Visualizing a ‘Brexit’ Project Plan

It’s enough to make any professional project manager’s skin crawl. The United Kingdom’s pending exit from the European Union – the biggest shakeup in Western statecraft since the fall of the Soviet Union – appears to be proceeding essentially without a plan.

David Cameron, Britain’s Prime Minister, is stepping down before October. He’s said he won’t trigger Article 50 – the EU’s method for a member state resigning – in the near future; that’s up to his successor. And even when (or if) Article 50 is invoked, no one quite knows exactly how the “Brexit” itself will work – the rule has never been used.

Continue reading

Display Certainty In Your Plan by Using Conditional Formatting

I often have users ask me how I would display a level of certainty around a particular milestone or task.

The need exists because the initiative spans many years, and therefore, items in the plan set to begin, or complete, in the near future are fairly certain in terms of their target dates.  However, items further out on the timeline need to be interpreted as loose estimates.

This is actually very easily accomplished in OnePager, as long as you have a column with a value that indicates the various levels of certainty you want to communicate.

backgammon-precision-dice-dark-red_primary

Continue reading

Visualizing Greatness: Muhammad Ali’s Pro Boxing Career

As you surely know by now, boxer, social activist and global icon Muhammad Ali died over the weekend at age 74.

While there was so much more to Ali’s life than just his boxing career, it’s stunning to look at what he accomplished (and what more he could have accomplished) in the ring.

Using Microsoft® Excel and OnePager® plan communication software, we’ve created a visual representation of Ali’s 20-plus year boxing career. Flags represent the location of his fights (the 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle” against George Foreman, for instance, was contested in Kinshasa, Zaire).

Continue reading

Progress and On-time Status are two very different things

We often receive this question within our support interactions:  “Why doesn’t my % Complete bar match today’s date?”

progress behindThe answer is simple.

Continue reading