Aunty Entity: The Myth Of MS Project
Aunty Entity
Dear Aunty Entity,
Does anyone ever use MS project to produce project schedules?
Signed, Phil McCracken
Dear Mr Crack,
Aaah yessss, the project fantasy charts. Impressive to unfurl across a boardroom table, a glorious sight in Xerox’s finest technicolour, some of them deserving of the Booker prize for best new fiction… just make sure you have them the right side up, that’s a dear. If produced at the beginning of the project and left as is for the remainder, they are as useful as the proverbial tits on a bull.
MS Project is listed on many job ads as a desirable or even a ‘must-have’ but consider this: Many corporate clients do not have a copy of MS project.
The purpose of a project schedule is to communicate tasks for the project stakeholders, dates when they are due and if any tasks have dependencies. These can also be produced in MS Excel and for some projects it is acceptable to submit a list of tasks and dates to your client. Bear in mind that schedules change on a regular basis – sometimes weekly and sometimes even daily and you still need to keep this updated and circulated for it to be a useful project tool.
MS Project when used by the experts can track progress, resources and costs. I’ve heard of one user being able to chart his personal algorithms, make predictions on the stock-market and align his stars using MS project but that is probably an urban myth.
Dennis Tang
August 26th, 2007
It’s a nice tool to have, but it’s got a hefty price tag attached to it.
Why pay that much when you have a lot cheaper alternatives?
Good post though!
Nick
August 26th, 2007
For a free alternative to Project, check out OpenProj - http://openproj.org/?q=node/21
Mark
August 26th, 2007
What is your preferred alternative?
Mike G
August 26th, 2007
MS Project is one of the more overrated tools for *most* jobs. Employers believe it’s *the* tool to use if you will do anything with managing a project. They just don’t understand the other tools available. If your project involves only you or is reasonably limited in scope, you would be better off using something else.
For large projects that span several months, MS Project is helpful for planning (and making sure you don’t schedule a programmer for 90 hours in one week). Some prefer to use other tools to track and “adjusting” the MS Project plan later.
For the projects last several years, MS Project is pretty useful.
The GANNT chart is impressive.
Rob
August 26th, 2007
Our PMs use it all the time, and I must say that as a “soldier”, it really sucks. I’m so glad it (and maybe this is the PMs and not Project’s fault) doesn’t take into account the meetings involved for the given project, the other projects going on around said project, or the fact that there are actually only 168 hours in a given week.
In my experience from the short end of the stick, MS Project is really only good if there’s just one project going on where everyone knows what’s going on and when things are due and the PMs are competent. Otherwise, it really just seems like a royal PITA.
Can’t wait to ditch those bastards and hit the open road toward freelancedom!
Brian S
August 26th, 2007
The first problem that I see with project plans is that the creator doesn’t have a tuned perspective as to why he/she is building it. One has to ask oneself why you’re trying to build a schedule. Are you trying to sell a project to a client who needs to be convinced of your planning capabilities? Do you need to show management how well a budget is meeting meet a project’s progress? Are you trying to develop a resource plan to help determine whether the project should include 2 BAs, 5 developers and 3 testers? If you don’t know this, then how do you know what to focus on, and what outcome you want? How do you know when you’ll get there?
The second problem I often see is that the person is building the plan into MS Project because that’s what everyone else uses. Bull. Use what you know. Just like most any other application or language, MS Project is a tool, a tool can be used well or poorly. You can create a very useful plan in a spreadsheet like Excel, an open-source tool like GanttProject, or a few pages of paper and a cheap pen. If you can’t play golf well, don’t blame the clubs.
Finally, even if you know what why you’re building it, and know how to use the tool, you can still shoot for the mythical Holy Grail of schedules where the future unfolds in front of you in the form of a pretty gantt chart. A project plan is a directional tool, not a complete set of to-dos for each team member. If you’re spending more than a couple hours/week updating the project plan, then either your plan is too detailed, your project has lost its direction, or you don’t know what you’re doing.
Whitewood
August 26th, 2007
Tools like MS Project are to many PM’s the proverbial hammer (when you have a hammer, everything is a nail). Having said that, when used properly the potential of MS Project is enormous. Unfortunately not many PM’s know how to harness the power of MS P.
It’s not the tools fault, it’s the incompetent / inexperienced PM’s fault.
@Rob: Experienced PM’s know that only about 75% (or less) of a working day is productive.
Kevin M. Scarbrough
August 27th, 2007
Good luck, Rob!
Kevinjohn
August 27th, 2007
I have to say that i have the opposite experience of MS Project.
If the entire team (devs, designers, database-ers, PMs etc) are all in the one building, then MS Project is total overkill. In that instance, a free open source project like GanttProject does the job nicely.
But if i’m working on multiple projects, with multiple timelines, with shared resources, across more than one location; then MS Project really come into it’s own.
And if you HAVE to stick to a management methodology (e.g. Prince 2) for goverment departmental oversight, then MS Project is really handy.
I think the thing to realise is that when seeing a job advertised, it’s rarely written by the people who actually want to hire you. It’s either written by HR (who copy the previous ad or from their competitor) or it’s by a recruiter who’s looking to cover the bases as he doesn’t know the technology.
I mean, who’s gone for a web design job where the recruit has told you that 5 years JAVA experience is an absolute must, when really any small javaScript knowledge will do?
Rajesh Shakya
August 27th, 2007
I have been using MS Project for the last few years. It is very much helpful when you are managing large project with multiple resources and activities. For small size projects, sometime I feel it makes things complicated.
Rajesh Shakya
http://www.rajeshshakya.com
Scott Carpenter
August 27th, 2007
MS Project used well does a good job to plan and keep track of progress.. Used poorly and it’s a waste of time.
To use it well -
* Schedule realistically - adjust estimates according to risk/complexity of certain tasks. Ask team members to provide input on the level of complexity of tasks when planning.
* Don’t micro-manage - create tasks and milestones at an appropriate level of detail.
* Manage well - seek regular feedback on project progress and adjust the schedule accordingly.
To use it poorly -
).
* Assume anything you don’t understand is easy to do (credit to Dilbert for this one
* Create the project plan in isolation to the people who will actually be doing the work.
* Assume all people on the team provide 40 hours a week of productive project time.
* Assume the team all have the same experience and ability.
* Assume nobody takes sick leave, annual leave, attend training sessions or staff meetings, or have any other work commitments.
* Schedule every possible task and activity of the project (including toilet breaks).
* Create a very aggressive and optimistic schedule - assume everything will work right the first time.
* Print the plan once, attach it to the meeting room wall, and leave untouched for the duration of the project.
Matthew Stibbe
August 27th, 2007
In my “Marketing Devil’s Dictionary” I define Project as “A piece of software that transforms lies into pretty diagrams. No one knows how it works but everyone insists you use it. And for goodness sake, never ask it to level resources automatically. It has been suggested that Microsoft developed Project in order to make project management an art rather than a science. Personally, I think it is still a religion and Project is its liturgy.”
Having run a software company for 12 years before I got into the writing business, I know whereof I speak!
More definitions: http://www.badlanguage.net/the-devils-marketing-dictionary-part-3
Paul Harder
August 28th, 2007
Okay, I have to agree with many of the comments regarding using MS Project. I’ve been using timeline software since Symantec made TimeLine 1.0 (that dates me!).
Anyway, Project is a great tool to express to customers that you have a vague idea that you know what the hell you are doing. Gantt charts show cool bars and milestone diamonds that make customers comfortable that you’ve thought about what you are doing.
For managers, it does give you the chance to analyze and understand the impact of changes to the project when one task changes (slipping deliveries, adjustments to labor).
MS Project, along with other project management tools, have bad habits, especially with labor allocation. But it is also useful for performing estimates.
I agree that project plans and costing should be discussed with everyone involved to verify that the number of hours the system is proposing is right or off.
One tip that I’ve found is that the more detailed a project plan is, the more likely a customer will micro-manage you. What I’ve found is that I create two project plans. One, at a higher level, is the one I give my customer so that no task is shorter than a week. The other, more detailed version is the one I use with my team.
Regards,
Paul
David
August 30th, 2007
Some day I would like to work on a project with a full MSProject implementation. I’m not sure it will ever happen. It seems like to use it in real time on a large project you need someone to use it in real time. Isn’t there something better I could be doing with that person?
In the mean time, it makes real nice GANTT calendars for sales packages, and it isn’t half bad for initial planning. But tracking? Maybe someday I’ll get it.
Klaus Wiedemann
October 9th, 2007
After years in project management and also working as a project management coach, I am still looking for somebody telling me that he/she REALLY run a project from start to end with MS Project (actually, Rajesh above claims that…)
I’ve seen quite often that people start with Project (e.g. to get some nice drawings of a project plan) but tend to abondon it quite soon afterwards.
Why?
Well, for really large projects (I was working on some with >200 developers), Project is just too lightweight. Here, you need much more controlling capabilities and a solid multi-user database to keep track of everything. The tight integration of planning, controlling and drag/drop modification of project plans together with automated recalculation of a schedule causes very easy a schedule where you do not know anymore whether you looking at the current version, a version of last week or a “new version” reflecting the latest controlling data.
On the other side, I guess most projects are just small scale, with less than 10 or even 5 people involved. Here, the issue is a missing (or very poor) integration with the daily calendars of the project team, and -most important- the fact that in small projects chances are high that people have parallel projects. So, you usually have on one side a tool which gives the impression that everything is under control while at the other side the data within the tool tend to not reflect reality any more.
Is there a solution to it? Not yet (we are currentyl developing a P2P based tool to adress this issue), but I’ve seen a lot of people just going back to Excel: Here you can track what’s really important for you and have full control of all KPI (as you have to calculate them on your own). Drawback: requires some advance Excel skills, no drawings and does not scale beyond a certain size of your project team.
Klaus
Aunty Entity
November 26th, 2007
I recently completed a project where the core management team referred to an MS Project file on a weekly basis to update the team. This required a 2 hour meeting once a week involving around 8 stakeholders and at least 3 people a few hours each to update the file before and after the meeting….and yes, the project was completed on time. However, time and resources are not always so abundant.
For smaller projects I use excel spreadsheets or even lists of tasks with dates clearly marked next to them for quick reference, on a Word document. The aim here is to think about who uses these - if a small team of developers they should have something that is easy to read and on a program they are likely to have on their PCs.
But the most important task involved in timelines is the management of expectations - especially the client’s. If the client understands from the outset that some tasks cannot be started until completion/signoff of another task and a delay may cause delays to the end date then any argument about which program to use for a project plan seems piffling in comparison.