I've just been describing how it's a really bad idea to hold a project plan in your head.
We need to draw it out in some way and I want to show you what I would recommend as the best way to
draw this out.
So this is the A.P.M. process the association of project managers or p.m.-I if you're in America and
a lot of project management books will recommend two things I recommend what's called a network diagram
and a gunshot.
And what I've realized is we need both quite often in books they just say the network diagrams are great
for thinking about dependencies on the Gantt chart is great for thinking about time scales but they
don't really make the point very clearly that you need both and you absolutely do need both.
So that's what I'm going to show you here.
So I'm going to take an example it's fairly dear to my heart because this is planning a wedding.
My daughter had her wedding recently and we did actually do this but I'm going to show you a simplified
version of it just for demonstration purposes OK.
So the first thing you do is you just get a list of all the tasks and I mention that.
And then you estimate the times of the tasks and then you put them on some sort of some sort of plan
some sort of network diagram.
So what I've done is I've just prepared preprepared on here and a whole load of post-it notes with tasks.
And that's what you do.
So let's say for example we need to decide who we're going to invite So we need to we need a guest list
so stick that one there.
We need to get a venue.
So I've got all my tasks on here in roughly the right places and these tasks just came from big brain
dump of everything.
And actually while you're sticking them on you might even think of a few more tasks and just get another
posted and bang them on.
So this is roughly the right order and then need to put the dependencies.
So I'm probably going to think about the budget first and then decide what venue I can afford.
I also got the venue I can look at availability of the venue and I can set a date.
That's quite a key moment really isn't it.
And once I've set a date then I'm probably going to think about the timing exactly of my day what's
going to happen when and I think that does depend on the venue because you know is it available in the
morning or the afternoon or whatever.
Now the guest list of who I'm going to invite probably depends on my budget it probably doesn't depend
on the venue but I think it depends on the budget printed printing the invitations.
I need to know who I'm going to invite.
But I also need to know what time to put on the invitations.
So that needs both of those things then I can send the invitations.
See who's going to come get my final list of attendees then I can do my seating plan.
I probably can't do the seating plan and I know who's coming which means I need to have done the inviting
obviously before the day.
I need the seating plan.
Then I'll go to book the catering.
And I think I probably need to know what time of day I need the caterers So I think that comes from
the timings and I need the catering before the day obviously when there's buying the dress.
Now what does that depend on.
Probably probably not setting the date at all.
Actually I think it probably does because I don't think I would actually buy the dress until we definitely
had a date booked.
So let's say that depends on there.
And then the dress doesn't really affect anything else.
I just need that before the day.
Now I put on my little post-it note on here all the things I've missed out for the sake of this demonstration.
I haven't thought about the cake.
The photographer the stag do and hand do the honeymoon.
So all these other things I just haven't done.
But in real life you would need all of those on here as well.
So let's say that this is your plan.
You then can look at how long these things are going to take.
So something about you can do that fairly quickly let's just say I need a week to debate that with my
other half and try to persuade my parents to fork out lots of money and then getting a venue I'm going
to say I'm going to spend four weeks doing it because I think that's quite you know it's going to take
some research visiting looking at places setting the dates going to be really quick and then the timing
is going to be really quick and I'm going to say it's going to take me a couple of weeks to debate the
guest list because again that's quite political of who we're going to invite and printed in the invitations
could take a while.
And if we're going to go for old fashioned paper invitations So let's say that's going to take me six
weeks to do and then I'm going to send them out but I going to probably wait a month till I know who's
coming because I'm not going to hear back from people straight away that I can do the seating plan.
Let's say the caterers need six weeks notice at least before the wedding.
They've got a pile of food and plan all of that.
The day itself is a zero it's just an event that has no generation buying a dress.
I know nothing about wedding dresses for the sake of this demonstration let's say that it's going to
take 12 weeks to get the dress made or fitted or whatever they do with wedding dresses.
So let's say this is my plan for the wedding.
Now you can already see.
You wouldn't want to keep this in your head.
It's far better to draw this out.
Particularly you can work on this with several people.
So a group of you could say Well I think we should do it in this order and I think you know if we get
the venue and then decide the budget or whatever.
So a team of you can debate it when you've got it drawn out it's much better than just having it in
your head.
So once you've got this you can then look for the longest path through which tells you how long the
project is going to take and you can see the longest path from this to get to the six.
It's much slower to go through the four and the one in the one than it is to go through that too.
Now this 12 could be the longest path but it actually isn't because coming through here is longer and
this one's longer than this one isn't it.
So I reckon this is the longest path through here.
Just check in at that 12 is definitely shorter than 1 6 1 for one isn't it.
So how long is it going to take me before I can get married.
And the answer is it's five six seven plus six is 13 14 18.
It's going to take me 19 weeks.
So in theory I could get married 19 weeks from today or my daughter could.
Another way to think about it is that I need to decide at least 19 weeks ahead of the day.
I need to start this process if I'm working back from a finished date of when we get married say by
Christmas I need to need to work back 19 weeks before then.
So I now know how long my project is going to take.
So this thing things called a network diagram and it's sometimes called a critical path diagram or sometimes
also called a PERT chart.
I just call it a post-it note diagram when I run my training courses and the Post-Its are quite low
tech.
I totally accept that are low tech but I think they're better than a computer because several people
can all just move stuff around is just quicker and easier.
Post-it notes on a white board or even just post-it notes on a big sheet of paper.
I think they're better than a computer.
And this is the heart of the planning process because this is when we actually decide how we going to
do this thing.
When are we going to get the dress.
You know do we need this before this.
Etc. so that's the first part of the planning process.
Now I mentioned at the start of this video that we need both this and again shot and I want to show
you that now.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to squeeze a little Gantt chart just down in the corner here.
No idea because I don't have a huge amount of space but I want to show you how you can then very easily
make this into a gun shot.
OK so I'm just going to rub out that Ira if you can just imagine that you know the arrow is still there
and we're just going to draw a little gunshot down in the corner.
So the first thing we need for a gunshot is our time going across the top and we've already seen that
this adds up to 19.
So we just went from naught to 19 on here.
So let's call it 20s and let's just call it five 10 15 20.
I would use Excel for this in the ideal world but I'm just going to show it to you briefly with pens
OK.
It's just like an Excel spreadsheet so you can see how you do it with Excel.
So once we've got our time we then just put in the critical path and we just focus on the Redpath nothing
else.
So it's really easy.
So we just put in one week for the budget and we put in four weeks for the event.
So that takes us to then levy for venue.
Then we put in a week for setting the date a week for planning the timings we're up to seven now and
then six weeks for the invitation.
So that took us to a teen.
So I'll put print invitations on that then we're going to send post them off.
So then we've got four weeks to get our final list of attendees.
So that takes us to 18.
And then you've got one more week for the seating plan.
So that's 19 weeks to do our critical path and the day itself.
Usually events are just drawn as a line like that they have no generation it's just a vertical line.
So that's our critical path on there.
And then the floating tasks just go in between.
So for example the guest list comes a time after we've set a budget and it has to be done before we
print the invitation.
So somewhere in here we're going to agree to a guest list.
I'll just put it in the middle for the moment.
So little 2 week floating tasks.
Somewhere in between here and here Deji the guest list.
So we've got a choice of when we do that as long as it's done before here.
Then we can print the invitations.
So that's the guest list floating in there.
The catering is any time that we've planned the timings which is here that's planning the timing isn't
it.
So it's any time after that and it has to be done.
So the catering has to be done after the planning the timing has to be done before the day.
So anywhere between here and here we can put the catering.
So I'll put that in quite early put that in the catering.
But quite a lot of choice about when we do that one.
And then finally there was buying the dress.
And you remember this one comes after setting the date.
So it comes off to here.
I'm going to put it above the critical part just to save some space but normally you would put all the
floating tasks under the critical path.
But just to save a bit of space and we go put it in here it's a 12.
Now how much float has it got.
It hasn't got a lot of floats actually because if you add up all of these you got 1 7 8 12 13.
It's only got one week of float.
So I think we need to get on with buying the dress.
Absolutely immediately.
That's buying the dress.
And we've only got one week of safety margin.
That's pretty tight.
So I would want to keep a close look at that.
But in theory it's a floating task it's got one we could float.
So it's a little bit scruffy looking and I would recommend using Xcel for this.
I've made a YouTube video.
You can look at however you draw it.
This is the Gantt chart and why is the Gantt Chart worth having.
Why don't we just have the post-its and that's is the Gantt chart shows everything to scale so we can
now see what's critical and what's floating.
We can see that this has got lots of flow.
The guest list we could see that the dress has very little float.
So we're going to keep an eye on that.
We can choose earlier or later but we can also look vertically on the Gantt chart and we can see what's
happening at the same time as what.
So we can see that here we are.
And what are we doing.
We're getting a wedding dress.
We're printing the invitations and we are arranging the catering.
And the question is can we do all three of those things at the same time.
Now we probably can because printing the invitations just waiting for the printer.
So that's not too bad.
But if these were activities that required quite a lot of work we can start to ask ourselves have we
got enough time to do it all at once.
And if you are too busy you might want to move some of your floating terser they don't line up with
other times when you're busy.
So the gunshot allows you to see the project much more clearly in terms of a real time line and you
can actually put real data along here so that you can actually put things in your diary and you can
say to the person this is when we're going to be looking at venues.
So we need to allocate some time in our diary when we're going to do that.
So we know where each thing is going to happen.
This is when we're going to be posting the invitations and we know the actual date and for the floating
tasks.
It helps us to remember you know this is when you got to do these floating tasks.
So the gunshot is really good for seeing a time scale.
So that's the gunshot.
And you can also use the gunshot for monitoring your progress.
When we get to let's say week 13 we have an line which in the old days used to be a piece of string
that would move along.
But nowadays it be on a computer.
So you have an outline and then you can color in what you've done.
So let's say by the time we get to week 13 that we've got a budget we've got the venue we have set the
date we planned the timings and that's all we've done.
How is our plan doing.
The answer is not very well.
We're not keeping up with the knowledge Oh we we should be halfway through getting the dress by now.
We should have printed the invitations.
We should've got a catering arranged and we should have agreed the guest list.
That's what you want to see.
So the color didn't get chart gives me an instant view of how's the project doing.
So if somebody else was doing this project for me and I wanted to monitor progress.
The one question I would ask them is can I see or colored in Gantt chart and if they say well what's
a gunshot it's all in my head.
I would definitely worry because I want to see it drawn out colored in clear and easy to see.
So that's why a gunshot is so great.
It's very clear to see the progress everybody could see.
Part of it and you've got a real time scale.
So just to sum this up I think you need both of these.
You do need to go through the Post-Its to get to the Gantt chart because how could you jump straight
to this.
It needs to know the critical part first and then the floaters all hang off that.
So to find the critical part you have to do the post-its and you have to decide on the running order.
So the Post it's a great that you get the running order get a credible power and then it's dead easy
to draw the Gantt chart based on that.
So you need both.
Do not try to have all of this in your head.
It's never going to work.