ProjectLink: Activity and Action Items - Sharing experience

[cc-2]

Hello everyone.

just a kind of survey as to know how you use activities and action items.

As you know, you can create as many action items as you want in a project, the project plan does not progress as the action items are resolved. You can create action items associated to directly to document (CAD or non CAD) to meetings, to activities.

From a project plan perspective, it may look as if an activity is like an action item. There is an assignee who must do something.

I read in some of PTC documentation the following

• Action items are used to capture project issues that must be resolved or items that must be accomplished, and are not formally tracked in a project plan. Action items are useful for identifying and tracking supporting work that must be accomplished either prior to, or as part of a formal project activity.

• Activities are specific steps in the project that contain information such as duration and effort. Activities have a completion date that can be associated to a deliverable.

All the above seems quite straightfoward and I guess everyone uses them more or less as described above. However how do you manage the communication between an activity owner and the resources ?

The way we currently do it is the following.

The project manager creates an activity and assign an owner and also the resources the owner is allowed to use. (We only manage human resources at the moment in PJL). In the event the owner is not the only resources, the owner will then create action items to tell each resource what to do. The owner will then regularly check the progress of the action items and accordingly update the activity status.

Sometimes, it is a shame that the activity status cannot be automatically updated from the statuses of the action items. On the other hand, the owner may still want/need to do certain things which are not capture by an action item but has an impact on the activity status.

How do you manage the "link" between activity owner and resources. How do you task the resources.

Do you have any practices you would like to share with the community ?

Thanks

[mfield]

In Reply to NacNac MOTT:

Thank you for starting this thread. I'm interested to hear how people use action items and activities too.

One thing we are thinking about at PTC is whether or not action items should be used to influence the status of an associated activity, deliverable or milestone. For example, perhaps an Activity can't be 'Complete' until all its associated Action Items are resolved, or perhaps the status of a Deliverable is rolled up from any associated action items. Those are just a couple of thoughts, but I'm interested in yours as well.

Hello everyone.

just a kind of survey as to know how you use activities and action items.

As you know, you can create as many action items as you want in a project, the project plan does not progress as the action items are resolved. You can create action items associated to directly to document (CAD or non CAD) to meetings, to activities.

From a project plan perspective, it may look as if an activity is like an action item. There is an assignee who must do something.

I read in some of PTC documentation the following

• Action items are used to capture project issues that must be resolved or items that must be accomplished, and are not formally tracked in a project plan. Action items are useful for identifying and tracking supporting work that must be accomplished either prior to, or as part of a formal project activity.

• Activities are specific steps in the project that contain information such as duration and effort. Activities have a completion date that can be associated to a deliverable.

All the above seems quite straightfoward and I guess everyone uses them more or less as described above. However how do you manage the communication between an activity owner and the resources ?

The way we currently do it is the following.

The project manager creates an activity and assign an owner and also the resources the owner is allowed to use. (We only manage human resources at the moment in PJL). In the event the owner is not the only resources, the owner will then create action items to tell each resource what to do. The owner will then regularly check the progress of the action items and accordingly update the activity status.

Sometimes, it is a shame that the activity status cannot be automatically updated from the statuses of the action items. On the other hand, the owner may still want/need to do certain things which are not capture by an action item but has an impact on the activity status.

How do you manage the "link" between activity owner and resources. How do you task the resources.

Do you have any practices you would like to share with the community ?

Thanks

[cc-2]

Hello Mark

I'll be more than delighted to discuss further with PTC. I have a large quantity of "bits" I think that can be improved. But please do not take it the wrong way. I like very much PJL and as mentioned, I can't think of managing a project without it.

Some of the, let's call them issues could be categorized

1) We have as you and I mentioned related to OOTB functionalities, there is the actions, but also the OIR, costs in different currencies, cost of resources usages. (sharing resources between projects, how do you manage their utilization etc... etc...)

2) related to project methodology. => user education. How to introduce what I would called an advanced project management system to people who have only managed projects with emails and spreadsheets..... should the answer be having PJL level 1 (allowing project and document management only, PJL Level 2 (allowing Level 1 + resource management and deliverables), PJL Level 3 (allowing Level 2 + cost roll up) etc.....

I am always very surprised but the childish way certain people work. For instance, it is explained to someone he will be an activity owner and he will have to do this and this. it is written in the description etc... He can see the activity and knows what to do. As a good worker, he get on with his work but the project manager, does not see any progress in PJL. That user is contacted

Hi, how are you getting with your activity xyz, what is the progress, Do not forget to update your status

and then a reply by email saying.

- Very well, nearly completed.

- Thanks for letting me know but can you please update your status so the plan is automatically updated and the members know about it

- why, I told you the progress.....

am I the only one getting such replies ? In the way I hope, this could mean I am doing something wrong.

coming to more serious business and regarding the project methodology. I think another challenge is to include PJL as part of a business process. Some sees PJL has a heavy big beast and there are discussions that says, We use PJL only if a project is worth above $xxxx. On the other hand, if we use PJL to have a Project Template to manage NPI, some companies will end up with 100 new project a day if not more. I do not think IT will like this.... as far as I know Windchill can only handle so many contexts, I am yet to find out the limit 🙂

PTC organizes often conference, webcast about PDMLink (kind of flagship product), CAM, but as far as I am aware very little about ProjectLink. I think workshops around PJL could be interested. PJL is a powerful tool, with automatic execution of the project plan (make sure your plan is right upfront otherwise........) templates, ad-hoc security management but as many powerful tool I think it is not known well enough

I hope other participants will prove me wrong and will add to this forum their valuable feedback

Maybe a good place to start is to break down Windchill Solutions, in sub category, one for PDM, one for PJL, one for MPM etc....

but let's try to keep this thread on activities and action items 🙂

Best regards

[mfield]

Thank you again for the feedback. I hear your request for more ProjectLink focused sessions in the community. This week at PTC Live Global I'm presenting "Project Scheduling in Windchill - Fundamentals, Practices & Product Improvements," and I'd be happy to repeat it to this community after the conference if there is demand. Do you have other suggestions for webcast topics?

[SteveVinyard]

I am absolutely interested.

Additional Webcasts:
MPMLink - daily use best practices and use cases, how to keep it simple but functional etc
InfoEngine + Cognos Reporting

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Steve Vinyard
Senior Solution Architect

[cc-2]

Hi Mark

you are right, there is very little as far as I am concerned. What I can find is pretty basics either here or on youtube etc...

There are a lot of material for people who do not know PJL, or it is about very specfic customisation, but about PJL within a business process and seen more advanced functionalities (for instance I have never seen demonstration about how to manage successfull the cost of a project in when teams are using different currencies, use of PJL in New Product Introdution process (basic NPI where the complete NPI is completed within 1 or 2 days and complex NPI where it takes several weeks or months with different teams, ) etc.. all this type of stuff a product manager should be interested in.

Thank you for your proposal to publish all your material from that PTC event. This will be much appreciated.

I agree with Steve about the other topics. Thus my suggestion to create dedicated area for each Windchill Modules.

Thanks a lot and looking forward to see demo and ppt and also hear more from the community.

I must say, I am surprised there is not much participation.

Best regards