Bill McQueenEng Project Manager| NanometricsYork, North Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Hi,
I have a set of resources (approx 30) who take on all design engineering work. This can be anything from a major project or a 1 hour sustaining engineering task.
Planning this with MS Project has been a nightmare as the schedules and priorities are very dynamic, and can change on a day to day basis. The project plan was kept at a reasonably detail level (1 day min) and could not be kept up to date
My execs want a tool that can show what work moves out if some work that was low priority becomes urgent.
In a number of cases my resources are specialists (ie no one else can do the job)
I cant imagine that I'm the first person to struggle with this type of environment and hope there are others who have found a way to make this work.
Any guidance will be really appreciated! Saving Changes...
I wonder if perhaps your schedules were built in a rigid and inflexible way. MS Project or any scheduling tool should be able to let you move major deliverables around on the schedule. Priorities can shift, and you should be able to shift your schedule around.
I have seen schedules in MS Project get really rigid and hard to manage if you use:
* Date constraints too often
* Overloaded or missing scheduling logic (network diagram)
* No milestones to control the start and end of major work packages
* Missing work-level information for each resource
I like the "Dynamic Scheduling with MS Project" books, as a way to avoid these types of problems. Using the techniques there, I can usually create a schedule that lets me re-prioritize and move around work without too much trouble. Of course, moving in-progress work is always difficult, but there is no way around that one.
If you want any help or specific guidance, let me know. I do training in this area, and I am happy to help.
The only other way I have heard of doing this is to manage the work as lists of assignments in Excel or a database of some kind. You could come up with your own algorithms to estimate time and capacity. I do not recommend doing this, because it is a lot of work and is never very accurate. Saving Changes...
Anonymous
Hi Alex,
After reading your post I thought I'd let you know some of the daily challenges I face.
1. There is a high level of detail in the plan, which means that it is always never up to date.
2. Some of the R&D activities change daily as new issues are stumbled on.
3. Project and product priorities change daily.
4. Resources are diverted onto other issues without any involvment of project scheduling.
5. There is quite a bit of missing schedule logic because of the dynamic environment.
6. Scheduling frequently relies on the use of the levelling tool which rejigs the plan based on the priority level but frequently also does something unexpected.
Currently there is a combination of excel spreadsheets and MS project plans used to capture all requested eng activity.
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George JucanManaging Partner| Organizational Perfomance Enablers NetworkWoodbridge, Ontario, Canada
Hi Bill,
Recently I created a project management methodology for a department almost identical with yours – only that they were coming from the other end, having a limited formal project management approach and needing to get more organized.
One answer to your issue is to start using a specialized workforce management system to do scheduling based on a range of criteria such as target delivery date, priority, resources conflict etc. MS Project is not the right tool for this – it should be used focusing on deliverables first, and activities to meet them, but going down to 1-day tasks is way too much detail (you need to update the plan every day). So I would suggest to investigate specialized tools for detailed scheduling – I personally like Oracle Workforce Scheduling (former TempoSoft product), but searching the internet for “workforce management system” will show you even several promising open-source products. However, either you find a tool that integrates with MS Project (at least at milestone level) or you drop MS Project altogether and use the new tool for planning (which may work fine in your environment, even for projects).
The other answer I would suggest – and I know a lot of project managers will jump up hearing this – is to manage less your workforce. Going down to 1-day tasks is way too detailed planning, and you may be loosing the big picture by working at ground level. My suggestion would be to plan your projects using MS Project as you normally do, but stop the planning at deliverable level – something that is tangible and adds value to the project. It is hard to believe that a single day activity would add enough value to justify the time you spend recording and updating it. Trust your people as the specialists they are, tell them what you need from them (as deliverable) and allow them to organize the detailed activities to get them done.
Regarding the support work it should be maintained in a separate “to-do list”. I do not recommend maintaining it in MS Project – spending 10-15 minutes to record, update, reassign resources etc for a 3-4 hours activity is a waste of time. Instead, assign your people only 80% of working time to projects, and maintain a buffer of 20% for operational work – based on your experience you can vary these percentages for each resource, as you already have a good feeling who will be required for support more and who not so much. Sure, there will be days when they will exceed the support percentage, and days when they will not use it at all, but in average it should be a wash. And because your projects have now longer activities (based on deliverables) the availability for projects vs. support has time to balance out.
Hope it helps,
George Jucan
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Bill McQueenEng Project Manager| NanometricsYork, North Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Thanks George,
I would be interested to hear what you implemented at the company with limited project management.
I'm taking a look at the WFM systems now to see if they can provide what I need.
One of the perceived benefits of using MS Project within the company is so that the execs can have an accurate estimate to the fixing of engineering issues. And secondly to be able to understand what's affected if another high priority task is shoe-horned into the plan, or to show whats impacted when during design testing, an unexpected problem is identified.
Best regards,
Bill McQueen
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George JucanManaging Partner| Organizational Perfomance Enablers NetworkWoodbridge, Ontario, Canada
Hi Bill,
The drive to use MS Project as you explain it reminds me of another client, trying to use MS Project to manage power equipment servicing from coming in the shop until delivery to the customer – including allocation of equipment, resolving conflicts and optimizing schedule. I normally use MS Project myself, so I have nothing against it, but it really isn’t the tool to manage 2-3 hours allocations with it! They were very keen on it, so I tried to make it work by using separate schedules for each project and a master schedule to resolve cross-projects conflicts and optimize equipment usage, but I also recommended them to get specialized software to manage the work on the floor.
Regarding the other client I previously mentioned, while I cannot provide the details due to confidentiality agreement, the basis of the process I set them up with are:
- Activities done by 1 resource (maybe with some limited help from others) and shorter that 10 days are represented as a single activity, with the percentage of time allocation pre-negotiated to allow some time for participation in other projects. Unless there are issues and the person needs management support, the details of activity execution are left to that person to manage.
- The work break-down structure for projects is to be decomposed only to the level the manager will exercise control at. This implies that senior resources doing a normal activity (e.g. a senior engineer revising a blue-print) might have even month-long tasks assigned to them, without worrying about the multiple tasks within that activity. If there are problems with one of such tasks the person responsible needs to surface them to attention, otherwise they are off the management’s radar. This approach of empowering people had as a side-effect a dramatic improvement in morale and commitment to delivery.
- People’s allocation is done to max of 6.5 hours out of an 8 hours work schedule – the 1.5 hour is reserved for company time (non-project meetings, socializing etc) and to deal with emergencies. If this buffer is not used it represents a gain for the project(s) each person is working on, so the “meeting the deadline” metric improved to 87% (from 32%).
- The project management methodology included as fundamental concept the “project complexity” (expanding on the concepts I published at http://www.gantthead.com/content/articles/231775.cfm) and tailoring the mandatory and recommended project management processes/formalism (including document templates) for each project while all being aligned with the same concepts. This way, a $150k 2 months project for a regular client using in-house resources did not have to jump through the same hoops as a $5 mil year long engagement into a business area totally new for the company. This improved voluntary adoption of project management methodology for smaller projects, that before had a real struggle applying sound project management principles (change control, risk management, financial planning, communication planning etc).
Hope it helps,
George Jucan
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Bill McQueenEng Project Manager| NanometricsYork, North Yorkshire, United Kingdom
Hi George,
Thanks for your help. The way to solve my dilemma is much clearer now.
As a first step, I'll create and manage the plan at a higher level, with the work packages containing the detail of the individual tasks. I'll try this out and see how it goes.
Regards,
Bill
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George JucanManaging Partner| Organizational Perfomance Enablers NetworkWoodbridge, Ontario, Canada
Hope I could help - if you wish connect to me and you can send me direct emails as you go, if you have any follow-on questions.
Good luck,
