97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know

Chapter 45. Don't Throw Spreadsheets at People Issues

Anupam Kundu

HAVE YOU EVER BEEN SHOWN A SPREADSHEET with lists of activities to explain your work on a project? Many experienced managers try to use spreadsheet lists as a "silver bullet"^[17] for managing and monitoring projects.

Tom is an information technology development architect in the online division of a large organization. He serves four or more different stakeholder groups. Since he has a poor ability to prioritize the deliverables for different stakeholders, he ends up annoying or disappointing someone every week. With too many commitments to fulfill, and too few resources on hand, he is always at the center of the resulting conflicts among the groups.

Tom and his team are talented IT architects, yet their lack of time and the skill sets necessary to manage stakeholder expectations creates problems for everyone in the online group. The solution? Get a trained software project manager to prioritize and list the deliverables for Tom and his team every week, month, or quarter.

The PM can facilitate discussions with the various stakeholders to prioritize the deliverables. Then, the priorities are evaluated across all the internal customers. This way, not only do the stakeholders have their expectations set correctly, but Tom and his team get a frequently refreshed list of tasks. They can stay focused on developing the most important ...