Beware – here be monsters!
Since it is the spooky season, let me tell you a scary story:
Imagine you are standing in front of a creepy mansion. It is clearly haunted. You can hear children crying and screaming – you see a face peer at you from the attic window. The child is begging for help, but she also warns you there are monsters in the house.
You look around for a weapon, and see a shed just to the side of the house. You run to open the door. Inside you see a variety of potential weapons, such as gardening tools. Which one to pick?
This horrendous scenario is much like any project: you have a goal to get to the attic and rescue the children, without succumbing to any of the monsters. And, like with any project, you have to choose your weapon, in other words a project management software.
Now, if you were, say, Van Helsing, facing off against vampires, you could stock up on wooden stakes, garlic, and holy water. Unfortunately, we are not always lucky enough to know what type of monster a specific project is. So which software do you choose?
Like in any horror movie, having any weapon is better than none but, since you don’t know if you need a wooden stake for vampires, a double barrel shotgun for zombies, or silver bullets for werewolves, which do you choose? I suggest you start with the trusty machete – most things die if you decapitate them.
In this case, our machete would be Excel.
Why Excel? Well, it has the advantage that in one workbook, you could have multiple sheets, to cover most of what is required for a project, such as:
- A list of all the stakeholders, with their contact details, as well as what role they play in the project
- A calendar to show the project time line
- A description of the project scope
- A table of the risks, issues, and concerns, as well as the planned mitigation actions
- A sheet to track the KPIs that the project aims to improve
You could even use the first sheet as an overview to document the project objectives, benefits, and required outcomes.
Excel also has other advantages: it is easy to draw up charts, to show progress, and you can also capture lessons learnt, as the project advances.
You may be wondering why not just do a little internet research and go on those recommendations? To which I will reply: do you know what type of project you are facing? What happens if you choose the wrong type of software, then you will have wasted both time and money on something that won’t work. Kind of like buying garlic and a wooden stake, and then having to face a pack of werewolves.
You might also counter with: why can’t I just use the same software I’ve used before, maybe at my previous place of employment?
I will counter this with: are you sure it is the same type of monster? And, depending on how long ago it was that you used your preferred software, many newer solutions have come on the market, not just newer versions of the once familiar software. Similar to weapons, there have been a great many improvements in the last couple of years in terms of both improving what was available, as well as developing completely new software. Think of it as going from a bow and arrow to a crossbow, with guns being the completely new software. And yes, even Excel has made some amazing leaps.
There is one other sharp pointy stick – by which I mean point – in favour of starting with Excel. Once you have decided with which software to go, most modern tools allow you to import information directly from Excel! Meaning you do not need to redo all that work.
Another advantage of Excel is that mostly everybody knows how to use it. Can you say the same about a new piece of software?
So, if the machete of the project management world, i.e. Excel, can deal with most monsters, why not just stick with Excel? I will say there is nothing wrong with that. I still use Excel for many of my clients’ projects. There is one caveat though, which I’ll illustrate using our monstrous metaphor: shooting a silver bullet at a werewolf is a lot safer than trying to decapitate it with a machete. In much the same vein, using software that is designed to manage a specific type of project will always be more efficient.