MS Project – the Legend

If your like me and thought that the MS Project legend was crap becuase it contained to many items…. – well I’ve got an amazing suprise for you!

 You can use an “*” as the start character in the Bar Styles title and the formatting item doesn’t appear in the legend.

1. Format | Bar Styles

2. Go through the “Names” column and place a “*” at the start of all the obvious bar formats that aren’t required in your legend. e.g. Change “Task” into “*Task”.

3. File | Page Setup | Legend and check “Every page”

4. Print Preview to show your slimmed down Legend

Links

This technique can be used with the “Different Coloured Gantt Bars in MS Project” technique for great effect.  My clients love it.

http://pmotechniques.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/different-colored-gantt-bars-in-ms-project-%e2%80%93-how-to/

 

IT Program Documentation

Introduction 

This is a list of governance documentation that must be created for a large IT program (>20M). 

Documentation must

• be signed by the Program Board
• filed professionaly (paper wet sigutures and electronic .pdf formats)
• kept up to date 
• readily available in neat packages

Program Goverance

• Program Board – Terms of reference.  States the reason for the existance of the board, the authority, the membership, and the frequency of meetings
• Advisory Boards – Terms of reference.  Advisory Boards must always report to the Program Board
• Program Strategy.  Large IT projects should only be attempted becuase the strategic gains outweigh the delivery risks
• Stakeholder matrix.  The stakeholder matrix is a RACI chart that shows the responsibile Business Owners for each Business Module, and preferably each major Business Scenario.  The provider of the IT solution will not define the specific Business Owners in the contract.  Internally it must be known who has the correct authority to sign of scenarios
• Program Board – minutes of meetings.  The minutes must follow a stardard (and comprehensive) agenda and must be documented and filed professionally.

Program Management

• Program Charter.  Breif overall charter that defines the program boundaries.
• Program Organisation Chart
• Program Budget
• Program Schedule
• Program Risk & Issues Management
• Program Quality plan including Acceptance Criteria
• Program Document management
• Program Variations management
• Prorgam Resources plan
• Program Status reporting

Project Management

• Project Scope document
• Project schedule
• Project risks and issues
• Project status reports

Conclusion

The process of creating and signing off this documentation forces the Program Board to truely commit in writing to decisions of authority and responsibility.  My advice is to keep the documentation as light weight and flexible as possible.

Links

http://onprojects.net/project-prince2-pmbok-toolkits/prince2-templates/

 

Reporting formats

One of the key deliverables for an IT PMO is project reporting across the portfolio.

There are two reports to focus on;

• Portfolio report
• Project report

Portfolio Report

The portfolio report presents the complete portfolio of projects onto 1 or 2 pages.

ID	Project Title	Budget $	Business Owner	Project Manager	Start	Baseline	Finish	Traffic Light
Business Unit
					17/10/06		15/06/08
					01/01/08		31/05/08
Business Unit
					26/02/07		01/11/08
					30/01/08		15/04/08
Business Unit
					05/06/07		31/12/08
					01/01/09		01/01/10
					01/01/10		01/10/10
Corporate Services
IT Infrastructure
					24/09/07		30/07/08

Project Report

The project status report is completed on the 1st and 15th of each month by the Project Manager and submitted to the Program manager and PMO.

Project Status Report

The project status report is completed on the 1^st and 15^th of each month by the Project Manager and submitted to the Program manager and PMO.

Project Information

Project Title		Project ID
Business Unit		Budget
Business Sponsor
Project Manager

Management Summary – Status

Brief status for management – highlight Achievements and/or Risks/Issues

Milestones

Project Milestones

Start Date

01/01/08

Baseline Finish

31/12/08

Finish

31/12/08

 Project Phase Milestones

Milestone Title	Date	% Complete
Initiation Complete (Start)
Planning Complete
Analysis Complete
Design & Development Complete
UAT Complete
Support Planning Complete
Infrastructure Complete
User Training Complete
Go Live (Finish)
Implementation Support Complete

 Risks

Risk ID	Risk Title	Consequence	Likelihood

 

Issues

Issue ID	Issue Title	Assignee	Date

 

 

PMO Core

Introduction

If we were to review all potential Program Management Office (PMO) activity it would fall into two core areas; Methodology and Program Controls.

Methodology

PMO are the owners of the Project Management Methodology.  Project Management Methodology includes processes, procedures, templates and tools which together create a predicable and repeatable method for the delivery of projects.

The PMO is responsible for;

• Development of the methodology
• Staff inductions in the methodology

Project Management Methodology includes;

• Project Portfolio Governance structures
• Project Delivery roadmap
• Project Delivery processes for Risk management, Issue management, Document Management, Quality Management, Variation Management etc
• Project Delivery templates including Project Management Plan, Project schedule template, Acceptance Certificates, Variation templates, Business Requirements Document etc.
• Project Quality Control processes including Health Checks

Program Controls

PMO are the owners of the program control procedures.  Program controls include the monitoring of budgets, costs, schedules, scope or quality of projects against the baselines or project tolerances.  Authority to deliver projects is delegated to Project Managers by the Program Board but this authority has limits that are defined by project tolerances.  Project tolerances must be clearly measurable.  PMO act on behalf of the Program Board and Project Managers to collate project data into consistent views (reports) that enable the Program Board to efficiently track the status of the program and make decisions regarding projects in the portfolio.
Program Controls includes;

• The Program plan or Portfolio Plan
• The project tracking systems including Risk register, Issue Register, Variations register
• Administration of the Baseline’s– only PMO can update Baselines in project tracking systems
• Produce Portfolio traffic light reports for Program meetings or Portfolio meetings

Conclusion

PMO activity is wide ranging and can mean the PMO focuses on only one of the above areas or even only certain functions.  My personal viewpoint is that the Program Controls activity has the greatest impact to an organisation and should be the first activity a PMO focuses on achieving.

 

Different colored Gantt bars in MS Project – How To

Different colored Gantt bars in MS Project

Introduction

Using different coloured Gantt bars in MS Project is a great way to communicate information and enhance the ‘look and feel’ of Gantt charts. 

Some recent examples where I’ve used different coloured Gantt bars;

• Visually differentiate between in-progress projects and planned projects
• Visually differentiate between different Levels in the schedule.

Diagram: In-progress projects vs Planned projects

Diagram: Different Levels
 

Links

http://masamiki.com/project/examples/Project_Grouping_And_Conditional_Formatting.html

http://dnutley.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/project-tips-and-tricks/

http://project.mvps.org  

Different coloured Gantt Bars 

Using Flag fields
Using my example above I’m going to flag the projects that are In-Progress using the Flag10 field.  You can use any of the Flag fields (from 1 to 20)

Format – Bar Styles
Now we use the Format – Bar Styles to setup the look of the bars.

1. Setup the default style.  We have decided the default style is to have ‘red’ bars for planned projects. 

2. Create a new style.  Use the ‘Cut’ Row and then ‘Paste’ twice to add a new style.

3. Format the New Bar style.  Change the name to ‘Flag10’.  Change the formatting.  Most importantly change the ‘Show For…Tasks’ to Flag10.

Further examples
You can extend the use of this technique by using the Customize Fields functionality. (Tools – Customize – Fields).  For example if you wanted all the tasks that contained ‘Client’ in the task title to be represented in a different colour.
Diagram: Customize Fields Screen (Formula)

Equation Screen
The equation looks a little complex but is really simple VBA.

IIf( InStr([Name] ,”Client” )>0,Yes ,No )

Conclusion

This technique is flexible and robust, really a great little tool to help in the readability of your schedule.  Ultimately it helps in the communication of the program and really that’s what schedules are all about.
 

 

IT Branch – Function Chart

Introduction 

The IT Branch – Function Chart is a hybrid function and organisational chart to explain the key functions of an IT Branch of a organisation with a total of 1000-5000 employees.  I would suggest that each of these functions is filled with an ‘manager’ who may have a number of people working in the function.

The PMOBK, PRINCE2 and ITIL methodologies feature somewhat in this chart.  The structure doesn’t employ either of these methodologies completely. 

Diagram:

Strategy & Governance – Function Descriptions

Function	Brief Description
General Management	Operational management of a business unit that delivers specialist technology services to an organisation.
Strategy	Help the business deliver on its objectives, business strategies and goals by aligning business and IT. Develop and maintain and IT systems strategy and direct IT investments in line with business and IT strategies.
Architecture	Develop and maintain enterprise architecture strategies and standards. Provide specialist advice and review projects to ensure compliance and integration with enterprise architecture.
PMO	Owner of the branch project management methodology including processes and templates.  Develop and maintain project management tools, methods, procedures and equipment. Provides project controls function across portfolio in relation to quality, time or cost risks to projects.
Contracts management	Manage IT supplier relationships and monitor commercial, contractual, legal and financial outcomes against contract and contract Key Performance Indicators. Ensure the organisation achieves maximum value from IT supplier arrangements.
Business Administration	Provide administration services to the branch including purchasing, bookkeeping and office management.

Project Delivery – Function Descriptions

Function	Brief Description
Project Delivery (Program Management)	Program management ensures the effective delivery of multiple, simultaneous projects. Ensure all projects are successfully monitored, documented, tracked, reported, integrated and implemented.
Project Management	Manage the end-to-end delivery of projects to deliver quality outcomes for business owners. Application of Project Management competencies including scope, time, costs, quality, HR, communications, risk, procurement, and integration management.
Business Analysis	Business Analysts work with and on behalf of business owners to ensure that business and user requirements are delivered in IT solutions.  Business analysis may include process/scenario analysis or process re-engineering, documentation of business requirements for IT systems and project management of activity within projects.
Design and Development	Designing, developing, system testing and maintenance of applications software to meet users requirements and compliance to enterprise architecture standards.
Test Management	Planning and execution of scenario or functional based testing of applications to ensure stability, reliability of production applications.
Organisational Change	Supports the business throughout the project implementation period.  Activities include change impact analysis, change planning and implementation activities such as road-shows, training and communication.

Systems Support – Function Descriptions

Function	Brief Description
Systems Support (Systems Support Manager)	Systems support ensures the operation of systems to support the business as agreed in Service Level Agreements with the business. Systems support management incorporates a wide range of activity and is well defined by ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library)
Change & Release Management	The change management function ensures minor changes to infrastructure and application or configuration/data changes follow process and are managed effectively.  The release management function ensures major releases have followed process.  Release management is a key quality point for major implementations.
Incident Management	Ensure procedures and processes are in place to deal with high impact incidents that impact Service Level Agreements.  Manage incidents through to return to SLA, raise Problems as potential projects to delivery group.
Disaster Recovery	Developing, planning, testing and administering the organisation’s Disaster Recovery plans and procedures.
Service Desk	The Service Desk provides first level support to all users of IT systems and incident trend reporting to the IT branch.
Desktop Support	Provides Desktop support services to the organisation including desktop lifecycle management and Standard Operating Environment release management.
Infrastructure Support	Infrastructure support provides enterprise level infrastructure services including Email services, messaging systems (EAI), financials infrastructure and other hardware, database and facility management services.

 

Risk Management

The Australian Standard for Risk Management AS4360 defines risk as;

exposure to the consequences of uncertainty, or potential deviations from what is planned or expected

Risk Management has a number of different focuses and is very often applied in companies with the focus of organisational safety in relation to staff members health and well being.

For IT Project Managers, risk analysis takes a different flavour with a focus on project delivery risk and usually all risks are tied to impacts of time, cost or quality.

There are some different approaches to Risk Management even for IT Projects

• IT Project Health report (can be done prior or periodically during the project) 
• IT Project risk log
• IT Program risk report
• IT Financial Controls risk assessment

Each of the above points has its own processes and templates. 

 

What should a PMO do?

Project Offices cover a wide scope of activity on programs.

Heres a list of different activities that PMO’s get up too on a busy day

• Risk Management processes and risk reporting including running the risk meetings
• Issue Management processes including printing graphs and running meetings to step through the issues and follow up resolutions
• Change Management process including tracking down all the signitures
• Budgeting including casting the program budget, tracking actual program costs, facilating where costs are maintained against the budget, flagging cost overruns
• Project Tolerance, drafting the tolerance document and tracking the program tolerance breaches
• Documentation management, designing the document taxonomy, tracking document turn around times, and making sure the project team are filing
• Quality Control of project documentation to ensure quality standards are adhered too across the project
• Mentoring of junior project officers and induction of new staff in project
• Methodology enhancement, updating the processes and templates used to deliver the project
• Resource Analysis, using the project data to calculate required project resources
• Implementation and management of Project Management toolsets (Microsoft EVM, Primavera, Clarity)
• Project scheuduling including designing the standard project template, drafting the project schedule, tracking the schedule

I feel tired just looking at this list, one of the problems with such a large list is ensuring your PMO is doing a quality job on the tasks, you may have to draw up a detailed PMO Charter that clears defines what your PMO will deliver and what it won’t deliver.

 

Program Reporting – Tools

Introduction

If you are running a PMO, reporting is probably your most visible deliverable.  Usually you will have a portfolio of projects (10-50) that may or may not be part of a program.  You will also have a group of project managers who will report to a couple of different Line managers.

You will be required to produce two reports.  One weekly or fortnightly report for the Project Director and Line managers who are responsible for project management – we call this the Project Report.  The other report is for the Business Owners (people paying for the project / people who use the final output of the project) – we call this the Owners Report.

The Project Report should be a warts and all; good, bad and ugly report by the Project managers to the Project Director and Line Managers.  Its’ best if these reports are short and sharp and ‘by exception’.  By Exception means that the report usually they focuses on the negative exceptions.  Negative exceptions must always be hard (i.e. measurable).

E.g. “The sign off for HVAC design was rejected by the Quality Reviewer, this will delay the delivery of the HVAC by 2 weeks”.

The Owners report will be even shorter and sharper than the Project report.  Usually a more positive spin is put on this report – focusing on the achievements.  Remember only the Owners can approve a move in the project completion date – so any changes must be pre-approved and will require an analysis (and grovelling) for approval.  Many project issues are not on the critical path and Business Owners only expect to be informed of project exceptions if it has been confirmed the finish date or budget will not be achieved.

E.g. “HVAC final design was completed – pending sign off.”

Reporting Fields/Data

You need to talk with the Project Director and the Business Managers and get their reporting requirements and also get their buy-in to the reporting process. 

Remember; YOU!are the best judge of the fields that are needed in the report.  Usually the project managers will be a prickly lot with different ideas as to the structure and fields that are required.  But the list of fields so always pretty standard across most organisations so don’t over-complicate the reporting process.

Reporting Fields – Project Report

• Project ID
• Project Title
• Project Description – when there are 120 small projects a description of the project can produce interesting discussions!
• Business Division
• Business Owner
• Project Manager
• Start
• Baseline Finish – this can only ever be entered once.
• Target Finish – the Target should always be approved
• Status/Achievements – the good
• Issues / Risks – the bad
• Traffic Light

Reporting Fields – Owners Report

• Project Title
• Project Description
• Status
• Baseline Finish
• Target Finish 
• Traffic Light

Reporting Tools 

• Microsoft Excel

Excel is probably the most widely used reporting tool.  Excel is good for the Owners report because usually this report is written by one person (the Project Director).  Excel isn’t good for the Project report because lots of people will login to the report at the same time creating a file conflict.

• Microsoft Word

Some PMO’s get very fancy and create a Word report (with locked fields) for Project Managers to enter the status into.  The Word reports are collected (usually via email) and the data is transferred from Word to Excel (with a fancy macro).

This type of system can be great for distributed project teams (different buildings, different states) where sometimes there isn’t much interaction or project cross-dependency between various project teams across the organisation. 

In general I don’t like these Microsoft Word based systems.  Usually the PMO doesn’t have the coding knowledge of VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) to change the report and they have to rely on external coders to do the changes.  This can make it difficult for the PMO to make quick changes to formats – being a PMO that can rapidly change formats for a new Project Director is a recipe for longevity.

 

MS Project – Color Macro

Introduction 

This macro improves the readability of large MS Project schedules by changing the color of the text and bars for each WBS level (Work Breakdown Structure), so that all the level 1 elements will be Blue, all level 2 Green. etc.

Example

How to copy the Macro into your MS Project file 

• To view the Visual Basic Editor in MS Project either;
  • hit: Alt+F11
  • Tools | Macro | Visual Basic Editor
• Copy and paste the macro into the Editor
• Save the file
• Try Debug | Compile VBAproject.  If the project compiles you are able to run it.  (Yo! its not my problem if YOU can’t get it to work).
• To run the macro – “Tools | Macro | Run Macro”.  Choose “Format_Bars_Color_Macro” from the list.

The Macro – copy and paste into your file (or you default MS Project file)

Sub Format_Bars_Color_Macro()

‘**************************************************************************
‘ Format Bars Colour Macro
‘ Written by pmotechniques@gmail.com in July 2006
‘**************************************************************************
‘ SUMMARY
‘ This macro colour formats the text and bars into different levels
‘ Level 1 will have a different colour to Level 2 etc.
‘ The program currently supports 5 levels of colour
‘Note: MS Project currently only supports 16 colors
‘**************************************************************************
‘ INSTRUCTIONS
‘ 1. Change the colors by changing the number below
‘ 2. The color wheel for MS Project is provided below
‘ 3. Hint: Colors 1 to 7 are very strong – best not to use these colors
‘**************************************************************************
‘UPDATE THESE NUMBERS TO CHANGE THE COLORS
Level1 = 8
Level2 = 11
Level3 = 9
Level4 = 11
Level5 = 9

‘ COLOUR WHEEL
‘ 0 = Black = pjBlack
‘ 1 = Red = pjRed
‘ 2 = Yellow = pjYellow
‘ 3 = Lime = pjLime
‘ 4 = Aqua = pjAqua
‘ 5 = Blue = pjBlue
‘ 6 = Fuchsia = pjFuchsia
‘ 7 = White = pjWhite
‘ 8 = Maroon = pjMaroon
‘ 9 = Green = pjGreen
‘ 10 = Olive = pjOlive
‘ 11 = Navy = pjNavy
‘ 12 = Purple = pjPurple
‘ 13 = Teal = pjTeal
‘ 14 = Gray = pjGray
‘ 15 = Silver = pjSilver

Dim myTask As Task

    For Each myTask In ActiveProject.Tasks
        If Not myTask Is Nothing Then ‘check task is not blank/’missing’
        If Not myTask.ExternalTask Then
            If myTask.Summary Then
               
                Select Case myTask.OutlineLevel
               
                Case 1
                    GanttBarFormat TaskID:=myTask.ID, GanttStyle:=5, StartColor:=Level1, MiddleColor:=Level1, EndColor:=Level1, RightText:=”Name”
                    SelectRow Row:=myTask.ID, RowRelative:=False
                    Font Color:=Level1
                   
                Case 2
                    GanttBarFormat TaskID:=myTask.ID, GanttStyle:=5, StartColor:=Level2, MiddleColor:=Level2, EndColor:=Level2, RightText:=”Name”
                    SelectRow Row:=myTask.ID, RowRelative:=False
                    Font Color:=Level2
               
                Case 3
                    GanttBarFormat TaskID:=myTask.ID, GanttStyle:=5, StartColor:=Level3, MiddleColor:=Level3, EndColor:=Level3, RightText:=”Name”
                    SelectRow Row:=myTask.ID, RowRelative:=False
                    Font Color:=Level3
               
                Case 4
                    GanttBarFormat TaskID:=myTask.ID, GanttStyle:=5, StartColor:=Level4, MiddleColor:=Level4, EndColor:=Level4, RightText:=”Name”
                    SelectRow Row:=myTask.ID, RowRelative:=False
                    Font Color:=Level4

                Case 5
                    GanttBarFormat TaskID:=myTask.ID, GanttStyle:=5, StartColor:=Level5, MiddleColor:=Level5, EndColor:=Level5, RightText:=”Name”
                    SelectRow Row:=myTask.ID, RowRelative:=False
                    Font Color:=Level5
               
               
                End Select
           
            Else
                ‘resets all ‘tasks’ to default
                GanttBarFormat TaskID:=myTask.ID, Reset:=True
                    SelectRow Row:=myTask.ID, RowRelative:=False
                    Font Reset:=True
                   
            End If
        End If ‘myTask Is Nothing
        End If ‘myTask.ExternalTask
    Next

End Sub