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Project management

By the end of this chapter

  • create a project, from scratch or from a template;
  • organise the work into tasks, sub-tasks and dependencies;
  • set milestones and track the time spent;
  • invoice a service and measure its profitability.

The Project application organises work into tasks, tracks the time spent, sets milestones against progress and feeds the invoicing of services.

Configuring the application

The application has only two general settings.

  1. Open Project › Configuration › Settings.
  2. Tasks Management block: tick Project Stages to follow the progress of the projects themselves, on top of that of the tasks.
  3. Time Management block: tick Task Logs to record the hours spent on the tasks.
  4. Save.

Note

Recurring tasks, dependencies and milestones are not general options: they are set project by project, in the Settings tab of each one. An internal project can therefore do without milestones while a customer engagement uses them.

Tip

Do not confuse the two notions of stage. The task stages (To Do, In Progress, Done) always exist and structure the working kanban. The Project Stages qualify the progress of the project as a whole, and only serve whoever steers a portfolio of engagements.

Creating a project

  1. Open the Project application and click New.
  2. In the window that opens, fill in the project name, the Customer, the Scheduled Date and, if needed, the Project's Email: the address at which an incoming message creates a task.
  3. Open the project and complete: - the Project Manager; - the Scheduled Date, as a start and end interval; - the Tags, to classify the project.
  4. Open the Settings tab and set what is specific to this project: - the Name of Tasks, which replaces the word Tasks with the vocabulary of the trade: interventions, batches, episodes; - the Allocated Time, the envelope of hours planned for the whole project; - the Project's Email and Accept Emails From, which limits the senders allowed to create a task by email; - the Visibility, which governs the opening to the customer portal. Four levels: Team members only, Team members and invited portal users, All internal users, and the widest, kept by default, All internal users and invited portal users; - in Tasks Management: Recurring Tasks, Task Dependencies, Milestones; - in Time Billing: Timesheets, to log the hours on the tasks, and Billable, which allows time and materials to be re-invoiced.
  5. Save.

Note

On the two most restrictive levels, a Team Members field appears just below: it names the internal users who reach the project. The others do not reach it, even when they hold the rights of the application. A button for inviting portal users completes the block on the two levels that open the project to the customer.

Note

These settings are not global: each project carries its own. An internal project does without invoicing and milestones while a customer engagement uses both, with neither getting in the way of the other.

Tip

The Allocated Time is what gives timesheet tracking its meaning: without a reference envelope, hours pile up with no way of knowing whether you are within budget. Fill it in from the outset, even if you correct it later.

Creating a project
Figure 18.1 : Creating a project

Starting from a template

When projects resemble each other (a standard installation, a recurring engagement), a template avoids rebuilding the tree of tasks every time.

  1. Create a representative project: stages, standard tasks, durations, assignments.
  2. Open the project, then the Actions menu and Convert to Template. The action is reserved for project managers and is only offered from the record, not from the list.
  3. To find the templates, open Project › Configuration › Project Templates. The Templates filter of the project list gives the same result.
  4. To start a new engagement, create a project from the template: the task structure is reproduced, ready to be adapted to the customer.

Note

The creation window from a template asks for the name, the Scheduled Date and the Project's Email. If the tasks of the template are attached to roles, defined in Project › Configuration › Project Roles, an extra tab matches each role with the people who will hold it on this engagement: the tasks are assigned accordingly, with no one-by-one rework.

Tip

A well-built template carries the method of the company. It does more for the consistency of deliveries than a written procedure nobody reads again.

Structuring the work

Stages

  1. Open the project in kanban view.
  2. Create the columns matching your method: to do, in progress, in review, done.
  3. Set for each stage its sequence, its colour, and the closing automations.

Tasks

  1. From the project, click New.
  2. Fill in the title, the description, the Assignees, the deadline and the priority.
  3. Add Tags to cross tasks by topic independently of their stage.
  4. Fill in the allocated time if the workload is tracked.
  5. Save.
Project tasks in kanban view
Figure 18.2 : Project tasks in kanban view

Sub-tasks and dependencies

  • Sub-tasks break a complex piece of work down while keeping the link to the parent task, whose progress is consolidated.
  • Task Dependencies declare that a task cannot start before another one is finished. They are ticked in the Settings tab of the project, Tasks Management block. The dependencies are then shown in the Gantt view and flag the knock-on delays.

Note

The Gantt view belongs to the Enterprise edition. It makes the critical path visible, and the effect of a slippage on the whole schedule.

Setting milestones

Milestones embody the contractual steps of a project: validation of a specification, acceptance of a batch, go-live.

Watch out

Milestones are enabled project by project. Open the project, Settings tab, Tasks Management block, and tick Milestones. While the box stays cleared, the screens described below do not appear.

They do not sit on the project form but on a separate screen, the list of milestones.

  1. Open the project: you land on its tasks.
  2. In the screen bar at the top, choose Milestones.
  3. Add a line, enter the title and the Deadline.
  4. Attach to the milestones the tasks that condition them being reached, through the Milestone field of each task.
  5. Tick the Reached box on the row when the milestone is passed. The row turns green as soon as every attached task is closed and the box is not ticked yet, red when the deadline has passed without that being the case, and grey once the milestone is reached.

Note

The same screen is also offered from the Updates of the project, and the project form carries a Milestones smart button showing the number of milestones reached out of the total. That button only appears once a first milestone has been created: the list remains the entry point to keep in mind.

Tip

The Status smart button of the project opens its updates: a progress note written periodically, shared with the customer or with management. It is the natural support for a steering committee, it keeps the history of the successive notes, where an email gets lost.

On a project invoiced by milestone, reaching a milestone triggers the invoicing of the matching instalment.

Project milestones
Figure 18.3 : Project milestones

Tip

A milestone is worded as a verifiable result, not as an activity: "signed functional acceptance" rather than "testing phase". The difference shows at the moment you have to decide whether the milestone is reached.

Tracking time

Logging the hours

Two modes coexist:

  • As you go: the stopwatch icon in the top bar, on the right, opens a panel listing the day's timesheets and lets you start a new one by naming the project and the task. The count runs whatever page you are on.
  • Afterwards: enter the hours in the Timesheets application, by day or by week.

Note

The stopwatch does not start from the task form: there is no start button on it. The panel of the top bar is the only entry point, and it only appears if the company's time encoding unit is the hour. Set to days, entry goes solely through the Timesheets application.

Tip

Settings › General Settings gathers, in the Timesheets section, Time Encoding block, two settings that weigh on stopwatch entry: the Time Rounding, which automatically raises too short a duration to the step chosen, and the Timesheets Assistant, which watches the activity of the workstation and proposes timesheets from what it observes.

Validating

The manager checks and validates the timesheets of their team. The validated hours feed the profitability analysis and, where relevant, the invoicing.

Watch out

Timesheets are only usable if they are entered regularly. Entry reconstructed at the end of the month produces invoicing data that can be contested and a profitability analysis with no value.

Invoicing services

Four invoicing modes are available:

Mode Principle
Prepaid/Fixed Price A fixed amount is invoiced, whatever the time consumed.
Based on Timesheets The hours logged are carried over onto the invoice.
Based on Milestones Each milestone reached triggers the invoicing of its instalment.
Based on Delivery (Manual) The quantity to invoice is entered by hand.

Watch out

This mode is set neither on the project nor on the task, contrary to what one might expect: it is carried by the service product sold, in its Invoicing Policy field. It therefore follows from the order line that feeds the project. Two services invoiced differently assume two separate service products.

Collaborating

Internally

  • The chatter of each task keeps the exchanges and the decisions.
  • Activities schedule the follow-ups and the checkpoints.
  • The useful documents are attached directly to the task.

With the customer

  1. Set the Visibility of the project to a level that includes invited portal users: Settings tab, Visibility block.
  2. Open the Actions menu of the project and choose Share Project, then name the customer contacts and the level of access granted.
  3. Grant the access to the customer contact (see chapter 5).

The customer then follows the progress, comments on the shared tasks and validates the deliverables, without consuming a user licence.

Note

Visibility is set project by project and task by task. Check what is actually exposed before opening the access: internal notes stay private, messages do not.

Steering

Project indicators

The project form carries no single dashboard: the indicators read off the row of smart buttons at the top of the record. Each one displays its value and opens the detail.

Button What it gives
Tasks Number of tasks closed out of the total, and the percentage of progress.
Status Colour of the latest progress note, and access to the Updates.
Milestones Milestones reached out of the total. Only appears once a milestone exists.
Timesheets Hours logged against the Allocated Time. A second button flags the overrun.
Real Costs Share of the costs in the whole set of analytic moves of the project, costs and revenue together. Opens the analytic detail, line by line, as a list, a pivot or a graph.
Estimated Costs Share of the expected purchase cost in the amount sold, on the services whose tasks are still open. Opens the forecast margin analysis.
Burndown Chart Curve of the work left: number of tasks still open period after period.
Rating Average mark given by the customer on the closed tasks.

Note

Both cost buttons and the margin analyses assume the project is Billable and attached to a sales order. On an internal project, they do not appear.

Analyses

Project › Reporting gathers the Tasks Analysis, the Customer Ratings and two margin analyses: Margins, on the analytic moves already recorded, and Forecast Margins, on the services sold and not yet delivered.

The Tasks Analysis is crossed by customer, by stage, by assignee or by period, and compares allocated hours with actual hours.

Smart buttons of a billable project
Figure 18.4 : Smart buttons of a billable project

Tip

On fixed-price projects, systematically compare the time consumed with the amount sold, project by project. It is that comparison, and not overall turnover, that tells you whether the fixed prices are correctly calibrated.

Adapting the method

Sequential approach

Structure the project into phases, set milestones between each phase, declare the dependencies, and follow the schedule in Gantt view.

Iterative approach

Configure the stages as flow columns (to do, in progress, in review, done), use the tags to mark the batches of work, and run the daily stand-ups from the kanban view.

How it fits with the other applications

  • Sales: an order for a service can automatically create the project and its tasks.
  • CRM: a won deal gives rise to the implementation project. From the opportunity, the Actions menu then Create Project opens the creation of the project, possibly from a template; the opportunity then carries a button counting the projects and the tasks that came out of it.
  • Timesheets: feed the costs and the invoicing.
  • Accounting: costs and revenue are allocated to the analytic account of the project.
  • Purchase: purchases assigned to the project enter its cost.
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