Lesson From Biggest Loser – Weigh In More Frequently for Better Performance

thebiggestloser_patrick_house_scale_640_nbcOK, so the analogy of pushing your body to lose hundreds of pounds might be a stretch against the projects you manage (what those people accomplish is truly amazing).  But how we think about tracking our change as we work to achieve our project goals is very similar.  The Biggest Loser takes an initial weigh in to tell you where your starting point (or baseline) is.  Then your change is measured weekly, and eventually based on the overall experience.  The smaller increments of change will tell a different story and help 395509_3098183700540_822628582_nyou in a much different (and more productive) way than all of the change at the end.
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Using Formulas to Filter Dates in a Master Project File

Recently we had a user ask us how they might automatically populate their flag columns to allow a configurable start and end date constraint which would capture any task that starts, finishes, or is in the middle of execution.  Essentially, the business requirements for the report looked like this:

Date Boundaries

The problem for us was the formula, as written, would not work due to the fact that we were working within a master project file with many subprojects.  Here was our simple formula, which worked in the individual subprojects, but not if you looked at them all within the master file:
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Gantts, Lies, and Videotape 3: The Mulligan

tee-offIn our third and final post in the “Gantts, Lies, and Videotape” series, we’ll discuss the Mulligan. For those of you not familiar with the golf term, “Mulligan” is an unsanctioned do-over, usually with no regard to ever counting the first attempt. Historians disagree on whether the term originated with Canadian David Mulligan or American John “Buddy” Mulligan.
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