If I'm going to be the gatekeeper at my meeting, how do I take notes?

As I stated one of my posts last week, your main job at your meetings is to be the gatekeeper. So how do you take notes when you're controlling the flow of communications? You don't!

For example, when I teach my courses, I know my material inside and out. However, from time to time, I play a game with my students and just because I have to keep score, it detracts from my control. I either miss part of the discussion or make a scoring mistake (which the students would quickly correct!). It's nearly impossible to do both of those things at once.

So who takes notes? The note taker's official role is Recorder or Scribe. The PM must be the gatekeeper but the recorder can be anyone. Find an administrative assistant, project coordinator, business analyst, or intern. Just make sure it's not you. If you must, ask someone who's going to be the meeting anyway and kindly ask him to take notes for the team so you can focus running the meeting.

I'm the PM -- So what's my role in this meeting?

Of all the “roles” project managers can play during a meeting, there’s only one that is crucial — that’s the gatekeeper. Sure, it may sound bad (partially because of Sigourney Weaver’s role in the movie Ghostbusters!), but it simply means that you control the flow of the communications.

In my opinion, there’s nothing worse than sitting in a meeting and watching the project manager have little or no control of the discussion. Not only can the meeting become chaotic, but it also poorly reflects on the perceived competency of the project manager. When there are disruptions, sidebar conversations, topics totally off on a tangent, or someone else “running the show”, team members undoubtedly lose confidence in the project manager’s ability to lead.

This does not mean you are to boss people around. Just use your own style and control who says what and when. It may be advantageous to have an agenda so when someone pulls you off it, just refer back to the agenda to reel the discussion back on track. Jot down these off-topics and address them offline.

Project 2007 does some of the things you’ve been waiting for

Microsoft Office Project 2007 has been released for almost a year now and in case you haven’t had the chance to take a peek, some of the features that users have been waiting for made it to this version (finally)!

Among the new items, Project 2007 includes:

• Multiple undo’s - Yes, it’s true, you can undo and undo and undo… As all current users know, all previous versions of Project have only one undo.
• Highlight changes - When you make a change in one thing, Project 2007 highlights other items you have affected, right on the table! So go ahead, make change a task’s duration from 2 days to 4 days, you’ll see exactly how it affected your other tasks.
• Visual reports - Gone are the days of using the view/print only reports. OK, they’re not gone but now you have new and improved reports as well. They are more dynamic and will drop your data right into Excel and Visio.

Fixed duration task type - When should you use it?

The default task type in MS Project is fixed units. However, this isn’t always the best choice, especially if your organization is in a functional structure (meaning your project team reports to their respective functional managers and not to the project manager).

For example, you assigned a 2 day task to Michael. Michael does not report to you and your primary concern is that he does his work within those 2 days. Since you are not managing his full workload, you really don’t need to track how much time he is spending on that particular task; it could be 2 hours of effort or 16 hours of effort. If that looks like your situation, then you want fixed duration, not fixed units.

Many project managers already know that they can change each task’s task type to ‘Fixed Duration’ by accessing its Task Information. But did you know that you can also set MS Project to use fixed duration as the task type every time in the future?

Simply go to Tools > Options > Schedule tab and change the Default task type to ‘Fixed Duration’. This task type will apply to all new tasks for every project moving forward.

Contingency reserve vs. management reserve

Many of my clients use contingency reserve and management reserve interchangeably. Although they both refer to money used to account for a risk that has triggered, there is a difference.

• Contingency reserve - This is your fund for “known-unknowns“. That means you’ve already identified the risk; you just don’t know how much it will impact your project. This can be estimated based on the sum of all of your risks’ expected values.
• Management reserve - This is for the “unknown-unknowns“. Basically, you didn’t even identify the risk until it has occurred. This may be derived from using percentage of the overall project budget.

Not so obvious benefits of a PMI membership

Aside from the benefits that you’d already expect from joining PMI as a member (e.g. access to publications, discounts to resources), have you thought about:

• The cost of a one-year PMI membership ($129) and the PMP exam as a member ($405) is actually less than the cost of the PMP exam as a non-member ($555).
• You could (and probably should) add ‘PMI member‘ as one of your professional affiliations on your resume.
• If you also join a local chapter, you can:
  • Network with other PMPs and aspiring PMPs at chapter events.
  • Find others in your area to form a study group for your PMP/CAPM.
  • Attend meetings and volunteer for activities, which can earn PDUs after you have attained your PMP/CAPM credential.

By the way, if you are a student or a retiree, you can apply for membership at a greatly reduced rate at $30/yr. and $60/yr. respectively.

Printing usable Gantt charts as handouts

How many times have you or someone you know plastered a Gantt Chart on an entire wall? From time to time, that may serve a purpose but what happens when you want to distribute it at a meeting? For instance, certainly you don’t want to take your 6×6 (or more!) page grid and staple them. That would leave your audience with a packet that includes blank pages and pages with bars with no tables.

Here’s how to solve that problem. Your goal is to create print outs that are one page in width. In other words, you can have as many pages as you want vertically but you only want one page horizontally. That way, you will have print outs with both the table and the Gantt Chart on the same pages.

Remember WYSIWYG? It’s not a term used much today but it stands for What You See Is What You Get. What does that mean to you? Essentially, what you see on your screen is what you will get as your print out. Right before you print, look at your screen and do these two things:

1. Modify your table to show only the fields that are necessary. You may hide some columns, scroll the table side so some columns are no longer visible, or reposition your split bar.
2. Adjust your Gantt Chart and ensure that you can see both your start milestone and your finish milestone without scrolling horizontally. You can do this quickly by clicking the Zoom In or Zoom Out buttons on the Formatting toolbar.

Take a look at your print preview. Rather than having a 6×6 grid, you should now have a 1×6 grid. Just staple and distribute!

Project Managers: Remember these two words!

Every class I teach, I write my name, a welcome message with the course title, and the following two words on the board:

Manage Expectations

Take a moment and think of every good project manager you ever have worked with. I guarantee these folks communicated to you what is occurring, when things were changing, and what is going to happen; in other words, they managed your expectations. They may not be the ones with the prettiest Gantt charts or the best dressed or the most entertaining (though I must admit those things could help). Rather, they are simply excellent at telling accurate stories — verbally and nonverbally.

As long as you’re wearing a PM hat, if you’re not managing expectations, with very few exceptions, I’m not really sure what you’re doing then. Perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate your daily priorities. Every meeting you run, every requirement you capture, every email you send, and every report you create, you better be managing expectations.

If you can remember those two words, your job will be much, much easier. Trust me on this tip: paste those two words on top of your monitor so you can see them all day long. It will provide you with a constant reminder of what your job is all about. Everything else is gravy. And you know, gravy without the turkey is not all that tasty.

On the road and too lazy to get my own food

So, here I am on business this week at a client that is 1500 miles from my home. When I first learned that I was headed to Denver, I figured my client would put me up at a half decent hotel. Instead, I end up here at an extended stay facility and guess what -- there's no room service and no restaurant on-site!

I'm no diva but I'd just like to eat and therefore I want easy access to food. Some people enjoy painting the town red but if you're anything like me, you may prefer to just head straight to your room after a long day and just be a vegetable.

Rather than looking through the stack of phone books in my room (really, they're still in publication?) I recall studying internet delivery services back in 2000 when I was going through my MBA program. I know many of them didn't make it through the dot com implosion but I wondered if I could find one that could go to a local establishment and get my food for me.

A quick google and I found Foodler.com. I briefly scanned the restaurants that the service would deliver to my zip, picked a few things on the menu, and charged the entire order on my card. In a few moments, I received an email confirmation and about 45 minutes after that, there's a knock on my door.

Last night, I had a gourmet pizza from California Pizza, tonight, I had a steak from Bennigan's, and tomorrow, I'm eying a few items from the Thai Pot Cafe. I mean sure, they're not exactly five star dinners but I can tell you that I really enjoyed ordering from a variety of menus and paying for it in one spot.

Bon Appetit!

Welcome to all the PM infoseekers

First, let me thank you for coming. I am certain that you will find the much needed project management insight that you're looking for.

Over the years, as a project manager consultant and trainer, I have come across many people from whom I have had the pleasure of not only providing solutions, but also learning a great deal from. It's the everyday interactions that I have with my clients and students that provide me with new experiences on a regular basis.

I have been documenting my project management tips in the form of white papers and blogs for other sites but decided it was time to manage my own site. I simply have so much to say! My "secrets" have impacted many of my readers in one way or another. They may not agree with everything that I have to offer but the goal is to generate purposeful thinking, not to sway people with my own professional beliefs.

Anyway, mark this blog and come back often. I'm sure you will enjoy my observations and advice as much as I will enjoy writing them!


-Gabe