Update timesheets on the go with QuickProject

Project Web App with its timesheet feature enables project managers to keep track of their team member’s work status. Team members can report their day to day work on hourly basis and view their assignments, and the project managers or resource managers can track the assignments of their team members.

Time spent on administrative tasks like meetings, trainings, vacation etc., can be planned and updated using the timesheet. The time submitted by team members automatically updates the tasks and projects upon approval.

QuickProject

QuickProject for Microsoft Project Server 2013 helps in increasing the organization wide user adoption of timesheet. With QuickProject, you can view, update and submit the timesheet even when you are away from your desktop or laptop. The mobile app keeps the team members updated of the new assignments or when there are any changes in the assignment. Project managers, without logging into their systems, can remain updated of the timesheet status using the app.

Some of the key features that make QuickProject a useful application in the day to day life of project managers and team members:

• Project managers or resource managers remain updated of the team members’ timesheet status, for example – whether the team member has filled the timesheet or not, which of the members have pending timesheet, etc.

• Team Members can view the assigned tasks according to the projects and get the task details.

• Team Members can view their timesheets – plan hours against each task and update the actuals with actual hours. They can then save or submit the timesheet.
• Team members can even directly mark the task as complete if they are done with their tasks. The tasks marked as completed, directly goes to the status manager for approval.
• The calendar view enables to view assignments on the calendar. The app has a feature to set the tasks as Calendar Event, so that you may get the reminder for these task events.

Is this exactly what you were looking for? Why not try it out?

Click here to download.

Project management on the go with QuickProject

Implementation and customization of Microsoft Project Server 2013/Project Online specific to any organization, in itself is an extensive exercise which includes extracting the actual requirements, identifying pain points and providing the solution to best fit their needs.

Even after deploying an end to end Enterprise Project Management solution within organization, making sure that users are using the system is another big challenge for organizations. Some of the challenges could be:

• Users look for specific information
• They need the information easily available for quick action
• System has all latest information and updates but users need to explicitly access the system to get information

To overcome these challenges, Advaiya has launched a mobile app – QuickProject to ease the user adoption process for organizations who are using Project Server 2013/ Project Online for project management. Key features of the app are:

• Ability to access contextual information (project, task, milestones) from their mobile device
• Marking project task completion in a single click
• Tracking team’s timesheet status and do necessary follow up
• View project and milestones with brief details of each
• Setting reminders for tasks/milestones assigned
• View last accessed data while offline

The app will be supporting Project Server 2013 and the upcoming versions will have support for Project Online 2013, Project Server 2010 and Project Online 2010. The mobile app is available for iOS and we plan to launch the app for Android very soon. Stay tuned with us for more updates on this

Managing projects in Project Web App 2013

Project Management is a difficult road to travel. Very often, managing a project involves an on-going battle with deadlines, budget and resource allocation. Studies have shown that almost 30% of the projects do not meet the deadline or are off the schedule. Basically  a delayed or unsuccessful project management is a  result of an inexperienced and inexpert manager.

Project managers role involve a lot of responsibilities such as creating, maintaining, updating schedule, coordinating with other team members, project managers, resource managers etc.

In order to make the life of a project manager easy and to make project management tasks effortless, Microsoft Project Server 2013 brings Project Web App 2013 (PWA) which is a resilient web application that can be used to do anything from project management to filling timesheet, updating task status and creating project proposals to manage project portfolios. This well-built web application makes the life of project managers easy and comfortable and gives a new ray of light for inexperienced managers to learn and manage projects.

The features which can be used by a project manager to successfully manage a project using Project Web App 2013 (PWA 2013) are:

• Record timesheet hours or task status of the project and team members.
• View, modify, and analyze information for one or more resources who are assigned to the tasks in projects.
• Obtain detailed information of an individual project or more than one project within an organisation.
• Easier automation of the process of receiving and requesting status information in the form of status reports.
• Understand the health of an organization in terms of cost and resources using OLAP reports interactively with the help of pivot charts or tables.
• Easy collaboration with Project Professional 2013 + Sharepoint 2013 + Microsoft Outlook 2013 for managing day to day task activities.
• Resources can give information about any project risks, issues or any other area which can affect the project health.

There are some other great resources from where you can get more information on Project Web App 2013 – Office.com and TechNet. You can also post your Queries, issues and can initiate discussions on a discussion forum.

Quick look on Microsoft Project Professional 2016

The next version of Microsoft Project Professional, i.e. Project 2016 is now available for preview. I downloaded the 64 bit version and did some hands-on. Both the bits are available as below:

Project 32 bit

Project 64 bit

• Tell me what you want to do: The new look is familiar to the users who have been using Project 2010, 2013, same ribbon interface and intuitive UI continues. An important add-on for new users is the ‘Tell me what you want to do’ feature. Through this add-on, the features are available on tips and user do not need to go deep with ribbons and tabs. Few screenshots as below:

Clicking on Team Planner, launches the Team Planner view of the project

Now, you only need to remember the feature names to access Microsoft Project Professional 2016 and the relevant interfaces will be quickly visible on your screen.

•  Multiple timeline bars: Another feature of Project 2016 also adds to the user experience – the ability to add multiple timelines. You can have separate timeline views for few important summary task or for specific date range in the Project Schedule. As a Project Manager, you can create separate timeline view presentation for schedules, team and project tasks.

To add timeline view, you can right click anywhere on the Timeline View and select Timeline Bar.

This way you can communicate the different milestone timeline view or different representation   of Project Plan to different stakeholders.

• App write back: I did not get a chance to do hands-on this feature but, this feature is about the ability to allow the change from App. Don’t have much insight to this feature but it would be a great change for developers and an opportunity further to deliver new robust apps.

This is all about the new Project Professional 2016 based on my first day use. Stay tuned, more updates are inline 🙂

How to link your tasks with Microsoft Project Professional

In the blog ‘Seven Project Professional features to keep your plan up-to-date‘, one of the topics I discussed was ‘Link Your Tasks’, where I gave a brief introduction of it. Here I detail on – how to link tasks in Microsoft project .

When you create the tasks in the Project Plan, you need to decide the sequence of execution of these tasks. Microsoft Project Professional provides flexibility to define task dependencies by ‘Linking Tasks’ feature. The tasks can be linked by any of following relationship:

–          Finish to Start (FS)

–          Start to Finish (SF)

–          Finish to Finish (FF)

–          Start to Start (SS)

By default, the tasks are linked by ‘Finish to Start’ link. You can also use the predecessor column to define such task dependencies.

There is a good article on Create Task dependencies and Links in Project Plan which you can use to learn how to use the features appropriately.

There is another dependency type which you may need to define in real time projects – ‘like to start a task’ once its predecessor task is half done. To do so you can use the ‘Lag’ property of the predecessor while defining the task dependency.

You set the ‘Lag’ value in order to start a task when its predecessor is 50% done as shown in the below image

After defining ‘Lag’, the Project Plan looks like below, where you can notice the arrow starting from the middle of task id 9

Hence you can make your project plan more realistic and aligned to project duration by setting up the task links and dependencies. Stay tuned for my next article on ‘Task Path and Critical Paths’.

Seven Project Professional features to keep your project plan up-to-date

As an EPM specialist, I keep resolving project scheduling scenarios with my team and client. I come across various project scheduling challenges while working on it. Sometimes, project managers have a well-planned project but they cannot create the deviation reports out of it and hence cannot get ‘planned vs actual’ scenario and sometimes the team and respective project managers are too busy to complete their project milestones and hence cannot not keep the project schedule plan up to date.

I realize that seven features of Microsoft Project Professional , if used as a best practice, can potentially help you in keeping your project plan up to date and ready for project review at any time. I believe these features will not require additional homework or preparation when your seniors or executives call for a project status review meeting.

Let’s talk about these in brief and I will be detailing them separately in the series of blogs.

Link Your Tasks

When you create the tasks in the Project Plan, you must decide the sequence of execution of these tasks. Microsoft Project Professional provides flexibility to define task dependencies with the help of ‘Linking Tasks’ feature. The tasks can be linked by any of the dependency type provided by enterprise project management software – Project Professional 2013. Sign of a good project plan is that it does not have any orphan task i.e. each task is linked. If a task is not linked it can be either a milestone or a ‘Summary Task’.

Task Path and Critical Path

Using ‘Task Path’, you can quickly see all the predecessors of the selected tasks in the Project Plan. This feature helps when you have a complex project plan.

Critical Tasks are those task which directly impacts the Project Finish date. Using this option you can quickly see the critical tasks of your project and being a project manager, you may keep track of those specific task for project success.

Resolve Resource Over allocation

‘Resource Over allocation’ is a stage in the ‘Project Plan’ which occurs when:

–          A resource is assigned more than one tasks which are planned to be executed in the same duration

–          Tasks are not planned and resource is assigned

–          Project manager intentionally overloads the resource to complete the project on time or to meet the critical timeline

In Project Professional 2013 you see a Red persona icon (also called Burning Resource) with respect to respective tasks when a resource is over allocated. You can use any of following Project Professional 2013 features to resolve the resource over allocation:

–          Task inspector to automatically resolve the over allocation

–          Manually set the tasks timeline and dependencies to resolve over allocation

–          Use ‘Team Planner’ for resource assignment and resolving over allocation

Proper resource assignment is very important in a ‘Project Plan’ especially when you share the plan with your seniors or executives. The Red Persona icon easily grabs eyes when managers or executives look upon the plan, also it allows to level the team work and acts as a warning to project manager. A ‘Project Plan’ with frequent resource over allocation may not be a good plan and may lead to confusions. Keep your plan over allocation free.

Use Project Status Date

Generally in every organization, project managers report the project status to their seniors on a set rhythm (weekly, Bi-weekly etc.)

The new feature ‘Status Date’ of the enterprise project management software, Project Professional 2013, allows project manager to set any past date to view all in-built reports and views till selected date.

The ‘Status Date’ also displays a line in the Gannt Chart which you can use to refer the date of last time you viewed or shared the project status.

Use Timeline

Timeline is another cool feature which you can use to report your project status to executives or to share a high level plan in graphical view with your team members. This feature was introduced in Project Professional 2010 and since then it has been a handy tool to communicate the ‘Project Plan’ in graphical view to executives and seniors who loves a timeline view.

In timeline, you can

–          Select the task or deliverables to be displayed in graphic

–          Customize the look and feel (color, fonts, etc.) of bar lines, tasks, deliverables, etc.

–          Relocate the tasks up or down the grid.

Once you finalize the timeline to be presented, you can share it directly in Outlook, PowerPoint or copy to be used in any other document type.

Use In-built Project Dashboard for High level reports

Project Professional 2013 has another new feature which gives direct access to in-built reports of Project Professional and can be leveraged for quick reporting. Project Professional 2013 has new ‘Report’ tab and there you can access reports for cost, resource, project, etc.

All these reports can be copied and printed to be shared with client, team members or executives. These reports can also be customized by the parameters, look and feel, etc.

Use Project Baseline

Baseline feature has been continually improving from Project Professional 2007. The baseline helps you to compare various projects and task level parameters at planned versus actual basis.  Few discrepancies between plan and actual are fine, but if you find major discrepancies then there is either an issue in planning or in execution. You seriously need to find the cause and need to fix in such case to keep your project on track.

You can set the Project Base line as below:

You should set the Baseline at Project Start up in your plan, which becomes your planned snapshot.  Then you can set the Baseline on sprint basis or monthly basis. You can set up to 11 baselines of a Project. Later, you can compare all the baselines and find the project discrepancies, you can compare and find till when the project was running well or when the schedule did not meet, etc. Baseline helps you a lot to communicate the snapshot or phase wise status of project to point out the actual deviation in the project, if any.

I have been using all these features in my daily project plans and they escaped me from lot of homework and preparation to prepare for project review meetings with client, seniors and team members. All of these features will be proven very helpful when the entire team is updating the task status and you being a status manager approve/reject tasks timely.

So, what are you waiting for? Make your plan effective and up-to-date. Happy Project Planning!

EPM assessment to ensure successful project management program

Enterprise Project Management (EPM) streamlines the way businesses manage projects and accomplish work. EPM solution helps an organization to efficiently contour and automate their processes related to organizational functioning – resource management, budgeting, management reporting, forecasting and planning, etc.

However, to effectively implement EPM and ensure enterprise-wide adoption, a detailed understanding of an organization’s structure, its processes (simple or complex), project management maturity, and the key business drivers, is required. Infact, different departments or business groups in an organization can approach project management in different ways. Thus, it is important to identify the departments in which EPM is most needed, and the aspects of EPM which would deliver maximum impact.

Moreover, for successful project management, organizations need to have a clear roadmap of EPM implementation and adoption which is aligned to their business goals. Absence of this roadmap, can lead to improper EPM implementation and lack of will and motivation to put EPM to work.

How & where to start?

EPM assessment can be a starting point towards building an effective EPM roadmap. It is an approach to uncover the strengths and weaknesses of the existing Project Management (PM) processes, and identify the near-term and long-term Project Management needs. It can help in effective and successful adoption of project management program in an organization.

This assessment aims at helping organizations to improve their project management processes and capabilities by providing them deep insights into maturity of their current (as-is) capabilities. It helps to identify the most valuable applications and use cases of EPM in the organization. Moreover, this assessment also defines the way to implement and adopt EPM, which can help the organization in the best possible manner, and also maximize the ROI.

How is the EPM assessment done?

The first step in EPM assessment is to gather information about the current project management practices in an organization, to understand the overall business processes, and create a baseline measurement of the current EPM capabilities. This information is then analysed to surface the best practices, and uncover the opportunities for improvement. The assessor looks at how the organization is performing various project management activities viz. work management, portfolio optimization, resource management, etc. And then, he identifies and uncovers those areas where EPM can be applied and will be most valuable for the organization.

What is the outcome of EPM assessment?

The outcome of EPM assessment is a report that contains key observations & findings; and improvement opportunities that are categorized by level of impact to the business (high/medium/low). This report also provides actionable recommendations for improvements – in the context of current findings and what the organization wants to achieve. These recommendations are at different levels – from project process automation and real-time monitoring, to quality process enablement, executive insight and strategic enablement activities.

Advaiya has a detailed assessment framework available, which is based on project management lifecycle. We leverage this framework to assess the current project management capabilities, processes, and practices in an organization. To know more about how EPM assessment can help your organization, write to us at – connect@advaiya.com. We will be happy to discuss about your EPM needs and current challenges that your organization faces.

Our article was originally published in InformationWeek. Source: http://www.informationweek.in/informationweek/perspective/299100/epm-assessment