This is for task scheduling or resource allocation questions.
2
votes
2answers
65 views
How to start my first project?
I'm going to manage my first project that is really a small stream of an even greater project, and my boss said that I could make my own schedule and plans etc.
I have a couple of questions, I need ...
6
votes
2answers
143 views
How can I schedule resources across multiple projects?
Drawing from the body and comments of a previous question, what is the best way to schedule simultaneous projects and resources to those projects?
For example, in a group of 16 staff, each working on ...
3
votes
4answers
173 views
Schedule Control
Here's the scenario: You are building a schedule for a project that has a planned duration about three months. You are not concerned about project costs so you will not be doing EV. You are ...
3
votes
3answers
122 views
In Scrum, how to estimate research stories?
In our Scrum team, when there is uncertainty about a story or the team is not sure about how to implement it, we take up a research story first. Based on the findings of this research story, we are ...
2
votes
2answers
212 views
What is the typical ratio of PM/EM hours to “work” hours in a project?
What is the rule-of-thumb ratio of Project Manager/Engagement Manager time to overall project time (e.g. man-hours for work products) in a project? I'm especially interested in an answer within the ...
9
votes
6answers
245 views
Is there a clear benefit to separating “issues” from “tasks” when working in larger teams?
Is there a clear benefit to separating issue from task when working in larger teams?
When working with sizable teams of developers in addition to a number of external clients, QA, and any other ...
13
votes
5answers
202 views
How should I account for non-coding time when estimating duration of a coding task?
I was wondering whether this approach I am doing to scheduling dev work on a day to day basis is correct. In which I assume that instead that a developer has 8 hours a day to do coding, they actually ...
12
votes
5answers
222 views
How to schedule a team during a time of many holidays, on a project with a tight deadline?
You are assigned a three month duration project at the end of the calendar year that has legal obligation of a finish by Jan 1. The schedule is very aggressive with higher odds missing that date than ...
8
votes
5answers
225 views
Agile/scrum - tracking time spent in current iteration towards stories from the next iteration if all current stories are done
Our team has been slowly trying to go towards agile, and like many other teams, up to this point, the question of "what do we do when we actually finish all commitments?" is fairly new and foreign to ...
9
votes
3answers
177 views
How can I improve a project schedule on a project I took over and complete it on time?
I just took over a project from a Project Engineer and just saw a revised project schedule. The revised schedule shows the project will be delayed by 3 months. I am trying to complete it within the ...
0
votes
1answer
90 views
Canned project breakdown suitable for training interns in scheduling
I'm looking for a project with a well-constrained breakdown that would suitable for training interns in scheduling projects. (The desired context is actually software project scheduling, but I'm ...
14
votes
13answers
1k views
Are 40 hour work-weeks (no overtime) acceptable for development teams?
No matter what our current conditions are, it seems like my team is always working 40 hour work-weeks.
Under normal work conditions this would be fine, but as we approach a deadline on a major ...
3
votes
1answer
158 views
How to manage a project schedule based on Late Start dates?
We finished planning a project a month ago and since then have had four formal changes pushing out start dates to the latest possible. Scope change isn't a factor, rather the root cause appears to be ...
5
votes
1answer
249 views
How can I track team member utilization across a range of projects?
I have a fixed-sized team (with fixed-hours) and products, more than the team can handle. At any given time, while my resources are working on one product, requests keep flowing in about work on other ...
3
votes
2answers
75 views
How can an EV be calculated when there are different versions of a project plan?
There is a project manager who is trying to come up with a way to calculate EV under a specific situation where there is a project management system which allows different versions of project plans.
...
5
votes
4answers
149 views
Resources used by multiple PMs
I am the Infrastructure PM on a large project, working as part of a team of PMs with different responsibilities. These include Development, Testing, Environment Support, and Implementation. My remit ...
1
vote
2answers
162 views
What is the procedure for adjusting the project schedule when a team member is replaced?
There is a project team with a project manager and 5 development resources working on a Web 2.0 web application. The current project the team is working on is for a long term client who commissioned a ...
0
votes
1answer
161 views
Rational Team Concert for resource scheduling
We are evaluating RTC as a primary project management / development framework tool.
In particular we follow a high number of concurrent projects with mutable teams. Our main problem are that we ...
2
votes
4answers
147 views
How to add value beyond collecting tasks and their dates?
As a project manager I catalogue a group's tasks, definitions, dependencies, milestones, resources, and similar other elements of a project. The managers use this to report up, estimate project ...
4
votes
7answers
236 views
Quick win or long term sustainability?
My project has to deliver middleware components that will support a large, complex system development spanning multiple phases. My phase is due to implement in 6 weeks, with future phases being ...
8
votes
5answers
239 views
How to communicate with project leaders when they are doing poorly
I have been on multiple projects where the project leaders have not involved themselves in the project enough to even learn what the project is really doing. Other times the project leaders didn't ...
7
votes
4answers
505 views
What went wrong - project going off track
I'm not a PM. I'm a developer working on a large project with a small team at an 18 person company. The "team" is just me and the project manager. The project isn't the largest my company has ever had ...
1
vote
1answer
116 views
Is there a name for this PERT-like project management status chart?
I know of a long-standing program where a particular format of project status chart has been in use for more than a decade. It was originally created to status the assembly sequence of a complex ...
4
votes
6answers
291 views
Scheduling interview with stakeholders
Have a business process re-engineering project where I need to schedule and conduct interviews with business participants and stakeholders in a short period of time (4 weeks).
What is the best way ...
9
votes
4answers
150 views
What techniques are useful when factoring in the likelihood that one or more members of the team may take leave during a project?
What's the best way of planning for the possibility that a key member(s) of the team might want to take leave at some point during a project?
I understand one solution is to buffer the project ...
15
votes
1answer
405 views
Fogbugz Evidence Based Scheduling
Has any one in the community used 'evidence-based scheduling' by Fogcreek's fogbugz to come up with estimates and schedules on your real projects? I understand the basis of this technique (well ...
2
votes
3answers
217 views
How can I show scheduling for shared resources?
We have people who work on half a dozen projects at a time (tech writers, testers, etc.). What's the best way to do time planning for resources like this if you have six separate MS Project Plans for ...
4
votes
5answers
278 views
What's the most effective way of sharing the schedule with the team?
I'm keen to know the perceived best way of sharing a company wide schedule of work.
Here are some key considerations:
I want the team to be able to see what is upcoming in the next 1-6 weeks and ...
5
votes
6answers
459 views
Buffers, tolerances - how do you approach them in your project management practice?
How do you apply them in practice?
What tools do you use / what would you recommend?
6
votes
2answers
218 views
How can I make company-wide scheduling and resource allocation decisions?
I've recently been taken on in a Programme Management role for a software company. There are several definitions of Programme / Program Manager out there - my role encompasses, amongst other things:
...
1
vote
3answers
226 views
How can I convince my team that they delays are inevitable and that they need to hustle in order to actuall get done on time?
Sometimes I have teams that think there is little point to being ahead of schedule. I try to convince them that things will inevitably come up that will take up precious time to sort out, so we need ...
7
votes
6answers
3k views
How can I use MS Project to manage an agile project
We use MS Project to manage a project. Although I know that MS Project is just a scheduling tool, we use it to get the current state of the project. We update the % complete field at the end of every ...
14
votes
5answers
470 views
How can I help my project manager deal with schedule pressure?
Often the project manager in my team is under severe pressure to commit to and deliver to a particular schedule, when this looks unlikely they get stressed and this has an impact on the whole team.
...
5
votes
3answers
456 views
How to Organise Help Desk?
I have to organize the help desk. I have some thoughts and ideas.
The project for which I have to do is a Web application. It has 5 servers
in different time zones.
We have something about 25 ...
7
votes
7answers
453 views
Valuable Information When Managing Multiple Projects
When managing multiple projects at once, what information would be most valuable to a project manager if the projects are related? Not related?
[Purpose is for the development of new project ...
4
votes
4answers
993 views
When is it okay to pad estimates?
Project Managers are expected to guess the future, a difficult task even in sciences like meteorology. As many projects finish late (due to expanded scope, underestimated durations, etc), it is ...
5
votes
5answers
2k views
How to calculate budget margin?
Say a work package (containing several tasks) is estimated to take between 320 (Most likely) and 480 (Worst case) hours of work (not duration) to complete. Because of some dependencies and the ...
18
votes
11answers
879 views
When and how to schedule effective meetings?
I'm the lead programmer turned project manager in a small shop. Our project has entered "the last 90%" phase where many things need to be communicated between different departments. This means many ...
5
votes
5answers
725 views
How to anticipate delays in the project schedule?
I once managed a very intensive, very complex project that with every tool, illustrated an on-time schedule. But in the end, the project was severely delayed.
I understand the concept of "known ...
5
votes
3answers
129 views
Who owns the project timeline?
On a large, fully staffed, project team, under ideal situations, who would you expect to own the project timeline?
4
votes
7answers
395 views
Which tools would you recommend for use when drafting, monitoring and reporting on a project schedule? [closed]
When managing a complex project (large enough for significant daily status updates), with a large team (in the 10's of team members), which tools would you recommend for use to draft the project ...
