Daniel Raymond, Author at AceProject

Project management and firefighting

Background on this post

This post started from a tweet that resonated with me. I realized that if we spend all our time managing emergencies, we leave the project at a standstill, without a leader or a vision.

Project management and firefighting

One thing most bloggers won’t admit to is how
they often find inspiration for their posts: in other blogs and tweets.
Anywho, I found my inspiration for today’s post from this Tweet: “Why do so many professionals say they are project managing, when what
they are actually doing is fire fighting? – Colin Bentley” from Greg Cimmarrusti, PMP

Firefighting is a management style not only used by project managers. When someone spends all their time putting out fires, they look very busy, and they have a great sense of purpose.

Why so much fire fighting?

It’s a vicious circle. It’s difficult to think long-term when fighting fires. And not thinking further than the immediate will create problems in the long run.
Planning is hard. It’s much easier to fix issues as they occur than the […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-08-26T12:51:00-04:002009-08-26|

Take the risk of trusting your team

Background on this post

I wrote this post as a bit of a manifesto. I often have the impression from project managers that, while they expect their teams to trust them, they are not giving the trust back to the team. And it occurred to me that this really was about taking a risk, and managing that risk in the project.

Take the risk of trusting your team

From the part of the person who gives it, trust is hard. It requires
a leap of faith. It requires that we believe the person we trust is
worth it.

From the part of the person who receives it, trust is energizing. It
means that someone was willing to take that leap of faith for us. It
means we are worth it. Trust also carries responsibility: if we want to
keep that trust, we must prove the giver right. This means delivering
on that trust.

Project management requires a high level of trust

The project manager must trust the team to do quality work on time and on budget.
The project team must trust the project manager to lead them […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-08-19T12:51:00-04:002009-08-19|

The fisherman’s take on project management

Background on the post

I wrote this after a fishing weekend. A bad fishing weekend. As it turns out, there are a lot of project managers that also like fishing! This post was the starting point of several very interesting discussions on LinkedIn about risk management!

The fisherman’s take on project management

I went fishing last weekend. It was a beautiful (yet a little cold) weekend in the woods. We were on a good lake for fishing: our quota was 15 catches per person. That’s a lot of fish!

We were thinking: if the outfitter allows 15 catches per person, there’s got to be a lot of fish in this lake. And there was. As we arrived the Friday night, we could see the bass jump at flies on the surface of the lake. We were stoked for a good day of bass fishing on Saturday!

Well, it was not a good day of fishing. We caught a total of 10 fish between the three of us. This was underwhelming.

Here’s why we didn’t get the fish we were hoping for

The fish was jumping at the flies, […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-08-12T12:51:00-04:002009-08-12|

Summer reposts: Project metrics: earned value management with a 6-function calculator

Background on the posts

I wrote these two posts because I got tired of reading how complicated it was to compute project metrics. Project metrics are NOT complicated, it’s simple math! So I thought if I wrote my understanding of those metrics, it might help some people.

It turns out these two posts are the most popular ones on the blog!

I hope you enjoy them 🙂

Project metrics: earned value management with a 6-function calculator

Project metrics have a bad reputation. Things like Earned Value and Schedule Performance Index are presented as complex calculations that only experts can master.

Nothing could be further from the truth

Actually, most project metric calculations can be done by anyone with grade-school math skills. The challenge in project metrics calculations is not in the formulas themselves, but in mixing project management concepts with mathematical operators.

Still, these concepts are basic to project management. Every good project manager should understand them.

Start with the basics: Earned Value, Planned Value, Actual Cost

These three are not really formulas. They are the three figures project metrics use to create all the other ones, like the Cost Performance Index […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-08-05T12:51:00-04:002009-08-05|

Just in before the end of summer: Cost tracking coming to AceProject!

It’s been requested for a long time. After all, cost or part of the project management triangle, along with schedule and scope. While AceProject allows for management of the schedule and the scope of the project, no dollar signs could be found in the application.

That’s about to change

With version 4.8, scheduled for the end of the year, AceProject will include the following cost tracking features:

Entering an hourly cost rate for each user
Logging expenses for a task and/or a project
Entering estimates for expenses as well as hours
Entering a budget for the project
Reporting on expenses and labor costs
Comparison to budget and estimates
Disabling or enabling both cost tracking and time tracking features at the account level

As development progresses, we’ll share some screen captures with you here.

Our goal is to introduce a way to manage project costs that is simple and user-friendly. Our challenge is to keep AceProject balanced between its ease of use and a comprehensive feature set, and we expect that the cost tracking features will test us on that level.

What do you think? How should we […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-07-28T11:57:00-04:002009-07-28|

Making project decisions: Guts or data?

We make decisions all the time. As project managers, we make decisions not only for ourselves, but also for our project teams, stakeholders, and sponsors.

There are two ways that people make decisions: they trust their intuitions (their guts) or they analyze the information available. Analytical people (those who trust data) and intuitive people (who trust their guts) are often not very compatible. Analyticals feel intuitives make decisions too lightly. Intuivites feel analyticals get lost in the details of data and take to much time to decide.

There’s two sides to this coin

Both analyticals and intuitives have a point there.

	Strengths	Weaknesses
Analyticals	Always know the facts. Understand the consequences of their decisions before they make them, every time. Never base a decision on impulsive emotions. Usually take time to think about their decision before they make it.	Tend to be more reactive than proactive. Decision-making can be a lengthy process. May suffer from analysis paralysis – when too much information actually prevents decision making.
Intuitives	Make decisions fast. Have a keen sense of unquantifiable information, like non-verbal language. Firmly believe in their […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-07-23T11:48:00-04:002009-07-23|

Vacations change perspective

It's the high vacation season here in Canada. Since July is the warmest month of the year, it makes sense that most people take time off during that period.

Vacations are good for the body, the mind and the soul. It's not just about resting, vacations give us an opportunity to change the focus of our lives, from our work to something else. A different place to be, different activities, more time with our families.

For me, vacations are also an opportunity to rethink an issue or gain fresh perspective on my projects. Begin out of the office changes how we see things. Sometimes this is what we need to come up with an innovative solution.

Every year, when I leave on vacation, I choose one thing to reflect upon during my vacation. When I come back, I don't always have a solution (epiphanies don't happen upon request, you know), but I always have better understanding.

What will you be thinking about during your vacation?

By Daniel Raymond|2009-07-21T11:39:00-04:002009-07-21|

Project managers who like to learn belong on Twitter

Ah, Twitter. Possibly the most misunderstood tool online.

A lot of people wonder “what’s the deal with Twitter? Why would I tell the world what I had for lunch?”

For us at Websystems, Twitter is a learning tool. The amount of information, wisdom and discussion that happens on the twitternets is simply amazing. Since each post is only 140-characters long, not only must people be concise and to the point, but it’s also very quick to browse through all those tweets.

The secret to getting good information from Twitter is to use hashtags. Hashtags are like search terms that people will put at the end of their posts. Then, through a simple search on the Twemes website or with your favorite Twitter application, you can see everything that’s going on for that keyword.

The popular one related to project management is #pmot (for project managers on twitter). There’s also #pmi, #pmp, #agile and #pmiagile

Here is what was posted recently:

Essentially, […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-07-16T12:50:00-04:002009-07-16|

Trends VS needs: know the difference

We receive suggestions for new features every week. When I do live demos with future clients, they regularly request new features as well.

We really like receiving these suggestions. They give us a pulse of the market, of what people are looking for.

A year ago people were asking for Salesforce integration a lot. Six months ago it was baselines. These days, people are asking to automated resource leveling.

Now I’m not saying those are not great features to have in AceProject. Quite the contrary. However, these requests come and go. They’re trends.

Over the last 2 years, one feature that has been requested consistently is cost-tracking. It’s a big feature.

And we’ve decided to do it!

Cost tracking will be included in AceProject 4.8

We chose to develop the cost tracking feature because it’s been requested consistently for a long time. This tells us it’s a true need for AceProject, not just a trend. Seeing how implementing cost tracking will take a lot of time and effort, we wouldn’t have done if we had identified it as a trend.

Next time: I’ll […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-07-14T12:01:00-04:002009-07-14|

That pot is not calling that kettle black: project budgets and estimates

We were sitting at the table in the conference room, discussing how we’ll implement the new cost tracking features in AceProject. And I realized the difference between budget and estimate was not clear at all to everyone sitting at that table.

What’s the difference, anyway?

Budget is defined as:

A sum of money allocated for a particular purpose

An estimate is defined as:

An approximate calculation of quantity or degree or worth; “an estimate of what it would cost.”

A budget is often something that is decided before estimating how much something will cost. The organization decides how much they can invest in the project, then they decide on the scope of the project, and finally the project team estimates how much it will really cost to do the project. When the estimate is higher than the budget, the fun begins.

Here’s an example:

I want to buy a new car. I know I can afford to pay 15 000$ for the car. That’s my budget.
I go to the car dealer and I pick the car I want, with all the options I […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-07-08T18:29:00-04:002009-07-08|

About Daniel Raymond

The fisherman’s take on project management

Project metrics: earned value management with a 6-function calculator

Start with the basics: Earned Value, Planned Value, Actual Cost