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HowdoToolsHelpYouWork

I'm planing the syllabus for a (new-to-me) project management workshop for graduate students. I'm supposed to teach Microsoft Project to new project managers so they can learn to schedule and manage projects. Well, when I teach PM, I don't use a scheduling tool. And if I was going to teach a tool, it wouldn't be Project ( Fast Track Scheduler is easier to understand and faster to learn). I'm going back to my contact and clarifying what he really wants :-)

But I agree that knowing how to use a tool to help you schedule and reschedule projects could be enormously helpful. What tools do you find help you work? -- JohannaRothman 2004.01.20

Big Visible Charts (BVCs).

Burn down charts

EstherDerby 01.20.04

The new, hot technology is flipcharts, butcher paper, index cards, post-it notes, scented markers, and sharpie pens.

FWIW, I like the post-it brand flip charts. But be aware that the post-it brand notes don't stick well to their brand flipcharts. Use off brand post-it notes.

Visibility is the key to good project planning.

SteveSmith 2004.01.20

Used in its basic form without style sheets, it's a quick and easy way to display tables of information that anyone can get to (test results with links to the summaries and raw data, in my case). It's also easy to change. Avoid backgrounds, blinking, and all that, just put up the info, though green for pass and red for fail helps.

MikeMelendez 2004.01.21

wiki-webs are useful various purposes, if a Wall of Wonder isn't working due to distributed workers / managers.

SteveSmith 2004.01.23

Perhaps you are doing them a disservice not to teach them MS project. It may not be a useful program but so many executives expect project managers to know how to us it that they would be at a competitive disadvantage if they do not know it.

KenEstes 2004.01.23

I've been wondering about that. The problem is that teaching MS Project is more than a 3-hour gig :-) And the best way to teach it (as with many other tools) is to teach it and then coach people over the course of several months.

I was wondering if teaching a different tool (Fast Track Scheduler is my favorite non-enterprise tool) would do the trick, since this tool is easier to use and the knowledge is transferable to Project, without the overhead of Project. -- JohannaRothman 2004.01.26

I moved my comment to this page since I had put it in the wrong place (WhatWouldYouTeachNewProjectManagers)I had never heard of this product before so I also put a link to it at the top of the page.

The other product that AEC sells sounds interesting, has anyone worked with Details 3.0?

KenEstes 2004.01.26

I want a tool that extends my reach

Not a tool that restricts my reach

SteveSmith 2004.01.31

I'm conflicted about the proposed syllabus. The academic side of me says yes, teach them fundamentals of MS project. I wish more projects had actual project schedules. The practical side says no. Instead, focus on other things that will make them good project managers.

From my dealings with smaller organizations within the last few years, very few of the development projects from these organizations actually used some type of project management software. I suspect that this is the case for many organizations in the real world. I think the use of formal PM software can really help organizations but I feel that the principles of project management, proper planning and soft skills are more important than teaching them about a specific tool that their organization may never adopt. Maybe some of the problems that these organizations encountered could have been alleviated by using one of these formal PM packages.

For some of my past Fortune 500 clients, I would say that only about half of the projects that I worked on utilized formal scheduling and tracking packages such as MS Project. Generally, the larger and more mature the organization, the more likely that they would use formal PM software. I suspect that it also depends on the previous exposure of the PM to these packages. Some of these projects created initial project schedules in MS Project/Primavera but the PMs did not formally update them on a regular basis as the projects progressed. Some of the best projects (meeting schedule, cost and customer satisfaction requirements) that I have worked on did not use project management software. One of the most important factors to that project success was that we had very experienced folks on the project.

I think teaching the use of the PM tool like MS Project might be warranted, but the students should be warned that many folks in the real project world don't use formal PM software packages.

If a tool did exist to teach project management it should be a simulation tool where participants can see the impact of their decisions during project system dynamics. It would allow the user to better understand the non-linear nature of project management. --JohnSuzuki 2004.02.05

But such a simulation tool would assume that people agree on apropriate models of process dynamics. I have never seen any such agreement. I do not know what kind of measures most people think are important and few people can think of anything beyond linear interactions between events.

KenEstes 2004.02.06

Maybe I can help John with a proposal for how to get un-conflicted. Some places use MS-Project, and some don't. But the idea embodied in a PERT chart is very, very powerful. The first PERT charts weren't done on GUI driven computers, and PERT goes with "CPM" - it went with a planning method. For me two things absolutely stood out in a PM course I took (the _one_ PM course I ever took):

• The profound metaphor of sequential activities connected in a network. (PERT chart).
• The equally profound metaphor that given sequenced work over time, resource loading varies . . . even when it's people doing the work. (GANTT chart).

Not the tools. And especially not the end date that some folks build a career out of deriding, while others make careers from praising. I think fluency in those two metaphors is indespensible for someone who would do a project.

Teach that. Ignore the software.

- JimBullock, 2004.02.06

What's "CPM"? - ShannonSeverance 2004.02.06
CPM = Critical Path Method, which focuses on the path(s) through task dependencies which have the least slack. --DaveSmith 2004.02.07

Thanks to Jim for clarifying my intent. What I really wanted to convey was that the class teach some of these underlying principles or concepts in project management (CPM, PERT, GANTT, Theory of Contraints (TOC), Activity Based Costing (ABC), Earned Value, etc.). MS Project can be used as a supplement to illustrate each of these principles or concepts.

-- JohnSuzuki, 2004.02.11

OK, that's one of my backlog of about a billion where you have done this for me.

The risk for using any tool to do this is that the tool mechanics become the topic, and chew up all kinds of class time. I think a small number of pithy exercises with simple, low learning curve tools could be really compelling.

One of the best things I ever did with dependencies (the big deal with PERT charts) for example, used a cork-board, multi-colored index cards, some string and push-pins. The organization and the situation both had MS-Project-itis. Files and printouts and whatever flying around that nobody read, understood, or cared about - even the accurate ones. It didn't help that many of the folks there were steeped in "the magic of the tool." With cards & etc, and suddenly it was obvious that about six parts of the organization had to each do bits of this job. Also that we had no clue about the timeline.

I wonder if there isn't a way to teach all this stuff simply.

• Start with projects as intentional activites, which suggests a process of orient, plan and act (on whatever scale, and with whatever accuracy.) Often a project involves a production process.
• From there build a WBS, and make cards.

  Cards-on-the-Wall Sessions: A low-tech method to help your high-tech ventures succeed. by Dwayne Phillips
  Nice article. Sorry I missed that one. I missed a lot of things in 2001; mid dot-com implosion. -- jb
  

• Then with the cards, it's "When will this end?" - dependency thinking and PERT / CPM.
• Then it's "How busy are we?" - loading thinking and GANTT / the Evils of Multi-Tasking.
• Then it's "What about variability in our estimates?" - TOC thinking.
• Then it's "How the heck do we track & report this?" - EVA & "Slug Charts."
• Then it's "Well, how do we steer things based on what we're observing?" - That's systems thinking, and some mechanical project level activities: replanning, handling exceptions, project communication.
• From there it's "Gosh it's hard for people, including me, to cope with all that." - That's the human and humane stuff communication, congruence, project community, tools like MBTI or NLP.

That's a nice outline. If JR doesn't do that, I think I will. I may anyway.

-- JimBullock. 2004.02.12 (Edit)