08/18/2015 by Brad Egeland Tags: project management, project management advice, project management career, project manager
Considering a career in project management or know someone who is considering such a move? Are you ready? Are they ready? And what does it actually mean to be ready? What steps do you need to take to get to that point?
Other things to consider… Are you being thrust into the role, or do you desire it (and yes, some of us made a conscious choice to become PMs)? Do you have the experience needed? Are you a leader or a follower? Does your background match up well with the types of projects you’ll be leading? Do you have the experience with the proper project management software tools to track the schedule appropriately? Can you make good, quick decisions and then own them?
These are all relevant questions to ask yourself before stepping into the role of project manager. Why? Because it’s an interesting role and it can be a very rewarding role, but it is a difficult role when taken seriously and it puts you in the place of nearly full responsibility for the positive or negative outcome of the projects that you take on.
Continue reading “Is Project Management for You?”
08/11/2015 by Brad Egeland Tags: project management advice, project management best practices, project management software
Ever had one of those projects where you were tempted to skip best practices, the usual processes and templates and just do it your way to get it done? It may be a very short term project, a very low dollar project, a project flying way under the radar, a project where the customer is saying, “Let’s get this done NOW!”, or maybe it’s an issue-riddled project and you’re just trying to shove a working version out the door so you can get it signed off. Do any of these scenarios sound familiar?
For whatever reason, the project didn’t seem to warrant the attention to detail, the frequent status reporting and oversight warranted by normal project management best practices. Risks??? What risks? Resource planning? It’s not going to last that long…so why go into detail? Budget forecasting? It’s a small budget on a straightforward project so…um…why bother? Creating and tracking a detailed schedule through project management software – why bother on such a short-term project? All we’re doing is fixing and testing issues to get to rollout – why follow any best practices…we need speed and resolution! Have any of these phrases been uttered by you or a colleague only to have them come back and bite you later on?
Continue reading “Cutting Corners to Get the Project Done”
08/06/2015 by Jackie Dembinsky Tags: Cash Flow, FastTrack Schedule 10, Reporting, Summary Graphs, Tips and Tricks
In our projects there can be a wide variety of data that we need to keep track of such as dates, durations, resources assigned, costs, and other data. However we may not always be able to display the data we wish to track directly within a column. In some cases we may want to easily display a cash flow chart for our project. In FastTrack Schedule 10 there are many pre-defined Summary Graphs, within both new, blank files and our Free Project Management Templates, which can be used to easily convey cash flow style information.
By default every schedule will have several Summary Graphs that users can easily view. The most commonly used Summary Graphs are found within the Cost Layout and provide information on Resource Costs, Fixed Costs, and Total Costs on a monthly basis. These graphs use the data from each corresponding column (Resource Cost, Fixed Cost, Total Cost) to calculate where the costs occur throughout the project. This can be further refined by adjusting the time increments in the graphs.
Continue reading “Pre-Defined Summary Graphs in FastTrack Schedule 10”
08/04/2015 by Brad Egeland Tags: project budget, project management, project resources, unproductive project resources
Have you ever had a project resource that wasn’t really contributing? Who am I kidding…if you’ve managed more than 10 projects, chances are you’ve run into this.
You know the ones…their contribution is low or non-existent. They aren’t serving a purpose on the team. It may even have been their last ditch effort to show worth to the entire organization and it just didn’t happen. In a sense, they are your excess baggage. They aren’t helping the project and are a continuing drain on the project budget and the rest of the team. You’re not even sure if you need to replace them or just remove them. I realize this can be a touchy subject, but it does come up and how it is addressed can be critical to project success and even customer satisfaction.
Continue reading “Removing Unproductive Project Resources”
07/28/2015 by Brad Egeland Tags: control of projects, keeping projects under control, project control, project management
Control. We all like to be in control of what we are living, managing and doing on a daily basis, right? Both personally and professionally. At least it’s the goal. From a professional standpoint – from a project management standpoint – as we go about our processes of managing all of the projects on our plate that can often mean organizing our activities across four, five or even six live projects at a time. Maintaining control of those projects can sometimes be an issue.
Keeping projects on track, organizing the team and keeping them focused, and making sure the customer has the information and attention that they need and deserve can be a difficult process. From my experience and what I’ve witnessed on my PM colleagues’ projects, ensuring that the four actions that I’m about to discuss below are taken during the project can greatly decrease your likelihood of seeing significant project issues and, therefore, increasing your likelihood of maintaining ongoing control of your projects…
Continue reading “Keeping Projects Under Control”
07/16/2015 by Jackie Dembinsky Tags: FastTrack Schedule 10, Filters, Look Ahead, Reporting, Tips and Tricks
When following and managing a project schedule one of the most important things to be aware of is when the various activities are planned to occur. In projects that span a larger range of time it may sometimes be harder to easily pinpoint activities that occur within just a specific period. In FastTrack Schedule 10 there are numerous pre-defined Look Ahead filter options to allow users to easily view tasks within any period of the schedule.
As we can see in the image below, our project is currently planned to occur from June 1st to September 9th. At any point as we are working in the project we may want to focus on just one period within the project, so that we can easily identify all tasks that must occur at that point.
Continue reading “Look Ahead Reporting in FastTrack Schedule 10”
07/15/2015 by Brad Egeland Tags: pm software, pm tool, project management software, project management tool
You know the drill – you’re hypothetically stuck somewhere (often a desert island is used but the problem is there is no WIFI on a desert island) and someone asks you what five or ten things would you want to have with you over everything else. Commonly people ask what five or ten music albums would you want for listening to for the rest of your life. Here I’m asking – if you were stuck somewhere remote and left to manage projects from there – what would you want to manage projects on an ongoing basis from this stuck, remote location for an extended period of time.
If it were me, absolutely for starters I would have to have my smartphone and laptop. I’d also have to go with a good project management software tool. In the perfect world – meaning when I’m not stranded on a desert island – I usually use several different software tools when I’m managing a project. The standard fare for me would be Word, Excel, possibly Visio and PowerPoint to prepare for project kickoff or to give a detailed overview for a change order, and on some projects a database software like Access.
Continue reading “What Project Management Tools Would You Bring?”
07/07/2015 by Brad Egeland Tags: pmo, project management, project management office, project manager
Do you have a project management office (PMO) in your organization? If so, is it successful? Is it contributing to individual project successes by its project managers? If not, is there one in your company’s future? Is the PM practice growing to the point where a PMO would be a welcomed addition to help streamline the PM practice and processes?
One thing for is for sure – more than half of all projects fail to some degree. However, the organizations that recognize the need to wrap some structure, processes, tools and policies around their project management efforts will usually realize more consistent success than the organizations that don’t recognize this need. And for those that work to create viable, functional, working project management office (PMO) infrastructures are just that much further ahead in the project management success game.
I’ve created a PMO, I’ve helped create PMOs and I’ve watched PMOs being built and executed from afar. And consistently I’ve seen certain characteristics – certain factors – that seem to be very important in terms of whether or not the project management office ends up as a successful part of the organization or whether it ends up being dismantled and tossed aside. These basically narrow down to seven factors, in my opinion. Let’s examine them further…
Continue reading “7 Key Factors to PMO Success”
06/30/2015 by Brad Egeland Tags: feasible project, project feasibility, project manager, prototyping
Our customer – whoever that may be – wants something done, right? That may be an external customer, an internal customer…it may even be our own CEO. But, is what they want done even feasible? First, you have to get past the cover your own neck concept of the thought of going through a complete project to create a solution or product exactly like your customer asks only to have it be something completely unusable in the market place or by the customer’s end user community. In that scenario you – the project manager – look bad (very bad) because you delivered something unusable even if it wasn’t your own direct fault. Rather, you have to see the big picture and understand that it’s about making a customer happy and not completely wasting their money in the process.
So, yes, it is up to us to help them determine whether or not if what they are asking for is even feasible. If you really want to make your customer happy then make sure from the beginning that what they want is actually feasible. And how do we do that? Well, methods for verifying feasibility can often include such things as market studies, simulation, pilot testing, and prototyping. Let’s examine each of these methods in a little more detail…
Continue reading “Is This Project Feasible?”
06/23/2015 by Brad Egeland Tags: project, project best practices, project management, project manager, project schedule
Are all projects basically the same? Do best practices translate from project to project and industry to industry? What’s your take? I’m going to discuss my take on this and then I’d like to hear from you on your thoughts.
Every project – in its details – is different, I know. Even two projects implementing the same technology – maybe even with the same PM and technical team involved – will be different to some degree. But my real question is this – are all projects basically and fundamentally the same? From a project manager standpoint, do we really run project A different than project B? Do we do the same things – just in different detail – on each project (or at least the things we know are helpful and successful and aren’t contributing to ongoing project failures once we learn our lessons)?
For me, the answer really isn’t clear-cut. I’m going to present what I think should happen on every project – no matter what type of project it is – and then I’d like to hear from you. Here’s what SHOULD be happening on all projects…
Continue reading “A Project is a Project is a Project”
