- Set milestones and "inch-pebbles." Milestones indicate when major deliverables are due. Break them into inch-pebbles--shorter time periods attached to well-defined interim results--so trouble can be spotted early on.
- Schedule resources evenly. Small companies need to plan week-to-week assignments for people and equipment. Are there enough people and machines to handle peak periods? Most people willingly give for the Gipper, but eventually they burn out, causing productivity to plummet.
- Communicate across functions and distance. When a project affects people in different departments, make sure everyone can--through a network or a human administrator--retrieve and update the complete task list. Use the Web to communicate deadlines, to keep an issue log that enforces accountability by letting everyone know who's responsible for resolving problems, and to track changes.
Expansion Plans
With a little creativity, project-management software can do a lot more than its name implies
Eric Stoop's goal is to keep his company growing. Stoop is CEO of Newport Trading, a securities-trading facility that caters to day traders--individuals who cash out their positions by the end of each day. Within six months of the company's November 1997 founding, monthly revenues from trading operations, which were climbing at a 25% rate, had reached $25,000. Some of Stoop's clients trade via the Internet, but most drive to his office, in Newport Beach, Calif., where they use the company's in-house trading stations. Since his office has room for only 15 stations, Stoop knew it would soon be "busting at the seams." But the to-do list for expanding the business--from negotiating new contracts to configuring additional hardware--was overwhelming. "There were so many contingencies that everything had to be done in a step-by-step order. I needed a road map."
To chart his company's growth, Stoop fires up TurboProject, a project-management package from IMSI. Back in April 1998, Stoop used TurboProject to lay out all the tasks necessary to double Newport Trading's capacity. For starters, he knew he'd need new suppliers. His broker-dealer--the company that executes trades--wasn't up for the expansion, and contracting with a new one meant obtaining price quotes, discussing clearing costs, and negotiating and then signing an agreement. Stoop entered those tasks into TurboProject, along with estimates of how much time they would take. With twice as much business he'd also need more office equipment--computers, phones, phone lines, and so on. So Stoop added tasks for bolstering infrastructure: pricing equipment, placing orders, and negotiating lease terms. The new hardware, Stoop knew, would never fit into the company's office. Which led him to enter a third set of tasks: finding a new site, signing a lease, and moving in.
Next Stoop defined dependencies between tasks. For example, he had to sign the lease before the company could move into its new space, and he needed to finalize a broker-dealer relationship before he could order signs. TurboProject's Gantt view uses a green bar to indicate the duration of every task, and to establish dependencies Stoop simply clicked on the bar for one task and dragged a line to another. The default dependency is "finish-to-start"--that is, the first task has to end before the next can start, but users can change that to start-to-finish or finish-to-finish. Once Stoop set all the dependencies, he entered the start date for his first task, and TurboProject did the rest.
The schedule showed that the expansion would be complete by September 1998, but because it took longer than expected to find the right site, the move was delayed two months. Still, by November the company was booking more than $2 million in revenues on an annualized basis. Stoop credits TurboProject with keeping him focused. "I've gone to it whenever I've felt overwhelmed," he says. "Now I'm near the end of my first road map, so I'll start over with a new one."
Popular Software
Work Scheduling and Tracking
Web-Based Project Coordination and Communication
In-Site
BidCom, $45 to $75 a month per user per project, plus setup fee
ProjectNet
Blue-Line/On-Line, $1,250 per project per month
TRAQtix
Red Rock Software, $399 for five users, $20 for each additional user
Resources
Web Sites
Books
- The Complete Idiot's Guide to Project Management, by Sunny Baker and Kim Baker
Macmillan General Reference, 1998, $16.95
- Critical Chain, by Eliyahu M. Goldratt
North River Press, 1997, $19.95
- The Deadline: A Novel About Project Management, by Tom Demarco
Dorset House, 1997, $24.95
Conferences
- ProjectWorld
Boston, May 17-21, 1999, and
San Jose, December 6-10, 1999
- Project Management Institute's PMI '99
Philadelphia, October 10-16, 1999
