Simple project template

[Pavel]

When Project Management came out, 15-20 years ago, can't remember the name
but it wasn't Microsoft, there was a template for a simple project,
disregarding the complex issues involved in a real project. PM gradually
became a very specialized field and the marketing has written off ordinary
people as if they did not need to plan their activities, which they mostly
don't (shame).
I do have Win Project 2003 (for some strange reason I won't go in here) and
I used to work with it, mainly in a supervising capacity.
There are situations in my daily (retired) life where I can use something
simple (because of progressive forgetfulness) to plan an activity/project.
Setting up a new project in WinProject seems too much of a hassle, unless I
can use some template, which I recall existed way back then.
I'd prefer to use the Microsoft family of software instead of getting
something new.
Any suggestions to this old fart?
Thanks.

Pavel

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

Project Management as a business discipline has been around for much longer
than that, initially appearing in the 1920s and 30s. It really came into
its own as a managment tool with the Apollo program during the 1960s, long
before the advent of the personal computer and computer software to take
over some of the calculation details..

The problem with templates such as you're seeking for projects large or
small is that they really can't be as generic as you want. Any project plan
is going to be focussed on a specific goal and the nature of the goal
determines what activities are going to be required. Now I can create a
template for building a house because the majority of the tasks and the
types of skills required to build a house are pretty much the same for all
sorts of houses I might need to build. It might take 3 days to place the
roof beams on a 1200 square foot bungalow and 3 weeks to do it on a 20,000
square foot super-mansion but both sorts of houses are going to need roof
beams placed on their frames. So a template for housing construction is
going to have a "place roof beams" task in virtually all cases. But you
really can't come up with a list of activities that must take place to
successfully conclude a generic "project" with an undefined goal because the
things you do in each one will be different from those in all the others.

Be sure to keep clear in your mind the differences between a project
management program and a personal planner and calendaring program. A
project planner does not receive as its input the schedule of things you
need to do. It takes as input the overall objective, the breakdown of the
specific activities required to achieve it and the way those activities
relate to each other, and the resources you have at your disposal with which
to conduct those activities and from that generates a work schedule and cost
estimate. That's quite different from entering tasks, the dates you expect
to do them, and their deadlines into a personal to-do list.

Setting up a new project can be as complex or as simple as you make it.
Simple projects with a few steps and a couple of resources will be very
simple. Complex projects with hundreds of steps and dozens of resources
that need to be coordinated will be more involved.

HTH

 

[Prj_Mngr]

The Microsoft website has a number of templates that you can use to start a
project schedule. Once you have looked at their format and taken out anything
that is not really relevant to what you want you can then save your own
template. Just file/save as/ template. Then you can use this for future
activities.

Hope this helps

 

[Pavel]

Thank you for taking time to respond.
I used to use PM (and was a strong promoter of it) in the late 60s and 70s
in the heavy construction industry (in a different country, in a different
language), in a graphical mode with manual calculations, obviously......long
story.
Having moved "upstairs" I became quite rusty, except that whenever I could I
"forced" staff to employ some form of PM, with various degree of success,
mostly failures. Analyzing the activities and their interdependencies to
achieve an objective was too much a hassle and people preferred to fly by
the seat of their pants. Having been retired for a number of years now I
lost track of corporate governance methods and tools, but I doubt things
have changes much. Programs like Time-System, Day Timers, Outlook, other
PIMs, still probably prevail, or "nothing". It's "crisis management",
management of filling time of individuals or groups, with little attention
paid to results and what happens between the beginning and the end.
My initial question was about smaller undertakings, hardly "projects", but
more than tasks. The beauty of a smaller "project" handled by the use of
some form of project management software or an add-on to Microsoft Office
Family and/or OneNote (as existed in the initial version of Microsoft
Project (I think) in a form of a Wizard, was in leading (forcing) the user
to think about it in terms of tasks and milestones as well as constrains,
and few resources.
Re-reading my diatribe I recognize the shortcomings of my description.
Let me try with a more descriptive example. During the course of a day we
all experience a sudden flash of an idea, or a co-worker/supervisor makes a
request. So you jot it down. For that there are plenty of ways to do it
within Office. When you return to it you realize that it is not as simple as
it may have appeared initially. So what do you do now? You write out the
tasks as you think of them, as they pop up. While you are at the fourth one
you realize that it really should become the second one and so on. As you
continue you realize you will have to wait for an outcome of another task,
either done by you or by an external resource. So you reshuffle your list,
jot down couple of milestones, make a side note about a resource or two and
you a have a sceenful or a sheet of paper, which looks a bit confusing,
there is no graphical representation of it (Gantt), nor a time-line. You set
it aside, come back to it in couple of days and then it even makes less
sense because you have forgotten few things. You sure cannot show it to
others for it really does not portray any coherent picture. You work at it a
bit more, it becomes even more convoluted and you will most likely abandon
it as unusable. The only advantage gained was your partial analysis of what
is needed to accomplish the "project".
So what I have in mind is a wizard/template or several to choose from, which
would guide me in expanding the idea into a small "project". There could be
tie-in with Outlook Calendar and OneNote. The upcoming new version of Office
will have OnenNote included, which is actively marketed to students. They
sure would benefit by having this capability.
In a short synopsis: Microsoft Project has become a tool for specialized
professional management. I know of no similar tool for everyday computer
users who would like to be, or should be, better organized, or using the
term I just heard in a Microsoft TV commercial, empowered. Office is a
collection of very powerful, complex software programs. Instead of making
them even more powerful, they should keep and improve their complexity but
in the service to the user without having him/her have to learn all the
intricacies of the command structure.
I better stop right here, when I get going I get going. I wish I wasn't over
seventy so I could work with this and other ideas how computers can better
interact with users without having to learn complex programs.
I moved away from the original topic, a simple "project management"
template/wizard, sorry for that.

Pavel

 

[Amir K]

Pavel,

What you describe does exist, for "home users", as part of MS Works 7. Its
used for "projects" such as "preparing a birthday party", "moving home" and
the like. It is Wizards based, and does prompt users to think!

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Amir