That’s right up there with with some other project budget tricks. For years a major bottle manufacturers projects always had a line item for “UDR” that was roughly 10% of the project cost. One day a senior manager got a bug up his ass and wanted to know what “UDR” was - Undeveloped Design Risk - a.k.a. the slush fund. The usual corporate temper tantrum was thrown and no project was allowed to have such a thing. You can guess the rest - fewer than 10% of the projects made it though on budget after that, down from about 80% previously.
Mark > On Mar 29, 2019, at 2:06 PM, Ken Hohhof <af...@kwisp.com> wrote: > > 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 <af-boun...@af.afmug.com <mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com>> On Behalf > Of ch...@wbmfg.com <mailto:ch...@wbmfg.com> > Sent: Friday, March 29, 2019 12:35 PM > To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com > <mailto:af@af.afmug.com>> > 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 <af-boun...@af.afmug.com <mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com>> On >> Behalf Of ch...@wbmfg.com <mailto:ch...@wbmfg.com> >> Sent: Friday, March 29, 2019 9:00 AM >> To: af@af.afmug.com <mailto:af@af.afmug.com> >> 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 >> AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> >> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com >> <http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com> > -- > AF mailing list > AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> > http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com > <http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com>-- > AF mailing list > AF@af.afmug.com <mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> > http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com > <http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com>
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