Introducing p2msp

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Microsoft Project is a great tool for creating and maintaining task and resource plans, but in today's world of structured project management methodologies these items represent only one element of the planning process.

Two of the most widely respected and recognised PM qualifications around today are Prince2 Practitioner and PMP (Project Management Professional), and both of their associated methodologies recommend producing a Product Breakdown Structure (PBS) as the start-point for building a project plan. They also recommend fleshing out the bones of the PBS with more detailed information about each product, and creating a flow diagram that shows the logical sequence of producing the project's products.

It is only when these higher-level steps have been completed that the more detailed processes of identifying tasks, resources, work estimates and assignments can start, and a project schedule can be produced using a tool such as MS Project.

Other common elements of the PM processes that also feature on the plan are Risks and Issues - work must be planned to mitigate the consequences of risks with a high impact/probability rating, and issues often become active Change Requests and Problems that also require additional tasks on the plan.

The Traditional Approach.

If you are a Project Manager using Prince2 or another structured methodology, the scenario shown in the diagram below will probably be very familiar to you - lots of separate but related planning documents held in different files and formats, with information duplicated across them. Maintaining all of these files separately can be a real challenge, as a change in one document is likely to require changes to some or all of the other documents - keeping them all aligned and reconciled can be a tortuous and time-consuming process.

Diagram 1 - the traditional Project Planning jigsaw showing the separate documents that must be maintained in parallel

The p2msp approach.

With p2msp, there is only one set of master data and it is all integrated in one place - your Microsoft Project plan - removing the need to keep multiple files in alignment.

Diagram 2 - the p2msp approach

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