Integrating CloudEVM with Primavera P6 and Microsoft Project For those contractors who have an Earned Value Management (EVM) requirement on their contract, you may have had the experience of gathering data from different business systems that do not easily align. The time-consuming process of merging data cannot only be frustrating but it can also produce […]
Schedule Time Buffers
In the world of project management, things go wrong! This is an inherent characteristic of schedules. This is why good project managers will list and track risks associated with activities and the project. Still, it is difficult to find all the risks that may be hidden within the project schedule. This is why some project […]
Inserting Gantt Chart Gridlines in Microsoft Project
If you have had difficulty reading Microsoft Project’s Gantt chart, either because you had too little or too many gridlines, than you may want to become familiar with the numerous gridline features available to you. Gridlines are supposed to make your Gantt chart easier to read. For instance they help you spot the day an […]
The Cause and Effect Task Dependency Paradigm
Do you understand task dependency relationships? If you’ve ever become confused when trying to decipher the predecessor from the successor in task relationships, you are not alone. Read on to discover a helpful paradigm for understanding task dependencies. The terminology used in task dependency relationships breeds misunderstanding. The terms predecessor and successor to describe task […]
Using Management Reserve (MR)
This is the third in a series of three articles about Management Reserve written by EVM SME Mark Infanti. You can read the previous two articles on this subject here; Management Reserve Defined and Estimating Management Reserve (MR). Now we have defined what it is and discussed how it is estimated. Now we need to […]
Questions You Should Ask When Implementing A PMO
Implementing a Project Management Office (PMO) is often not as simple as it might seem. As noted in this article, politics, organizational dynamics, history, personalities, etc. often come into play. When a client asks us to help “right the ship” of a struggling PMO implementation, one of the first things we want to understand, is […]
Finding the Longest Critical Schedule Tasks Using Microsoft Project
Schedule optimization requires investigation of critical tasks to see whether fast tracking or “crashing” of these tasks will materially shorten the schedule. You also may want to perform a more accurate bottom-up estimate of these tasks to confirm their duration estimates. If you are looking for a way to help focus in on those tasks […]
Estimating Management Reserve (MR)
This is the second in a series of three articles about Management Reserve written by EVM SME Mark Infanti. You can read the first article Management Reserve Defined here. FAR 31.205-7 (c), defines contingency as a possible future event or condition arising from presently known or unknown causes, the outcome of which is indeterminable at […]
Comparison of Top-down and Bottom-up Estimates in Microsoft Project
Looking for a way to compare bottom-up Estimates with top-down estimates? Look no further than Microsoft Project. Yes, in Microsoft Project you can display a comparison of bottom-up estimates and top-down estimates right on the Gantt chart.
Why Schedule Risk Analysis is a Good Idea
Our friends at Barbecana submitted this interesting article explaining why Schedule Risk Analysis is a good idea. The Value As part of the project management process, a project schedule will be defined, typically using the Critical Path Method (CPM) technique, that identifies the activities (tasks) that need to be performed to fulfill the project objectives, […]