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Define: Critical Path

Critical Path: A series of tasks that extend a project to its longest finish date.  Tasks that depend upon previous tasks, causing a project to finish at the latest time.

 

A project’s critical path is your longest route from start to finish.  In other words, your project cannot be finished any quicker than through this series of tasks.  Eliminate or shorten some tasks, and your project will be completed sooner.

It is valuable to analyze a project’s critical path.  Sometimes you can offload tasks to other resources, effectively shortening it.  In essence, you are turning a series circuit into a parallel circuit with multiple paths.  Any time you can do this, you are trading time for resources.  Yes, it will cost more, but you’ll finish sooner.

Consider a simple project with 1,000 hours of work, all performed by a single person.  The critical path is that single-path sequence of tasks.  Task 1, then 2, then 3, and so on…  You get the idea.

What if you added another person who could do the same work?  The project would then be completed in 500 hours, utilizing two paths.  But do you have a second person?

This is the crux of project management – juggling time, resources, and cost to maximize productivity.  Quite a game, huh?  🙂

–ray

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How to: Level Resources in Microsoft Project

This post discusses how to perform resource leveling in Microsoft Project.  Before we perform the steps, we should first define resource leveling.

Resource leveling is the act of moving project tasks so that employees are not over allocated.  In other words, tasks are moved to new dates so they are not all piled on top of each other.  This ensures that resources have steady work without gaps and without excessive demand.

Microsoft Project can perform a one-time leveling, or automatically perform it each time a task is changed.  Normally, resource leveling is most effective for projects that have tasks with constraints.  For instance, a task may be set to ‘Start No Earlier Than’ a certain date.  This constraint forces the task to start after a specified date.  Other tasks may need to be split to start before and after this task.  In fact, the example below demonstrates this exact scenario.

 

First, setup a new project:

  1. Create two new tasks
  2. Add resources to the tasks
  3. Set the task durations
  4. The tasks should look like the image below

 

 

Set a task constraint:

  1. Drag the first task to the right so it overlaps the second task
  2. Notice the task icon in the information column
  3. Double-click on the task to see the Task Information dialog
  4. Click the Advanced tab to see the task constraint

 

 

Level the tasks:

  1. Choose Tools, Level Resources
  2. Click Level Now
  3. The results will be a split task that allows the resource to work before and after the first task.

 

 

–Newshirt

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Diamond Cutting

The four C’s of diamond cutting are Color, Clarity, Caret, and Cut.  Every stone is judged on these characteristics, and the price set accordingly.  My assertion is that these qualities also apply to the art of product development.  Engineers and Product Managers, listen up!  The value of products for your customers follows the same principles as cutting and polishing a beautiful stone.  Indulge me, and I’ll explain.

1. Color.  People expect beauty in the products they use, and will always choose a pleasing product to an ugly one.  This aspect of project development refers to the almost imperceptable touches of style you add to your work.  As left-brain engineers, we often overlook this.

2. Clarity.  Have you applied a ‘usability test’ to your product?  How clear is it?  How easy is it to navigate and complete the basic tasks?  Consider using a digital camera to study people using your product.  You’ll learn a lot about clarity and usability.

Polish: Refers to any blemishes on the surface of the diamond which are not significant enough to affect the clarity grade of the diamond. Examples of blemishes that might be considered as ‘polish’ characteristics are faint polishing lines and small surface nicks or scratches. Polish is regarded as an indicator of the quality of as diamond’s cut; it is graded as either Ideal, Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair or Poor.

3. Caret.  Is your product full-featured?  Is there a lot of value?  Consider building it out to offer more for the money.  But listen closely to customers before launching into your build-out program.  Find out what they want, and add only those features.

4. Cut.  There a dozens of ways to present a product (i.e. cut the product features for use).  Choose an ugly one, and customers will look elsewhere.  They want new ways to approach their problems.  After all, they have exhausted all the conventional wisdom, and are looking to you to solve the real jawbreakers.  Do it, and they will reward you.

 

–ray

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What’s More Important than Web 2.0?

Blogs, wikis, and social networks top the list for collaboration tools among project team professionals, right?  After all, they bring the entire team together in ways nobody ever thought possible.  But that’s not what the latest Ziff Davis study found.  In fact, “shared project management tools” was in the top ten, up there with simple old email.  Didn’t know that?  Check out this article by Allan Alder at CIO Insite.

http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Research/Collaboration-Unlocking-the-Power-of-Teams/

It’s buried on page five, but the zinger quote below tells it all.  Check out the chart on page 5 too.  It tells us that products like Standard Time® really are important!  They are the ones bringing project teams together.  “Shared project management systems” ranked at #8, while “MySpace” was at #27, just above “None of the above.”

 

Shared project management systems, workflow systems, real-time document collaboration tools and knowledge management systems are considered more important than any Web 2.0 technology: They are widely used by project teams and, to a slightly lesser extent, by co-workers engaged in business processes.

I’d like to see the list of collaboration tools you find useful for your project team.  If you are not using Standard Time, what are you using?  I’d like to hear!

–ray

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Define: Project Phase

Project phase: A series of project tasks grouped together by time frame.

 

Project phases help you complete a portion of your project before moving on to other activities.  If your project is so big that it needs phases, good for you!  It probably means you have many resources assigned to it, and you need to break things up to manage them effectively.  This is not always so, but often the case.

Both Microsoft Project® and Standard Time® let you create phases or breakdowns.  They are called by many names: summaries, subprojects, subsystems, or just plain phases.  Anyway you look at it, they are project breakdowns that represent groups of tasks lumped into a time frame.  In other words, all the tasks are expected to be completed within a close proximity of time.

To create a summary task in Microsoft Project, simply click the task under it, and then click the Indent toolbar button.  That will cause the task above it to become bold, signifying that it summarizes the tasks below it.  As you add more tasks to the summary, certain fields (like start and finish dates) will roll up to the summary level.  You can collapse the summary to hide detail.  In Standard Time, these tasks are displayed on the timesheet.

–ray

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How To: Set Deadlines for Tasks in MS Project

This topic (how to set a deadline for an MS Project task) is so simple, it’s hardly worth mentioning.  But, it might be good to review.  It’s just another little piece of information that might help scheduling projects.

To create a task deadline:

  1. Double-click on a task  (the Task Info dialog box appears)
  2. Click the Advanced tab
  3. Click the Deadline dropdown
  4. Choose a date, sometime after the task finish date

These steps allow you to set a deadline that the task should be finished by.  A small arrow is displayed in the Gantt column at that date.  The image below shows what it looks like.

 


Arrow indicating task deadline
(normally before the task finish date)

 

If your task gets bumped (presumably because of linked predecessors) the finish date may go beyond the deadline.  When this happens, a small red indicator is shown next to the task name.  The image below shows what it looks like.  Browse your mouse over it to see a tool tip explaining the reason.


Deadline indicator

 

–ray

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You Gotta Love It

Are you the leader of a project team?  Or do you hope to be someday?  Here’s a tip for managing people.  Love what you do.  And show it.

If you are in leadership, you will not have success until you love your work so much it’s contagious.  People need to see you digging into every aspect of it.  And digging hard.  They simply will not follow until they see the passion.  Are you uncovering new ideas and methods?  Finding improvements in managing projects?  Making it look fun?

Think of things through your team member’s eyes.  Do they see someone who can take their careers to the next level?  Sure, you may be a good ol’ boy, but do they feel compelled to follow you?  Fight for new business?  Endure the pain for the pleasure of success?  Not if they don’t see you doing those things.

The point I’m making is that managing teams, projects, and products is more about leading by example than begin one of the gang.  Be a person they want to emulate.

–ray

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Define: Constraint Type

Contraint type: A task scheduling option that determines how project tasks interact with each other with respect to dates.

 

Microsoft Project allows you to set constraint types for each task.  Using task constraints can really bugger up a project, if you don’t know what you are doing.  Ever hear of scheduling conflicts?  Consider using deadlines instead.  I feel constraints can be useful when used in moderation.  But most managers do not need to dive this deeply into task management.  Why?

Most projects change rapidly from day to day.  Because of this, you may find yourself fiddling with esoteric task options, only to find that they become irrelevant next week when the schedule changes.  That’s where deadlines can be simpler.

Here are the task constraints MS Project offers:

  1. As Late As Possible (default in a project scheduled from the finish date)
  2. As Soon As Possible (default in a project scheduled from the start date)
  3. Finish No Earlier Than
  4. Finish No Later Than
  5. Must Start On
  6. Must Finish On
  7. Start No Earlier Than
  8. Start No Later Than

 Clearly, these options control the behaviour of tasks that are linked together.  Let’s say you chose the “Start No Later Than” constraint type.  In this case, you would be required to supply a date that the task cannot start after.  Let’s say you chose August 1st.

A scheduling conflict can occur if a predicessor task causes your task to start after August 1st.  Schedules change so frequently that this is likely to happen.  Actually that can be a good thing.  Consider it an alert that something has gone wrong with your project.  If your project slips so badly that these contraints become activated, it can alert you to deeper problems witn your project team.

–ray

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How to: Split Tasks in Microsoft Project

In this post we’ll discuss how to split tasks in Microsoft Project.  In other words, how to break tasks into segments representing the exact times work will be performed.

Microsoft Project tasks do not necessarily need to start on one day, and continue until the task is complete.  They can be broken up into segments.  In other words, work can be performed in a discontinguous fashion.  For instance, 16 hours in one week, 16 hours in the next week, and a final 4 hours the following week.  This technique is illustrated below.  Steps to perform it as also included.

 


Split bar, showing each segment of work


Split hours, in Task Usage view

 

I must warn you…  I feel this is a micro-management technique.  It can be good to define exactly when the work will be performed, right down to the hour, but do you really want to spend your time doing that?  That’s better left to the discretion of engineers who will actually be doing the work.

Follow these steps to split Microsoft Project tasks:

  1. Create a new task in the Gantt view (See the View menu)
  2. Right-click in the header area, and choose Insert Column
  3. Insert the Work column (it represents the planned work for a task)
  4. Enter 10 hours for the Work
  5. Choose View, Task Usage
  6. Notice the number of hours for each day (this is the time you will work on the task)
  7. Skip a few days, and enter some additional hours into the Task Usage view
  8. Choose View, Gantt Chart to return to the preview view
  9. Notice that the Gantt bar has been split to show the new hours

 

–ray

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Define: Free Slack

Free Slack: The amount of time that can be spared in a task before it begins to affect other tasks.

 

Some tasks don’t really need to be completed by the time you’ve set for them.  In other words, there’s a little slack available before they need to be finished.  That’s Free Slack.

Microsoft Project calculates free slack in tasks when they are linked to other tasks.  If a task is not linked to another, the free slack is the amount of time from the finish date until the end of the project.  Here’s a quote from MSP:

The Free Slack field contains the amount of time that a task can be delayed without delaying any successor (successor: A task that cannot start or finish until another task starts or finishes.) tasks. If the task has no successors, free slack is the amount of time that a task can be delayed without delaying the entire project’s finish date.

So, how is this valuable to you?  This only applies when a successor task is not linked directly to its predicessor.  In other words, there is some slack time between them, even though they are technically linked.  This can be valuable to offer some spare time for the resource to finish the task, or to do other things.

–ray