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Investing in people process and tools

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So you think you need a PPM tool?

Picture this scenario: Your company has been running various projects and programmes for a while now, with varying degrees of success regarding delivery. Those that do go well often don’t embed as well as you’d hoped, and those that don’t – if only you could have had better visibility of when things started to go…

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How to set up custom Gantt chart views in MS-Project ®

Part of a series on customising Microsoft® Project® to make working with project schedules more useful. This post describes how to set up custom Gantt chart views to present schedule extracts based on the Live project schedule data, filtered and formatted to suit particular stakeholder audiences. So why would you want to use this approach, how do you do it,…

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How to create PDF Gantt chart extracts with dynamic labels in MS-Project ®

Part of a series on customising Microsoft® Project® to make working with project schedules more useful. This post describes how to generate universally-readable ‘soft’ PDF Gantt charts to circulate to stakeholders, with dynamically generated labels that provide them with useful information about the view, and provide you with useful information about how you might re-create the view. So why would…

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How to diagnose schedule management problems in MS-Project ®

Part of a series on customising Microsoft® Project® to make working with project schedules more useful. So you’ve created a useful programme schedule, and you are now working on keeping it on the right track. You’ve set up fields to calculate RAG status, but what if you want diagnose schedule management problems without having to study the baseline…

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How to calculate RAG status in MS-Project ®

Part of a series on customising Microsoft® Project® to make working with project schedules more useful. So you’ve created a useful programme schedule, and you are now working on keeping it on the right track, reviewing the plan regularly with the Programme Manager and Project Managers. You will probably review the programme schedule regularly – focussing on on items with…

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How to diagnose schedule setup problems in MS-Project ®

Part of a series on customising Microsoft® Project® to make working with project schedules more useful. So, you’ve inherited a set of project schedules that you need to combine into a useful programme schedule. How do you set up a framework to enable you to quickly find and diagnose schedule setup problems, without having to deduce and apply complex combinations…

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Strategies for social CPD – Creating a PM community

How learning groups spontaneously form and disperse… A while back I attended an APM focus group facilitated by Dr Michael Moynagh of CPD Futures Ltd on developing strategies to improve the way that project and PMO professionals approach continuing professional development (CPD). One of the topics that came up was that established approaches to CPD (including the approach promoted…

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