Engineers - project manaegment

[Seahawk]

The key word is, "use".

I have seen absolute monuments to program planning and detailed execution that were obsolete weeks into the project because no one either understood or was compelled to understand the purpose of the program tools.

A program manager must insist that the management tools appropriate to the project are used in an expected, timely manner by all team members. Period.

I also insist on a vibrant Risk Management program that is linked to the master schedule and that the engineering staff understand their impact on cost and schedule.

[MBAtarga]

Originally Posted by serge944

One thing I've learned - upper management likes pictures, numbers, charts, etc. They don't want details - big picture. "Can I get a metric on that?"

We use a term at work - "ducks and bunnies" view. If the message can be captured with a view as simple as counting or explaining something at that level, then the executives will love it.

[12own911]

Originally Posted by Scott R

We use what could be the worst product ever for engineering efforts.. "Clarity." It's a "CA product" (Computer Associates) and it's driving us crazy. The damn thing has 100's of fields to fill in, including time lines and time tracking. It can take more time to fill out a Clarity form than it can to engineer a new project.

Hey, we also use "Clarity" but we titled ours "ePlan" for all project related work. Thru ePlan we have the connection to Microsoft Project for our schedule. I agree that there are hundreds of fields to complete but it provides up to the minute (based on active PM update) information of a project including risks, issues, assumptions and what-nots.

Much better then Planview product that we used a couple of years ago.

[12own911]

Originally Posted by jhelgesen

Here is current state....

This is "the big board" that our operations side uses to track every order, quality blip, and production issue. There are daily stand up meetings that last at least an hour every day so that upper management can get an update of today's milestones....




This is the "engineering board" that tracks engineers project by hours remaining.



Where I'm at is the big board is too much detail. The area managers should be driving their people and these tasks should never make it to upper management.

The engineering board is too hands off. Each Eng is expected to keep the board up to date, but no one uses it.

I'm on board with MS project is the way to go, but we have to use a "company tool". We like boards driven by markers and crayons...

Hey, that looks like Agile or Lean Project Management with PRoduct Owners, ScrumMasters and Team with daily standup meetings.

[Scuba Steve]

Originally Posted by jhelgesen

I'm taking a poll of my fellow Engineers.

"How do you track your projects / show status to upper management"

Background:

As engineers, we're all used to time-lines and gantt charts for tracking projects, I think most of us were taught to use them in school. The upper management I work with has all sorts of business tools to track "issues", but none of them work well for design related items.

So I need to find a Rossetta stone of engineering project management.

What methods do you use for project tracking and how do send that information up the ladder? How do you show your status, without having to explain in great detail to non-engineers or going into the n-th degree explanations?

Thanks!

Luckily we're huge on MS Project and management gets that program, but there's another application called Milestone I believe that's kind of a watered down version of Project that can spit out charts that are simpler to look at.

I prefer to just collapse major segments in Project and follow a % complete while tracking individual actions that are becoming late or could be in trouble.

I've seen others build what's essentially a rolling Gantt chart in Excel which works too. You don't get any percentages out of it though. Basically they have horizontal bars which are empty and become more and more full as the task progresses, and since there aren't a whole lot of them on any given day it's easy for people to keep them updated as the day goes by (these tasks typically span less than a day or so) and you get maybe 5 days or so per page. I have no idea what Excel template they use for this or if it's something that was developed within their group.

edit: BTW you know you're an industrial engineer when you've built out your whole home renovation project in MS Project complete with tasks, a critical path, order of operations, tools and materials needed.

[MotoSook]

If anyone is interested, I have a friend who is a BD manager at Burns & McDonnell who can pitch you a project management tool that is suppose to pull all aspects of the project together and make it easy to track everything easier. I have some info at the office I can forward to you...shoot me an e-mail and I'll forward it.