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The Nuts and
Bolts of Project Management
We specialize in assisting corporate and government clients in learning to
improve their productivity while planning and executing projects.
Our three-phase approach yields faster more efficient project initiation,
planning and execution results.
We also offer a one-day class on Microsoft Project 2000TM for
users wanting to improve their productivity in using the software.
Microsoft Project 2000TM is a registered
trademark of Microsoft Corporation.
Find out more....
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Project Management Tips
In each issue we pass along tips and tricks concerning Project Management
and Microsoft Project 2000TM software. Please feel free to
pass this newsletter along to others.
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· Ending a Project - Lessons Learned
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Don't
Call it a Post Mortem
In an organization working to achieve Project Management Maturity, a
meeting is held after the project is over or at least when most people
think it is over. They call it a Post Mortem. To us this sounds
unpleasantly morbid. After all, your project most likely has either
earned or saved money for your company. What has been learned from the
work that was done? The logical time to ask the following questions is
when the project is finished.
We prefer to set the stage differently by calling it a Lessons Learned
Meeting. This positive spin gets to the point of why this meeting is
needed to move to the next level of Project Management Maturity. If an
organization keeps making the same mistakes how is it ever going to grow?
The easiest part of the Lessons Learned meeting is the technical session.
It assumes that this project is not the only one we are going to do, but
is one of a sequence that will repeat. What worked with our technical
solution on this project and what didn't? Would we use the same or
similar solution again? It is important to keep the discussion of
technical solutions separate from other issues. It's the difference
between "what" we did and "how" we did
it.
The next session of the Lessons Learned should concern Project Management
Process. Any process is always under construction even when we think we
have reached the pinnacle of efficiency. Assuming we have a process we
are working within, how did the process steps of
Initiation, Planning and Execution & Control work? What forms and
templates did we use that worked well? Were there forms and templates we
were supposed to use and never got around to? What got in the team's way
of using the predefined process?
The hardest session of the Lessons Learned meeting is often the team
building or interpersonal one. We once worked with a group that had the
Technical and Process sessions immediately after the Project was
completed and then waited a month later for a team building off-site
after tempers had cooled down a bit. What got in the way of our
collaboration together? Can we talk to each other without rancor about
how we worked together? In what way were we successful? Interpersonal
tensions are going to exist in any organization. Choosing to deal with
them proactively is a clear mark of organizational maturity.
Taken together, these three sessions should give you a well-rounded
approach to making your next project experience different from the once
just completed. Be sure to keep and publish notes of the meeting(s) and
be sure that they are included in your project archives.
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· How to Display Linked Tasks with a
Fixed Deadline Using Microsoft ProjectTM
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If
you have a deadline such as a product release date, which is not the end
of the project that has preceding tasks such as requirements, development
and test, how is the deadline best displayed? If you know how long each
of those tasks are going to take and that they flow in sequence, how can
you make them line up so you know when they should start?
One way is to fix the start of the release date with a hard constraint.
In Microsoft Project, double-click on the task, choose the Advanced
Tab, make the constraint Must Finish On, and type
in the milestone date.
Link the series of tasks to that constrained task with standard Finish to
Start dependencies, then, using the Advanced Tab again,
constrain each of those tasks with the As Late as Possible
constraint.
One drawback of this method is that it marks all the tasks as being on
the Critical Path as shown here.
Another method is to set the constraint of the release date
with a softer constraint such as Start No Earlier Than. You
can do this by just typing in a date in the Start Field.
Then link the predecessor tasks to it with the Start to Finish
dependency. The logic of this dependency is hard to fathom. Don't worry
about it. Technically it says that the predecessor task cannot finish
until the successor has started. Using this link allows you to mimic the
As Late As Possible constraint without affecting your Critical Path.
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· The Next Issue
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Our
April 2002 issue will focus on the roles and responsibilities of a
Project Manager.
To subscribe to our newsletter
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· Previous Newsletters
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A
copy of this and previous newsletters may be found online at the link
below.
If you are interested in having us present either our Microsoft Project
in One Day course or Project Management Nuts and Bolts to employees at
your company, please contact us today.
See Previous Newsletters
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