Jan29
Well, I started this three part post back in September, then got caught up in other things, and never quite got around to finishing it. I thought for a while of taking the Douglas Adams approach to trilogies: “Check out these two blog posts, giving a whole new meaning to the term ‘Three Part Series.’” However, finding myself to be a posterchild for the Language Action Perspective, I felt that...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on
Friday, 29 Jan 2010 11:41.
Jan7
I’ve been buried under Project 2010 for a couple of weeks, only surfacing to get dragged back to Central Ohio for a wintry vacation and a series of random minor but annoying illnesses. Figured it was about time to get back into the blogging saddle (cue the flinch and sudden flashback to Central Asian saddles from my Peace Corps days).
For my first topic in the New Year, I’d like to ease into ...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on
Thursday, 7 Jan 2010 08:42.
Nov19
Here’s what’s evolved into my own personal method of documenting security for a MOPS implementation. Figured that I would throw this out and welcome any and all suggestions on how to improve this.
MOPS 2007 security can be broken out into two major chunks: functional requirements and configuration specifications:
Functional Security Requirements
Functional MOPS 2007 requirements m...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on
Thursday, 19 Nov 2009 05:18.
Nov2
I’ll be delivering my spiel on Leveraging Technology to Build a PMIS (with a Special Preview of Project 2010) at the University of Houston chapter on 11/17. Hope to see some of you there.
To my knowledge, this may be the first public demo of the Project 2010 features in Houston.
The event is free. For additional information, please click on the link below:
http://www.pmihouston.org/index...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on
Monday, 2 Nov 2009 08:16.
Oct14
Following up on a previous post on setting schedule buffers, I figured it was about time to revisit the topic of buffers, this time with cost. This post will discuss best practices in setting cost buffers using the budget resource feature in Microsoft Project 2007.
First off, why should we set buffers on a project? Simply put, buffers make projects more predictable and allow better planning ...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on
Wednesday, 14 Oct 2009 11:23.
Oct10
I developed this for a client a while back, and have had to refresh it and resend it multiple times. Updated for 2009, here’s my latest version. Note to the naysayers that this is not the end all be all of becoming a Project Server admin, but if you are on the business side, and have been appointed the owner of your Project Server instance, then this post is for you.
Required Reading List:
...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on
Saturday, 10 Oct 2009 04:43.
Oct9
Figured that I would end the week by providing a useful tip for all of the Project Server administrators out there. Here’s a neat trick to searching the Project newsgroups directly from your IE search window by using the Search Providers feature.
1) Add the Search Provider to your current list…to do this, click on the drop down arrow on the Search Bar, and choose the “Find More Providers” opt...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on
Friday, 9 Oct 2009 02:52.
Oct7
Updating my blog list after the EPM Conference a couple of weeks ago. Figured I'd share with the crowd. Note that this is not scientific, and some of these may be dead links. Some of these blogs haven't been updated in a while, but still have good information posted. Some of these blogs aren't really Project or Project Server focused, but still mention it from time to time.
RSS feeds ...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on
Wednesday, 7 Oct 2009 11:28.
Sep23
For years, the PMI has teased me with mentions of a Schedule Management Plan in the PMBOK. It obviously existed, and even was listed as an input to one of the Time Management processes, but it never got called out as its own separate artifact with its own planning process. Obviously, this implied some sort of bias against the scheduler caste. Didn’t Risk, HR, Communications, Quality and Proc...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on
Wednesday, 23 Sep 2009 08:10.
Sep17
When I was doing PMP training in Central Ohio, I used to have a lot of students from the Honda plant in Marysville, and from a lot of the Honda suppliers. I don’t know how true this is, but several of them told me the following story, which is a great illustrative anecdote:
At Honda, it’s the line workers that know the best about how to improve processes on the assembly line. Each worker i...
Posted by Andrew Lavinsky on
Thursday, 17 Sep 2009 11:18.