Robin Nicklas is a project management consultant and educator. Since 2001, he has trained project managers in the aerospace, financial, telecommunications, government, and software sectors. Prior to teaching, he spent twenty years in information systems and technology, twelve of which he managed software development at large information service companies. Since 2003, he has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in project management at the University of Washington in Seattle, as well as MS Project courses at Bellevue College Continuing Education since 2011. Robin is a former president of the PMI Puget Sound Chapter in Seattle and a certified PMP. He can be contacted through his website, robinnicklas.com.
LatestThis is the last of four articles I’ve written recently on the topic of on tracking a project. I have outlined a four-step tracking cycle: set the status date, enter […]
In the first two articles of this series, a four-step tracking cycle was defined. It includes setting the status date, entering actuals, rescheduling incomplete work, and resource leveling the remaining […]
In my recent Tracking Starts with a Status Date article, a four-step tracking cycle was defined. It includes setting the status date, entering actuals, rescheduling incomplete work, and resource leveling […]
There are four steps involved in tracking a project: setting the status date, entering actuals and schedule revisions, rescheduling incomplete work, and resource leveling the remaining schedule. These steps are […]
Different views into the same MS Project file enables us to see a schedule from multiple perspectives. Using the split view feature is one way to do this. The Project […]
In my recent article, Sequencing Product Backlog, I used the shortest weighted processing time (SWPT) strategy to sequence a product backlog in order to minimize flow time and work […]
A colleague posed a problem recently. He recorded earned value after tracking work done in the first status period of his project. When recording work done in the second status […]
When modeling a project as a flow process, one objective is to deliver the maximum amount of value in the shortest amount of time. Most project managers likely start with […]
In my recent “Is MS Project’s Leveling Optimal?” article, I covered the fact that MS Project may not produce optimally leveled schedules in terms of schedule length. The analysis showed […]
The objective of resource leveling is to minimize schedule length while honoring precedence relationships and resource constraints. If we know what a schedule’s optimal leveled length is, we can compare […]
For the project manager, the objective of resource leveling is to minimize the length of the resource-feasible schedule. For the computer scientist, the objective is to write code that will […]
Mid-point or block scheduling involves a sequence of tasks, the scheduling of which is dependent upon the start of a target task embedded within the sequence. In practice, as the […]
