Line Meets Curve

You’re a busy project manager, maybe traveling between multiple jobs, and you’re seeing things that need to be handled by employees or sub-contractors.  Maybe you are on one jobsite and see that a trash haul needs to be done earlier than scheduled.  Or perhaps you see that one sub has left tools or materials on the job that need to be removed.

There could be any number of little things you see each day that need to be delegated to someone, and you probably carry a notebook to do just that.  Then you get back to the office, or even home in the evening, and you can get these instructions out with email, phone calls or by smoke signal.  Of course, TangentWorks 550 has a place for tasking that will show up in the collaboration area for the appropriate person or company.  But, don’t you sometimes want it to be easier?

Here’s how you could be doing it:

• You see a trash haul is needed on the TWorks project.
• You call a number and dictate something like “trash haul needed by Thursday”
• You go home and have dinner.

Wait a minute, you say!  We forgot the other steps.  Well, we didn’t, because there aren’t any necessary.  You see, when we set up this project with a little free Google Calendar, we got the ball rolling.  Then we set up a free account at Jott.com to send tasks to our little job calendar with our voice from our cell phone.  Now catch that free word twice.  What do we end up with?

Yes, it’s all in a widget that displays on the appropriate page for our project participants to see.  And we didn’t type a letter!  Our requirements are delegated and documented.  Everyone who needs to know will know when they check their page.  Ah, isn’t technology wonderful?

You’re a busy project manager, perhaps hitting several projects at the end of each day to check their status.   Do you get calls in the evenings from sub-contractors checking progress of the other trades?  Or maybe it’s just a planned activity to let the electrician know the progress the framer made today.

What about keeping your boss and the project owner informed about progress?  Would they appreciate a simple and up-to-the-hour delivery of photos showing the perfect installation of those marble counter tops?   There may be a dozen or more people involved in a building project who would benefit from a look at the site at the end of the day.  With today’s digital cameras, it certainly is easy enough to get the shots.  It’s just the numerous steps to get them into your computer, sized for a reasonable email, and then email them out to the list.

Or…

This is a widget box on my project SkyView page in Tangentworks 550.  It displays the latest images uploaded to my Flickr.com account.  And, Flickr makes it easy to send images straight from the job site with my camera phone.  I can have this page refresh every few seconds if I want.

Now, all I have to do is cruise through the job site at the end of the day, take photos with my camera phone, and send them to the free Flickr account I created for each job.  They are on the Web in minutes, and everybody involved has their own page to view them.  Taking it to the next step, I create different widgets for different people.  The owner gets broad view shots of general progress.  The sub-contractors get more detailed close-ups of work that they need to see.

Now, when I get home, I enjoy my dinner without a dozen phone calls.

It all starts out so well-planned. A building project has a defined scope, a set of detailed plans, and piles of specifications. The project manager is an organized individual, and all of this documentation and planning material is on the table, with plenty of scrutiny on a daily basis.

So, why is it that, a few months into the project, the budget is going awry? There haven’t been any large change orders. No big space additions or major material modifications have been implemented. Why are our costs creeping upward, exceeding the budget in several areas? None of the areas have a huge budget overrun, but in aggregate it’s a large cost issue.

In an article titled Project Management 101, F. John Reh, the About.com Management Guide, discusses “scope creep.” Seemingly small additions and changes, any one of which doesn’t seem to be of concern, all add up to a creeping up of the scope of the project. Of course, with creeping scope comes creeping cost increases. I can’t improve on his examples, so here’s a quote:

The client wants to add a ten foot long, 4 foot wide awning over one bay door. That’s a pretty minor change. Later the client wants to extend the awing 8 feet to cover the adjacent bay. Another minor change. Then it’s a change to block the upwind side to the covered area to keep out the wind. Later, it’s a request to…

Get the picture? It can be even worse with a very large project, with managers handling different phases or buildings. Without a clearinghouse for all changes, even the most minor, this scope creep can become a major cost issue. Using an online project management and collaboration solution, even the largest and most complex building projects can monitor scope creep effectively.

With a single online location for any changes, even the most minor, and a cost associated to each, any manager can quickly access the collective changes from any Internet computer. Stopping this creep in its tracks is just a matter of capturing the activities and costs in one easily accessed location.