EPM, Microsoft Project and You

By: Collin Quiring

Why is it that so many companies will honor and consider a Project Manager as one of the leaders of their PM organization when they have one large project?  One Project Manager is given a ten million dollar project and they are held in great esteem.  And, perhaps they should be – they are running a large project, or perhaps a “company changing” project, or “the next big thing” for a company, or, it may just be a run-of-the-mill large project for a multinational company.  They deserve recognition for being able to manage something of that magnitude.

Why is it, then, that the same companies will often have multiple “small” projects given to a “junior” Project Manager and not realize the value or magnitude of “company changing” projects that one Project Manager is controlling?  One Project Manager, given ten projects at one million each will have the same, or potentially greater, effect than the Project Manager that is controlling one large project.

My examples may be using larger dollar numbers than your company – but my point is that an organization needs to look at the magnitude of the projects that each Project Manager is administrating.  One large project might not be as important as multiple smaller projects.

So, which is more important 1 for 10, or 10 for 1 (1 project for $10 million, or 10 projects at $1 million each)?

By: Collin Quiring

This is part two of a two part blog on using Project Management in our daily lives.  My sister challenged me the other day by saying that all the stuff I do every day doesn’t apply to her (or my) life.  While some might agree with her, I think that there are those that agree with my premise that Project Management is one of the disciplines that can easily carry over to daily life.  AND, I think that in many cases, this is an activity that is done naturally by many people (and not done at all by some others) – and they may never consider what they do or how they do it as being part of some formal field of study or specialty called Project Management.

So, here are some of the particulars of my sister’s circumstances:

                She is married

They have three kids

                The kids are homeschooled

                She runs marathons (the full, 26.2 miles)

                She has a part time job

                She volunteers

I am sure there are other details of interest, but that is enough for my point.

All of these areas require large amounts of managerial skill including scheduling, determination, communication and financial administration.  I will pick one area to concentrate on – the marathons.  The more popular/famous the marathon, the more restrictive the requirements are to register.  There are usually only certain windows within which to register, and those can be months to a year in advance of the actual marathon.

Then there is the training.  As a dedicated couch potato, I never realized that to run a marathon you have to be more than merely in shape, you have to actually train so that you build up the ability (or maintain it) to run a full marathon. 

Then there is the travel.  Marathon’s tend to start early in the day and you need to be mentally and physically ready to run.  Therefore, you want to be relatively close to the starting point without having to add lots of travel time that day (time zones might be in play, potentially requiring earlier travel time to physically adjust).  Travel requires a whole series of steps and management.  But, in this case, there are five people travelling to the marathon (or some number between two and five and a babysitter in charge of the kids that don’t go).  And, what if the marathon is during school?  Well, then, part of the travel includes taking the appropriate amount of schoolwork, or doubling up the work load prior to or after going on the trip.

And on and on goes the list of items to do.  This is a long list of tasks, and, when you include all the other things in daily life, like determining what to have for supper (cooking at home or going out), working part time jobs, volunteering time, paying the bills, and the myriad of other items that aren’t listed – you have an extensive Portfolio to Project Manage!

The amazing thing to me is that most of these tasks aren’t ever written down!  And, these are almost all long term projects – homeschooling could last until 12^th Grade, marathons could be a lifetime addiction and the other daily items (like eating) will always be around. 

To me, using the knowledge of Project Management can only be helpful in keeping everything in order!

By: Collin Quiring

This is part one of a two part blog on using Project Management in our daily lives.  My sister challenged me the other day by saying that all the stuff I do every day doesn’t apply to her (or my) life.  In the area of Project Management, I disagree.  I have worked in some jobs and career paths where what I did during the work day applied only to the work and there was no carryover to “real life” but, I don’t think that is true of Project Management.

Depending on our job/career, there are activities we do and knowledge we gain that can be used to enhance our daily lives as well.  For example, a mechanic can use their skills at work and at home or an IT employee may be able to use some of their knowledge to troubleshoot (or get into trouble) with their home computer (and, seemingly, their friends’ computers).  Likewise, a Project Manager can use their knowledge in their “real life”.  I would argue that everybody uses some form of Project Management in their daily lives – we just don’t call it that.  When a person starts their day and determines all of the errands, picking up and dropping off of kids and other duties that need to be done, they are creating a task list, building dependencies (or confirming that none exist), deadlines, time allotments and putting them in some order.  And, they are assigning a resource – usually themselves. 

Now, some would consider this just part of “life” and not necessarily Project Management.  My point is that the knowledge and skill sets learned from work can be used in our daily lives.  Just like a mechanic may obtain experience and abilities at work that they can use on their own vehicle I think that the Project Management profession can teach us some lessons for “life”.

One of the mantra’s of Project Management is COMMUNICATION, COMMUNICATION, COMMUNICATION.  This is probably a pretty good philosophy at home too.  Situations caused by poor communication in life are almost a constant issue.  We constantly are dealing with poor communication – from waiting for friends or family to meet us at one location at a certain time while they are at another place or think it is a different time to not knowing the price of an item we want to purchase at the store.

So, the answer, straight from PMBOK, is to have regular stakeholder meetings, take notes, distribute those notes, and hold everybody accountable.  Well, maybe that isn’t realistic in our non-work lives, but, I know that in my life we send texts to update each other on our current status – where we are, what we are doing and what time we expect to be at certain locations.  We used to write notes and stick them on the counter, but I guess those days are over.

In the PMBOK, Fourth Edition, there are nine Project Management Knowledge Areas, five Project Management Process Groups and twenty-three Project Management processes.  Once you have your friends and family memorize them all and implement them in their daily lives, you will be set!  Well, maybe not (you might get some pushback).   However, of all that information, there are at least a few things that you can implement in your daily life to make yourself a bit more effective.

I think that there are others that agree with me – just look at Project Management sites and look at the types of templates that they have available.  Yes, there are the ones about constructing a building and implementing IT.  But, there are also templates for taking a vacation, planning a wedding and one for the steps required for a colonoscopy.

By:  Collin Quiring

If you view our website, you know that we specialize in Microsoft Project Server.  You also can see that we are PMP (Project Management Professionals) certified.  As PMP certified individuals, we are demonstrating that we understand that there is a body of knowledge that exists to assist an individual with Project Management.  This is tool agnostic; but having the right tool that integrates well with the principles and body of knowledge of Project Management can make implementing and using those principles much easier.

There are other valid Project Management (PM) tools on the market today.  In fact, the number of PM tools numbers into the 100’s with some very specialized, some home grown that are now being sold and some are variants on more common products.   And, some companies use Excel or pen and paper for the PM needs.  So, why do we concentrate on Microsoft Project Server?

We understand that there are many tools and we have some experience in a number of them, but, we realized that we needed to be specialists in one tool, and able to use others; rather than trying to claim that we are experts in all tools.  This might be a good reason for us, but why would an organization want this tool?

Of course, if you go to Microsoft’s website, you can find all sorts of lists of why this is the best choice but I am going to give a few high level reasons here that seem to recur as I talk to clients.

 “One Source of Truth, Part One” – by this I mean that you can have one centralized location for all your project information and it is accessible by the browser.  All the schedule information is in one place.  This means that EVERYBODY (who has been given security permission) from a single task person to the CEO can see the same information, in real time.

“One Source of Truth, Part Two” – all the documentation, issues, risks and other pertinent data can be associated with a Proposal, Project or Portfolio in one place.  No more email chains with attachments that are being modified by different people at different times for various reasons – the most recent version of the document is in one place.

Resource Management – the ability to understand who is available (or not) and when they are available is becoming more and more important and this tool delivers.  Depending on the amount of setup detail that an organization wants to provide is directly related to the amount of benefit that they receive.  From a company’s perspective, the ability to understand their resources can be an invaluable area of information.

Integration – for a Microsoft dominated IT department, the ability to integrate Project Server with other tools is relatively easy.  And, if you use Portfolio Server as well then it is all designed together.  And, since Project Server uses SQL, there is often already a database server running that can be used for Project Server.  If you are using Microsoft Dynamics, there are connections between Project Server and the Dynamics products that allow for information to flow between systems.  And, there are connectors to non-Microsoft products that have been built as well.

There are numerous other reasons, but these are some of the ones that seem to keep popping up about why a company should use Microsoft Project Server.

By: Collin Quiring

 A new study on IT technology projects in excess of $250,000 by IAG Consulting discovered that project success is “improbable” for 68% of companies.  And, that for the other 32% the likelihood of success was “probable” because of their established Business Requirements process.  I would like to think that those 32% also use an established business Project Management process and that helped them with their projects but this study focused on the analysis portion of a project and so I will concentrate on that area of a project.

Just as there is a PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) there is a BABK (Business Analysis Body of Knowledge).  In that document, part of the role of the Business Analyst is defined as the individual(s) “responsible for identifying the business needs of their clients and stakeholders to determine solutions to business problems.”  They are “responsible for requirements development and requirements management”.

As Project Managers, we sometimes forget that the initial part of our project should be the business analysis.  Whether done by a skilled (or certified) Business Analyst or somebody else it still needs to be done.  It is critical to the success of a project to have a solid foundation.  Without the understanding of the existing situation and the need for the project by the project participants, sponsor and senior leadership even the best Project Manager is going to have difficulty.  For every project that you work on, there should be a Project Charter and Scope Statement – and the larger the project, the larger those documents may need to be.  But, even for a very small project, these documents should exist (maybe in an email, maybe one sheet of paper – but they must exist somewhere!).

Just as Project Management is a process and not a one-time event, the IAG study concludes:

Finally, requirements discovery and elicitation is a process – not a deliverable. The findings are very clear in this regard – companies that focus on both the process and the deliverables of requirements are far more successful than those that only focus on the documentation quality.  Documentation quality can only assure that investment in a project is not wasted by an outright failure. The quality of the process through which documentation is developed is what creates both successes and economic advantage.

The IAG Study is called “Business Analysis Benchmark – The impact of Business Requirements on the Success of Technology Projects” by Keith Ellis and can be found at www.iag.biz.

In a recent CIO magazine, there was an article titled “hot jobs” where the position of Project Manager was discussed.  CIO magazine is about Information Management and Information Technology so it views the Project Manager through that perspective.  However, it still highlights the need for good Project Managers – ESPECIALLY during these tough economic times.

A quote from the article:  “Poor project execution occurs when there is a breakdown in relationship management, communication, cooperation and poor problem resolution, he says. PMs get projects on track and ensure they are implemented properly and efficiently. This is important in today’s economy; only 35 percent of IT projects are completed successfully, according to The Standish Group”

Review the other blog entry about the amount of money being spent in 2009 on projects – and that is why we need good Project Managers.

BY: Collin Quiring

For people that view “Project Management” to be a strict discipline used only in formal settings or for those that regard “Projects” as a “thing that companies do” I submit that projects are all around us and that we need to have a larger viewpoint.  The official definition of a “Project” in the Fourth Edition of the PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) is: “A temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result.” 

This means that you could define a project as simply as the process for getting up in the morning and getting to work.  All the elements of a project are there – you have a goal (result) that you want to achieve.  And, there are items that must be completed to get that done – from waking up to arriving at your destination.  There are a number of choices about tasks that can be made and the order of which you can determine. 

You probably do not have a formal, documented process for the activities to accomplish the goal of getting to work.  This just demonstrates that the level of documentation and formal processes should be in accordance with the level of the project.  It is unrealistic to expect a Scope statement, Project Charter and task update process for a personal project such as this.  And, the amount of Project Management that is required should also be in accordance with the level of the project.

I think that we too often concentrate on the product part of the definition – thinking about a project as the work that goes into making something tangible.  And, these are the easiest types of projects to notice – we can see the physical results.  However, I think that we need to view the result part of the definition.  These are the types of projects that we tend to omit. 

What we often do is look at the parts of a project that are product oriented and view that as the entire project.  (Yes, there is Portfolio Management which deals with this but I am only talking about how to view a project.)  A great example of a result-oriented project is in an article that I ran across this morning about the military in Iraq.  Their project is looking to achieve a result of being able to “positively affect many contracts with Iraqi civilians in essential services” and to “deny the enemy places of blight and places of hopelessness”.   Those goals are result specific and result in numerous tangible products and services but the overall project is to achieve a non-tangible result – what we might generically call “a better Iraq”.  To achieve this result, they are working on the appropriate pieces of established Project Management that will best help their needs.

A project isn’t just a corporate based tangible product – it can be a goal.

The article I am referring to:

2nd HBCT PAO, 1st Inf. Div., MND-B

BAGHDAD – Multi-National Division – Baghdad leaders from the 2nd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, and supporting elements attended a class about the importance of project management at Camp Liberty.

The daylong course emphasized how the improved security in Baghdad can positively affect many contracts with Iraqi civilians in essential services.

“Services like sewer and electrical problems, medical clinic issues and emergency problems with schools are areas where we really need to make a lasting impact on the population to turn things around and improve quality of life,” said Maj. Andrew Attar, Joint Project Management Office, 2nd HBCT. “We want to deny the enemy places of blight and places of hopelessness where they can recruit members.”

Project management offices in the brigade focus on contracting jobs out to take care of the needed projects, stemmed from an agenda from Col. Joseph Martin, commander, 2HBCT, named the Commander’s Emergency Response Program.

The program is designed to establish community improvement projects with the local governance and the Iraqi Security Forces in northwest Baghdad.

“We help to try to turn around these neighborhoods through these projects; to give people hope in the Iraqi Government and the Iraqi Security Forces,” Attar said. “We want to make sure we are achieving the desired effects that our commanders need through these projects and becoming better project managers.”

In order to improve the process of project management, Attar added that the class was crucial for development in the brigade.

To give insight to the attendees, finance and civil military operations members from the 4th Infantry Division and the 926th Engineer Brigade also attended the class.

“We’re looking at the intermediate to the advance levels of project management; most of these guys have already gone through the basic training,” Attar said. “So what we are looking at here is sharing the lessons learned across the brigade and getting ourselves to that next level of excellence in terms of how we do projects across Baghdad.”

The class participants spoke about project operations, such as file management, how to write scopes of work and bills of quantity in contracting, how to do quality assurance and quality checks on projects, how to deal with contractors, the biding process of contracting and how to pay contractors.

“What we’ve learned so far is the process, we go through in project management and the paperwork we have to go through,” said 1st Lt. Fidencio Gamorano, 926th Eng. Bde. “I’m starting to learn a little bit more as far as how everything is set up so we can get on the right track.”

Gamorano added that partnering with the Iraqi government and ISF to reach out to the people of Iraq is very important for project management.

“We get to give something back to the Iraqi people,” he said. “A lot of these people want to work, and this is the best way so we can all learn from each other and work

From: http://newsblaze.com/story/20081229054358zmil.nb/topstory.html

By: Collin Quiring

How do you justify Project Management or Project Server in these tough times?  While looking for a document recently that I wrote about this, I came up with these thoughts.

Some business areas that are affected by Project Management are harder to quantify than others.  One of the biggest benefits that results from using Project Management principles is the increased flow of information and ability to make better informed decisions.  It is difficult to put a dollar amount on “doing things better” but there are some intuitive benefits.  Being able to make better decisions means fewer mistakes and a reduction in the number of times costly projects are started and then later stopped or completed without the expected gains.

Collaboration and easy to access real time information are business benefits that shouldn’t be underestimated.  The ability for everyone (with the appropriate security permissions) to see information from their own desktop, through a web browser, without having to request it from somebody else, or waiting for the “official report” to appear, is valuable.  Using templates allows for everybody to start from the same spot and to use pre-existing and approved information and methodologies.  This saves time and effort and permits the Project Managers and the users to have a familiar format – increasing collaboration and understanding.

A few of the questions that we like to ask Senior Managers are: What is a single view of ALL your projects worth?  What would the value to your organization be if you could see every project that you have?  How does each project align with the company’s stated strategies? How does the portfolio align? With Portfolio and Project Management in place the ability to see, and understand, individual projects or the entire project portfolio is straightforward.  Project Management can provide you with productivity improvements, better resource allocation, time- to- market enhancements, cost reductions, and current information.

As an organization becomes more and more “mature” in the area of Project Management and their use of Microsoft Project, they can use the built-in timesheet functions in addition to the task functions.  This allows for the tracking and understanding of what each resource within the organization is doing.  It allows you to answer the question “Can we do this next project with the people we have; on budget?”.   The system allows you to see instantly where a resource may be overloaded, or have free – or perhaps what work can be shuffled around to free up a resource.

In a survey of 166 companies by the Center for Business Practice, The Value of Project Management, 94% or respondents stated that implementing Project Management added value in terms of :

                                                ROI – 25%

                                                Productivity – 15%

                                                Time to Market reduction – 15%

                                                Project/Process Performance – 20%

Microsoft Project Server allows you to see at a glance the information that is important to you.  Dashboards can be easily created with information that is specific to the needs of various groups within an organization.  For example, the Executives can look at budget information while the Project Managers are looking at scheduling information while other groups are looking at information specific to them.  As an example, here is a screenshot showing the Cost Status and Schedule Status in graphical format:

By: Collin Quiring

According to the PMI institute, Twelve Trillion (yes, with a “T”), will be spent on projects in 2009.  Wow, a Trillion here, a Trillion there, and before long this is real money!

I wonder how many of those dollars will be spent on projects without a Project Manager?

I wonder how much of that money will be wasted?

I wonder how many projects will be declared a success?

That sure is a lot of Project Management (intentional or not)!!

By: Collin Quiring

There are numerous viewpoints and benefits that an individual can demonstrate when presenting the need for Project Management to upper management.  This entry isn’t an attempt to create an exhaustive list, but it is a starting point that helps show some of the value of Project Management, particularly when using Microsoft Project Server.

Some business areas that are affected by Project Management are harder to quantify in terms of ROI and money than others.  One of the biggest benefits that results from using Project Management principles is the increased flow of information and ability to make better informed decisions.  It is difficult to put a dollar amount on “doing things better” but there are some intuitive benefits.  Being able to make better decisions means fewer mistakes and a reduction in the number of times costly projects are started and then later stopped or completed without the expected gains.

Collaboration and real time, easy to access information is a business benefit that shouldn’t be underestimated.  The ability for everyone (with the appropriate security permissions) to see information from their own desktop, through a web browser, without having to request it from somebody else, or waiting for the “official report” to appear, is valuable.  Using templates allows for everybody to start from the same spot and to use pre-existing and approved information terminology and methodologies.  This saves time and effort and permits the Project Managers and the users to have a familiar format – increasing collaboration and understanding.

A few of the questions that we like to ask Senior Managers are: What is a single view of ALL your projects worth?  What would the value to your organization be if you could see every project that you have?  How does each project align with the company’s stated strategies? How does the portfolio align? With Portfolio and Project Management in place the ability to see, and understand, individual projects or the entire project portfolio is straightforward.  Project Management can provide you with productivity improvements, better resource allocation, time-to-market enhancements, cost reductions, and timely information.

As an organization becomes more and more “mature” in the area of Project Management and their use of Microsoft Project, they can use the built-in timesheet functions in addition to the task functions.  This allows for the tracking and understanding of what each resource within the organization is doing.  It allows you to answer the question “Can we do this next project with the people we have, on budget?”.   The system allows you to see instantly where a resource may be overloaded, or have free – or perhaps what work can be shuffled around to free up a resource.

In a survey of 166 companies by the Center for Business Practice, The Value of Project Management, 94% or respondents stated that implementing Project Management added value in terms of :

                                                ROI – 25%

                                                Productivity – 15%

                                                Time to Market reduction – 15%

                                                Project/Process Performance – 20%

While intangibles are hard to demonstrate to management, the effort expended on Project Management has proven again and again to be worth it in terms of increased efficiency, collaboration and overall effectiveness.