OK, so one of the reasons Microsoft Project makes me nervous is that it seems like such A Thing. Like, this giant unwieldy monster that is too complex for mere mortals like me to understand. Project is like wanting a little light reading to kill some time, and all I can find on the bookcase is a textbook about quantum physics.

But Tim, Innovative-e’s resident Project Portfolio Management mastermind, insists that it’s not scary or difficult and that the big-time processes that make Projects seem so complex and foreign all happen in the background where you don’t even see them. Kind of like a car that is powerful and fast, but when you drive it, you don’t worry about what’s happening under the hood. You’re concerned with where the car takes you rather than what’s going on with the engine. Project is the vehicle that helps you get your project to where you want it to be; stop thinking about what the engine is doing, and suddenly Project seems like just this everyday thing that helps you do what you want to get done.

A project manager will find Project to be more than helpful. Tim says, “It is toxic not to use Project to track your projects.”

Remember when I mentioned dependencies in an earlier post? They’re a pretty critical thing in effective project management. Dependencies are where your resources, schedule, and plans are all linked together so you can see whether what you are trying to do in a project is actually feasible. And Microsoft Project links all these things for you. Project maps whether the conditions under which you are trying to complete your project are sufficient. To wit: Project tells you whether what you’re endeavoring to do is practically doable.

All the pieces of information that you’ve tucked away into SharePoint, Excel spreadsheets, emails, and other places? Project glues them all together and then shows you what you have done with your available resources and time and what you can do in the future.

Making a project work is like following a recipe. You gather all the necessary components, and you mix them all. But if you are trying to make a cake, you can’t dump in the butter and eggs after you’ve stuck the rest of it in the oven. You have to do things in the proper order. What you do, with what, and when depends on the bigger picture, the greater objective.

The dependencies created when you’re following a cake recipe are not altogether different from those created when you’re coordinating a project. And Project helps you see those dependencies and relationships between the various ingredients of your project. It tells you when you should adjust by adding this or that component and how long your project will be cooking.

Throwing all the elements of your project together willy-nilly will result in chaos. Project, rather than being an unmanageable behemoth, will help you contain the chaos, streamline the process, and show you (rather than just telling you) precisely what your project looks like while it’s in process.

When you think about it like that, Microsoft Project doesn’t sound intimidating at all. In fact, it sounds downright friendly.

~Team Bamboo