The traditional approach by project managers using traditional project management software is to prioritize tasks based on the critical path of the project.  This critical path is constructed by defining tasks, information about those tasks and constraints.  Project management software (like MS Project) then auto-calculates a critical path.

Time and again I’ve found that this isn’t helpful to getting projects done.

1. It doesn’t capture all the variables that should go into prioritizing a task and
2. It is way too cumbersome to be useful to most people doing projects.

Instead, try a holistic approach to task prioritization.

Here are two ways of doing that. They can be used separately or together.

Subjective Task Priorities
First, come up with at least three levels of task priority. For simplicity, these can be low, medium and high or 3,2,1 -with 1 being highest priority.

These are completely subjective priority levels which allow you, as a human being, to factor in any number of variables when deciding what is important to work on.

A human being can better appreciate all the factors around a project or task better than any algorithm or decision making model. Algorithms and models can only go so far when factoring in things like human error, rework time, and things simply taking longer than planned. Algorithms also allow the project manager to be aloof from the process as a whole. This isn’t good.

An added benefit of a subjective approach is that it requires the project manager to have detailed knowledge of the production process and the business goals behind the project. That way, they can weigh everything in when deciding what people should be working on and when.

Second, when putting together a task list, label each task with the priority.

When the relative importance of a task changes, change the label and make sure everyone on the team knows about it.

Project management tools like Vertabase can help you notify people automatically. Or, just make sure you continue to communicate with the team.

Subjective Critical Path
A second way of incorporating holistic prioritization is to manually flag critical tasks when you set up your task list or work breakdown structure. The critical tasks should be those which are key for your project to be completed properly and/or on time.  Many organizations call these project milestones, though I like to reserve the term for major phases of a project.

But before I tell you what it is about, let me tell you what the presentation is NOT.

It is not a demo of our project management software. It is not a talk about agile project management versus waterfall or other formal methodologies. It is not a description of the ideal personality type you have to be to be successful or the latest fad in management styles. There is a lot of that around already

This is different.

This is a collection of practical tips to getting more done. It is based on the Vertabase approach to project management that says

the role of project management is to provide accurate and meaningful information between the people who want the project done (the client) and the people doing the work (the team).

It has real-world examples, good developer specific stories and tons of tips you can implement immediately to make your life easier.

You may not have project management set aside in your workflow -it might even be just you and the client. But, by definition, there is a project management role that is filled by you every time you communicate with the client. You are giving them information, collecting information and setting expectations. This presentation will help you do that better (and with less effort).

If there is project management already in your organization, it can help you better understand the information you can provide (making you more valuable) and how you can get the information you need (so you can get on with your work).

Like so many of the presentations being given at CFUnited, it should give attendees tools and ideas to be more productive, to keep their shops at the edge of innovation and to raise the overall level of their skills.

It is a great investment.

On a behind the scenes note, the organizers and presenters of this conference together put a tremendous amount of themselves into it. It is truly a labor of love and a testament to the passion of the community involved. This passion can’t help but rub off and keep people excited about what they do for months after the conference.

Two astronauts went out on a spacewalk to fix a particular part on the Hubble Telescope. The part that needed repair was blocked by a handrail. To get to the part, they had to unscrew the handrail. But, of course, the bolt that held the handrail onto the telescope was stripped. They couldn’t use any of their tools to get it off. The plan called for them to use a tool to unscrew the bolt. But it wasn’t working. Eventually, they had to resort to brute force, yanking the handrail off with old fashion muscle, in order to get to the part. They called it ”Plan C.”

My wife and I cracked-up when we heard this. The same thing always seems to happen to our household projects. Nothing ever goes as planned, things take longer and you often have to come up with innovative solutions to achieve your goals (which sometimes involved brute force).  Even with the huge budget, master planners and technical information that NASA has, things don’t always go as planned.

Why is this important?  It has a direct impact on how you structure your projects, the techniques you use and the tools you use for managing projects.

Recognizing that the active phase is the most crucial part of a project’s lifecycle, means that the flow of information from team members to the project manager, and back again, is of utmost importance. It is only by having accurate information that the project manager can understand the situation and implement changes as needed.

Without good information, those astronauts would probably be stuck trying to build a tool that could unscrew the bolt, to go according to plan, rather than just getting the job done.

I was at a usability conference recently looking over books on human-computer interaction. Standing next to me was a usability expert who worked for a government agency. Each of the many departments in that agency had their own website. I’d been to one of those website and found it very hard to use. (It wasn’t her department’s site.) We started chatting about it and she totally agreed.

I asked her why she, as a usability expert, couldn’t do anything to improve that website. She told me that she was siloed into her own department. I asked why the user interface (UI) expert in that other department didn’t do anything to improve the website. She said that the other department doesn’t have a usability expert on their team. She is the only UI specialist in the whole agency.

She has a unique skill amongst hundreds of employees -but her skills are trapped in one department.

This struck me as being an unproductive, though not uncommon, situation. And this is the type of situation where a good, get more done, project manager can come in.

A good project manager has access to information that other team members don’t. Specifically, the project manager knows where specialized knowledge and skills are within an organization. The PM can be the eyes and ears across project teams for talent.

This is a unique position that a project manager can use to expand their role as a value-added member of an organization. In this role, resource allocation becomes more than simply finding who has time to do what. It goes beyond traditional project management methodology. Resource allocation becomes about placing the right resource on a project. The one that can help get the job done better, faster or more cost effectively.

The first is to silo the information. This is generally the approach of a project management specialist. The idea is that project management is a brain-trust of information and that distribution of the information is most effective when its carefully managed. Specifically:

• The project manager consolidates project information
• The project manager publishes the information at specific times
• Others must ask the manager for the information
• Often requires calling meetings to share the information
• Or the information gets distributed in ways that make sense to the project manager.

Some of the consequences are that it:

• Is opaque in how information is gathered and why
• Builds a clique around the project manager
• Carefully controls the flow of information
• Can be politically and strategically useful in an organization
• Can be hard for others to use the information in the way the project manager presents it.

The biggest benefit to siloing information is that if the project manager can successfully become the funnel for all information they can effectively manage expectations and improve processes. The biggest downside is that the project manager often becomes a bottleneck for information and then, in frustration, people just ignore project management and see project managers as a hindrance to getting things done.

The second is to spread project information. This is generally the approach of a team leader or non-specialist who is given responsibility for managing a process. The idea here is that the project manager wears many hats and the faster information can be received or distributed the less time the manager has to spend collecting or publishing that information. Specifically:

• Information is quickly distributed
• It is centralized in one place that everyone knows about
• It is available to anyone with the proper access level
• It is dynamically updated with any new information
• Can be received and viewed whenever its convenient to each person.

Some of the consequences of spreading information are that it:

• Can break hierarchies of control
• Makes skills rather than knowledge more valuable in a team
• Brings transparency to a process
• Raises accountability
• Can make projects and teams harder to manage
• Makes it easier to improve a team’s performance.

The biggest benefit is that it allows non-specialists to manage projects and makes it easy to push a consistent way of tracking projects across a team. The biggest downside is that team members sometimes don’t care about the nitty gritty of a project (they just want to know what they have to work on) and can’t be bothered to contribute to information on the project.

I recommend a blended approach. Start from a place of spreading information but make sure that you cater the specific information to each person based on what they will need -and don’t go overboard with sharing information.

• A designer might just want to know the amount of time they have to deliver the project whereas
• a developer wants to know the specific deadline and functionality required.
• An executive needs customized metrics on projects they’re tracking whereas
• a client wants to know if things are on track or not.

On the other hand, if you let too much information flow out you will lose control and visibility on a project or task. A free flow of information can be constructive for collaboration on a deliverable. However, not everything is a collaborative process. Many projects and processes benefit from being monitored, measured and controlled.

Their main hypothesis is that this current meltdown is very similar to the meltdown that led to the Great Depression. Both were caused by massive consumer debt.

“It appears that we’re witnessing the second great consumer debt crash, the end of a massive consumption binge.” Steven Gjerstad and Vernon L. Smith, in The Wall Street Journal.

In short, people without money owned things they couldn’t afford. This was made possible by an all too willing financial and banking system that had government incentive to supply the purchasing power for the spending spree.

Four facts that are particularly interesting in the article:

1. The Dot-Com collapse wiped out about $10 trillion of value in the stock market but had minimal impact on the whole banking system.

2. The Consumer Debt Crash (the current crisis) wiped out only about $3 trillion of value in the stock market but has devastated the entire world banking system. Why? That’s much of what the article addresses.

3. Inflation in 2004 and on was much, much higher than reported due to a change in the way it was calculated. It was more like 6% instead of 3%.

4. Ben Bernanke seems to think like authors of the article. He wrote a study on the Great Depression in 1983.

Ben Bernanke is the current Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Bank. Understanding his thinking can help people make sense of what the government is trying to do to solve the current crisis. It gives us a better background to judge whether leaders in Washington are doing the right things or not.

On the causes of the current Consumer Debt Crash here are some of the factors the article lists (all taken directly from the article):

• Rising household income that began in 1992
• The elimination in 1997 of taxes on residential capital gains up to $500,000
• Lenders and the investment banks that securitized mortgages used rising home prices to justify loans to buyers with limited assets and income
• Rating agencies accepted the hypothesis of ever rising home values
• The fed-funds rate, by December 2001, had been reduced to its lowest level since 1962. In 2002 the average fed-funds rate was lower than in any year since the 1958 recession.
• Both the Clinton and Bush administrations aggressively pursued the goal of expanding homeownership, so credit standards eroded.

The authors end on a very academic note saying that “the causes of the Great Depression need more study” and suggesting that that would be helpful to understanding the current crisis. No doubt that’s true.

To me the article points the way to a counter-intuitive solution. The consumer needs to re-assure the financial system. (The government’s propping them up doesn’t seem to make a difference.)

Individuals need to show the banks that once again we will buy and spend. We have to show confidence that at some point we know there will be plenty of jobs in the future. There needs to be an obvious and clear signal to the banks that people haven’t given up on the system as a whole. But, on the contrary, that we will once again pick ourselves up and start to create the tremendous wealth this country is capable of producing.

The first site, http://www.getrailo.com focuses on Railo as as a commercial enterprise that publishes a high-end open source product and CFML platform. (This is where the old www.railo.ch redirects to.)

The second site, http://www.getrailo.org focuses on the community that uses and builds on the Railo platform.

A third site is in the works that It will contain documentation, guides and user generated content.

The sites and the release itself are still technically in beta. But Railo, and were Gert has taken it, remain a very exciting technology and expanded platform for both the ColdFusion community and for the world of Java developers (see the Why Railo page).

Aside from the fit with our corporate goals, the space reflects our vision for the changing face of Metro Detroit and its future.

The space is located at the crux between Detroit proper and the suburbs. Its right off of 8 mile road.

The building itself is a mix of dedicated front office and light industrial. Like the location, it is a meeting point of urban and suburban, physical and virtual, industrial space and internet space -and it captures a moment in time.

These days are a fulcrum. These are the times when the citizens of this area can decide what they want to be in the future or let the forces of the past drag them down. No-one is helping. Its up to the people alone. If people don’t step up and move themselves forward, this area will be dragged down further and it won’t be pretty.

Its up to the everyday people to re-envision what they want this area to look like, what kind of opportunities to create and new businesses to develop.

There are a tremendous amount of talented individuals here. But for too long people became complacent to entrepreneurship, complacent to starting radical new ideas, to taking risks to throw out a shingle or start a new company or service that had nothing to do with automotive industry.

Understandably so. It was easy to get hooked on the vast flow of wealth the auto companies generated. The opportunities and volume they provided were unprecedented. People spent a lot of time and energy trying to plug into that enormous flow. People forgot, though, that there are other ways to make a living and that even base hits help move a team forward. Hitters don’t need to swing for the fences to make it. Or, for that matter, to be a big success. A World Series can be won with consistent hitting, consistent pitching, team play, mutual support and heart. This area has got that in abundance.

Now-a-days, it doesn’t take a big capital investment to launch an idea. It doesn’t take a ton of machinery or a long term contract with an OEM to get cash-flow going or to get excited about a dream. Things don’t have to be made out of steel, rubber or cement. The base hits of today are made out of creativity, out of great service, out of taking care of people’s needs. They are made out of good work.

Base-hits and winning teams are fueled by energy, dedication and resolve -by keeping an eye on the ball. These are what the base hits of today are made of. And they are the same ingredients as today’s home-runs.

Our vision for the space is to take advantage of this moment and to transform it into a source of positive energy and growth. We want to do this both for our company and for the area as a whole. We’ve brought a few local “visionary” type of people here and they’ve gotten it -and given back awesome energy for the potential it holds. With everyone moving forward, there’s no reason it can’t succeed.

We look forward to having an open-house once we’ve finished unpacking and sprucing up. And from there? Stay tuned. There are a lot of ideas we want to make real.

• Make an initial feature list
• Get time estimates on each feature
• Prioritize the list
• Time box the development effort
• Build and test as much as possible in that time
• Launch
• Get user feedback

This works great for a tightly defined set of deliverables and a client who has done software before. However, that’s not what this project is nor the profile of this client.

More than building features, this client is interested in having us take care of them. They are new to technology. They have a great idea, an understanding of their target users and the enthusiasm to stick with the project.

In their case, we are providing a full service consulting and execution experience. The application we’re building is the center of that experience, it’s the basis for the services we’re providing. But the scope extends way beyond building the application.

In this scenario, a waterfall approach combined with constant communication and flexibility is the right approach. Namely, the focus will be to:

• Understand the client’s vision
• Write a detailed, final specification through many iterations
• Brainstorm with the client
• Build according to the specification
• Launch an alpha internally for functionality and scope affirmation
• Integrate comments and changes
• Another alpha release -iterate
• Launch a beta for testing and scalability
• Bug fix and test
• Bug fix and test
• Bug fix and test
• Launch to the public

All the while, we will be educating the client on different facets of development, software, user experience and running a software based business. We’ll be having numerous discussions and creative brainstorming sessions. We will be delivering the exact product they want and providing the service level they’ve requested. The specification and the process itself become the foundation for the conversations and the subject, as it were, around which our conversations, services and deliverables will revolve.

Both agile and waterfall can be powerful approaches. It all depends on the context of the engagement. You have to pick the right methodology for the right engagement and the right client. As the dean of a local incubator said yesterday, it’s about finding the right fit.

Number all of your files or to do’s with 3, 2 or 1. Put these numbers at the start of your file name.

3 or unmarked is an open to-do or an asset before you started working on it.

2 means a first pass has been done and it is in revisions.

1 means it is complete and ready for production.

Once it is launched or in production, delete it from your to-do list or list of active files that you are working on. Move it to a warehouse or a different folder in your filing system where you keep assets that are live. In a corporate environment, this could be the general network drive where other people can access it from.

While you are working on an item, rename the files as it changes status in its lifecycle e.g. “3 write blog post” becomes “2 write blog post” then “1 write blog post.” If its in 1, the next step is to launch then the blog post itself can go into your warehouse. If you want to recycle the task, re-set it to “3 write blog post.”