EPM, Microsoft Project and You

By: Tim Gryder

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.

BY:  Collin Quiring

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!

BY: Collin Quiring

With the Project Server 2010 SP1 release (expected in June) one of the new capabilities of Project Server 2010 will be the ability to update Timesheets and Task Status using browsers other than Internet Explorer.  This is one of those things that many people will probably not get too excited about and will consider a “minor” update and may not affect them.  However, I think this is one of those updates that is huge and extremely important to those customers that need this type of capability!

As somebody that has worked with clients in environments that didn’t require IE or in MAC-centric environments this is a huge step forward in my mind.  Having the ability to access any screen directly from a MAC is an important update and will relieve some IT shops from having to jump through hoops to configure MAC’s to work with Project Web App just so that a user can update their time.

Now, before we get too excited that this will solve all of our problems, only the Project Web App main default page and the MY WORK pages (Tasks, Timesheet and Issues and Risks) will work with the other browsers.  I have absolutely no inside knowledge but perhaps this is the initial movement toward making all of Project Web App pages work with other browsers!

From Microsoft’s information about SP1, the supported browsers are:

• Internet Explorer 9 (32-bit) on Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows 2008
• Internet Explorer 8 (32-bit) on Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows 2008
• Internet Explorer 7 (32-bit) on Windows Vista, Windows XP and Windows 2003
• Firefox 3.6.8+ on Mac OS X v10.6, Windows 7 (32-bit/64-bit), Windows Vista SP2, Windows XP SP3, Windows 2003 and UNIX/Linux,
• Google Chrome 6.0 on Windows 7
• Safari 5 on Mac OS X v10.6

Here is the link to Christophe Fiessinger’s blog with screenshots from the non-IE browsers:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/chrisfie/archive/2011/05/25/multi-browser-support-for-time-entry-in-project-server-2010.aspx

BY: Collin Quiring

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.

BY: Collin Quiring

The February Cumulative Update was recently released for Project Professional 2010.  As with most updates, this brings a few questions to mind.

How do I know which version, or build, of Project Professional 2010 is on my computer?

How do I know which version, or build, is the latest one available?

From the Project Server perspective, how do I restrict the Project Professional version my users are using to access the server?

Why does that matter?

When Project Professional and Project Server are released to the world and it begins to get a large installation base and is in everyday use all sorts of scenarios and usage variations are implemented by the people using the tools.  In so doing, some unintended consequences occur, some bugs are found and some “business realities” or “business logic issues” are discovered that aren’t part of the current version of Project.  As other integrated tools, like SharePoint, are modified in some way then Project also needs to be modified.  Therefore, updates are released for the software.

As software updates are released, these issues are resolved.  And, so it is important that all the users have the most recent version of Project Professional installed on their computers.  While most organizations have a process to update software, it isn’t always easy to know if everybody accessing your server has the most recent version.  Even if you don’t use Project Server, it is still important for everybody to be using the same version of Project.  What if a user has two copies or Project Professional – one on a desktop computer that is definitely part of the routine update process and a company issued notebook that they don’t always get updated?

And, again, why does this matter?  Why do I care if they all have the same version of Project Professional?  Let’s have a made-up example where there is a bug in Project where every time a Task Name has the letter “R” in it the system changes that to a “3”.  Well, that would be fixed in an update.  And, everybody that updates their version of Project to the latest version would no longer experience that problem.  However, if somebody does NOT update their version, opens a previously fine file and makes a change and then saves it, their version might affect all the “R” characters and make them “3’s” again.  This causes increased frustration as users have to determine if there is a new bug or if somebody has an older version – and, they have to figure out who has that version.  All of that work is in addition to having to correct all the project files that are affected.

So, how do I know which version of Project Professional 2010 is on my computer?

With most things Microsoft, there are many ways to determine this but the easiest way is to open Project, go to File and then Help.  On the right hand side of the screen is the “About Microsoft Project”.  There is also a link that says “Additional Version and Copyright Information”.  This is an important link.

In my case, BEFORE THE FEBRUARY UPDATE, the screen looks like this:

And, the important piece is when I click on the link:

The important piece of information here is the Build Number, the first number in the top row of the About information box.

In this case, before installing the February update, I am using build 14.0.4751.1000.  So, if you are not using Project Server, or if you just want to know, you can ask everybody to go to their computer, open Project Professional and look at this to determine which version they are using.

If you are using Project Server 2010, there is a setting that allows you to restrict the Project Professional build that people are using to access the Server.  In the Server Settings, Additional Server Settings, Project Professional Versions text box you can enter the version that you want users to have.  This will be the “oldest” version that you allow users to have when connecting.

In this example, BEFORE the update, I am requiring version 14.0.2215.1000.

But, now that the February CU is available, I want everybody to have that version.  So, all I have to do is modify this field to the latest version.  After modifying and clicking Save this is the new requirement. NOTE – it takes effect immediately, so don’t make this change until you have either warned your users this change is coming or you are fairly confident that everybody is on the new version.  And, it would be nice to notify your Help Desk about the error messages that will be produced by Project (shown below).

Since I want to use the February CU, I will change this field to say 14.0.5315.5000 since that is the new build number.  How did I know that?  I explain that a bit later as well.

Now, if a Project Professional client attempts to get to my server with a version that is not at least 14.0.5315.5000 they will get an error.  And, this is why it is nice to warn the users and your Help Desk that this is coming – the error message is a bit cryptic.  When the user tries to sign into Project Server, they will get this error message.  Error ID 12015(0x2EEF) with Error Description “An internal error occurred.”  These do not just jump out at you and tell you that it is an error that came from the version change.  It looks like this:

However, if you click on More Info, you do get a bit more information.  Notice that in the message it says that this is an UnsupportedProjectProfessionalVersion – which is what we would expect.

And, just to be thorough, if the user clicks on More Info or not, they get a second error box that says that the Enterprise Global template could not be retrieved and that there might be a database error.  While we know that is not the case, it sounds like a very bad thing and may cause widespread panic.  Ok, maybe just a lack of trust in the database.

However, once the Project Professional client is updated to the February CU, then no errors will appear.

What does Project Professional look like AFTER the February CU is applied?  Well, the first screen looks the same.  It still shows version 14.0.5128.5000:

However, when clicking on the Additional Version link, I get a different result, showing the new build number 14.0.5135.5000:

That answers the version questions and the compliance issue.  But, how did I know which version to use for Project Server?  I guess one way would be to implement the update and just look at the version.  But, that isn’t always precise because there might be a difference between 32-bit and 64-bit versions or there might be some other modification to the system that you are looking at that gives you a different version number.

The best way to know the correct version number is to look at the KB article that Microsoft provides.  For the February CU, the article is located at:  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2496946.  That article also gives information about what the update includes but it also gives the version information.  That is copied here:

x86

Download information

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Microsoft Windows Installer .msp file information

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After the hotfix is installed, the global version of this hotfix has the file attributes, or a later version of the file attributes, that are listed in the following table:

Project-x-none.msp information

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x64

Download information

Collapse this tableExpand this table

Microsoft Windows Installer .msp file information

Collapse this tableExpand this table

After the hotfix is installed, the global version of this hotfix has the file attributes, or a later version of the file attributes, that are listed in the following table:

Project-x-none.msp information

Collapse this tableExpand this table

Since we were using the 64-bit version for this example and since I was looking at the Project Professional information in File, Help, the pertinent information to me is the File Version for Winproj.exe.

There are a lot of articles, blogs and even some books about how Project Manager’s should be selected.  Also, stories abound about how people find themselves in the role of Project Manager because “they were there” or by some other fortunate series of events (or some would say, misfortune J ).   The same is often said for the team that is assembled – they were there, or they were the only people available or whatever other criteria was used to choose them.  Unfortunately, in many cases, the team and the Project Manager are chosen not because of skill sets or abilities but due to any of a thousand different reasons.

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.

BY: Collin Quiring

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.

By: Collin Quiring

 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:

BY:  Collin Quiring

First things first – I want to give credit to Microsoft for having some great documentation!  I have been working with Microsoft Project for many years and started becoming very involved with the tool starting with the 2000 release. While there has always been some “documentation”, I have to say that it has gotten better, easier to find and more detailed with each release.  With 2010, the documentation is pretty extensive and there is even a whole section called “Ignite” that has documents and videos which concentrate on the new features.  One of the catches with so much documentation (which I am VERY happy to deal with) is trying to assimilate all the documentation and moving parts as it pertains to a specific subject.  This entry is my version of putting that documentation as it relates to “Departments” into a high level summary.  Some of this is my own research but the majority of this is summarizing an overview of the documentation and of the wonderful video that Christophe Fiessinger made for the Ignite training.  (See that video here: http://cdn-smooth.ms-studiosmedia.com/msstudios/1005/1003463/Mod_9_Administration/Default.html  )

 I think that this is one of those cases where it might be easier to define what this is NOT.  The word “Department” is a word that Microsoft chose for this functionality and should not necessarily be defined as we normally define it in the business environment.  A “Department” should not be considered a “division of a business” like Human Resources or Information Technology or Marketing Department. 

 We need to think of “Department” as a grouping mechanism.  As an example, think of a company that has an IT group that has two separate functions – a Help Desk and New Development.  Even though these are the same “department” in a company, they may have totally separate work processes, requirements and reporting needs.  Therefore, we would set each up as a unique “Department” in Project Server 2010.

 As with numerous items within Project Server, the “Department” appears to be “only a custom field” at first glance but actually can be very powerful since it is possible to be used in many areas of the Server from users to Enterprise Project Types.  It should be thought of as a very powerful tool within Project Server rather than just a mere “custom field.”

 Now for some of that high level summary information about “Department”:

• The Primary purpose is to be a filter for:
  • Projects
  • Resources
  • Resources’ Custom Fields
  • Enterprise Project Types
  • Drivers
• Users can be assigned to none, one or multiple departments
• Projects can be assigned to none, one or multiple departments
• Different Users can see different User Interfaces based on their departments
  • It filters out EPT’s and Custom Fields
• Can be used for OLAP database data filtering
  • See the “Guide for IT Pros for Project Server 2010”, Departments section on the OLAP database detail information
• Different groups can have their own custom fields
• (Note:  a custom field NOT assigned a Department are global)
• Projects associated with different departments will only show their custom fields
• Portfolio Drivers can be associated with departments
• Driver prioritization can be associated with departments
• Departments allow for Enterprise-wide consistency AND different processes, forms and fields for different groups
• Departments are NOT tied to the RBS directly

BY: Tanya Foster

Have you ever noticed that there is more than one way to do the same thing in Microsoft Project?  I didn’t specify a version, because I’ve noticed it in multiple versions of Microsoft Project.  That’s one thing I love about Project… you’re shortcut may not be my shortcut, but we both end up at the same place.  Now this may not be the case for everything in Microsoft Project, but for several things, it’s definitely the case.  Take linking tasks for example.  Let’s say you have a schedule, and the tasks are going to be sequential.  I would just quickly highlight the tasks and hit the link button on the menu bar.  I had a colleague once that liked to see how one task related to the other and if there were any tweaks he needed to make at that point and time. 

So he would double click on a task to open the task information box, type the linking and task information in there and then move on to the next task. 

Me… I’ll link them, then I’ll see how they line up and I’ll tweak them if need be.  We’ll both have the same outcome, we just get there different ways.  And thank goodness that Microsoft took both of our personalities into consideration when creating Microsoft Project!  Well… I’m sure if we asked the programmers, the users different personalities was probably the furthest thing from their mind, but hey… it worked out!

Another great example is assigning resources.  Once you’ve added resources to your team, you can simply add resources by selecting them from the drop down box.

Or you can assign them by using the Assign Resources dialog box.

How about task entry?  Couple of different ways for that too!  Just type it in, right in the Task Name cell of an empty cell.  Double click an empty cell and bring up the task information box and fill out all of the information that way, or right mouse click, select Insert Task type in the task name when it inserts a new empty cell. 

Now it’s your turn.  Let us know of any great shortcuts you’ve found or multiple ways of doing things in Microsoft Project.  If we get enough feedback from you, our faithful readers, we’ll post the list as a future blog post!