Kevin Williamson, MCTS, PMP

Many project managers forget to include project planning in their Project schedules: reviewing and authorizing tasks and activities, project monitoring and reporting, reminding resources to update tasks and submit their updates, team meetings. These are involved in delivering successful projects, and are often the points that need the most attention from a project manager, so they should be included in your Project schedules.

One time PM tasks: Some tasks are specific to a particular stage of the project and occur only one-time, such as writing the project initiation request or developing the project budget. For these, create either a task in the sequence where you will perform it, like any other task.

Stage-specific Recurring Tasks: Some project management tasks are specific to a stage or an activity in a project. E.g., Monitoring and controlling project performance. Insert a Recurring Task at the bottom of the activity (just before the milestone for that activity). Project will automagically populate the date range of the recurring task based on date range of the activity. If it does not, you can adjust the date range manually.

Project-long Recurring Tasks: Many project management tasks are routine and recur throughout the duration of the project or from one point in the project to the end of a particular stage, such as project team meetings. Insert a Recurring Task at the project level (Outline Level 1) at the bottom of the Project Schedule, which will set it to coincide with the project start date and finish on the project finish date (for tasks that will occur throughout the project lifecycle) or at the date of end of the project stage at which this recurring task will end. Inserting a Recurring Task at the bottom of your schedule helps prevent inadvertently linking it with false dependencies and lengthening your schedule in unexpected ways.

Announcing the release of the Microsoft Project 2010 Beta Demo Image

As Doug McCutcheon and Christophe Fiessinger of Microsoft mentioned, the Project 2010 Demo image just got released today, it’s all based on the Public Beta (B2).

To download the Microsoft Project 2010 EPM Solution demo image, installation instructions and associated presenter’s script, send an email to Proj2010@microsoft.com.

Q: What are the system requirements to run the EPM Solution demo?

Hyper-V image with Windows Server 2008 as the base operating system and recommended 8GB of RAM (4GB minimum).

Also recommended is a Solid State Drive for optimal performance, see Christophe’s earlier blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/chrisfie/archive/2009/08/13/the-ultimate-demo-machine-get-ready-to-demo-project-and-sharepoint-server-2010.aspx).

Demo image contains (SharePoint Server Enterprise 2010, Project Server 2010, Office 2010, Project Professional 2010 etc…):

• PPM Governance: Separate governance workflows for both major and minor projects
  
• Demand Management:
  
  • Major Project business case includes general information, strategic impact, resource plan, cost and benefit templates and risk assessment survey
    
  • Minor project includes general information and schedule PDP
    
  • Includes custom workspaces for both Major and Minor projects
    
• Portfolio Selection & Analytics
  
  • Business Driver Library
    
  • Saved Business Driver Prioritizations
    
  • Saved Portfolio Analysis to run both Cost Constraint and Resource Constraint Analysis
    
• Detailed Planning: During the detailed planning stages the project manager
  
  • Finalizes the project schedule
    
  • Finds and assigns named resources
    
  • Completes a secondary cost assessment
    
  • Baselines the plan
    
• Manage:
  
  • Team Member: Team member receives and updates tasks and completes timesheet
    
  • Project Manager: Receives and approves task and timesheet updates
    
  • BI: Demo includes Corporate, Departmental and Project Level reports
    

To download the Microsoft Project 2010 EPM Solution demo image, installation instructions and associated presenter’s script by sending an email to the Proj2010@microsoft.com.

You will find more information at Advisicon.com and http://twitter.com/Advisicon.

Advisicon is Microsoft Project 2010 ready!

Regards,

Tim Cermak

I was listening to one of the syndicated news talk shows recently, and heard an interview with a US Senator. The topic was related to spending at the US Federal level, impact in critical factors such as the economy, employment and other social elements. Of course, there is always two sides to a situation, and the US Government represents a dichotomy of opinions. What really caught my attention was the phrase ‘promote accountability’. The US Senator was explaining that many decisions, issues, risks and other activity are happening, but who is representing the concept of accountability — essentially promoting that someone has to do the work, pay the price, or except the outcome. The decisions today simply cannot pass through a bottomless entity without some type of repercussions – think of Newton’s Third Law Action/Reaction.

I am working with the senior leadership team for Advisicon creating the FY2010 plans, and reflecting on historical data. My review of FY2009 reminded me of the substantial and sudden change in the US and global economics, which had a direct impact on our clients’ and partners’ business environment. Many companies were retrenching, extending the use of their current technology (much of it was outdated), reducing their enterprise pool of resources and cancelling programs and work activity — Back to Basics was the new corporate mantra, essentially ’stop the bleeding’ of cash and market share. What resulted was a flood of hasty decisions, organizational changes and influence of key markets and industries that may have long-term impacts. We found executives were breaking new territory with how they were leading their companies and basing their decisions on available data and instincts. The outcome, people were held accountable for their decisions. Companies went bankrupt, while others prospered. Jobs were lost and landed and economic processes altered (evident with changes in capital lending). Who remembers the relentless dialogue and comments such as ‘we didn’t see this coming’, or ‘who would have predicted’. Of course who could forget the public blame flood at the US Government level – someone needs to accept blame for allowing this to happen.

Ultimately, our business is based on the core concept that a cycle of decisions occurs naturally and 100% of the time. We help companies obtain better control over the data and visibility across the company as it relates to those decisions (e.g. work, people and costs). We mentor decision makers to analyze and embrace the data and perspectives. We enable all corners of a company to be connected to the work and output. We are proud of being able to help executives be better decision makers. The solutions and consulting we provide enables insight, planning and forecasting. At the end of the day, only results matter. Results are 100% related to people. Thus, someone is accountable.

Looking at FY2010, we believe the mantra will evolve from Back to Basic to Pro-ject´ Accountability. This concept is forward thinking, embraces predictive actions, leverages the data and inevitably puts money where your mouth is. The days of innovative project planning and uncovering input from the communities is changing to metrics and accountability. Companies have to be wrong less and right more in order to prosper.

2010 will be another significant year for the economy and people. Please join us to create a culture to Pro-ject´ Accountability!

Regards,

Tim Cermak, MBA PMP