The Business Analyst and Microsoft Project

 This blog was originally posted on my IIBA community blog on January 7, 2010.

Did no one at Microsoft consult a BA when they were creating the application Project? That sounds like an inflammatory and possibly even sarcastic statement, but if you’re like me, a BA who spends some of his time doing PM tasks, you really do begin to wonder. I catch myself thinking about how I might have structured the requirements for the Project product and can’t help but wonder how it got from the drawing board to where it is now. I do not understand, when I stare Project, why its two most heavily used views, task entry and the network diagram, became the basis for this application.

Project, a fairy tale

1. Create the task list. A task, at its core, is work that needs to be completed. Project management courses can provide hints and tricks for naming tasks, but all Project gives a blank text field to hold this information? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not asking for grammar correction to be added to Project (I still have nightmares about the 'passive voice’ warnings from the 1990’s version of Word), but couldn’t we find a way to do this that makes the task more useful? Many tasks in the software development realm look something like, “Code such and such screen” or “Document Process Plumbob’. Why do we not have task types? Sure, there are custom fields that could be of use in this, but why does Project not have this or at least the ability to Tag a task? Even more useful would be something similar to creating a Google Calendar entry, where the information entered in the calendar entry description was intelligently parsed into the correct metadata fields.
   
2. Assign an activity manager. This is where I, as a BA, step up and explain that collaboration is extremely undervalued and underutilized by modern business. When I attend a Work Breakdown Session (WBS), I invariably have a set of tasks that flow through almost every project in which I am involved. Despite this, I find myself dragging out my WBS sticky note pad, filling out a list of tasks that are exactly the same as the ones I put together for my last WBS two days ago. Having everyone in a room to create the initial plan is wonderful, but sessions that take all day to complete could be expedited if only we had a way to take the tasks which we already know and pre-populate them into the plan. At this point, someone is going to mention Project Server, to which I must retort the limitations in place that stop more than one person being able to add tasks to a plan. I don’t want to send my tasks in a small project plan to the PM for them to enter, I want my standard tasks to be able to be pushed into a new plan. If my tasks have dependencies upon someone else’s tasks in an existing plan, Project should be smart enough to see if those same tasks are also in the new plan and prompt me if they still apply.
   
3. Add a resource. I don’t really have a lot to say about this one as the combination of Project and Project Server get this one right. A single list of all resources, that is sorted alphabetically and can use quick-key shortcuts to jump through the list is great.
   
4. Add dependencies. This is by far the most arduous step in setting up a project plan because it functions in direct opposition to the way our brains seem to function. The idea of predecessors and successors is to show a relationship between two different tasks, but the way that relationship is shown is a set of line numbers that have nothing to do with the actual tasks. If I insert a new task between the two tasks I have related, the task further down the list increments and the numbers representing the relationship have changed. The numbers themselves are meaningless, yet they are the one thing that ties together our entire plan.
   

• The task entry view is not an optimal way to really understand dependencies. Using task numbers to link predecessors and successors is inefficient and difficult to visualize. Network diagrams composed of post-it notes work amazingly well laying out the dependencies within a plan as it 'shows’ instead of 'tells’.
• The network diagram shows the relationship between tasks, and when plotted with a timeline in the background, gives a decent approximation of project duration. This matches up with our sticky notes, yet in Project, there is no way to add new tasks in this view. I can read, but I sure can’t write.

Come Together, Right Now

1. The task list entry isn’t a bad thing, its just cluttered. Task #, Description, Activity Manager, Resources, Duration, Effort and many more columns make entry difficult, especially when you try to add in predecessors and successors at the same time. Make a task creation list view on the left side of the screen with just three fields: Description, Duration and Activity Manager.
2. The rest of the screen is a very Visio-like drawing pad. Once the tasks are entered in the side pane, they can be dragged and dropped into the diagram area, just like a Visio task.
3. Drag a task over into the Visio-like area and it disappears from the list of unused tasks.
4. Grab a second task and drag it on to the diagram area. Lets assume that task 1 and task 2 have a finish to start relationship. Drag the left edge of task 2 onto the right edge of task 1. Project now understands that task 1 is a predecessor to task 2 and makes the appropriate link.
5. Keep adding more tasks to the diagram. But wait, there are more types of relationships than just finish to start! This is where the genius (if I do say so myself) comes in to play. Need a Finish to Finish relationship, grab task 3 and bump its top line into the bottom line of task 1. Start to Start, grab task 4 and bump its bottom line into the top line of task 1. Start to Finish, grab task 5 and bump its right edge into the left edge of task 1.
6. What if you mess up? How do you break a relationship? Simple, click the relationship line and press delete. If one of the tasks (or both) are now unassociated, they slide back into the list of unassociated tasks or just hang out on the screen, waiting for you to make a new association for them.