There are some project dates that you just can’t move. For example, my first attempt at knitting baby clothes for a friend’s newborn. I couldn’t say to her to hang on a bit because the jumper wasn’t ready. It had to be wrapped and ready to go the moment I got the text to announce the birth. I planned backwards from the due date and because it takes me so long to knit anything at all I added in lots of contingency. Basically, I started looking at patterns and wool the minute I knew she was pregnant.
This month I’ll be taking a detailed look at managing fixed date projects. They happen more often than project managers would like. These are the ones where your boss says he has already promised to deliver the software, open the office, complete on the deal, by a certain date, and you are stuck crunching the critical path to make it happen. The hash tag for Fixed Date February is #fdfeb if you would like to blog, tweet, podcast etc your own experiences or advice about managing fixed date projects.
First up is a tool to help you manage fixed date projects called The Plan Is.
It’s a web-based scheduling tool. It doesn’t have lots of extra features like resource management or cost per task, but it does focus on providing a very graphical illustration of your project schedule. And it flags up when you cannot hit a fixed date.
Say your project starts today and needs to finish by the end of the month. You have estimates for the task durations. You can enter all that data into The Plan Is and it will calculate whether there is enough time to fit it all in. If there isn’t, the schedule shows negative float (and a really cute float icon) on the branch where the problem occurs. It’s easy to see where some of the dependencies need to be changed. Alternatively, the constraints need to be relaxed. You can present the schedule to your sponsor with some options and use it to explain to them why the current dates can’t be met. The screenshot below shows how it looks on a really simple plan with just one branch. The feature also works on longer schedules where there is just a chunk that is constrained. It’s an easy way to flag up issues with the critical path on a fixed date project.
It is a mindset change to move to using this over Microsoft Project or other tools that offer more functionality. If you just want to produce a Gantt chart, project managers used to using MS Project can knock one up in minutes. Moving to using a new piece of software comes with a learning curve. And I don’t particularly like learning new software as I’m lazy (and not in a Peter Taylor kind of way!). It took a little while for me to get used to this type of horizontal layout, but it’s not difficult once you have had a play around.
However, if you are not skilled in other project management software, just starting out in project management, or simply want a easy way to plan schedules, this is a good tool. There are frequent little releases (and still a few kinks to iron out in the current version) and the user interface is slicker than a month ago. You can click and drag in an empty space, for example, to scroll across the screen, much like you can in Google Maps. It looks clean, and you can download it to MS Project once you have sorted out the time constraints, if you feel so inclined. You can also keep your plans private or make them available to others by turning on the sharing option.
If you are about to embark on a fixed date project you should have a look at The Plan Is. Actually, you can’t right now as it is still in beta testing. Next week I’ll have some more information on how to take part in the beta program – I have 35 licences to give away, and you will find out how to get your hands on them on Monday.
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- Inside PRINCE2: Fixed date projects Planning is an essential part of what project managers do, so you would expect there to be some mention of how to deal with fixed...
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