that if an activity covers this period of time no work will occur during those days.
Continue reading “Displaying Non-Work Time in FastTrack Schedule 10”
01/20/2015 by Brad Egeland
In Part 1 of this two part series we started looking at the first two areas of my list of five that a project manager who is working with an offshore development team needs to focus on. We covered identifying a leader for the offshore team and how scope needs to be very carefully managed. Let’s look at the next three…
Continue reading “Project Management and the Offshore Development Team – Part 2”
01/15/2015 by Brad Egeland Tags: offshore development, project management offshore development team, project offshore development, remote project team
Profitability on our projects is always a goal – especially as our senior management looks at our portfolio of projects. And there is probably no greater factor into that profitability than our own human resources that are charging to our projects. So, in terms of technical projects…one thing that many organizations consider is who to utilize when developing software on a project. Do we use in-house resources (if we even have in-house resources…depending on the organization type, of course)? Do we outsource it locally or nationwide? Or do we utilize inexpensive offshore development resources?
It is that last option – the offshore team – that I want to focus on for this article. Not about whether we should use them or not…that’s a call each organization has to make. My focus is more on what the project manager needs to be considering and focusing on once you’ve already made that choice to go offshore. I’ve been there, and for me it comes down to five key things to look at and consider or incorporate into the project….
Continue reading “Project Management and the Offshore Development Team – Part 1”
01/12/2015 by Jackie Dembinsky Tags: Backward Scheduling, Dependencies, FastTrack Schedule 10, FastTrack Schedule Environment, Tips and Tricks
Backward Scheduling is a scheduling method used when the Finish Date of our project is already known, and we wish to determine when the project and corresponding tasks should occur to finish by this point. FastTrack Schedule 10 does not offer a standard option for setting a schedule up to follow a backwards scheduling method. However, FastTrack will allow us to manually set up a schedule with a backwards scheduling method.
Step 1
The first step is to set up our schedule in the “typical” way, by adding all of our activities and their corresponding durations. Disregard the automatically generated Start/Finish Dates for now. Once we have the outline built, we will then be able to add in our links/dependencies to allow the schedule to use backwards scheduling logic.
Continue reading “Backward Scheduling in FastTrack Schedule 10”
01/06/2015 by Brad Egeland Tags: project communication, project decision making, project management, project management communication
Good communication doesn’t always = good decision-making. Think of it almost as a different take on “The squeaky wheel gets the grease” only from a different angle. And a more dangerous angle. Why? Because the squeaky wheel one is the complainer. Everyone knows who that is and they appease them by giving them what they want.
In my house that could be a six-year old son or daughter…or even a 7 month old baby. And believe me, they aren’t going to be making the best decisions at any given moment. Always that was one of our lead developers or DBAs at my first employer – you know who you are if you’re reading this. But the ‘bad ideas’ one…that’s way more dangerous because that could be anyone on any project team in the history of project management or any project manager in the history of project management offices or….well, you get the picture.
Continue reading “Proper Project Communication is Key to Good Decision-Making”
