Work, in Plain English

Looking for a nice Gantt chart program? If you’ve got FileMaker Pro, take a look at CC Gantt, an excellent FM template.

It’s quick to learn, easy to modify, and the Gantt charts it generates not only work great, but look NICE. You can filter milestones by client, project, phase, status, person responsible, and/or date range.

The publishers, Cleveland Consulting, have recently spun their templates division off to a new company, SeedCode. They provide plenty of documentation for CC Gantt and their other beautifully designed templates, as well as an active support forum.

They’ve got a free version, but it doesn’t handle multiple projects. Still, it’s a good way to try it out before you buy—$159 for the “Pro” version.

Hm. Just noticed this:

SeedCode’s new Calendar Pro for Filemaker 8 gives you contact management, project management (including Gantts) and calendaring in a single package. This template is $239, and there’s a 10-day Demo version, too.

How much of my projected time have I used up? and how much do I have left if I’m going to meet my budget?

Got a pen and a napkin? The following technique is good for quick estimates.

Draw a row of squares (don’t worry about making them even), one for each unit of time you are tracking. Today, I did it with hours—one square per hour. I had projected that an online purchase system would require 12 hours of layout time, so I drew 12 boxes:

Then just X out the hours you’ve used:

Bingo! Five empty squares stare back at me, like clean socks in a drawer.

Make a different row for each arm of the project.

Also, this is how I juggle hours (when I can get away with it). It looked like layout time projections were going to be fine, but we were needing more for meetings and liaison:

Of course, one of the limits is that the different tasks have different costs, but for a quick overall look, I have found this works well.

Now I could call the money person and tell her what had been “spent” (whether it was billed yet, or not) and what was still coming. If she had input, I got another napkin and kept sketching until we were both satisfied. Now it was time to update the planning software on my computer.

I was getting ready to post links to the last of Seth Godin’s Small is the New Big articles, when I stumbled upon an intriguing post on his blog:

They Didn’t Get the Memo

Essentially, if you are reading this (or Godin’s, or for that matter, anyone’s) blog, and your work/interests involve connecting with people, it’s important to keep in mind that most of them don’t live anywhere near your universe.

There are certainly other lessons to learn from this all-statistics post. Here are a couple:

• 31.4% of Americans don’t have internet access
• .37% of the US population reads the paper version of the New York Times daily.

An interesting fact about our particular household: We don’t have cable. So this statistic…

• 98.2% of the households in the US have a TV, and virtually all of those TVs have cable.

… I will attempt to conceal from my son.

I’m writing from Los Angeles, California—we have just completed our cross-country journey and I’m catching up on work (which seems to have expanded while I was traveling).

It was a GREAT trip, with special stops in Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona, and we are happily recuperating while we acclimate to our new home. In the meantime, I just had to post this photo of the pink chair‘s new owner.

Some people just get it.

This time, it’s my son’s favorite sitter, Zander. That’s him on the left, exchanging bunny ears with my son, and dressed to coordinate perfectly with his new chair (note the pink shoelace—right shoe only). How fitting that we were able to leave him something to sit on, eh?

PS: I do need to add that it was Zander’s little (and equally cool) brother, Jared, who first wanted the chair. I believe Zander won out because it went better with his room. Zander or Mom, please post a comment to confirm!