I was on a sales call years ago visiting a company west of Philadelphia. I met with the Director in charge of project management and after socializing for a few minutes, I asked him what tool they use to manage projects.
He said: “MS Project.”
I said: “How do you like it?”
He said: “It’s great. Every project finishes on time and on budget!”
I said: “Every one?”
He said: “Every one!!”
I said: “How can that be?”
He said: “You change the baseline plan after the project is finished.”
I said: “What’s the benefit of that?”
He said: “You can tell leadership that every project finishes on time and on budget.”
I said: “But you learn nothing?”
He said: “Yes, but you can tell leadership that every project finished on time and on budget.”
That’s the best use case for MS Project I have ever heard. But . . . if you are interested in being a metrics-based organization, if you are interested in learning, improving and transforming, you need the metrics and the real metrics, the metrics you can trust.
If you want auditable data, check out APM+. At our first user, we learned that the people held themselves accountable. One user said: “APM+ implements discipline.” If you want consistency and repeatability, improved quality, check out APM+.
