Selecting planning software – 3 essential steps
You are looking for planning software to better schedule the time in the business, so to save time. But you do want to find the correct planning software. And that takes time. Mark de Jong of Timewax, as a former software selection consultant knows like no other how this process can be performed best - in three clear steps:
Is your organization getting better in planning?
Logically you would say so. You always get more insight and experience in the scheduling process, and you build on that. But how do you that? For example, higher productivity would not necessarily imply that you became better in planning. In this blog, we describe how you can measure the planning performance of your organization.
2 Killer KPIs for forecasting in projects
There are, of course, numerous ways to analyse your projects. Budget vs. actual, planning vs. actual, spending variances based on percentage completed, and so on. And all are valuable, but only aimed at looking at the past.
Planning in a shrinking organization
If the demand and/or turnover drops, structurally, we speak of shrinkage. In a shrinking organization you need to get a grip on the biggest expenditure, namely the employment of employees. We explain our vision on shrinking below, from the perspective of employee planning through innovative plans.
On autopsy after the end of a project (gold mining)
The start of many projects receives much attention. It is celebrated, installed, kicked-off, etc. In this article, I want to write a few tips about a stepchild in project management and that is the retrospective after the end of a project. The art & science of reflection is often an unpracticed area of management. That is a real shame because there is often so much gold to be found in terms of lessons for the future.
50% safety margins in project planning can go
According to the Critical Chain Project Management method, fifty percent of the built-in safety margins in project planning can go. It is a waste of time. So by taking this out, we can carry out projects in three-quarters of the time. That is a time saving of 25 percent. To achieve this, the method uses Buffer Management technology.
4 time wasters in project planning
The Standish Group conducts annual research into the performance of projects. It appears that there are different time wasters in project planning, so that the majority of projects are not delivered within the scheduled time. Employees incorporate a substantial safety margin during project planning to ensure that they can complete the activity on time. However, research shows that they are wasting the built-in safety margin. In this blog we look at the causes of this waste. We will try to
3 preconditions of project progress reporting
Research shows that almost half of all projects go over the end date and exceed the budget, despite the fact that project managers have progress information. Now it appears that project progress reports are often inaccurate. This creates the risk that the project manager takes the wrong decision and therefore cannot manage the project properly in time.
The art of scheduling a breakdown service
Many organizations that do project-based work offer products that should be available to customers 24 hours a day. This includes web applications, IT infrastructure and production lines. No product or service is perfect and everything can break. So there must be someone who can immediately communicate with the customer in case of a problem and who can provide a solution. To facilitate this, you must start scheduling a breakdown service and schedule employees for that breakdown service. Customers regularly ask us
Capacity planning vs. To-do planning
Companies sometimes report to us with the remark that they want to start planning. If we keep asking questions, it becomes clear what they actually mean by that. Some are looking for a tool for capacity planning to plan the working day of their employees. Others just want a tool to manage a to-do list. They want to be able to attach a deadline and project information to those to-dos. The time the employee performs the task is not certain,