Project Management Scratchpad

Project Schedule Visualization

At the PMI College of Scheduling Annual Conference (May 4-7), I'll be giving a talk on project schedule visualization.  This is an abstract of the talk:

Henry   Laurence Gantt brought us the Gantt chart in the 1910’s, and in 1958, the use   of the PERT method brought us PERT network charts. In almost a century, there   have been very few innovations in the science of project schedule   visualization. With major advances in visualization in so many other fields   (e.g. medical, manufacturing, data mining), why have advances in project schedule   visualization been so few and far between? Are Gantt Charts and Network   Diagrams sufficient to the point that no additional insights might be gained   via other charts and diagrams? How can new approaches in schedule   visualization help the project manager in their day-to-day work? This   presentation will examine these questions and provide an introduction to the   work of Edward Tufte, who has been described by The New York Times as “the   Leonardo da Vinci of Data.” With Tufte’s work as a backdrop, new ideas and   approaches will be presented, with the goal of stimulating discussion and   real advances in project schedule visualization.

Visit http://www.pmicosconference.com/ for details on the conference.  I hope to see you there!

- Brian Leach, Steelray Software

Steelray Software Adds Schedule Analysis and Security to Microsoft Project

Atlanta, Georgia -- February 26, 2007 -- Steelray Software, maker of the leading Microsoft Project Viewer software, announces the release of two new Microsoft Project Add-In products. Steelray Project Analyzer is a schedule analysis and scorecard tool that plugs into the desktop versions of Microsoft Project. Steelray Project Protector is a low-cost security and access control solution for sharing Microsoft Project files.

 

The patent-pending technology at the core of Steelray Project Analyzer was developed at a leading Aerospace and Defense company and licensed to Steelray Software. Using statistical analysis, a team of project managers at the A&D company analyzed project schedules spanning several years to derive a set of common characteristics of the project schedules that were considered successful. Steelray Project Analyzer uses a built-in set of criteria to generate an easy-to-read scorecard and helps the project manager improve their schedule.

 

Steelray Project Protector was born from a need that Steelray's Microsoft Project viewer customers requested. "Our customers asked us for a way to share certain parts of project files, " said Brian Leach, Managing Director of Steelray Software. "With Steelray Project Protector, we're delivering an easy, low cost solution to that problem." With password-based protection, the project file is protected or exposed in its entirety (all or nothing). Steelray Project Protector is a big improvement because it offers filter-based protection, which allows the project manager to specify exactly which parts of the project file may be hidden or shared.

 

For more information on Steelray Software, or to download a free trial of any Steelray product, visit www.steelray.com.

 

About Steelray Software

 

Steelray Software is the leading provider of Microsoft Project Viewer software and offers easy, low cost project management software solutions. Steelray Software is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia.

 

Contact Information

Ray Paseur

(404) 806 0160 x1

ray.paseur@steelray.com

Have We Given Up?

I can't remember the specifics of the commercials for the chain of drive-thru restaurants, only the slogan:  "You Gotta Eat."  My reaction, the first time I heard the slogan, was amusement.  Have they just given up?  No "Great Food", "Low Prices" or "Fast Service" message?    Expanded, what I get is this:  "Listen, you have to eat something, right?  So, why not get the food from us?  What message does this send?

Recently, I installed a copy of 64-bit Vista to make sure that our Microsoft Project Viewer runs flawlessly on Microsoft's latest software conglomeration, and I've noticed a peculiar new "feature".  Vista frequently warns me that someone is attempting to do something that might pose a security threat.  So far, in every case, that someone has been me.  I'm installing some software, or setting up a network connection.  Up pops the box, asking me to accept the security-intrusive operation.

I get the purpose behind the feature.  One day, I might be happily composing a blog entry or working on one of our exciting new products (no wimpy attitude here), and up will pop a window that someone is installing a plugin to Internet Explorer, and on that particular day this message will come as a surprise.  The someone is presumably an intruder.  Microsoft security feature to the rescue!

Still, I can't shake the feeling I got when I first heard the "You gotta eat" slogan: 
have they given up?  Expanded, what I get is this:  We're apparently unable to lock the doors to your building, but we will tell you that a criminal is running around checking doorknobs. 

That thought is followed by:  what is the Vista consumer user going to do when they get one of those messages, other than panic and maybe call 911?

Couldn't Microsoft have detected that I, the user, used my real mouse to double-click on the setup.exe program on my Desktop?  If I were an intruder, I'm going to click the "Allow" button anyway.

Have we just given up?

Steelray Project Analyzer 1.0 is Shipping

We are pleased to announce that our first version of Steelray Project Analyzer (SPA), our project analysis and scorecarding application, is shipping today!

SPA is a Microsoft Project plugin that checks your project schedule for a list of problems and generates a colorful scorecard showing you how to improve your schedule.  You can find more information about SPA at the SPA product web page, and download it here.

New Product: Steelray Project Analyzer

I'm pleased to announce the beta release of a new plugin for Microsoft Project: Steelray Project Analyzer (SPA).

 

SPA is an easy to use plugin that analyzes your project file and provides a scorecard on the quality of your project schedule. You can use our criteria or create your own criteria for what makes a project schedule "good." For individual project managers, SPA can help you improve your schedules. For larger organizations, it can be a great tool for assessing the health of a project and quality of the project schedule.

 

For more information and to download the beta, visit http://www.steelray.com/spa.php

Stacks and Time Management

Suppose you have two tasks, Task A and Task B.  Neither depends on the other, they both require a fixed amount of work, and you can start either of them anytime.

Which way will get them done faster: if you do them sequentially (one after the other, in any order), or in parallel (do a little of A, put it down, do a little of B, repeat)?

The answer, of course, depends on the type of job, and specifically whether there are natural gaps in the job.  Painting a room usually has natural gaps.  You apply a layer, wait for it to dry, and then apply another layer.  Other tasks, like writing an email, have no natural gaps.  You begin writing, you write some more, you finish writing, you send it.  You could take breaks, but we're not counting those.

The jobs like painting will probably be completed sooner if you do them in parallel; paint a layer in one room, paint a layer in another room while the first room dries, etc.  You're idle for less time, and the work is a fixed amount, so the math works in your favor.

The jobs like writing emails will be completed sooner if you finish one before you begin the next.  Why?  There is overhead associated with switching contexts.   Interruptions cost time because you lose your context, your train of thought, the document that you had at the top of the pile while you were writing the email.  When you resume the task, you need to find your train of thought, or locate the document that you had at the top of the pile.  That costs time, of course.

When you're not filling the natural gaps, you're not as productive as you could be.  Some people don't want to start on the second room until the first one is finished, even if it means sitting around waiting for paint to dry.  Multitasking isn't their thing.

Other people suffer from attention deficit disorder; in the middle of writing an email, they see a new email come in and decide to drop what they're doing and answer that one first.  Until the next one comes in.  They probably multitask too much.

In software development, programmers use these storage containers called stacks.  They're pretty simple, really.  You push something on the stack, and it sits on top of the stack.  Push something else on the stack, and it becomes the new top of the stack, with the other contents underneath.  Pop something off of the stack, and you're removing whatever was on top of the stack.  Think of the spring-loaded stacks of plates you might see in a cafeteria.  That's how they work.

I think of the things I do everyday as a stack.  I'm working on something, and suddenly something else comes along that is more urgent or more important than what I'm working on, and I push whatever I was doing on the stack and work on the new thing.   

Some days my stack gets pretty deep.  Each time I push or pop something, I'm switching context, and paying some penalty in productivity.

I've learned some truths about these stacks:

• The deeper your stack gets, the more stressful your job becomes.
• A certain amount of pushing on the stack is necessary; urgency happens.
• It takes discipline to stick with the tasks that should be finished before picking up a new task; sometimes, you switch to the new task because you want to, not because you need to.  This costs you productivity.
• It takes wisdom to manage your stack properly.  Personally, I have a long way to go.
• We hardly ever consider other people's stacks when we interrupt them with a question or a request. We're usually focused on our own stack.
• The important, non-urgent tasks suffer from neglect.  See the Seven Habits books to see what I mean.

Everyone has their own system and their own way of thinking about this.  I wonder if other people think of their task list as a stack . . .

The Cheap Revolution

This article by Daniel Lyons on forbes.com "gets it."  The cheap revolution is upon us.

The cheap revolution is one of the terms used to describe how companies are changing their software usage to cut costs and find alternative, simpler solutions to expensive bloatware.

Coleman is one of dozens of new barbarians plotting the Cheap Revolution, the wholesale shift by corporate customers and techmakers to cheap chips and open-source (often free) software such as Linux. They are embracing simplicity, unlocking prodigious new power and cutting tech costs by up to 90%, threatening the Silicon Valley plutocracy: the proprietary gear, "closed" software, redundant backup systems and fat profit margins of incumbents like Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, EMC and other blue-chip nameplates.

A lot of companies are using Steelray, our Microsoft Project viewer, to cut costs by as much as 90%, so I can vouch for the savings claims.  Check out this list of "cheap revolutionaries" for great ideas on alternatives to software you may already be using.

Of course, no revolution is without its own domain, and thecheaprevolution.com applies the principles of the cheap revolution to the entrepreneur, showing how they can "leverage and live" in the cheap revolution.

Like many past revolutions, these ideas won't seem so revolutionary once they become accepted.  If we go by our customers' experience to date, it won't be long before that happens.

Task Update in Steelray

The latest release of Steelray (our Microsoft Project Viewer) is now available, and with this version we introduce something our users have been asking for:  task update.

It's pretty simple:  the project manager "prepares" the project file by adding a custom property called Steelray Email.  The property's value is the email address of the project manager.

When Steelray Project Viewer opens the project file and sees that it contains this property, it adds a new tab to the task detail view.  The new tab allows the user to answer a few simple questions about the task status:  did it start, is it in progress, how much longer to finish, etc.

When the user clicks on the Update button, SPV sends an email back to the project manager with a concise update on the status of the task.

You can find out more (and see screenshots) about this feature on this page from steelray.com.

Sabbatical in Boulder

I'm at the tail end of a sabbatical of sorts; we've spent the month of July in Boulder, Colorado.

First, Boulder is truly an amazing place if you like the outdoors.  I enjoy hiking, and I started most of my hikes this month from the front door of the place I was staying.  Within minutes, I was up in the hills overlooking the town, with a respectable amount of perspiration and lungfuls of air.  People here are, I don't know, healthier than other people.  They walk, they bike, they swim, they enter races with scary names like Triple Bypass.  I'm not worthy.  I will be back, though.

I gave a talk at the SIC Conference (http://www.sic.org) in Denver, and I used photos in some of the slides that I took this month from various destinations in Boulder.  Aspen, the Rockies, etc.  People who might have been bored with the presentation at least had some pictures to stare at while they zoned out.

I'm speaking to a business class at University of Colorado this evening; I'll present a little bit about the company and some of the new products that are in the pipeline.

The best part of the trip was the fact that I had time to step back and think about the company, and re-invent my vision of where I want us to be in a year.  We have some exciting features in the pipeline for our Microsoft Project viewer, and even more exciting is the fact that we will have some great ideas that are going to take the form of new products. 

I am returning to Atlanta recharged and ready to launch 4 new projects!

Outlook as a To Do List

A while back, I wrote a simple little To Do list application that I offer for free.  Over the past year, I've been adding to it, while always staying true to the Design Principle that it be incredibly simple to use.

Recently I added a feature to it that gave me a significant improvement in productivity, so I'm going to lift my own words from the website and post them here . . .

Part 1: The Idea

I've been using Cool Moon To Do for over a year now, and recently I noticed something. Despite the fact that I have CMTD running all of the time, without realizing it I was keeping a second to do list: my Outlook Inbox.

I try to keep my Outlook inbox clear of emails, but there are always four or six or eight emails lingering there that i can't get rid of, because there is something I need to do before I can delete the email.

So I thought: if only CMTD could hold a copy of the email, I could file or delete the email from my Inbox and deal with it using CMTD. It would look like any other todo, except maybe it would have an envelope icon, and it would have an "attachment" I could open -- the actual copy of the email. After all, these emails are actually To Do items with a little extra information.

Part 2: Changing CMTD

So, with this idea in mind, I made some changes to CMTD to allow a second type of to do item: one that contains an email attachment. These new items have an envelope icon where you would normally see an LED. Yes, you can color the envelopes red, green, or yellow with the 'r', 'g', and 'y' keys, so you can still use LEDS to prioritize them.

With these email to do items, you can open the email by pressing the 'E' key or by right-clicking on the item and selecting 'Open Email.'

Pretty slick, but I was only halfway done.  How would I get the emails from Outlook to CMTD?

Part 3: The Outlook Plugin

After experimenting with a few different methods to copy the email from Outlook to CMTD, I settled on the simplest solution. I developed an Outlook plugin that work as follows: in your Inbox, right-click on an email item. There, you'll see a new CMTD menu item. Select that item, and the item will automatically be added to CMTD (provided that CMTD is running).

It's that simple.  You can download CMTD and the Outlook plugin from Download page.

Epilogue

I've been using this feature for over a week now, and I'm happy to report that my email Inbox is still clean.  Because I'm keeping all of my to do items in CMTD, I've seen a definite improvement in productivity.  Trust me:  once you start using this feature, you'll wonder how you ever got along without it.