The IPM Blog

Today marks the 80th anniversary of the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia. If there is one remarkable feat in construction, ‘The Coathanger’ as Aussies affectionately call it, would have to be right up there.

As the largest steel arch bridge in the world, it took 1 400 workers, 53 000 tonnes of steel, two creeper cranes, four maintenance cranes, 18 000m3 of granite blocks, 6 million hand driven rivets and eight years to complete.

One of the interesting features of the bridge was the building of two separate arches and joining them in the middle. Leading up to the completion, there as much apprehension from locals who didn’t believe the two sides would match up. But thankfully they did.

When I think about the Sydney Harbour Bridge today, not only does the sheer size of the project impress me, but also the fact it was built without any of the technology we so heavily rely on today. There was no CAD to assist the architects, no BIM, and more importantly, no project management software to manage the thousands of workers and subcontractors involved. The contractors were from England, there were two steel fabrication workshops set up on Sydney’s north shore, and a temporary Australian, Scottish and Italian settlement at Moruya (300km away) to quarry granite. And not a single email or mobile phone call was sent or made to communicate between everyone.

Today, we are so fortunate to have so much useful technology at our fingertips to make managing our projects easier. So as we celebrate the construction of one of Australia’s most iconic landmarks, we also have to celebrate the skill, ingenuity and project management skills of the people who pulled off such an amazing project without any of the technology we have today.

I just came across this study from Besner and Hobbs on the PMI website, and it was looking at the top 70 tools and techniques project managers use to manage projects in the real world. Interestingly, looking at a broad cross section of project managers from organisations of differing levels of maturity and managing projects of different sizes, one thing remained constant.

The number one tool for both low and high maturity organisations, and for working on projects both under and over $1m was the humble progress report.

The top ten in all categories also included many other tried and true project management tools and techniques such as task scheduling, Gantt charts, change requests and milestone planning, but it was the progress report that stood out as being the most important tool in all four categories. It just goes to show that project managers value knowing exactly where they are at, and where they are heading, at any stage of the project. And no matter the size of the project or the organisation, progress reports have a very significant place in the project management process.

That’s why it’s so important to be able to quickly produce this information with accuracy and reliability. There is so much information and communication surrounding a project, at times it can be difficult for the project manager to draw out the important information about his or her project to make good decisions and manage the project effectively. And as the survey tells us, that is what they really want, and will use often and across a whole range of projects. That’s why solid reporting tools that can produce accurate and reliable progress reports are a paramount addition when it comes to any project manager’s tool set. As a project manager do you have access to reliable reporting tools that can give you excellent progress reports?

Here at IPM we’ve been busy developing a new product in the IPM suite; an integration tool for Oracle Primavera P6. As an additional product in the IPM suite, the integration tool gives you the option of extending your project management capabilities by incorporating features from both systems.

But what exactly does the integration tool do? Primarily, it synchronises all your Primavera P6 job activities with IPM, which gives you a more comprehensive break down of all the work being completed on your job. Within IPM, you then have the ability to manage the job activity completion dates and update resource, purchase order item and subcontract item information for each activity. This gives you a better overall view of each of your projects as you have the ability to link job activities to information that is not available in Primavera P6.

The integration tool also works both ways, so once you have finished adding information to job activities in IPM, you can synch the information back to Primavera P6 to accurately record and track the expenses on your project.

This tool is an exciting addition to the IPM suite as it gives project managers a way to fill small gaps in their project information, and it also means you get a fully encompassing view of exactly what is happening on your project.

We are currently running the Beta version of the Primavera P6 integration tool, so if you’re a current IPM customer and would like to be involved with putting it through its paces, please contact us or leave a comment below. Feel free to contact us too if you’d like more information on the whole IPM suite.

Managing projects can often be a very demanding task, one that requires skill, dedication and a very cool head. But there are also a few tips and tricks you can implement to ensure your projects run smoothly.

1. Plan for everything
One of the best things I’ve heard when it comes to project management is that failing to plan is planning to fail. Bringing your projects in on time and on budget needs a great deal of planning, even before the very first foundations are laid. What’s more, you have to keep planning as you go along to ensure you always stay one step ahead. You need to continually monitor the schedule to anticipate which tasks need to be done next and what effect any notices of delay from subcontractors will have. It is also imperative to keep a comprehensive and updated issue and risk register so nothing catches you off guard. In other words, hope for the best but plan for the worst.

2. Keep track of communication
There’s nothing worse than having to trawl through six months worth of emails or project documents to answer an RFI, or misplacing a vital piece of communication in the event of a dispute or claim. That’s why good project managers keep track of all their project communication, no matter how small. It helps to have a central database that everyone on the project team has access to and can store all project documents and can keep a history of any edits or changes made to a document. Automatic email filing can also help, and IPM’s facility can file all incoming and outgoing emails against a transaction, rather than against the job.

3. Introduce a little automation
While sometimes computers and IT may feel frustrating, you have to admit technology really has made our lives a lot easier, particularly when it comes to project management. When done right, automation can be a project manager’s best friend; completing certain tasks so you don’t have to worry about them and ensuring all the right data is in all the right places. Using project management software is one of the best ways to bring automation to managing your projects. IPM’s project management software has features like customisable workflows you can use to convert change requests into change orders or subcontract change orders, automatically file your emails, automatically generate email reminders for meetings and track and store the information for RFIs and RFQs as it is emailed back and forth.

4. Keep all your team members on the same page
Managing a project is not just about juggling the schedule, subcontracts and budget, but also about managing the people you are working with. Many different people contribute to a project and in order to be able to manage everyone and ensure they all know what their job is, it’s important that everyone has access to the same, up-to-date information. You can make sure of this by using a central database that team member can access from anywhere, both online and offline. This means there are not multiple spreadsheets being emailed around and creating confusion as to which is the most up to date. Another simple way to keep everyone on the same page is to have standardised project reports across your whole organisation, meaning people are all familiar with the report design and know exactly where the content they are looking for is located in the report.

Are there any other fail safe ways you use to manage your projects? Have your say in the comments below :)

We often encounter problems on a project, and sometimes even the best of project management practices isn’t able to avoid them. But we know there are also those other problems on a project that should never have arisen in the first place. Sometimes it comes down to the way the project is managed, and the skills and experience of the project manager, as to the kinds of problems you encounter, and whether they are the avoidable or non-avoidable type. But there are other times when problems can be avoided by simply using the right kind of project management tools for the job. So I thought I would illustrate 4 common project problems that are avoidable, or at least mitigated with the right project management software.

1. Budget blowouts
We’ve all encountered budget problems on projects before and it is inevitable that problems will arise that force the budget skywards. But there are also times when the budget is beginning to come unstuck, and the project manager isn’t even aware of it. It’s at these times that it’s crucial to know exactly where your budget and costs figures are at so you can begin to make immediate changes to get the budget back in the black. As I was once told, being in the red on a project is often manageable so long as you are aware of it, but being in the red and not knowing is where the real problem lies. Good project management software should be able to give you up to the minute accurate budget information.

2. Unexpected events that you really should have expected
How often have you heard someone one a project say ‘Well I didn’t expect that to happen’, yet it’s something that they really should have been aware of? Good project management software should have an issues log and risks register, as well as a user friendly interface to ensure everyone is accessing and contributing to the database. With project management software, you only get out what you put in, so you need a data rich central database in order to be able to expect and predict problems that may arise. If the solution is user friendly with a comprehensive issues log, more people with use it and contribute data so everyone stays on the same page and ‘unexpected’ issues don’t arise.

3. Schedule blowouts
All kinds of things can affect a project’s schedule, including (but of course not limited to!) weather delays, funding, change orders and defects. We know project management software isn’t good enough to control the weather, but it should be good enough to help you identify where your schedule is being affected and take immediate steps to minimize the impact, or alert other stakeholders of changes to the schedule. Gantt charts are one of the most effective ways to manage your schedule, and interactive Gantt charts that integrate with other areas of the software to provide accurate schedule information are a must.

4. Customer demands not within the original scope
Another headache encountered on projects is a customer demanding something that was not within the original scope of the project, but insisting that it was. Or worse yet, refusing to pay for it. This is when you need accurate records with detailed information about the project scope at your fingertips, as well as any emails or other records of communication between the two parties. Good project management software will have all the project information stored in a central database that everyone working on the project has been contributing to. And in the case of IPM, all email communication can be automatically filed under a unique tracking code for each transaction, so you not only have a comprehensive email log, but individual emails are also easy to locate.
 
Of course, project management software is not the answer to every problem on a project, but there are certainly some problems that can be countered with a combination of good project management, and the right kind of project management tools.

You can find out more about IPM Project Management Software by contacting us for a free demo, or posting a comment below.

I recently came across an interesting survey from Cognitive Technologies Inc that looked to investigate the correlation between project success and the type and ‘maturity’ of project management tools employed by organisations.

In order to analyse the results of the survey, Cognitive Technologies Inc made the differentiation between less mature project management tools, such as Microsoft Excel, and more mature project management tools, such as dedicated project management software. Interestingly, they found that organisations with more mature, sophisticated tools were more likely to have greater project success, higher annual revenues and undertake more projects per year.

So this got me thinking about the maturity of the project management tools we use. We know that project managers love to use Excel, and one of the main difficulties we often see with companies trying to implement a dedicated project management software solution is a reluctance of their employees to move away from Excel. But Excel is primarily a less ‘mature’ tool.

According to the survey, a mature tool should enable project managers to provide timely and sufficient information, track employee time in detail, and track project status in detail. This sort of maturity can only come from dedicated project management software that is specifically designed to perform all of these functions.

A couple of months ago, I wrote a post about why Excel could be costing you time and money. That was based on a time factor, where we demonstrated how IPM is faster and more efficient than Excel in some areas of project management. But now thanks to Cognitive Inc’s survey, there is a proven positive correlation between more advanced management tools and project success. And if there’s one thing project managers love, it’s project success.

The complexity of today’s project management practices demands something more than just Excel, and now we know that organisational profits and success could be worse off for those who continue to preserve using only Excel to manage projects. So now may be a good time to ask yourself, how mature are our project management tools? And should it be time for them to grow up?

Since childhood I’m sure most of us have been continually told about the benefits of team work and how success is often achieved when people work together. Motivational speakers feast on team work and collaboration and sometimes the meaning can get lost in mushy motivational stories about working together.

But when teamwork is applied to your daily work life and your career, it all of a sudden becomes very important. In a project management sense, projects can often succeed or fail based on how well each member of the project team works with his or her other team members. No mushy motivational stories here, just purely and simply working together to help a project, and often your career, succeed.

Collaboration and effective teamwork between team members can often be one of the most effective ways of ensuring the success of your project. Not only do people work well together when things are going right, but when things go wrong they have a far better chance of coming up with effective solutions and alternative ways of working.

I recently read a great post from Brad Egeland on 5 strategies for successful project management. And out of those five strategies, two referred to the need to have a collaborative working environment, and the tools necessary to facilitate this. Egeland points out that success for project managers not only involves their own efforts, but also the efforts of the team. That’s why it’s also imperative that everyone is working to the same plan, the same set of expectations and the same information about the project.

One of the most effective tools to facilitate good collaboration between project team members is of course a central information system that is accessible to everyone and contains one version of the most up to date, relevant project data. In order to achieve good collaboration between your team members it’s imperative they all have access to the required information, and that they are all on the same page with this information.

IPM project management software is one example of providing a collaborative working environment for all project team members. Not only do all team members on a project have access to one central database that contains all the relevant information about the project, team members can also access this database when they are not in the office. The central database can be accessed from a laptop or mobile device so long as there is an internet connection. This makes it easy for teams that are sometimes scattered across different offices, field sites or even cities to maintain a collaborative approach to executing the project. And of course, collaboration between team members is, according to Brad Egeland, one of the top five strategies for project management success.

As always, you can find out more about working collaboratively with IPM by contacting us or posting a comment below.

There has been a lot of talk in the project management blogosphere lately focussing on project failure and how it can actually lead to success. However, one of the key points I have taken away from all these blogs is that failure only contributes to future success if you learn from the mistakes you made the first time. Failure is obviously no good if you continue to make the same mistakes over and over, without any change to your practices in light of what the failure is showing you.

However, there are also a lot of blogs out there expressing frustration at the fact that many organisations don’t learn from their mistakes and failures, because they haven’t properly discussed and documented the failure in order to learn from it in the future. On such article from Duncan Haughey on the Project Smart website has highlighted a very simple process to help organisations learn from their past mistakes.

Whilst much of Duncan Haughey’s suggested process really focuses on developing a mind-set within the organisation and facilitating discussion and awareness of past mistakes, a lot of it also relies on good documentation and storage of the past mistakes. This can then enable the development of an easily searchable database of ‘lessons learned’ that can be accessed by people from all over the organisation to prevent the same mistakes being made on future projects.

One way to start developing this database is to have all your project information stored in a central place that is accessible to the entire organisation, such as a dedicated project management software package like IPM. With IPM, you have all the site diaries, meeting minutes, issues and risks from each of your projects in the one database, which all hold valuable data when identifying where mistakes have been made on the project. The Issues register in IPM is also a good place to record your database of lessons learned as it is central, and easily searchable.

Failure is sometimes unavoidable when trying to accomplish your project goals, but if you can take that failure and learn from it, or help others in your organisation learn from it, then the failure becomes more valuable and can help you succeed next time.

 

I found the great quote for my headline from a collection of project management sayings from Steven Seay’s ProjectSteps blog. I thought it was quite quirky and relevant not only to project management in general but also to today’s discussion on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 dashboards.
 
Last week, I wrote a post about conditional formatting, one of the new features of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and this week I thought I’d share with you some information about dashboards, another feature that is surely going to make it easier to manage more information about your project, and identify when something does go wrong.

Up until now, the only way to view information about your project from different areas of IPM has been to open multiple windows, or run a report. Now, CRM 2011 has introduced dashboards that can display snapshots of each user’s desired information from the one screen.

These customisable dashboards can display data in real time and can incorporate information from all over IPM and CRM. This means you can choose which data you want to display and set it up without the cost and time involved with IT support. Choose to display all your outstanding RFIs, or a graph showing your budget and schedule information, whichever you need to manage your project the best. This way you can see at a glance what is happening all over your project.

As an extension of the dashboard feature, you can also set up graphical representations of your data, with the ability to drill-down into certain segments of the graph to get more detailed information about that particular part. And as with most Microsoft CRM features, the graphs can be customised according to each user, giving users the most accurate and appropriate information for their particular job.

So when everything feels like it’s going right, make sure it actually is with CRM 2011’s new dashboards feature. To see how dashboards and other new features of MS Dynamics CRM 2011 are enhancing IPM, contact us for a free demo, or if there's anything else you'd like to know about IPM and CRM 2011, feel free to post a comment below.

No doubt one of the great mantras used by project managers the world over is that failing to plan is planning to fail. I recently stumbled across a blog I haven’t seen before from the Project Management Institute and it’s got some really great posts by project management professionals from all over. My favourite post is quite a recent one from Jim De Piante about how project planning is the key to a successful project management career, and it got me thinking about planning and the tools we can use to ensure our plan’s success.

I’m a big fan of planning. To me, there is nothing better than having a killer outline of exactly what you intend to do, and how it’s going to be done. And then there is nothing more satisfying than seeing everything turns out according to that plan. Of course, this is real life though, so how often does that actually happen?

There are always going to be hiccoughs and disruptions to your plan, but the best planners have tools in place to accommodate those. In construction project management in particular, having a well laid project plan does go a long way to ensuring success, but it always helps to have the tools necessary to achieve that plan, and if they help you recognise when you’re off course and can get you back on track, that’s even better.

One of those tools is construction project management software, such as IPM, with good reporting facilities that can accurately deliver real time figures and data for every stage of the project. This way you know where you are every step of the way, and how far you may be deviating from your original plan. And with IPM, if you are off course you have all the information about the project in a central database to quickly retrieve and, if necessary, delegate tasks and make adjustments to get you back in line with your plan.

IPM also has enhanced planning and forecasting capabilities to give you detailed breakdowns of all your forecast figures, along with optional tight integration with your accounting system to keep track of costs and budget.

So even though the best laid plans can encounter bumps, having the right tools to execute your plan goes a long way to ensuring the success of your plan, and ultimately your project.