We’ve had a few blog posts recently on some of the more conventional uses of OnePager snapshot capabilities, but we hear of our users using snapshots for all kinds of other purposes. Although we all could come up with many, many of not-so-obvious uses, for simplicity’s sake, let’s just consider one here to stimulate our thinking.

I have in mind using snapshots to compare two projects on one page.

First off, snapshots can be useful in comparing two similar projects over time, perhaps to look at how resource availability impacted the outcomes of a plan. If we extend that concept and bring in the concept of snapshots, we can look at two parallel (in time) projects with similar objectives and structures and compare them over time on the same OnePager Pro output.

Take the two projects below represented as separate OnePager Pro graphs. They have very similar task structures and similar timelines. We can bring them together using OnePager Pro’s multi-project capability and present these two projects in this graph:

Here we are at the beginning of Projects A and C on 1/17/2014. These are simple projects for this illustration so we’ll just look at task start and finish dates along with percent complete which is displayed in the OnePager Pro graphic above. At the start of the project, all is well and the two sets of teams are starting off on the same footing.

Using a snapshot taken on 3/31/2014 (hypothetical case) we see below that the two projects have diverged from a stand point of percent complete and tasks are rescheduled:

Project A appears to be on schedule but Project B is starting to struggle in the second task (C2) which is extended and has caused the project’s end date to slip. Looking farther down the road at the next quarterly review on 7/1/2014, we see that the problems in Project C are continuing:

We see from the OnePager Pro snapshot above that Project A is making appropriate progress while Project C is still behind, having completed Task C2 very late and is behind on Task C4 further extending the estimated completion date. When we look at the final snapshot taken on 9/30/2014 (the last quarterly review), we see the following schedule situation:

Project A ended more or less on schedule but Project C has continued to have problems and their progression rate has slowed considerable.  The estimated completion date for Project C, in fact, is off the chart.

Using these graphs in a post-mortem or lessoned learned situation greatly enhances the schedule conversation when the presenter can show a sequence of schedule Gantt Charts that tell the story we’ve conjured up above. Please remember that OnePager Pro keeps these snapshots at your finger-tips and makes sure that the snapshots are visually consistent with respect to colors, shapes, text, and information content.