DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Project Management Problem

Previously, I was a PM, I would get a project, figure out who was going to be on my team to complete the project and get it done. Easy Peasy.. Plus, it was only a few projects and I knew all of the people that could help so I would usually just call around until somebody accepted.

Last year I was put in the position to manage the PMs who are doing what I used to and I'm struggling because I'm starting to realize why we were so painfully inefficient in getting things done. What I'm looking for is some advice on systems or software packages to help me manage what I've got...

So this is what I've got.

I've got 5 PMs... (In 3 different states)

Below them I've got about 20-25 "workers" who will report to the PMs. (In 6 different states)

I've got as many as 12-15 projects underway at any one time, a PM can handle more than one project at a time.

The 20-25 workers will be involved in multiple projects at a time and not always for the same PM.

The start/finish times of the tasks/projects can be fluid and shift fairly regularly.

Keeping track of who is working on what and who isn't working on anything (and is available to help) and planning out a couple weeks at a time is proving to be extremely difficult because of the number of moving variables. What I end up with is some people working 55-60 hours per week while others are gone at 5:00 everyday with nothing to do.. so I need to balance that out.

Imagine you have:

Project 1
... Task 1
... Task 2
... Task 3
... Task 4

Now you have 12 of these projects. Each task is completed by a different person and a task can be anywhere from 4 to 40 hours to complete and each worker can be responsible for 5 or 6 tasks at a time.

So I'm looking for advice, a system or a software package that can handle this type of management planning. All of the planning software packages I've looked into seem to work great if you have ONE project and a fixed team... I have a dozen projects and shared resources assigned multiple tasks at a time...

So I get the call from PM #2 who says, "Hey, I need somebody to work on Project #7, task #2 for 20 hours next week, who is available?" and I just mumble and stutter because I have no freaking idea who is available and who is overloaded.. and this is the way these things have been run for a long time and I need to fix it.

Thanks in advance for any help.

This is pretty popular. Especially for remote teams.

https://trello.com

Back when I worked at Delta, we used Microsoft Project.
Which I'm not sure can be accessed externally.

I manage multiple teams of people whose roles and tasks sometimes overlap on different projects.

I keep it simple by using google docs and open office (free suite of office apps that work with MS Office products) to track who does what and has which skillset. And the current todo list. But its very ad hoc and not well organized. I dont like excessive paperwork, so this keeps it simple for me. The thing I like about google docs is that you can access it from any device with internet access. And you can choose who else has access to it.

Let me first set expectations by saying I'm in line management, not middle management like it seems you are now in (congrats!)

That said, I am in a situation where my team is responsible for several products that have their own requirements and release schedules. What we've been doing that has been somewhat successful is use Jira for project management tracking, and apply agile/scrum principles to our products to set expectations and try to keep the ship running smoothly. We do 2 week sprints so we have some agility to switch gears without making the team feel like they can't plan for things day to day. Jira works for multiple projects because I can have multiple projects bound to different 'boards' so I can get different views of the teams performance.

A few general questions I have:

- How accurate are your task estimates? Do your 40 hour tasks routinely take 40 hours, or do they run over/under? If it's hard to estimate (I know it is for my team!) We try to split up tasks that approach 5 working days in the planning phase.
- Are your team members really working on 5-6 tasks at a time? One thing I try to pressure my team to do is to make sure they only work on 1 task at a time. The idea should be to work hard on it, complete their segment on it, then send it to the next "stage" of the pipeline, whether that's code review or test, before grabbing another task to start work. I find it gets hard to gauge project performance/velocity if people start grabbing a bunch of tasks at once.

The only one I am familiar with is MS Project Manager, got two different developers using it and they seem to be happy with it. They both do multiple projects at the same time, but I am not certain if the software deals with it.

One company does something very similar with a highly customized Excel spreadsheet. Advantage here is you can make it exactly the way you want it. Disadvantage is you need some macro skills to get it that way.

The one thing I would add is that there is a way that people actually work, and at least for some, the most productive and efficient is not necessarily the easiest to effectively track.

There's the old story about the efficiency expert and the guy with his feet planted on his desk all day long. Expert tells the owner this guy should be fired, owner replies that some time ago, that man had an idea that saved the company millions per year, and when he had the idea, his feet were planted just about exactly where they are right now.

Microsoft Project can handle this. We used it to manage our program of many projects and hundreds of people. It has been a few years since then (and I don't have MS Project on my machine) but I'd be more than happy to talk - DM me if you want to chat.


edit: I haven't used this myself, but go to projectmanager.com - their task/gantt tools should be able to do the same and it is online as opposed to desktop software.

A little background first. The projects I'm talking about are construction cost estimates, the tasks are different divisions.So within each cost estimate somebody will do architectural, somebody else will do plumbing, somebody else electrical and so on.


The tasks are typically pretty well defined. We've done this enough that we have a pretty good idea of how long each task will take, the only real variable here is that people with more experience do it a little quicker than those without but it doesn't vary much.


Based on what I said above, a person might "be working" on 5 or 6 different estimating tasks at any one time. They might all be due 2 to 3 weeks from now. If they want to start on one and finish it in a couple days and move on to the next one, that's fine. If they want to work on a few of them at a time for a few hours a day, that's also fine. As long as they all meet their completion date, I don't really care how they manage their own time.

I'm very familiar with MS Project, a lot of contractors use it on smaller projects. I had not considered this as an option, I will look into it. Thanks.


We've been playing with this already and are considering making it more advanced. Writing a few macros isn't really a problem. We have also been looking into using Power BI as a dashboard for reporting out status of various projects and tasks and availability. This also remains a viable option.


As I said in my last post, if a person has 6 tasks to do that add up to 120 hours of work and they are all due in 3 weeks, I don't really care how they get to the result, just get there. I have a lot of faith in my folks to do their job and let me know (and let their PM know) if there is a problem.

I will look into it, thanks. I need something that is online and accessible to everybody, it will not be my job to populate this and access it, the PMs are the ones who need to know their tasks are being assigned and who has availability if needed. I'm trying as best I can to remove myself from the day to day management of who is working on what, that's not really my job. My job is managing resources across a number of different offices to make sure we have the right people available to get jobs done so the PMs know where to go, not really to manage their day to day.

Thanks Eve, I know a few folks here use Trello to manage their own time but had never considered using it for a much broader purpose.

As for Google docs, its interesting. I almost feel like we have SOOOOO MANY resources at our disposal that finding one that works for everybody is a big part of the problem. We have Office 365, we have Teams, we have everything that is available on-line. It's just a lot of information to decipher. I'm almost suffering from paralysis by analysis... there are so many options that do MOST of what I want something to do, I'm kind of frozen and just need to pick something and go with it for a while.

The background is indeed helpful! In your case do you consider a project to be a single site? I'm curious what the granularity level is.

The reason I discourage people grabbing several tickets at once is because even if we end up with them all complete by the deadline, it gets hard to assess what the actual time it took for each one to complete. JIRA only cares how long a task sat in "In Progress", not that 3 other tickets were grabbed by the same person and put in "In Progress" also. It may not apply readily to your business needs, but then again it could help you in determining where you are having roadblocks.

Yes, a project is a single site. Could be an elementary school, US embassy overseas, or local fire station. They vary considerably but they are their own project.


On their weekly timesheet they will have to charge their time to whatever task they worked on and for what duration. So when all is said and done, I will have the data that tells me if it was a planned 8 hour task that took them 10 hours or 6.. whichever the case may be.


That sounds like it could be beneficial. I've only looked into Jira at a very superficial level, on the surface it has the look and feel of Planner from Office 365 (which we already have). Any thoughts on a comparison of those 2?

Jira was designed for software development, so it may have some redundant items for other industries, I'm not sure. It is very good for agile development and has many integrations into other software, including Trello. I've actually not used Planner, Jira tends to be pretty much the gold standard in software dev. I've also used a few others but they are significantly worse...

ERP software will help. Odoo is the best open source ERP.

https://www.odoo.com/

This is their retail home site, don't need to buy it though, just self host the community version and try it out. Modules on Projects, HR, and Time Management should get you there but there is a ton more available.

https://www.odoo.com/page/download


Community Download:

https://www.odoo.com/page/download


Community site with addon mods

https://odoo-community.org/