Project Challenge Expo 2009

P2ware is exhibiting at Project Challenge Expo 2009. Project Challenge is leading show for project, programme, process and resource management in UK and Europe. There will be around 40 presentations on project management (and not only on that!) and around 80 exhibiting organizations (project management software, consultancies, process control software, training and many more categories).

See us at stand 44 at Project Challenge EXPO 2009, 30 September – 01 October 2009, Olympia, London http://www.projchallenge.com

How to monitor project execution using P2ware Planner?

In previous post I wrote about how to create a plan using P2ware Planner. It is really straightforward and effective, see How to create a plan in P2ware Planner. Similar is with plan execution (it is even simpler since planning is in general quite tough but Planner helps immensely). In this post I am going to demonstrate how to execute a plan in Planner.

One small note: I am not demonstrating how to monitor project execution using Planner Server and Planner Professional. I am demonstrating only Planner Professional project execution (without server).

Prerequisites

In general you have to have created plan for your project with

• Created activities (using or not product based planning technique)
• Assigned resources to activities
• Defined work packages – groups of related activities assigned to individual or small group
• Defined checkpoints – dates when you want to update project status

Of course these prerequisites may vary. In some smaller projects you may not create work packages and even checkpoints at all. In other, more complex, you may want to use cost items to loot at the project also from accountant point of view.

Start

Looking at the screenshot below you see Gantt Chart of P2ware Planner. Gantt Chart can work in two modes: Planning and Progress Tracking. In general the main difference between the two is that Progress Tracking displays gray bar representing actual activity timing and percent complete. Screenshot below presents project at the beginning of execution. Nothing is yet done.

In P2ware Planner one does not have to update progress manually (i.e. manually move progress of each bar). Really! If you are managing your project using work packages and checkpoints you enter progress data only once – filling in checkpoint report. Screenshot below presents list of checkpoints before project execution.



How to execute project?

Description below presents general rules of project execution in P2ware Planner. I present mainly project schedule and cost control leaving risk, issues, quality management not covered.

1. Send work packages to persons responsible.

To do this navigate to Work Packages view. Select work package to be sent, click Send Work Package button, complete wizard and work package is sent.
Two screenshots below present sending of work package. First select work package, complete wizard.

Then actually send the work package. Work package is sent in a form of file containing all details of the work package. Details of this file can be changed in P2ware Planner.

2. Fill in checkpoint reports.

Checkpoint reports are to be filled in when planned. When managing project using P2ware Planner Server and Planner Professional checkpoint reports are entered via web browser and PM synchronizes (and accepts or rejects) this data using Planner Professional.

Using one instance of Planner Professional project manager receives reports either printed or by e-mail. Work package contains template of all data person responsible for work package has to send. Therefore PM copies report data to Planner checkpoint report editor (in the screenshot below).

After filling in checkpoint report and applying data to the plan all actual and estimated data are updated in P2ware Planner plan so there is no need to copy and paste this data again. Screenshot below presents Gantt Chart with updated values. In checkpoint report I entered that Initial trainees list Creation is to be finished (estimate) on 2009-04-29 17:00 and is 50% complete – Gantt Chart displays exactly the same values from the report.

3. Manage products quality.

To manage products quality navigate to Quality Log. Screenshot below presents quality log of project management training plan.

4. Manage risks and issues.

Planner has two separate logs for issue and risks management. These views have default properties required by popular methodologies.

5. Create snapshots and perform other activities.

Snapshots save state of a plan at the time of creating snapshot. To create snapshot go to Snapshots view (the one with camera icon).

How to create a plan using P2ware Planner?

Plan in Planner can be created in at least two different ways. First way is by making use of product-based planning technique and second using ‘traditional’ WBS approach. In its fundamentals these approaches are quite similar (from 10 000 feet view), lead to the same result (or at least should) but I will stick to the one using product-based planning technique (just wanted to mention that Planner could be used without ‘products’ at all if one prefers so even if I personally prefer the other way).
In next few steps I am going to describe how to create a plan from scratch using P2ware Planner. I skip some low level details and focus on key points (from blank plan to defined work packages and checkpoints).

Before we start - project scenario

You are to manage following project:

Management Board of Company A decided on implementing of methodological project management. One of the projects included in the implementation is to organize 2 two-day trainings, each for a group of fifteen. Topic and scope of the training were decided by the Management. Initial trainees list will be prepared by internal Training Department. Training will be provided by one of the training companies that Company A cooperates with (there is a list of such a companies in company’s database). Selection of actual training provider will be made by Training Department using internal criteria list from quality management system available in Company A. The training company will prepare handouts and will select Examiner to examine trainees in 3 to 5 days after the training. Test sheet for examination will be prepared by the training company. Training Department will be responsible for signing an agreement with the training provider. Training Department also will be responsible for booking training venue, catering (to be done by catering company that Company A cooperates with), occasional monitoring of the training and preparation of trainees list to be examined after the training. Training Department will be responsible for collecting training assessment surveys and will prepare certificates which will be printed by Printing Department. Printing Department will also print training handouts. Sending certificates will conclude the project.

Step 1 – Define products
In first step you have to define what the products of your plan are. You have to define final product, standard and external products. This and second step are really fast when assisted by Planner. It’s very very effective to merge these two steps.

Step 2 – Arrange products in a product breakdown structure
Having at least a few products arrange them is a structure called product breakdown structure. The most important thing to remember about PBS (product breakdown structure) is that it is not set in time or sequence. It defines only structure of products (results of activities) and not sequence in which we are going to work on them. Sample product breakdown structure in P2ware Planner is pasted below.

Step 3 – Define and modify a product flow diagram
In this step you have to define additional relations between products. Planner creates initial relations which are derived from a product breakdown structure. PFD (product flow diagram) is about logical sequence of products, i.e. which product depends on which ones. While PBS tells which products are composed of which ones, PFD adds logical relations to this diagram. There is one very important thing to remember – PFD is not about timing! Here we define only logical relations of products and not timing. Sample PFD is pasted below (please note that it was created automatically by P2ware Planner and then I added additional relations, e.g. to book Catering we have to have Schedule of Training and Exams).

Step 4 – Add resources to the plan
It may be at the beginning of planning or after we have defined our products – it depends. Following screenshot presents resources view and their costs.

Step 5 – Define properties of activities and add sub-activities
At this point we have defined product structure, product flow and added resources. P2ware Planner generated automatically activities, arranged them in a network diagram and Gantt Chart! Of course even though Planner did a lot of work for me I still have to define details of activities like duration and other data (type of activity, etc.).
Typically, after finishing product flow diagram, activities table is similar to the one presented below.

After modifications (either on activities table view, Gantt Chart or network diagram) the table might look close to the following screenshot. I modified durations, added sub activities and finally added additional relations between them.

Gantt chart of the plan is presented below.

Step 6 – Assign resources and verify plan
Having defined activities assign resources, verified resource load, planned costs and plan sanity. If needed go back to any previous planning step and start planning over from there. If you have viable plan you are ready to define work packages and checkpoints. Again one does not have to create work packages and checkpoints to manage project using P2ware Planner (you can always manually modify actual dates, costs and % completed).

Step 7 – Define work packages and checkpoints
To define work packages you have to go to Work Packages view, select Add Work Package icon, name it and add activities that comprise the work package.
Following screenshot presents new work package named New Work Package. It consists of 3 activities (in the bottom of the screenshot) and person responsible is Maciej Paczewski (properties table).
Having defined work packages you have to create checkpoints. Checkpoints are points in time when progress report (called checkpoint report) is filled in. Checkpoints are created for particular work package. To create checkpoints go to Checkpoints view, click Add Checkpoints icon and select work package for which you are to create checkpoints. Then define checkpoints properties (time, recurrence, ranges) like in the following screenshot.

Checkpoints created for New Work Package are below in the screenshot.
Done, plan is ready!

OK, so right now we have a complete plan. We created product breakdown and product flow structures, P2ware Planner generated for us network diagram and Gantt Chart which we then modified by setting activities durations and additional dependencies. Then we assigned resources, created work packages and checkpoints. Of course I didn’t mention risk log, plan properties (like setting calendars) and other areas that have to be covered for a plan to be successful. Please note that I presented quick overview on how to create a plan in P2ware Planner. Planning process is quite complicated (if you have hundreds or more of products) but all in all P2ware Planner speeds it up even by 90%! To view sample plan created with P2ware Planner go to http://www.p2ware.com/ and download trial version. I bet you won’t be disappointed.

New Planner evaluation version

Today we published new Planner evaluation version! Previous P2ware Planner evaluation version was based on Planner Standard. New Planner Personal Learning Edition (which is our free evaluation version) has virtually all functionalities of Planner Professional. For a list of Professional features take o look at Planner Professional – what’s in it for me?

Other major improvements are

• Increased maximum number of products (from 15 to 25), activities (from 15 to 25), and resources (from 5 to 10). Max number of other plan objects remained the same (5 for risks, issues and daily log entries, other objects are unlimited).
• Added sample project in Planner (Project Management Training). It is short and simplified project demonstrating most of available views in Planner Professional.
• Added scenario and quick guide through sample project.
• Added two very useful sample reports to be used out-of-the-box with sample project (Highlight Report and Product Description).
• Slightly changed ‘How to start?’ document.

Sample project with scenario and additional two sample reports are also available in other version of P2ware Planner (there is no reporting in Standard, but except for that sample project is in place). Free evaluation version of Planner can be downloaded from P2ware Planner Suite - Download P2ware Planner Personal Learning Edition what I encourage you to do! If you are looking for valuable project management software try Planner evaluation version.

Planner Professional – what’s in it for me?

What are the most useful advantages of Planner Professional that justify purchase of the application? I am asked similar questions quite often. My first answer used to be ‘depends on what you need’ which is no answer at all. So what are these advantages? What are those cool and useful features?
Brief feature matrix can be found in post P2ware Planner versions. Planner Professional is Planner Standard plus additional features. While Standard is unique project management software, it still lacks several important features that might enhance project managers productivity even more. Planner Standard was designed as an entry level PM software – basic yet powerful. Many of our customers prefer Planner Professional which offers, as mentioned above, all features of Planner Standard and was designed to be full blown project management solution. It offers following additional functionalities (in random order except for first)

• Authoring own report templates and automatic generation of reports
  It’s one of my favourite features. Imagine you have to send detailed report (schedule, costs, risks and issues) from your three medium projects once a week. Copy & pasting, cutting, computing takes most of your Friday. It’s no wonder you make errors in each report from time to time – there’s 100+ key activities to be included in each report. Why don’t you create report template by specifying in Planner Professional (or Developer) which data you want and how they are to be arranged? You may make use of existing sample reports to speed-up the process. As a result creating detailed report is limited to several clicks and voila – complete report ready in 10 seconds! You may even send the report from Planner but that’s little time gain compared to automatic report generation. Below there is a screenshot of one reports I’ve been recently working on (Highlight Report for sample project installed along with Planner applications). All data available in the report comes only from Planner. You add one new element (let’s say activity) it is displayed instantly in the report.

• Quality Log
  Log for storing information about product quality reviews. Each product can have many quality reviews.
  
• Daily Log
  Daily Log used for storing events related to plan preparation and project control. It can store much useful project information.
  
• Cost Items
  Used when creating more detailed budget than ‘ordinary’ activity based. It can be used as project cost tracking for accounting while activity based is used by PM and stakeholders.
  
• Plan/feeding buffers diagrams
  Excellent visualisation of trends – whether we are going in right direction or not of using feeding and plan buffers.
  
• Snapshots
  Used to save current data of activities like cost. It can be then either browsed using Planner or used in reports to create overview.
  
• Time Sheets
  Another way of tracking project work. Especially useful when used with Planner Server – resources report what they were doing specific day and on which assignment. It can be coupled with project status updates to make project status reporting faster.
  
• Usage of activities and products from other plans
  Possibility of using activities or products from other plans. Only available for users with Planner Server infrastructure. It is great feature – if your plan depends on some external activities you can import these from other plan from server.

Software for PM – ‘nice to have’ or ‘must have’?

It’s obvious that to be an effective project manager (and manager in particular) one does not have to have any software, tool or methodology. Software is only an aid (not a goal) as it is with methodologies (fact quite often forgotten!). To manage projects nobody needs software. There is one catch: it all takes so much time! One can spend whole day of manual reporting, computing, analyzing etc. just only to forgot at the end of a day about one thing – that he or she is responsible not for doing project chores but for project success. It’s reasonable to “delegate” those chores to computers and do what computers cannot. That’s why project management software helps immensely in doing those “chores”.

100 project management applications
There’s plenty of project management software listed on Wikipedia's Project Management Software (Open-source: 6 desktop and 13 web-based applications. Proprietary: 24 desktop and 60+ web-based applications - as of May 21st). That’s a lot of! Of course many of these support only few PM roles.

PM software features
So what are the ‘must have’ or ‘nice to have’ features of such a software?

‘Must have’ (essential requirements)

• Define work to be done (tasks, activities, products, more?)
• Store resources and assign them to activities
• Create schedule (Gantt)
• Plan and control project schedule and cost
• Track risks and issues

‘Nice to have’ (although obvious not available in many applications)

• Create snapshots of activities
• Present activities in various forms (Gantt, network diagram, table, etc.)
• Various diagrams (resource load, costs, other)
• Register other project information (project logs)
• Create relations between project objects (which risks relate to what activities, which issues relate to what resources, etc.)
• Create and print reportsThere could be much more features but they are more or less similar to those presented above.

‘Must have’
Answer to the question in the title is obvious. Yes, in most cases PM software is a ‘must’. It’s not only a fashion and it’s not only time-saving tool. In many cases it is essential tool without which it would be impossible to comprehend complexity of even a modest venture, not to mention projects with more than 1000 products/activities. I suppose that almost everyone out there in project management at least once in their lifetime created network diagram from scratch using brown paper and post-its. It’s tedious for 20-30 activities – linking, unlinking, adding activities, modifying duration time, changing precedence etc. Even the most basic software can do it for us in just seconds. And if many of our competitors use it, software for PM is definitely a ‘must’ (it’s like with ERP systems years ago – once competitive advantage, today standard).
Just one final thought. Project management software gives false sense of security that we’ve got it all under control. It will not solve many project problems and, if used without skills, can do much harm. The simplest example is creating brilliant schedule without considering resource load and resource dependencies – seems simple but according to episode 57 of Project Management Podcast about 90% PMs does not resource balance their schedules! Even the most sophisticated application does not replace proper training, knowledge, experience and above all common sense.

P2ware Planner versions - advanced project management software

Tailoring product versions has always been a challenging task. Products have (in general) entry level, medium and executive versions (sometimes it has more versions – see Windows Vista ;-)). If not speaking of luxurious goods this applies to products from automobiles to furniture to software. Of course software market has its own rules – it’s focused more on functionalities than prestige. The same applies to project management software which is of my primary interest. Since I am project management and software professional and have unique opportunity to work as key account manager in P2ware (http://www.p2ware.com/) I have an insight in how and why P2ware Planner Suite (advanced project management software) applications work and what can be achieved using them. In my posts I am going to explain the ins and outs of our project management software that probably only few can (except for our brilliant partners and customers).

Why various P2ware Planners?
There are desktop Planner project management software (three flavours) and there is one Planner Server. Three desktop P2ware Planners are available in versions: Standard, Professional and Developer. They are suited for different project management roles. In brief, Planner Standard is an entry level project management tool and Planner Professional is full blown application supporting all PM activities. Planner Developer is an additional application that has all features of P2ware Planner Professional but allows to add custom properties and formulas to all plan objects (e.g. add checklist to products so that all products have additional checklist property or add property computing revenue forecast based on activities and products properties). Following points summarize major P2ware Planner versions.

1. Server side
• P2ware Planner Server
2. Desktop
   • P2ware Planner Standard
   • P2ware Planner Professional
   • P2ware Planner Developer
     

There is, of course, P2ware Planner Viewer which is a read-only tool. It’s is distributed freely among P2ware customers who purchased other versions. It allows opening and browsing through plans but not modifying and saving them.

Finally there is Personal Learning Edition. It’s, as Planner Viewer, available for free. However it is available to all users of the Internet (downloadable from http://www.p2ware.com/) and is suited only for non-commercial trial usage while P2ware Planner Viewer can be used in commercial projects. PLE (Personal Learning Edition) is based on Professional and is limited by number of products, activities, risks, issues and other objects that one can enter to plan.

So there are 3 major desktop applications (Standard, Professional and Developer). What are major differences? As I mentioned earlier Planner desktop applications have different functionalities suited for different users. For simplicity I speak of differences in terms of available views. View is a window with specific functionalities supporting project managers.

Feature matrix of Planner desktop applications

Table below sums up views available in P2ware Planner desktop applications (X – there is this view, --- - no such a view).

(Click here to enlarge)

Who is Planner for?

Not knowing about particular PM requirements I would guess that following versions are for specific audience below (if I were speaking generally).

1. Planner Standard
• Junior project managers
• Project coordinators
• Small organizations
2. Planner Professional
• All project managers and people taking part in planning
• Medium and large organizations
3. Planner Developer
• Project management office members
• People acting as support to organizations projects
• Organizations with non-standard requirements
• Key project managers

Of course I may be wrong and Planner Developer can be used in very small organization as well as single project manager working as consultant. It’s perfectly fine. On the other hand Planner Standard may be used in a project in large corporation. I’ve seen such an applications of Planner and they are working perfectly fine. Again and again – it all comes down to requirements.

So, in summary, there are 3 desktop Planners (Standard, Professional and Developer) and 1 server side application (Planner Server). They have different functionalities (each higher version is equipped with more functionalities) and slightly different audience. However they all have at least one thing in common – they are excellent project management software!