MS Portfolio Server in a nutshell

Microsoft Portfolio Server 2007 is a powerful, somewhat complex portfolio management tool so when I state ‘nutshell’, I really mean it.

Portfolio Server allows senior management to meet their organization’s strategic objectives by providing insight on their projects. This allows them to make sound decisions on the choosing the right project mix.

The tool is broken down into three major sections:

• Builder: Users enter information about details for each project
• Optimizer: Users define what’s important to them from a strategic level
• Dashboard: Users view the results of their choices

So there you have it. Enjoy your nut!

MS Project: The difference between Standard and Professional

What’s the difference between MS Project Standard and MS Project Professional? I get this question a lot when I teach MS Project classes.

Here’s Microsoft’s explanation:

Office Project Standard 2007 is the latest version of the desktop project management program. As a stand-alone product, Office Project Standard 2007 helps project managers, business managers, and planners to manage and plan projects independently with familiar, easy-to-use tools. Office Project Standard 2007 is not designed to exchange data with Office Project Server 2007.

Office Project Professional 2007 is the desktop client that is also used to connect with Office Project Server 2007 as part of the Office EPM Solution. Office Project Professional 2007 offers all the tools found in Office Project Standard 2007, and when used with Office Project Server 2007, it also provides powerful EPM capabilities such as collaboration, management of shared resources, portfolio management, and reporting across projects and programs run by different project managers.

So what does that mean? Standard and Professional are the same unless you are going to use Project Server. Professional is required for Project Server and will cost nearly double. Otherwise, save your organization money and get Standard (retail $599/$349 upgrade vs. $999/599 upgrade).

Of course, please bear in mind that you may have future needs for Project Server so if that’s the case, Project Professional should also be considered for your organization’s growth, even if you don’t need it today.

Baseline best practices using MS Project

Many new users to MS Project, or any other project management tool for that matter, do not set baselines for their project files. Without a baseline, however, a you can never really accurately gauge performance on the project. For instance, you won’t see variances or earned value data.

A baseline is what I call an original snapshot of your project. When you set a baseline (MS Project 2007 calls it ‘Set baseline’; all previous versions refer to it as ‘Save baseline’), you are essentially saving Start, Finish, Duration, Work, and Cost data for the entire project, each subproject, and each subtask.

Although you may have multiple baselines for each project (up to 11 baselines in MS Project), nearly all of my clients and students only have a need for one. I usually recommend only using one anyway since there is no quick way to extract those other baselines without additional configuration. Anyway, I’ll save that topic for another day.

In the meantime, here are some general best practices for setting baselines:

• Set your baseline when you are ready to begin the project. That means when it has been approved, the day before, the morning of, etc…
• Only clear baselines when you don’t want to see baseline data in your tables and views. Otherwise, simply set the baseline again and MS Project will overwrite the previous baseline.
• If you have new tasks during the project, you can save a baseline on only those tasks so you don’t have to save the baseline for the entire project.
• Interim plans are similar to baselines but MS Project only saves Start and Finish data.

New Microsoft Project Exams

Microsoft has released their new MS Project certifications and they are on par with their other serious certs.

70-632 Microsoft Project 2007 Desktop, Managing Projects

70-633 Microsoft Project 2007 Server, Managing Projects

70-634 Microsoft Project 2007 Server, Managing Projects and Programs

The first two are MCTS (Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist) exams, while the last is a MCITP (Microsoft Certified IT Professional). The MCITP also requires achieving the two MCTS credentials first.

I took the 70-632 exam last Fall when it became available and although I passed easily, I was surprised at the difficulty of the exam. Almost all questions were scenario based and I really had to not only understand MS Project inside and out, but also have project management knowledge.

In February, I took the 70-633 exam and passed. It was a very similar format and again, I was impressed with the number of scenarios that required me to really think. That said, I took these exams without the help of practice exams, which I’m sure would have made the process a tad easier.

When should I use LEAD in MS Project?

Last week, I answered the question of when to use lag. Now I’m going to describe its counterpart – lead.

Lead is the amount of time a successor task can overlap its predecessor. In other words, how soon can a task begin before its predecessor completely finishes? My two-word definition for lead is overlapped tasks. Please note that I’m referring only to tasks that have a relationship between each other.

For instance, let’s say that I am a programmer and one my tasks is Develop code. I also have a task for unit testing my own work, Test code. Would you agree that I can’t actually test the code unless I develop the code? Therefore, I should use a finish-to-start relationship. However, I am asked to shorten the duration of my project. One of my options is to simply start testing before I am completely done developing. Maybe I will start testing two days before I am scheduled to finish developing. If that’s the case, I will apply two days of lead on that link.

By the way, if you’re looking for the lead field in MS Project, you won’t find it. You have to put a negative number in the lag field.

And lastly, just as I stated for lag, the same applies here — no dependencies, no lead.

When should I use LAG in MS Project?

The definition of lag is the amount of time a successor task must be delayed. If you’ve attended any of my classes where I walk my students through activity sequencing, you’d already know that I like using two-word definitions and that I simply refer to lag as a forced wait.

Let’s walk through an example of when lag makes sense. I am redecorating a room and part of this project includes painting the room and hanging up pictures. Therefore, Paint walls is a predecessor of Hang up pictures. If I intend to “force” a waiting time between the tasks (I should probably let the paint dry a bit!), I place lag right on that finish-to-start dependency. If I want to let the paint dry for a day, then I’d add 1 day lag. The start of the successor task will now begin after a one day waiting period once the predecessor has finished. Lag is dynamic so if it takes more or less time for me to paint, the lag will still remain as a fixed 1 day wait prior to hanging up pictures.

An alternative to adding lag is creating a new task, such as Wait for paint to dry. The reason why lag is usually the preferred method is because there is no effort for paint drying. Unless you need to exhibit these types of tasks on the Gantt Chart, then just use lag and save yourself the trouble. In general, using lag will reduce the number of tasks you need to view on your project schedules.

Of course, if you’re not using dependencies at all, then you can’t actually apply lag!

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.

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!