“Paralysis by Analysis,” “Information Overload,” “TMI.”

If the key to a successful project is controlling time, one timewaster to eliminate is over-reporting. Some managers spend too much time tracking too many activities at too low a level of detail.

Luckily, reporting doesn’t have to be like doing your taxes, if you have some guidelines on how much detail is enough:

Each activity should produce a deliverable or change in product status with just enough information to indicate a change in status.

• Subdivide long-term activities into tasks of about a month, so you can track and monitor progress reliably.
• As a rule of thumb, a good level of detail is between three and fifteen working days.

Of course, some large, complex projects – just like large, complex tax returns – need some outside help. Our hands-on course in Control Methods & Practices with Microsoft Project streamlines controlling the performance of projects characterized by complexity and dynamic change.

A concise reporting strategy lets everyone spend their time on the project and not on reporting. Whoever said “the Devil is in the details” was likely a project manager.

There are ‘teachable moments” but April presents a teachable month. Tax time makes project managers of everyone who files a return.

Most people procrastinate, then scramble for records and spend days with an accountant or tax software. As April 15 approaches, they cross their fingers, file, and hope. They prove PSI’s philosophy: of the three measures of project success – time, budget and quality – the key element to manage properly is time.

 Busy managers have two common solutions, both wrong:

-Count backwards from the deadline

-Let the software handle it

 Both solutions are cages, not structures. Scheduling backwards is inflexible, unrealistic, and suppresses team commitment…and despite “time management software” and its 320 million Google hits, software alone is not the answer – people are.

We developed an add-in for Microsoft Project that puts people in control of their schedules. Our Project Success Toolkit lets users revise an activity’s duration without impacting resource assignments, and vice versa. This creates a more stable schedule because task duration, resource assignments and status do not change without user input.

We can’t help with IRS schedules, but we can train staff on the Project Success Method in just two day’s time – three with the Project Success Toolkit program. That’s a schedule any project manager could appreciate.