This brings back memories of my previous life in corporate America. That was awhile ago, and yes MS Project was the way to go. One company tried to force us all to use some very expensive client/server program that was awful.
What I hated was the organizations that had “project managers” not in the matrix management sense, but people who tracked the PERT and Gantt charts, hounded the actual project managers, and tattled to senior management. Their approach was typically to get the actual project managers to construct the charts, then go through and find any “slack resources” and force you to eliminate them, essentially putting all tasks on the critical path. They seemed unaware that slack resources are how you manage a project to stay on track when shit happens. Like moving people from one task to another that is now critical. Or paying an expediting fee to get PCBs or prototypes made quicker. Or authorizing overtime, or hiring contractors. By forcing every task to be on the critical path, they essentially guaranteed failure, in the sense that the schedule was doomed to slip. Constantly. Every time anything went less than perfect, the end date slipped. But of course this gave them job security, since they were not project managers, they were project trackers and reporters. When something went wrong, they would happily input the slip, and it would ripple to the end date, since everything was on the critical path. My view was that MS Project was a planning tool, not so much a reporting tool. And I would always subdivide the project and delegate responsibility. Everyone on the project was expected to manage their own tasks. If something went wrong, they should first try to make adjustments within their own area of authority/responsibility to get back on track without affecting others. If that was not possible, they were expected to alert the rest of the team as soon as possible, rather than a day before they missed their deadline, because other team members or the overall project manager might have options to keep the slip from rippling, given enough notice. I think I was at a seminar once which said there was a difference between project tracking and project management. The example was sailing a boat across a river to reach a dock at the other side. A project tracker would constantly forecast where the boat would land – basically how far downstream it would miss the dock. A project manager would plan how to land at the dock, despite variations in water and wind speed. From: AF <[email protected]> On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Friday, March 29, 2019 12:35 PM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT Project Management Software I took a look around. Could not see how to create dependencies or critical paths. I am sure it is there but it looks like a front end for Trello. So far I am making progress with Smartsheet. Not cheap, but not as expensive as MS Project. From: Mike Meluskey Sent: Friday, March 29, 2019 11:24 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT Project Management Software Here is a Gantt chart tool for Trello that I like: <https://gantt-chart.com/> https://gantt-chart.com/ On 29 Mar 2019, at 12:09, Sterling Jacobson wrote: I’m looking as well so let me know if you find something you like. Gantt features also preferable. I’m migrating my teams to Slack which has worked well, and I’m thinking of picking up Trello for simple projects. From: AF <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > On Behalf Of [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Friday, March 29, 2019 9:00 AM To: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> Subject: [AFMUG] OT Project Management Software Is there anything new out there I should look at? Need Gantt charts for multiple fiber construction jobs. I have used MS Project years ago and really liked it. I had some kind of freeware stuff a few years back. Bare bones. Worked but I still prefer project. I understand Smartsheet has some critical path and Gantt stuff in it now. Opinions, recommendations, critiques? -- AF mailing list [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> <http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com _____ -- AF mailing list [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
-- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
