Thursday 27 December 2012
Gantt chart in Execl 2013 and 2014
Thousand of users download this sheet every year when it is updated. It is in Dansih with Danish banking holidays etc.
Friday 21 December 2012
Thursday 20 December 2012
Why do we continue?
An analogy to your job as a project manager could be the following:
"Every morning your boss calls to offer you a new job, an unknown place with unknown deadlines and unknown partners. Without hesitation you say ok and thrusts you into the day. Each evening you will come deadly exhausted home to your family who have become accustomed to, you never get home on time. The morning after your boss is calling ... "
Canadian Martin Cobb's paradox of 1995 is about the same: "We know why projekter fail, we know how to prevent their failure – so why do they still fail?” David Hillson tries to answer it in this months Risk briefing here.
"Every morning your boss calls to offer you a new job, an unknown place with unknown deadlines and unknown partners. Without hesitation you say ok and thrusts you into the day. Each evening you will come deadly exhausted home to your family who have become accustomed to, you never get home on time. The morning after your boss is calling ... "
Canadian Martin Cobb's paradox of 1995 is about the same: "We know why projekter fail, we know how to prevent their failure – so why do they still fail?” David Hillson tries to answer it in this months Risk briefing here.
Sunday 16 December 2012
Henry L. Gantt 1861 - 1919 didn't event the Gantt Chart!
Wednesday 12 December 2012
Excellent communication with little effort
Heard today Ann Mark (her who ran the program Knowledge about for several years on DR2) talk about communication. Exciting exciting.She started with this dear little video clip - as well says it all about communication?
As project managers, we must be able to: manage people, leading change, understand customers and users, selling ideas and plans to the Steering Committee groups, be an ambassador for our project etc. etc. The tool for all this IS communication. Yet we spend very little time on increasing the quality of our communication. When we wake up and understand our role as project managers?
Thursday 6 December 2012
Tuesday 4 December 2012
A crazy can ask more than ten wise ...
Situation: You have a good project model / Stage-Gate model with precise steps and accurate descriptions of the information that you must provide as basis for decisions / Gate report to pass a gate and proceed to the next stage. You have collected the required information for decision making in the Idea stage for an exciting new project. You are meeting with the Steering Committee / Gate-keeper group and has just presented your report and recommended a Go!
Action: The group also felt it all sounds exciting, but is a little uncertain about risks, and asks you to go a little more in depth with the risks. They are also a little uncertain about the market assessment is valid, and therefore ask that you sacrifice a significant investment in a comprehensive study. Finally, there is little doubt about how the final product actually looks like, why they ask you to sacrifice some design money to develop some plausible sketches of the final product. You all agree that you convene another meeting when you have the information sought.
Reflection: What the decision the group has just asked is probably the main constituents of the subsequent analysis and planning phase. They have thus deferred the decision to go ahead until they know more! They think, then, that by postponing their Go they can for free get all the information they would otherwise have to invest significant amounts of time and money in getting in the subsequent phases? Sorry, this does not work in really! Information and security costs! That is why we must have the Go, so we can ensure these things!
Moral: You can not be 100% sure on a project. Projects are business decisions, and in business is nothing is given. Business is basically decisions about taking some chances and run some risks, but certaint, it will never be. Project Models is about to do the most important thing for given times in relation to the decisions to be taken. Therefore, as a decision-maker you have to realise that this stuff takes time and especially cost money. The further we go in the project model, the wiser we become, but we can never be sure, and we can never avoid wasting time and money on projects that are underway proves to be unhealthy.
The lesson: When a decision group asks such questions as described here, you should take it as buying signals. Just answer: "I can hear that you would like to know more, and it can be done. You have to just give a Go to invest ex. £ 30,000 in the next phase and then you will get answers to all your questions. What do you say? - Is it a Go so? "
Action: The group also felt it all sounds exciting, but is a little uncertain about risks, and asks you to go a little more in depth with the risks. They are also a little uncertain about the market assessment is valid, and therefore ask that you sacrifice a significant investment in a comprehensive study. Finally, there is little doubt about how the final product actually looks like, why they ask you to sacrifice some design money to develop some plausible sketches of the final product. You all agree that you convene another meeting when you have the information sought.
Reflection: What the decision the group has just asked is probably the main constituents of the subsequent analysis and planning phase. They have thus deferred the decision to go ahead until they know more! They think, then, that by postponing their Go they can for free get all the information they would otherwise have to invest significant amounts of time and money in getting in the subsequent phases? Sorry, this does not work in really! Information and security costs! That is why we must have the Go, so we can ensure these things!
Moral: You can not be 100% sure on a project. Projects are business decisions, and in business is nothing is given. Business is basically decisions about taking some chances and run some risks, but certaint, it will never be. Project Models is about to do the most important thing for given times in relation to the decisions to be taken. Therefore, as a decision-maker you have to realise that this stuff takes time and especially cost money. The further we go in the project model, the wiser we become, but we can never be sure, and we can never avoid wasting time and money on projects that are underway proves to be unhealthy.
The lesson: When a decision group asks such questions as described here, you should take it as buying signals. Just answer: "I can hear that you would like to know more, and it can be done. You have to just give a Go to invest ex. £ 30,000 in the next phase and then you will get answers to all your questions. What do you say? - Is it a Go so? "
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