I’ve been using Microsoft Project for about 10 years now. Great tool. It’s indispensbile on large, complex projects and to help manage many parallel, yet unrelated, projects.
However, it is a tool. Knowing how to use Project does not make someone a good project manager. I’ve known a number of people that know more about the software than I will ever know (not particularly hard to do), but who were not particularly good at managing a project – let alone several projects at once.
Good people get sucked into the magic of Project because it gives the illusion that the project is all worked out. It makes sense. Self-contained. You are in control.
I heard an Agile presenter describe it as “the fantasy you call a project plan.”
The truth is that all but the simplest projects are complex. A project manager’s role is to manage chaos to get something done. Creating a project plan is an essential step, but more than likely by the time the plan is finalized it’s wrong. Something has changed in the real world. You’ll find out as soon as you read that e-mail that just showed up in your inbox.
If you find yourself spending too much time in Project, I recommend taking a hard look at how your are using the tool. Here are six ways to pull yourself out of living in the Gant chart:
Do Not Micromanage- Bucket your WBS so your tasks don’t manage you.
Let Your Leaders Guide You- The leaders that make up the development, infrastructure, quality assurance and business teams should know what it will take to do their jobs on the project. They will be able to give you the key tasks, milestones and dependencies as well as the time and resources to get it done. You shouldn’t have to work it out for them or dictate how long it should take them to do their job.
Guide Your Detailed-Oriented Leaders- If your DBA is breaking down tasks down by the table, stored procedure and trigger, stop them. Help them aggregate and bucket the tasks so you can manage their progress efficiently. They can break it down however they need to in order to suit their needs.
Identify Unrealistic Projections – Is there a milestone and related tasks that constantly need updating in Project? Good sign that whoever is giving you the estimates is being unrealistic. Either they’re not factoring in dependencies, other responsibilities, have trouble managing their time or their team or they’re being too aggressive.
Mandated Schedule Unrealistic - Time for Plan B - No matter how much you shave time here, and put in a parallel process there, things are slipping and you’re constantly adjusting the future schedule to magically still make it come in on time and budget. There are drop dead dates that are critical for the business. The reality is that those dates are never going to be made. But if you can just cut the QA time in half… It’s time to have that courageous conversation with the sponsor.
Manage Scope Creep- The requirements are never final. The bigger the project, the larger the team, the longer the trickle comes in of additional requirements for the project. Squeezing the life out of the padding you put in the project is not the answer. You need a change management process for handling these must-haves.
A project manager is the WD-40 of the project. If you find yourself spending a lot of time managing the project plan you are not managing the project. This means you are not managing expectations. Not managing risk. Not managing people.
This all happens outside of MS Project.
