Project Management

By Skip
Created: Tuesday, January 21, 2003, 13:25:19 MST

JoelonSoftware.com
Painless Software Schedules
MrProject.org

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Well, I'm trying a new form of project management. I am currently trying out the Painless Software Scheduling technique described by Joel Spolsky (www.joelonsoftware.com). It is the most painless one that I have tried and seems to be working well for me so far.

In the past I had tried to use Microsoft Project. But I found that it felt way too "heavy" for me. The number of features was overwhelming, especially for the small, simple schedules that I was looking at. It took a long time to load. Dependencies and interactions between tasks would sometimes be difficult to manage and cause unexpected and undesireable results. Allocating resources turned out to be a huge headache since it messed up all my times and estimates more times than I can count. In the end, I ditched it.

I tried MrProject on Linux briefly. It is a light-weight version of MS Project and so felt somewhat familiar. But again I ran into trouble. I ran into the pain of loading it up and trying to manage my project from a Windows box. I didn't keep it up-to-date and eventually it, too, fell by the wayside.

I tried using a simple text file. But in the end, it too fell into disuse and is no longer up-to-date.

I think that the true problem lies in the fact that I don't know how to manage a schedule. Any of these could have been adequate. All of them provided a means for estimating and tracking progress. What they didn't do was give me simple guidelines to follow. In the end, I failed in each of these attempts because I didn't take the time to update the schedule. Partly this was due to the fact that most of the tasks I outlined were too broad, scheduled in terms of days. Partly it was because I didn't stick to the schedule and then didn't update it, hoping to hide my inadequacy from myself. Painful as this admittion is, it is the truth and I declare it openly for myself and to myself.

This new method, the Painless method, is my latest attempt at doing things right and actually delivering on some projects. Don't get the wrong idea. Even without scheduling I was able to complete projects and get things delivered, just not as efficiently as I would have liked. The advantage that this method has over the others is that it comes with guidelines. I am following those guidelines and trying to get my schedule under control. Already, I have been able to more clearly see what needs to be done and start working on some stagnated tasks. The painless part is that it takes very little time to keep the schedule up-to-date. I am not getting bogged down managing the project management side of things. Also, it is flexible. This allows me to put in tasks quickly as I field support calls and adjust tasks as I need too.

Thankfully, this seems to be working and I feel more productive and can see my progress. I really appreciate being able to track progress using a simple spreadsheet. This Painless Scheduling is also nice because I can stop worrying about dependencies and just worry about completing the highest priority task.

I'm excited about this and things always work when I'm initially excited about them. The test of fire will be time. If I'm still managing my time and projects using any method in the next month, then chances are it has worked for me. If not, then I better find a better motivator than ease and the "coolness" factor.

Until later...

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