The Other Side of Microsoft Project.
More and more often, managers of large companies are faced with the issue of effective project management. Its solution requires modern management approaches. One of the popular products is Microsoft Project. It is designed for rational and effective management of projects, plans, resources and finances. But no matter how good Microsoft Project is, it is just a management tool, and its use cannot be considered a guarantee of successful operation of the enterprise.
In many companies where Microsoft Project is implemented, the problem of meeting deadlines remains relevant. Microsoft Project allows you to estimate the duration of a task, but does not provide the ability to determine the duration of work on the project as a whole. If we consider planting cucumbers in a greenhouse as a project — forty percent of the seedlings were planted today, which means that there are less than two days of work left — then in this case, Microsoft Project is probably ideal. When it comes to large projects that include a number of interdependent stages, everything becomes more complicated. If you break the project into separate tasks, set the duration of each and sum them up — in this case, the result obtained can be considered the deadline for completing the project only conditionally. Often, ninety percent of completed tasks do not mean that the project is ninety percent complete.
In companies where several projects are being implemented simultaneously, calculating their duration has its own peculiarities. When planning, it is necessary to take into account the situation for all projects as a whole. In most cases, the failure to meet deadlines is caused not by errors in estimating the duration of the tasks provided for in the plan, but by unforeseen tasks and circumstances. Projects that were supposed to be completed earlier and which have priority in completion over others will definitely be discovered. The reasons for the delays are not so important — they will always be found. These projects will cross out all plans, and no Microsoft Project will save you from an emergency.
Before you start implementing a project, you need to know the situation with resources, that is, with the people who are supposed to be involved in it. Microsoft Project allows you to do this. The program takes into account all the resources of the enterprise. On the corresponding page, you can see the resource occupancy for the period of interest. But Microsoft Project is not designed for the human factor, or rather, the nature of the resources that are responsible for entering data into the calendar plan. Let's open, say, July. Judging by the lack of records, there is not a single project for this time interval, none of the employees are going on vacation — all resources are free. It turns out that you can safely plan a new project for this time. As a rule, in reality, things are different: there is enough unfinished work, and a crowd of people want to relax in the summer. The issue with vacations is easy to solve — employees do not go on vacation. But what to do with overlapping projects?
Microsoft Project has one great function — working time tracking. It shows the hourly workload of resources for certain tasks.