I am excited about being one of the presenters at the Microsoft Project Conference 2012 in Phoenix, Arizona.  My topic is going to be “Resource Management – Putting the Puzzle Pieces Together!”.  I will be talking about some of the settings that interact together to make the Resource Management piece of Microsoft Project work effectively.

This is the premiere Microsoft-led event for Microsoft Project. To quote Microsoft: “Get more out of your Project 2010 investment by attending this special event for the worldwide Microsoft Project Community Attended by a world-wide audience of project professionals, business and technical decision makers and the Microsoft Project team this unique point-in-time event is your opportunity to learn, network and get more out of you Project 2010 investment!”

For more about the conference and to sign up, go to this website:

http://www.msprojectconference.com/pages/default.aspx

In our book, “Mastering Resource Management Using Microsoft Project and Project Server 2010” we concentrate on the tool itself and on Work Resources.  This document is an addendum of sorts to that and is designed to better define specifically the Budget Resource Type and the Cost Resource Type that are available in Project.

From Chapter 5 of the book:

A Resource can be defined as a Work, Material or Cost Type.  Material Resources are consumable items like concrete or paint.  Cost Type Resources are meant for controlling or reporting costs such as airfare or lodging.  Work Resources are people or equipment and can be generic or actual (sometimes called named).  A Generic Resource is a resource identified by the skill set or type of resource and an actual resource is a person.

For example, a Generic Resource might be called something like Carpenter, Painter, System Administrator, DBA or Project Manager.  The Generic Resource is then replaced by an actual resource with the appropriate skill set at a later time

To more deeply define the Cost and Budget Resources I have come up with this:

A Cost Resource is a specific cost that occurs that is usually related to a specific task.  For example, to accomplish a specific task you may incur some airfare.  But, throughout the life of the Project, there may be numerous times where airfare expenses are incurred – each one based on the deliverable for a specific task.  (Yes, if you want to, you can be more advanced and spread a cost across multiple tasks but that requires a bit more effort on your part and we are going to stay simple in this document.)

And, each time you assign the Resource to a task, you can put in the amount of the cost as it pertains to that specific task.  For example, I have created the Cost Resource named Airfare and on these two tasks have two different cost amounts for each ticket – the first one being $750 and the second being $250.  I assign the same Resource (Airfare) but with different costing.  When you enter the information into the Resources tab of the Task Information box the amount of the cost will appear in the Resource Name field.

For the rest of this post, view the full document:  http://pmpspecialists.com/WhitePapers/PMP_Specialists_Resource_Types.pdf

This seems to be a question, or more often, a phrase stated as a true comment, quite a bit lately.  I just saw a post by somebody that is trying to get a job and he said to the recruiter that he understood how Project worked (he thinks this because he uses Outlook, Word, Excel and some other Microsoft applications).  He was posting a “quick, tell me in 5 minutes what I need to know” question.  He didn’t think that Project could be that much different than other Microsoft software and felt that a few minutes of internet sound bites would teach him everything he needed to know.

I think that this line of thinking comes from a number of origins.  Part of it is that Microsoft used to market Project as if it were a part of Office that “any user can just use”.  Another large part is the many users just use Project to hold a list of tasks and they never use the majority of the features and functions available to Project.  (And, I am just talking about Project Standard or Project Professional and NOT referring to the even more powerful Project Server empowered tools.)  And, many organizations just purchase technological tools and don’t train their users.  So, you end up with users who find Project as a tool available to them and they use it based on their needs.  I think I have said it before, but it bears repeating, that I think one of the reasons that so many users are frustrated with Project and think that it doesn’t work right is because of the complexity of the tool and their lack of training or knowledge about it.  When people think that Project is just like Excel or some other tool they know and they try to use Project they usually get pretty annoyed fairly quickly.  There are many background processes and calculations that drastically affect the way the tool works.  (Some of those background settings and default options are wrong for the way businesses use the tool, and that frustrates users more – but that is a separate post.)

So, let me answer the question for you – Project is NOT like Excel.  It is not like any other Microsoft application.  Yes, Project has some familiar Microsoft interface features.  Yes, it has some functionality like Excel but that doesn’t make it Excel.  It has so many options, variables and levels of capability that are designed for scheduling that it is unique.  Excel is a spreadsheet program designed to calculate numbers (at its basic level).  You wouldn’t write a letter in Excel, you would use Word.  Why?  Because they are different tools for different purposes!  The same holds for Project and Excel – they are different tools with different purposes.  And yes, I know that there are people who successfully use Excel to track lists of tasks for projects – but that doesn’t make it a scheduling tool.  (Tanya posted a short note about this about almost two years ago as well in her post – http://pmpspecialists.com/Blog/2009/10/microsoft-project-vs-excel/ )

The point of this short post is that just because you know one, or two, or twenty, Microsoft applications or tools you can’t claim that you know Project.  And, no, they aren’t all the same – they are designed for different purposes and different needs.  Project is one of those tools that requires time to learn and to learn the levels of complexity that is has available.  Just as it takes time to become a Power User in Excel rather than just a “regular” user.  And, the more you learn, the more valuable that knowledge is to you and to others.  I have talked in other posts about certification but as a strong believer in certifications I always hope that if somebody is claiming to be an expert in a tool they should be able to prove it with more than just saying that since they know one Microsoft tool, they know them all.

So while the title of this article is something I doubt anyone can claim, we all have to admit that we either aspire to be the perfect project manager or sponsor the perfect project manager.  I say this to address the reality that is the variation in experience in project managers.  Variation of experience is understood but some things cannot be done without…so these are my thoughts on the perfect project manager.

First of all, I look for a PMI certified project manager.  I want this because I know firsthand the value of a project manager that understands a healthy management process which we all know is often a complex situation to manage.  After all, the management of scope, time, and resources are always a trade off and I want to know that best practices are being applied when it comes to choices and change and decision making.

A certified project manager is taught what the standard artifacts of project management are, how to use them, where to use them, when to use them and who will use them.  Its best practices for things like documentation, costs, communication, risk, etc.  These items are taught as textual readings, calculations, templates and general rules of engagement.  These artifacts prepare the project manager for the topics of project management.  This prepares them to be able to address the issues and risks and strategic considerations of project management.

But certification from an educational perspective is not enough for me.  I also expect a good project manager to be able to tactically manage the project.  By that I mean that a PM has got to be able to build out a WBS that results in a valid project task list.  I am tired of people claiming to be PMP certified and then managing the project in a word document.  Project reporting may be reported in a Word document but the tactical planning, tasking, resourcing, deliverables, milestones, constraints and costs cannot be managed in anything but a qualified project software tool.

There is also the other side of this and I have seen project managers that are really good at the tactical technical set up of project software and totally miss the strategic educational values discussed above.  This too is unacceptable.  These folks are often all wrapped up in making cool things happen in the software but yet miss the strategic management process all together.

So I want the best of both…I want a project manager that can manage from a best practices educational perspective and yet employ project management software with great skill and precision.  So is this a point of anality or a point of great value?  I believe the value of defining the project tactically in the software does several things.  First of all it communicates the specific dates of tasks, secondly it communicates who does specific tasks, and thirdly it reflects the status of the project.  A word document is not the medium for the dynamic management of a project.  Instead, project software can and should manage multiple variables and constraints and show you where you are and what the true state of the project is.  For me this is an art form and is where educational aspects meet tactical implementation.  Yes, some of these software tools are complex to use but complex projects may require complex software functionality to plan and manage well.   Often the devil is in the details and I expect the process of dynamic project planning to be accomplished.  I don’t want to “feel” that the project is on schedule, I want some hard core task and resource data to confirm to me that the schedule is on track.

The old adage stands true…you get what you measure and deserve what you don’t.  So look for a project manager that can understand best practices and can actually manage strategically in a medium that manages tactically.

I am not a pilot, nor do I play one on tv.  However, I have a number of friends that are and I have had the joys(?) of travelling quite a bit by plane in the last few years.  I have also flown on charter flights and that is a different experience than flying commercial as well.  When I flew charter, the pilot allowed us to listen to the communication between the various control centers and he took some time to explain what the handoffs were about.  And, like every industry there are numerous acronyms and terms with their own in-house meanings.

Recently, I was on a commercial flight into Chicago.  Everything was normal and uneventful.  And then, just before landing, a few hundred feet or less, we accelerated and took off again.  We never touched the ground but we sure came close.  After a few minutes, the pilot came on and said we had “been brought in too high” and that we would try again and be “on the ground in five minutes”.  Whether or not I believe that as the real reason is for another day.  However, it definitely took more than five minutes to get back to landing – and EVERYBODY who has ever flown before KNEW THAT IT WOULD!

On the next flight, when we left the airport, on United, the pilot told us that if we listened to a certain station on the airplane provided music and talk channels we could hear the pilot and air traffic controller discussions live and unedited.  I listened to this and while I didn’t understand all the terms it was interesting and added to my learning about how the communication works.

As I often do, I tied these experiences back to Project Management.  I had two great examples of Project Management in in the space of two hours and a third example from previous experiences.  First, the aborted landing – I was in the plane, had no idea why we aborted the landing, didn’t necessarily believe the reasoning given and absolutely never believed we would be “on the ground in five minutes” (which proved true about 20 minutes later).  My trust in the pilot never wavered and I like to believe that it was the pilot’s wisdom about issues on the ground that kept us from landing (but, for all I know, the pilot didn’t put the landing gear down and that tour was screaming at us to not land).  So, the communication from the pilot after we accelerated was lacking and seemed both polished and standardized to make all sound fine.

The second example is the ability to listen to the flight communications.  I still have no control over outcomes or methods and don’t even know all of the terms being used BUT I had more of a feeling of “empowerment” and that just listening helped me better understand what was happening.  The third example is the first one I mentioned above – when I flew charter and the pilot not only allowed me to listen but explained what I was hearing and what it meant.

We hear again and again and again and again that the mantra of successful Project Management is COMMUNICATION!   And, these examples reminded me of this again as well.  The terms and acronyms that we use in Project Management have meaning to those of us that use them.  But, our team members may have no idea what we are talking about.  Also, they may not have had exposure to a Project Manager and “project-management-ese” language before.  And, if we have meetings (with or without the team) where we don’t explain the results and at least some of the reasoning to the entire team then we lose their trust.  If we don’t communicate the realistic situation then we also lose their trust – those of us who have had to circle in an airplane know that nothing happens in a mere five minutes!  This is just like telling team members or stakeholders that “we are over budget and late on the schedule, but we will catch up in time without any problems”.  Anybody who has been on a project before has every reason to doubt this statement.

I know that not everybody always knows (or should) everything about a project but the more open we are and the more realistic we are in our communication the more the team and stakeholders will trust us and that only helps our projects!

When talking with customers one of the observations that I often make is something like “by using Project Server you have one version of the truth”.  By that I mean that there is a central location where you can obtain information about your Projects, Resources, specific tasks and whatever else you want to track from a centralized location.  There is ONE PLACE to get that information – and the version of that information will be the same for everybody accessing it.  If a task is late and that is causing the entire schedule for a project to be late, then all those using Project Web Access (with the right security permissions) can see that the schedule is late.

But, my statement is inferring one very important detail.  That detail is that the data in Project Server is correct, or stated differently, that it is TRUE.  While surfing the internet this morning I ran across a small post by Mark K title “What is Truth?”  In that post, he asks if “…project management software tools…reflect truth?”   (http://blog.teaminteractions.com/ep/2011/04/what-is-truth.html) I posted a quick response to his post but have decided to expand on it here.

When I tell customers that having a centralized repository of information allows for one version of the truth I am thinking about all those times when I have seen two different people come to a meeting and they both have their own report based on their own data collection system.  And, invariably, the reports do not match.  That is one of the great values of using Project Server.  The information is in one place and so the underlying data is going to be the same to start with.  And, depending on how you set up your server and reporting capabilities, there can be agreed upon template reports so that everybody has the same end report – in both data and format.  Or, reports and views can be customized so that each person has their own format and their own way to view the data – but since the data is the same then the ending values will be the same (and if they aren’t then it is relatively easy to see if somebody is modifying their data in an interesting way).

But, the reports only show what that data is on the server and it doesn’t address whether or not that data is truth. The tool can’t force people to always accurately record their information.  However, it can provide the ability to check and confirm that information once it is recorded.  For example, if I have a task that is due today and I mark it as “complete” the person that approves my update can decide to accept or reject that update.  If I have to provide some sort of document and post it when that task is complete, the system easily shows whether or not a document is posted.  There are other checks-and-balances that the Project Server can provide to us in all sorts of reports and data exports.  One client I work with has some Timesheet updates flow through to their payroll and billing systems.  This makes the incentive for both management and each individual to have truthful entries into the system.  If they aren’t truthful in Project Server, customers will notice that they are being billed for work not done.  Or, the Human Resources department will discover a payroll issue if the information in Project Server isn’t correct.

We have posted before about getting to the truth from the business perspective (http://pmpspecialists.com/Blog/2010/09/getting-the-truth/).  As that post describes, if we shoot our messengers then we are telling them to always tell us happy thoughts and to avoid anything negative.  Sometimes the truth is negative and we need to deal with it when it happens and not when the results are finally shown.  If an individual knows that their assigned task is going late, but they know that they have weeks or months before others will discover this fact and they don’t want to update anybody because they fear retribution then we have failed as an organization to demonstrate that we want the truth.

So, it is important to realize that the project management tool that we use is usually only as good as the culture we operate it in.  If we shoot the messenger then those messengers will figure out how to go around any system.  However, if we provide the right incentive to individuals to tell us the truth then our systems will reflect that as well.

It is important to note that the truth is not always negative.  On occasion, tasks are completed early or issues or risks appear that can benefit a task or a schedule.  And, sometimes individuals know that something is coming up but perhaps nobody else sees it or is thinking about it yet.  What if I know that we are going to miss a deadline due to an upcoming event that we have no control over?  For example, if I know that a critical vendor is almost assuredly going to miss a ship date 3 months from now there is a value to my organization if I bring this up as a probable risk to the project.

If the organization were to reward me for bringing this up early, rather than waiting for it to happen, I would be much more prone to bring that up as soon as I discovered it.  If bad news is met by blaming me and by “shooting” me than I will just cross my fingers and hope it doesn’t happen.  And, when it does happen, and we are suddenly forced into trying to figure out how to mitigate the problem, how much more pain and cost does that cost my organization than if I had brought it up early and we had a mitigation plan already in place?

My answer to whether or not we know that our project management tool is reflecting the truth is the “both/and” answer.  If we have a culture that expects (and both rewards and holds accountable) truth and a tool that centralizes the data then we expect it to be truthful.  And, to me one of the other benefits of having the tool is that we have an archived history so we can begin to look at information about “how long did this take last time” and we can have better and better (more truthful) schedules, expectations and timelines in the future.

My son and I have been enjoying a television show on the History channel called “Top Shot”.  This is yet another reality show and in this one 16 people from around the United States compete for a $100,000 and the title of being “The Top Shot”.    They go through various team and individual challenges where they use different weapons (firearms, bow and arrow, tomahawks, etc) and people are eliminated.  A key piece of information is that the worst marksman is NOT necessarily the one eliminated.  The best marksman is NOT necessarily the one that is the most likely to win.

How does this apply to Project Teams?  I was thinking about the way the 16 people were initially chosen.  Basically, anybody that wanted to be on the show could apply (with a list of rules and legalese with some simple requirements – like never having made terroristic threats).  As a participant, you must have skills in the area of marksmanship.  I was thinking that this would be a great way to obtain the Project Team – have folks volunteer!  But, then reality sunk in and I realized that getting volunteers to form the team for a project are few and far between.  And, the prospect of giving one team member a prize of $100,000 for being on your team seems unlikely.  It would be great to get the people with the correct skills to volunteer for a project.  Barring a great bank of volunteers trying to get on a project, at least having a known skill set pool to help select from would be great.  And, some sort of criteria, other than immediate availability, for how a person gets on the team would be beneficial.

What about the Project Manager?  I have only watched Season Two of Top Shot but assume that the way the group leader’s were selected on Season One is the same as this season.  The best two marksmen in the very first competition become the Team Leaders.  Those Team Leaders then pick their teams from the other 14 participants.  One of the two new Team Leaders interviewed everyone and made a list of how he would rank the team members based on his own criteria.  The other team leader seemed to only talk to a few folks, get their opinions, and then decided on a few key people that he wanted and the rest kind of fell into place.

 In Top Shot, the method of selection for the team leader is a bit random and a bit selective, or specific.  First, the “specific” part – every one of the 16 people are highly skilled marksmen and they all have passed the requirements to be potentially selected as the lead.  Therefore, from a purely skill set perspective, they are all relative equals.  However, the random part is that they all had to use a weapon that they no doubt had never seen before and had to hit a target – and the “best” or “most skilled” marksmen may not have shot the closest to the bull’s-eye in this one event.   And, being the best skilled on this one occasion or being the best skilled overall doesn’t necessarily make a person a leader.  To me, this is very like picking a Project Manager based upon who came into work on time or early on the second Tuesday of the month. 

This does have me thinking though about the way the Project Managers are chosen.  Maybe we could at least start choosing Project Managers based on some minimum set of rules about their skill sets, rather than just their availability.  Or, perhaps if we got a team together in a room and then had them select their own Project Manager we might get some better teams and better leaders on our teams.

I always wonder why a blog goes silent.  While it takes great discipline and scheduling to update a blog on a regular basis, there are plenty of folks that do it.  For a long time I was able to do it as well.  However, for a number of personal and professional reasons I have been all but “offline” for a few months now.  I have written a few entries in my head and have some notes about some as well but haven’t been posting anything.  I am hoping to start getting active again now.  This post will be more of a hodgepodge of “little things” of varying interest to you.

• First, Tanya Foster and I have been working on a book on how to use Microsoft Project Professional and Microsoft Project Server for Resource Management.  This is only concentrating on the Resource Management piece.  The book is currently in review and I will update everybody when it is closer to being published.

• One tidbit of knowledge that I have recently learned involves the Project Server 2010 “force check-in” background process.  I noticed that when a schedule was forced to check-in it sometimes took a few moments and other times it took significantly longer.  I didn’t understand the difference and just chalked it up to random “stuff” on the server, my connection or whatever.  However, Brian Smith recently explained to me that a force check-in isn’t just a “check-in” but it actually tries to process outstanding status updates as well.  It probably does other things as well and perhaps Brian will one day blog about that but this was a big “ah-ha” moment for me as I know that I was trying to check in some schedules that had outstanding updates – and that is what took them so long to check in when I was forcing it.  Now, as a general rule, you probably should not be force checking-in schedules very often, but that is a different story for another day.

• We are big believers around here in obtaining certifications – as individuals and as an organization (although Microsoft calls them Competencies for organizations).  We have blogged about it in the past ( http://pmpspecialists.com/Blog/2010/05/new-microsoft-competency-for-partners-%e2%80%93-why-should-the-customer-care/ and  http://pmpspecialists.com/Blog/2010/02/microsoft-project-certifications-%e2%80%93-how-do-they-create-the-test-3-of-3/ and  http://pmpspecialists.com/Blog/2010/10/pmi-membership-and-pmp-certification-%e2%80%93-by-the-numbers/ ).  The Microsoft Project 2010, Managing Projects certification exam has gone live.  The exam number is 70-178.  The “Microsoft Project Server 2010, Configuring”, exam 70-177 is expected to go live in June.

• More information about 70-178 can be found here:  http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Exam.aspx?ID=70-178&Locale=en-us

• More information about 70-177 can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/Exam.aspx?ID=70-177&Locale=en-us

• This one is of interest to me:  Project Management Institute (PMI) is creating a new Agile Certification pilot program, beginning in May of 2011 (http://www.pmi.org/en/Agile/Agile-Certification-Eligibility-Requirements.aspx).  While I am not necessarily a big proponent of Agile I do understand that it is the “next big thing” and it may have a place in the Project Management world.  I did see at the last PMI Conference that there were lots of Agile presentations and I attended a couple of them.  One of the two that I went to was extremely confusing as I guess the presenters assumed that everybody in attendance was already familiar with Agile.  There are many folks that would debate that Agile is not really its own Project Management methodology and that Agile is actually a software development method (see http://blog.pmtechnix.com/does-agile-project-management-exist/ for a snippet of that debate).  We shall see where this certification and Agile goes in the future.

 Ever since I started looking at obtaining a certification as a Project Management Professional I was interested in knowing how many people had the certification already.  I have blogged about certifications in previous posts so I won’t get into all my reasons for getting a certification but one of those reasons is to make sure that that it is recognized by potential employers.  Another reason is to make sure that not “everybody” has it because that might indicate it is one of those “take 3 hours and $50 and become certified” kind of certifications.  Large numbers of people holding a certification don’t scare me when it makes sense but if “anybody” can get a certification then I get nervous. 

 I am also interested in knowing how many people don’t maintain their certification because that tells me something about the value that people put on the certification once they have it.  The number of PMP certifications was in the 180,000 range (PMI calls them Active PMP’s) when I took my test and became a PMP and my number starts with a 249xxx so that means that about 70,000 people had let their certifications expire.  Since PMP certifications started in 1984 that makes me feel ok about this number of people– with job movement, priority shifting, economy issues and some passing away I think that a 70,000 difference is quite acceptable.

 Since I obtained my certification, I have watched the monthly numbers closely.  This is just one indicator to me of the health of the organization and the certification overall.  (FYI – I do carry another certification where the numbers got so bad that the certifying organization discontinued the certification entirely.)  I thought that I was pretty much alone in my fascination of the numbers (other than PMI tracking it for their reasons) and then I across this article from Derek Huether at “The Critical Path”.  (http://thecriticalpath.info/2010/09/30/august-pmp-certification-numbers/)  He has been tracking the monthly numbers since September, 2006, and he was willing to share his numbers with me for this post.  He deserves full credit for the monthly chart below.  Once I had his data, I started searching around and found some other information of PMP certification and PMI membership.  A good chunk of that comes from PMI Today, August 2004 edition.  The other parts I found here and there mentioned in old articles.

 I charted the number of PMI members and the number of PMP certifications by year.  The first year for PMP certification was 1984 and 43 of the people that took the test became certified that year.  Also, I never found any certification numbers for 1985 or 1987-1992.  What intrigues me is that the number of PMP certified individuals is greater than the number of PMI members.

For those that like numbers:

This chart uses Derek’s Monthly Numbers since September, 2006.

Same chart, but with numbers:

And, because Derek was kind of enough to share it, here is some bonus information.  This is the number of NEW PMP’s by month and the total number of CAPM certifications as well (by month).

With numbers:

All tasks are being completed when planned and within budget.  There are no issues, risks have all been mitigated, and the project team members love each other and work perfectly together.  How would you like to give that status for your projects every week?  If you did, would anyone believe it?

Real projects don’t go perfectly most of the time.  They have a few warts and sometimes are downright ugly.  Our job as Project Managers is to report the truth, whatever that is, to the world.  Getting that truth from the project team is sometimes difficult though.  What follows are some tips that will help you get to that truth.

1. Don’t shoot the messenger – During the Operation Desert Storm (the first Gulf War), there were stories being reported by the media that Saddam Hussein would shoot his Generals if they didn’t perform well.  As a result he was often not told the truth about what was really going on.  This caused him to make a lot of bad decisions.  Verbally attacking project team members that do not tell us what we want to hear has the same effect on our projects.  If you have a customer, project sponsor, or boss that is like that you may be tempted to be less than candid in your status reporting.  Don’t go over to the dark side!
2. Document issues – When a task does not go as planned it should be documented as an issue in an issues log.  The task could be late or over budget for a lot of different reasons.  It is important to document these in an objective way that identifies the problem and what is being done about it; but does not blame team members.   This issues log should be public to build or maintain a culture of transparency.
3. Probe estimates – The estimates of time or cost that seem too good to be true probably are.  People are often very optimistic and do not account for risks when giving estimates.  Making mistakes and having to do rework is a daily reality in the workplace that is not always taken into account.  Reminding resources about this and asking them for more detail about the task being estimated and what they need to do it usually yields more realistic estimates.
4. Ask for clarification until you get it – Sometimes people create confusion deliberately to hide their own failures.  This can be done with technical gibberish or just disorganized rambling.  When someone you are collecting status from does this, take the time to organize what they are saying and ask them to explain until you have enough information.  This requires some patience, but stick with it until you know the truth.  There is probably something there that you need to know

Bruce Lofland writes his PM Technix blog at http://blog.pmtechnix.com/ .   PM Technix is a blog about practical techniques to manage projects that can be used by most project managers.  Bruce Lofland has been a Project Manager in the Kansas City area since 1999 and a certified PMP since 2007.  He was a software developer for many years before that on a wide variety of platforms.