Any project workers / managers in here?

[inservo]

Hey there,

As described in my introductory post, I'm most of the time somehow "into projects". I have figured out a lot of things in Excel that supported me in that task. Chandoo's podcast (I think it was session 46) confirmed my "project approach" in MS Excel as well.

I wonder if any of you here are working in projects as well?

I know this is an Excel forum, but I firmly believe that Excel is an incredible tool to support a lot of project tasks.

So here are my questions:

• What are your "expected" obstacles and how do you overcome them? Do you use Excel for that?
• Are there any struggles that limit your project performance?
• What are your gains from eventually using Excel in projects?

Here's my answer:

I usually deal a lot with people management and writing down a simple to-do list in Excel (who does what until when) in combination, e.g., with a conditional formatting helps me to keep up with the things.

Struggles usually are that I have a lot of files, and they are all shared between different sources. Also, getting "non-Excel" data sometimes into my workbooks seems hard to do.

Gains are that I have an excellent overview, that I know my figures inside out and can get them with one click.

So what about you? Looking forward to some interesting discussions here...

 

[Hui]

The biggest issue in project management is ensuring that everyone involved Customer, Client, Contractors, etc are on the same page in terms of understanding requirements and deliverables (Cost, Quality, Timing etc).

Excel is just a tool that can assist in some areas and is great at analysing variance and what if scenarios when used correctly