This question is central to project managers and clients.

Its a tough question because every project has its own unique characteristics. Even if its something that you’ve done before, many factors can throw off a schedule.  As a friend of mine says:

Its not the stuff you know that throws you off. And its not the stuff you know ‘you don’t know’ that throws you off -you can cover that by doubling your estimate or so. Its the stuff you don’t know that you don’t know that can throw you off, 5x or more.

Nevertheless, an estimated due date is a reasonable thing to ask for.  In fact, it is critical to successfully scheduling work, achieving goals and managing people.

So, what’s the best way to answer the question?

First, understand that a due date is a best guess of how things will turn out.  It should be based on the most accurate information available like:

• past estimates of the amount of work tasks took
• past estimates of the calender days tasks took
• comparisons between those estimates and the actual data from past projects
• familiarity with the strengths and weaknesses of the project team and
• the current resources available for the project.

But when you present the schedule to your client, frame it as a basis for communication.  Let them know that, while based on the best information available, it is not a definitive prediction of the future. What it does do, though, is become a definitive guide for you to provide them updates on the schedule and for them to ask for the status of the project in very specific terms.

Second, carefully understand the constraints at play on your project. Every project has at least three constraints:

• Time,
• Money and
• Scope - all of which should center around
• Quality.

Explain to your client that each of those constraints directly impacts the others.

If your client requires a hard deadline, you need to have the right amount of resources and a limited scope. Your ability to meet deadlines further improves if you can scale up the resources allocated to the project to meet unforeseen challenges or pressures on the scope.

In any case, it is the project manager’s job to help control these factors and, most importantly, to communicate to the client how changes, challenges and surprises impact the estimated due date of a project.

Here are simple steps you can take to have better visibility on resources and answer the question: “How much more work can we do?”. They are geared towards answering the question how much can we do this month. But the same principals apply if you want to look at it for a week, a quarter, a year, etc.

1. Break your project down into separate months.
2. Put in all the team members on that project (the whole project team).
3. Add in each person’s total availability to work for the month.
4. As you enter in tasks for that project, put in the estimated hours each person will spend on that task.
5. Keep a rolling sum of estimated hours per person for the month.
6. Subtract that rolling sum from total availability.

This will show you how much time each person has left for the month, based on current workload.  If you are considering adding on a new task, think about how much time it will take a specific team member to do that task. Then, see if that person has the availability left to take it on.

These type of calculations are automatically done by Vertabase project management software. Project management software also makes it far easier to see this information across all projects and to scale for large numbers of people with varying schedules (including holidays, sick days, etc.)

Great skills can get lost in a large organization. A good project manager can help find them.

I was at a usability conference recently looking over books on human-computer interaction. Standing next to me was a usability expert who worked for a government agency. Each of the many departments in that agency had their own website. I’d been to one of those website and found it very hard to use. (It wasn’t her department’s site.) We started chatting about it and she totally agreed.

I asked her why she, as a usability expert, couldn’t do anything to improve that website. She told me that she was siloed into her own department. I asked why the user interface (UI) expert in that other department didn’t do anything to improve the website. She said that the other department doesn’t have a usability expert on their team. She is the only UI specialist in the whole agency.

She has a unique skill amongst hundreds of employees -but her skills are trapped in one department.

This struck me as being an unproductive, though not uncommon, situation. And this is the type of situation where a good, get more done, project manager can come in.

A good project manager has access to information that other team members don’t. Specifically, the project manager knows where specialized knowledge and skills are within an organization. The PM can be the eyes and ears across project teams for talent.

This is a unique position that a project manager can use to expand their role as a value-added member of an organization. In this role, resource allocation becomes more than simply finding who has time to do what. It goes beyond traditional project management methodology. Resource allocation becomes about placing the right resource on a project. The one that can help get the job done better, faster or more cost effectively.

One helpful piece of information to get on a project is estimated hours per task. This is a measure of how much work or effort a particular task will take.  Not to be confused with due date (when a task will be done), estimated hours is a reflection of how much of a person’s time the task will take. Knowing this will help you better allocate that person’s time. It will make it easier to juggle tasks across projects and plan out people’s workload.

Getting estimated hours from internal staff can sometimes be hard. First off, people may worry that if they tell you it will take 8 hours, you’ll be mad when its not done by the end of the day.  They might also be afraid that if it takes them longer then the estimate, they’ll be penalized.  These fears can keep people from giving estimates. 

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Question: How can I reduce shipping costs when sending products, parts or components to customers?

Answer: Knowing what the customer will need ahead of time, accurate forecasting,  is the key to reducing shipping costs.

Now, mind reading is tough. But when shipping is part of the projects and services you are providing customers, you can control your shipping costs by controling the scheduling of those projects or services.  By knowing the schedule, you can know when items will need to be shipped.

Data Systems of Texas implemented Vertabase Pro and was able to better group projects and resources -scheduling them up to six months ahead of time.  As a result, they were able to cut shipping costs by 50%.   

“We used to ship everything overnight express at full costs. Now, our time management is much more efficient and we know who needs what in advance. Consequently, we save a significant amount of money by using standard shipping services,” says Tom Davis, Support Manager.

Vertabase Pro offers scheduling tools for people of all levels of technical experience. 

Project management software can significantly simplify time management in an enterprise.

To get this benefit, make sure to look for a project management tool that centralizes timesheet data by project along with percent complete status of individual projects.  This can provide a seemless picture of effort and labor costs on a project compared against where the project actually is. 

This same feature set facilitates financial forecasting by giving managers up-to-date information to best estimate how many more resource hours will be needed to be complete a deliverable -and therefore, often time, send an invoice to a client.

Message Makers, a multimedia communications firm in Lansing, Michigan recently experienced these benefits with Vertabase Pro. 

“Prior to implementing Vertabase Pro, it was difficult for us to effectively manage resource allocation,” said Chiung Cheng, PhD, Controller and Research Director. “We selected Vertabase Pro because it addressed our most essential need - the merging of project status reporting and timesheet management into a single function. Now, with Vertabase Pro, we are able to evaluate overall status instantly.”

To read more about their experiences, heres a case study on improving resource allocation with project management software.