Jeremy Cottino

Let me tell you this story of a project manager; he spent time with his team to compile their project planning, then proudly print it on A0 page, and pin it on the wall behind his desk. This is for me one of the most common mistakes a beginner does on project management. Why? Because the time you print the schedule and pin it on the wall, the schedule is not anymore up to date. You planning is alive, people will make work and progression on some tasks, others tasks might be delayed… It is important to track the work done in order to answer the question “how are we progressing compared to original plan?”.

A snapshot of the original plan should be saved in order to allow later comparison. This is what we call the Baseline.

Once your original planning is done, you can save your first baseline, by clicking on Project > Set Baseline > Set Baseline.

The practice of estimating in project management is one of the most challenging. Whether you’re trying to figure out project effort, duration or cost, given the inherent uncertainty of projects and their uniqueness, we often end up “guesstimating.” This article provides techniques to use in order to be as accurate as possible in doing your estimates. While I focus on effort estimation, the same techniques apply to duration or cost estimation.

Let’s start with a reminder about how project time management is articulated, according to the PMI® PMBOK® Guide & Standards, Fifth Edition:

Resource engagements, which is one of the new feature available in Project Online, is the way Project Managers and Resource Managers agree on resource allocations (for more information about new features of Project in 2016, please check my previous blog article: What’s new in Project 2016).

The resource engagement feature substitutes the resource plan feature you might know from the previous version of Project Online or Project Server. Projects’ resource plans will be migrated to resource engagements. It’s important to note that only published resource plans will be migrated, so before you start, publish all your resource plans.

In order to use resource engagement, the feature needs to be activated. When you connect to your Project Online tenant, you see this message (only admins see it):

During the Microsoft Ignite Conference Keynote Address in May 2015, the Office 2016 Public Preview for Consumers and Enterprise customers was announced. The final release is broadly available since the end of September 2015. So what about Project? Here was the official announcement from Microsoft:

Project 2016 is […] available online as part of Office 365. The new service side features […], are being rolled out into Project Pro for Office365 and Project Online right now. The new […] features will be available to on-premises customers in the spring of 2016 when Project Server 2016 is released.

Let’s see those new features in details:

Friday October 23^rd, I had the chance to be speaker at the first Project Virtual Conference http://projectvirtualconference.com/.

As introduced by the conference team: “Project Virtual Conference 2015 is the first-ever online conference that is dedicated to Microsoft Project, Project Server and Project Online, that will run for a continuous 24 hours”.

The Project Virtual Conference 2015 in numbers is 1400+ registered attendees, from 76 different countries, and 61 sessions (the list of sessions is below).

My session was: Successful business value realization with Lean Startup and Project Online. The idea was to merge Portfolio Analysis with Lean Startup principles.

Here is the session abstract

To develop their business and products, Coltham Metalhead, a beer brewing start-up, has put in place the Lean Startup Method in order to support their fast growing business. They have combine this practice with a Portfolio Management Methodology, based on the Standard for Portfolio Management from the Project Management Institute. Their Project lifecycle starts with demand management and project ideation through their innovation hub, then the portfolio management process helps the decision making process to select the right projects to run and finally project management techniques help ensure projects are successfully delivered. In this presentation, the focus will be on the Portfolio management principles, and how Coltham Metalhead, hence yourself, can apply Project Management Institute’s standards on Portfolio management and lean start-up philosophy within project Online. By creating what if scenarios (based on risks, costs¦), they ensure they are “doing the right work”.

Have fun watching the recorded

Within Microsoft Project Server, a resource plan is a forecasting tool for estimation, used at the early stages of project initiation. It’s a way to estimate resource capacity where projects are in different state, in other words, it helps you to define high level resource needs for each project or initiative.

Because you can use it during early stages of projects, there might not be any task or WBS defined yet, some projects might be just proposed and not handed over to Project Manager.

More often, resource plan utilize resources that are generic just to get some idea of capacity. Using named resources might also help resource managers to understand their team’s availability and capacity.

Let see how it works:

Wednesday, 13. May 2015, I had the chance to be the speaker for the PMI EMEA congress, held in London, UK and the subject was:

MasteringPortfolio Analysis with a Project and Portfolio Management Tool.

The event description I have created to present my speech, was the following.

Understanding the Portfolio Management Body of Knowledge might help you to better comprehend the goals of a portfolio and the advantage in selecting the right one(s). When it comes to life, you need to select the best tool in order to help ensure that those making the decisions, make the right ones. By attending to this session, you will be able to understand a three-step process of portfolio analysis through one PPM software.

After going through basic principles of Portfolio Management, I gave a concrete example of Portfolio Analysis using Microsoft Project Server 2013.

Let me share here this experience, by giving you a copy of the white paper I wrote and the slide deck of my presentation.

Also, we were proposed by PMI to create a selfie video to present our session. That was my first experience doing this, you can enjoy the decor of my living room J