A Toast. "To our new guests: The Business"Those of us who have worked with Business Project Management Software have sampled from its vineyard of features. Over time, we acquired a taste for what we like, learned to avoid those we don't, and ultimately settled in on our favorites.
As PPM Software has matured, The Business has come to appreciate how they too can enjoy these Project Management Tools. As Project Management professionals, wouldn't it be decadent if we had time to play the role of connoisseur, sharing the subtleties of our experience as we tour The Business around?
Well, sober up. There's never that much time.
That said, may I offer to at least fill your cup with one popular Project Management concept I've uncorked?
From Sippage to Slippage
Let's switch from Wine Country to Oil Country. On Oil and Gas projects, somewhere in the middle of the Project Plan, there's a Task where the well itself gets drilled; what's called the Spud Date. It's a key event in the entire project, and since lots can go wrong either side of it, The Business often watches the Spud Date to quickly gauge how the Project is going, typically in a Gaant Chart view.
| If all Tasks are ASAP, a Project's Start date determines where the Spud Well (S) will occur. This is typically what it looks like in the future, while we're planning ahead, with no Tasks started yet (0%). | ![]() |
| As time moves on, real work occurs and some Tasks get completed (100%). However, until a Task is marked as totally complete, @task pushes everything that's ASAP past it further into the future, assuming that the earliest you would mark it as complete is "Today". The dotted yellow bar shows what's CAUSING the delay, and the other shading shows the EFFECT of the delay. | ![]() |
| If you realize you forgot to enter an end date, you can backdate a Task with the real actual end date (A). When you do, @task "snaps" the schedule back to that date, but then assumes (again) that any late Tasks can't finish any sooner than "Today". | ![]() |
| Since it’s the Actual Tasks, the fact that is "Today", and the ASAP relationships that drive where the Spud Well occurs (S), there is NO POINT in adjusting the Start Date of the Project -- it would simply make the overall Project start earlier, without moving (S). | ![]() |
Last Call
I hope you can use this analogy to understand or explain why ASAP Gaant Charts move the way they do once a Project gets underway.
You are also welcome to download the original Excel version. It includes a similar example for a Project with a Start No Earlier Than restriction. For Oil and Gas, that is often the case when waiting for ground to freeze before the drilling rig can get into position.
For a Winery....hmm...please leave a comment with your own analogy.




I've lately been reading
Over the last year or so we've talked a lot on this blog about how empowering project teams with some autonomy and control over the work they do will help improve the project management process. With that being said, we should also talk about the need for individual project team members to step up and take responsibility for the additional autonomy.
Over the years I've read dozens of articles (and even written a few myself) about what it takes to plan and execute a successful project. However, over the years I've discovered that opinions are like belly-buttons, everybody has one and they're all different. Although there's no doubt in my mind that sound project management methodology includes a number of considerations like risk, reward, resource needs, and stakeholder buy-in, I'm convinced that the linchpin for project success is the end user and how he or she interacts with the project management process.
About this time last year my Boston Terrier Cosmo passed away. He was, in my humble opinion, the best dog that ever lived. He was a gentle and loving companion who transcended his canine nature and became one of our family. It didn't matter if I had been gone for five minutes or a week, he was always glad to see me and truly exhibited unconditional love for me. As he got older he may have lost a step or two, but he was still willing to jump in the Jeep for ride, sit by my side on the couch, or chase a ball or stick thrown in the back yard.
Long before the prime-time police drama Law and Order, there was Dragnet. As a kid, I used to watch Dragnet's Joe Friday interview people, investigate crime scenes, and catch the bad guy every week. Every episode started with, "The story you are about to see is true, the names have been changed to protect the innocent."
As a teenager, I was a lifeguard and swimming instructor at my high school swimming pool. I spent the summer teaching two- and three-year-olds to swim. Over the three or four years I taught swimming lessons, I noticed that there were some traits that successful swimmers had in common:
A good caddie is critical to a successful tournament for a golfer. On the golf course, a caddie has a number of basic responsibilities:
Are there common characteristics successful project managers share? I don't think anyone disagrees that delivering projects on-time, on budget, and on spec are important. I certainly think they are. That being said, I was thumbing through some old notes a while back and found these six leadership attributes. I'm not sure where I came across them originally, but they are leadership skills that can take a good project manager and make them "super."
Learning project management best practice doesn't just happen. Especially for those who don't come from the traditional IT project portfolio management background.
Change is hard. We humans are creatures of habit and we don't like it when someone upsets the apple cart. That being said, projects often react like living, changing creatures. Sometimes it only takes a few hours for a successful project to morph into something spiraling down the vortex to disaster. With that in mind, project management might sound like a counter instinctual career choice, but I tend to look at it the same way some cultures look at their dream-lives. By overcoming their fears in their dreams, it makes them stronger in their waking lives. Change might be hard for us to face, but the more often we face our fear (of change), the better we get at adapting and overcoming.
Managing stakeholder expectations is an important part of managing project-based work. If you're lucky, project stakeholders have clearly defined the value of what the successful outcome of their project might look like. I say lucky because unfortunately, clearly defining the potential value of an initiative before the project has begun seems to be the exception rather than the rule in most organizations. However, if success is not clearly defined, it's up to the project manager to initiate a dialog to determine the value and desired outcome. Otherwise it's difficult to successfully complete any project. And what's more, it's never a good idea to be measured against a moving target.
I'd like to talk about the Nintendo Wii.
500 annual projects sounds like a lot of work.
When Companies Merge

The Magic 8 Ball is not a good project management decision-making tool.