I've been a project manager for years, managing highly complex projects. I have a project plan however I use it for myself and generally run my project team meetings with task spreadsheets. The new PMO dirctor is insisting that I use my project plan solely. It just seems like so much work as I could update status directly in the spreadsheet as I ran the meeting.
How do you do this?
Do you work off the project plan in the meeting?
Circulate meeting minutes afterwards?
Why not let the team pull their work and manage the status of it themselves using a Kanban like approach? You could then self-serve the status updates needed to update your schedule...
If not, then I would just change MS Project's view to a task view minus the Gantt chart, hide extraneous columns, filter by tasks falling into the current time period and sort them by team member or other logical grouping method and go through them sequentially in a team meeting...
It might be a stretch to use alternative forms such as Kanban if the PMO Director is old school, but as Kiron said this is one good option. Saving Changes...
Eric SimmsSenior Program ManagerBaltimore, Maryland, United States
On occasion I've made an electronic copy of my schedule, loaded it onto a laptop and brought it to meetings. I attached the laptop to a projector and edited the schedule during the meeting. This enabled everyone to see and react to the impact of changes immediately, which helped shape our discussions. Saving Changes...
