The Money Files

In this book, Bonnie Biafore aims to share the basics of project management and how to achieve what you want to do in Microsoft Project 2013. That’s quite an ask for one book. Part 1 is a primer on project management and I was surprised that there was so much about this including project selection. It’s written as if it is aimed at a complete beginner – at least, the early bits are; the book gets technical pretty quickly – and there are nice boxes called     ‘reality check’ scattered throughout. They tell it how it really is, like this one (which you probably can’t read) titled ‘When Stakeholders Aren’t Supportive’.

Chartering the project

As part of the ‘how to do project management’ stuff, Biafore describes a project charter as a press release. This appeals to me as someone who writes press releases and I'd not thought about it like this before. She writes:

The project manager needs some publicity, too. Your authority comes from your project and its sponsor, not your position in the organisation, so people need to know how far your authority goes. The project charter is like a project's press release – it announces the project itself, as well as your responsibilities and authority as its manager.

There’s lots of practical advice like this, including the handy tip of not getting the most senior manager to send out the charter unless they actually know something about the project. You need authority, but you also need credibility, so choose someone who can give that to you, not any old senior manager in a suit.

"Like the pop-fly ball that drops to the ground as the third baseman and shortstop stare at each other, project work can fall between the cracks," she writes, whatever that means.

Getting technical: MS Project 2013

It's not until Part 2 that the book starts talking about MS Project. The biggest news since the product’s last release is that Project is now part of the Office 365 suite and there are easier to digest reports (which frankly wouldn’t be hard). In fact, there's a lot on reports which leads me to believe that getting them to look how you want could be tricky.

The book only covers the Standard and Professional editions, not Project Server. Some of the 365 suite features are covered but that software is evolving and the book is likely to get out of date quickly (and Biafore acknowledges that).

There are usability tips like collapsing the ribbon so you can see more of your plan on the screen and keyboard shortcuts. Biafore uses an example to create a basic project and then goes on to use another example to create a 'proper' schedule in a lot more detail.

She also includes tips on using other Microsoft products alongside Project, such as how to create a RACI matrix in Excel and importing resource names from your Outlook contacts.

The book is full of tips like how to create a resource and assign it to tasks at the same time, which are all aimed at getting you operational faster. I like the idea of downloadable worksheets for things like capital budget planning from the book's website and also links to MS templates online, which this book provides. They make the book more useful (and give it a longer shelf life) and the added resources will help you get your project on track more quickly. Having said that, I haven't downloaded any to try them out.

Check your schedule

There’s a lot about how calendars control resource and task scheduling with plenty of detail and screenshots about how to set up the correct variations of working time for your project.

As well as detailed walkthroughs and how to information, there is also practical advice for making the best possible schedule. For example, Biafore says you should be on the look out for these 8 things as you refine your schedule:

1. Task dependencies that shouldn’t be there or should be a different type.
2. Tasks with inflexible date constraints that they shouldn’t have.
3. Manually scheduled tasks that should instead be auto-scheduled.
4. Work or duration values that see too low or too high.
5. Work packages/tasks without assigned resources.
6. Summary tasks with assigned resources.
7. Overallocated resources.
8. Resource calendars that don’t represent people’s actual availability.

You can do some really advanced stuff, like setting work contours within an individual task to reflect how work is actually done – after all, resources don't work at the same pace for the entire duration of a task, especially if it lasts over several days. You could get really whizzy with your resource management using the advice in this book, but many of the features described will be far too much detail for the average project. While it's good to know what Project can do, it would be useful to have some sort of signpost in the book to say 'you can do without this feature if your project environment is not that mature or is relatively straightforward’. This would help new project managers work out which features they should use (like dependencies and baselines) and which ones they can leave and learn about another day (like creating an Excel form to display task information from Project and use it to get task updates from team members).

At over 800 pages the book covers a lot of ground. Much of that is screenshots, which are good and helpful. What surprised me was the breadth of the book, which covers everything from ‘what is a project’ to crunching some serious project calculations using data cubes. I don’t think you could read this knowing nothing about project management and turn into an expert by page 800, but if you need a detailed knowledge of MS Project 2013 then you certainly will get it from this informative and practical book.

At Synergy, the annual UK PMI project management event in London which was held earlier this month, Mark Langley, PMI President and CEO, spoke about what he sees as the future development of the project management role.

He started by setting the scene for the evolution of projects in the workplace: 88% of organisations think that strategy implementation is important and yet only 62% of projects meet their original business goals. This is 10% less than 5 years ago so businesses are seeing less success when it comes to implementing strategy.

“Value for money, doing more with less – that’s what organisations are dealing with,” he said, “but it is also about strategy.” Working with organisational leaders is an area where PMI are very active as they try to push the agenda that strategic delivery is about projects, programmes and portfolios, which is a link that many businesses seem to have missed.

The challenge, he said, was that when you look round the boardroom table there isn’t anyone accountable for strategy implementation. It’s usually dispersed. “They don’t connect strategy with projects and programmes and too often connect it with something tactical.”

Why don’t executives get it?

“Language influences behaviour,” Mark said. “We define projects in technical terms – budget, scope, performance indices. This sounds great but to the executive – they don’t understand anything you just said.” The board, he explained, talks a different language. “We have to change that language when we go up to organisational leaders when they’re deciding what to invest in project and programme management.”

If we don’t invest in projects and make ourselves understood, we put more resources at risk. A high performing organisation (in project management terms) risks 14 times less money than other organisations, simply through being better at implementing strategic and tactical projects.

So where is project management going?

Mark believes that there will be a role of Project Executive at some point, although I imagine some companies have this now. It will be a board level position responsible for strategy implementation through projects and programmes. The problem is that we don’t have the people with the right skills to fill these roles.

“Technical skills are no longer enough,” he said. “They are the easy to teach but hard to find – it’s a career path issue; a university issue. People don’t come out of university with the technical project management skills that are necessary.”

So, we have two issues: a lack of pre-trained project managers with technical skills and a lack of people who could step up and take board level roles as project executives. Businesses, Mark said, do realise that they need to invest in project management. They recognise that they’re developing project leaders but they don’t recognise that they’re developing business leaders, he explained. The competences you need to be a good project leader are the same as those for being a good C-suite executive in any position: financial acumen, leadership, communication skills and so on.

Despite these challenges, Mark was clear that where project management should be going is to the boardroom. “Strategy development and strategy implementation are part of the same whole and that’s what organisations are starting to realise,” he said. Businesses are moving from having project managers to project leaders and eventually to project executives. Project professionals are moving out of projects into business areas and executive positions.

I think this shift is already starting to happen – it will be interesting to see how far we get in 10 years and whether the statistics for the importance of strategy implementation remain high, only to be matched by an organisation’s ability to deliver to that strategy.

Project status reports include financial information, but also a whole host of other things related to the project’s progress. But are yours actually getting read? And do your stakeholders make decisions or act on the information in there?

This is a common problem for project managers, that and the fact that they are time-consuming and a bit boring to produce anyway. My new online course and ebook, Better Project Status Reports, aims to change all that. It even includes an option where I’ll review one of your status reports and help you make it better.

You can find out more about it here.

And it’s got a money back guarantee if you change your mind at any point or decide it isn’t for you.

Drop me a line if you need more information or have any questions!

Ah, wouldn’t it be great if you could wave a magic wand and get more cash for your project? Think of all the things you could do with a bit more budget – add in some extra features, reward the team, improve the quality, deliver faster! Well, you can increase your project budget but it’s not the easiest of things to do and it does depend on your project. Have a look at these 4 ways to increase your budget and see if you could use any of them on your project.

1. Call in some favours

Yes, top of the list is cashing in those favours that you’ve been banking over the years. This could mean that another manager lends you a resource or some equipment without cross-charging your budget (call it a development opportunity). It could be that you cut travel expenses on your project by getting everyone to call in favours and stay overnight with their friends and family members.

The downside of calling in favours is then you don’t have anything in the ‘bank’ for the future and it isn’t always possible. This isn’t a reliable way to increase your project budget but depending on your project there might be something you could do here.

2. Swap or Barter for services

Again, it depends on your project as to whether swapping services is going to work for you. Swapping a high value software licence for some free pens from the stationery cupboard obviously isn’t appropriate. But talk to your connections and reach out to your network. There could be someone willing to take publicity photos or write you a press release in exchange for sending one of their staff along to a training course you are running. Look at ways to reduce your expenses.

Just a note: you shouldn’t ask people to work for free. They should be getting something of value back in exchange, otherwise it isn’t really a swap or a barter, it’s just you asking for free stuff. That isn’t ethical and you’ll probably hear ‘No’ quite a lot.

3. Reduce the project scope

What can you cut out? Reducing the scope would give you extra cash to improve the areas of scope that remain. You can’t make this decision without input from your project sponsor, but you could put forward a recommendation about postponing some areas of project scope and moving them into a Phase 2.

Look at areas of the project budget that don’t add as much value as other areas and see if you could cut those without compromising quality. Do you really need that all-hands meeting at a posh hotel? Couldn’t you manage with a conference call? Then, with your sponsor’s approval, the money that was going towards those can be legitimately put towards other areas.

4. Don’t take the first deal

Shop around for the best deal. You probably do this anyway using the procurement project management approaches for large items, but could you do it for small items too? Instead of going to your usual meeting venue, is there somewhere cheaper locally? (Or could you ask your favourite venue to match the price of another venue?). Can you get a single resource with the skills to cover several subject areas on the project? That could save you having to fund the salaries and costs of two employees.

Think about all the extra stuff that comes with what you buy – warranties, guarantees, escrow, insurance, maintenance contracts… what do you actually need and would it be cheaper to source it from somewhere else? Could you acquire equipment second hand or refurbished? There are often other ways to carry out procurement, but make sure you check any non-standard approach with your purchasing or finance team first.

What else have you tried to save the pennies on your project budget? Let us know in the comments.