Projects Possible

I’ve heard many different things being compared to herding cats…  Project Management is Like Herding Cats, Managing Programmers is Like Herding Cats, Leadership is Like Herding Cats, Teaching is Like Herding Cats, Getting My Family Together is Like Herding Cats. (You’ve probably got a few things in your life that are like herding cats as well.)

The interesting thing for me as a NON-CAT person is I really wasn’t sure what that whole phrase implied…so I thought I might take a look at it from the standpoint of why I don’t like cats.

1. Cat’s don’t “need” me in the truest sense of they word.  They tend to do just fine by themselves and really to me only seem interested when they need or want something from me.  I’ve been told they “sense” that I am not a cat person.
2. Cat’s never seem to focus on anything.   You can easily distract them with a ball of twine or some other toy.  They can bounce from distraction to distraction and seem to be quite happy doing it.  I’ve been told they focus on the distractions… that’s what they are good at.
3. Cats will climb all over everything.  Boundaries don’t seem to matter.  My kitchen table, the stove, bathroom vanities, you name it and it is their territory. 
4. The incessant need to make sure that you know they have claws.  When you push them away or put them down, they will let you know that they also know how to use these claws.  Make sure you provide them with an acceptable scratching post or they will use whatever they can get those claws into.
5. Cats want to be awake when I want to sleep and if it’s mating season it is absolutely amazing the amount of noise that you can get out a cat when they are on the prowl.

So now look at your [Job or Task] and look at some of the reasons above…  I’ll use Project Management since I am a bit familiar with it…

1. Team members will often think that the PM is really not needed and that their job is to make their life miserable, holding them accountable for their portion of the project.  When people want to go it alone in a project things will quickly start to become problematic.  The sum of the parts is much better than the lone wolf.  (ummm cat)
2. Projects need to be organized, well communicated, structured, etc… If you are easily distracted or have team members that are easily distracted the project becomes at risk.
3. Everyone needs to know their boundaries and work on the things that they have been assigned.  I am a firm believer that you can’t manage ever single task.  You need to allow your team members the flexibility to do their task and all of its sub-tasks in the time allotted, holding them accountable.   
4. Having claws… In a project I might consider this to be the hidden agenda.  Either the project sponsor, the team members or in some cases even the project manager have an agenda that they want to accomplish that is not part of the project but they will wield their claws to get it accomplished.
5. Time management in projects is so important to meet the deadlines agreed upon.  If we aren’t meeting the deadlines we end up with again a project at risk.  Doing things “on your own time” never works well with projects.  I don’t care if you do it at 2am as long as I don’t have to get a call from you at 2am that you are running up against problems or need to discuss a change order.

So I guess the reasons I hate cats can be fit into the analogy…  I wonder if it would work with dogs?  Perhaps another day!

There was a super bowl commercial that was done a few years back by EDS… It was absolutely one of the funniest and well done!  I’ve included it from a YouTube search below… enjoy!

This is the first in a series of a few articles that I will be sharing on little tips and tricks in Microsoft Excel that I have accumulated or built over the last few months.  I’ve incorporated most of these into an Excel workbook or two to meet my specific needs.  I’m not really a Visual Basic for Applications programmer so I probably won’t be able to help out much in customizing…I just tweak things a bit here and there with help from online resources like Excel Forums. 

In this post, I want to show you how you can have a series of checkboxes in a column and when you “check” the checkbox it populates the cell directly to the right of the checkbox with the current date.   I use this in a project management spreadsheet where I have any number of projects all with common tasks that must be completed.

If you look at the spreadsheet above you will see that there are 3 columns… what you don’t see over to the far left in column A is the name of the task that I want to complete…  When I create a new project this portion of my spreadsheet is populated with a series of expected dates based on a set of known criteria.   I want to be able to come to this worksheet and not only quickly review a project and what needs to be completed but I want to be able to quickly update the “work” that was done on a project and have it give me the date that it was completed.   This is where my checkbox routine comes into play…  by simply clicking on the checkbox I can indicate the task is complete and it will make a permanent record of when it was completed… If I check it by mistake I can uncheck and it will also remove the date.

So how do I do this?

Sub Process_CheckBox()

Dim cBox As CheckBox
Dim LCol As Long
Dim LRow As Long
Dim Rng As Range

  LName = Application.Caller
  Set cBox = ActiveSheet.CheckBoxes(LName)

'Find row that checkbox resides in
  LCol = cBox.TopLeftCell.Column
  LRow = cBox.TopLeftCell.Row
  Set Rng = ActiveSheet.Cells(LRow + 1, LCol + 1)

'Change date in cell to the right of CheckBox, if checkbox is checked
If cBox.Value > 0 Then
  Rng.Value = Date

'Clear date in column B, if checkbox is unchecked
Else
  Rng.ClearContents
End If

End Sub

The key lines here are:

• Set Rng line which determines the row and column to place the date… You may tweak these to be +2, +3, whatever you need based on where and how you place yoru checkboxes in your spreadsheet and where and how you want your dates to appear.
• Rng.Value sets the date if there is a check in the checkbox
• Rng.ClearContents clears the date if the checkbox does not have a date

To use the routine you must open the Visual Basic Editor in Excel - Alt+F11, Click on Insert, Select Module and then Paste the Code above.   In your spreadsheet you would then right click on your checkbox and Assign a Macro to it… the macro is called Process_Checkbox.  Now every time you check the checkbox it will run this macro and it will insert the date.

In looking at the projects that I work on there could literally be thousands of small little tasks in the jigsaw puzzle we call a project.  The tasks could range from simple little 20 or 30 minute things, to tasks that may require days or even weeks to complete.  At one time, I went down the road of creating a Work Breakdown Structure that would allow me to assign and track all of those thousands of tasks.   What I found is that I was spending more time tracking tasks than some of those tasks even took to complete.   I also found that I was creating an atmosphere in my projects that did not allow my team members the flexibility that they needed to exercise their expertise.  

I learned after doing a couple of these extensive WBSs that I needed to trust my team and hold them accountable for their portion of the project but to let them handle the small details that they had control over.  As a result I had a slimmed down WBS that really focused on key components of the project with a few “touch points” within each component that I could effectively monitor and measure.  My team members were empowered to complete their jobs without me hovering on each and every task and instead of me spending hours trying to keep tasks updated I was now able to focus my attention more on the things that really mattered.

In my web surfing today I ran across an interesting website called 4PM.com that deals with a concept in project management called Achievement-driven Project Management.  While I haven’t had full opportunity to review everything they have to offer, there was an article that I wanted to share with you that is similar to my current approach to WBS.   Written by Dick Billows - Work Breakdown Structure: Project Design Issue or Clerical Task - discusses the WBS as a “TO DO” list being the potential launchpad for project failure…check out the blog post and the associated article linked in the text.

I’d be real curious how other project managers deal with their work breakdowns.  Do you poll your team members as to the tasks they believe need to be completed and then compile the final list?  Do you build it yourself and send it out to the team for review and edits?  What tools do you use to assist?   As a “rookie” project manager I’m always looking for ways to streamline the processes.  Anything that I can do to make me and my staff more productive is a positive thing.  What are some of your thoughts?

As a project manager, I am always looking for great tools and utilities that will help me to become more productive and improve customer (internal and external) experience.

I know about the standard stuff that we use like Microsoft Project, Mindmapper, Excel, Outlook and the like.   What I would be interested in is hearing what you’ve found that you believe to be absolutely indispensable.  For example, I have posted reviews on an Outlook addin that I use called ClearContext IMS.  This tool helps me become a much more effective and productive email manager.    I’ve also posted about Excel and some of the things that I try to do with Excel to make me more productive.

 What do you do?  What little tricks have you found that help you out as you work on projects…  Share them with us!