For those unfamiliar with the project management space, its amazing to think that even with Microsoft Project seemingly the default project management software, there is no obvious "winner" in the category. In fact, Microsoft Excel is more commonly used to build out task lists and work breakdown structures than is MS Project. Of course, my first real experience with SharePoint back in 2005 was deploying Project Server (well, trying to deploy it and get the analytics to work) with SharePoint as the reporting repository.
And following the history of project and portfolio management solutions, Microsoft was very slow to move this business system category to the cloud, with a number of online project management solutions popping up between 2000 and 2004 while Microsoft was insisting that the future belonged to on prem. Thankfully that's all cleared up now, and Microsoft is focusing on solving the productivity needs of project management teams -- and task management. Which is what this interview is all about.
I'm not sure when exactly I met Treb Gatte (@tgatte), Project MVP and principal consultant at Tumble Road. I started running into him at events a couple years back, but got to know him when he started attending the local SharePoint user group (www.PSSPUG.org) and SharePoint Saturday Redmond (#SPSRED) events. Of course, given my background in project and business analyst roles, I've always felt an affinity toward the technologies in the space, and Treb has become my go-to expert on what is happening in the world Microsoft Project, Project Server, and now Office 365 Planner. I recently caught up with Treb between events and asked him to share his opinions on the history of tasks in SharePoint, and what is happening in the project space:
[Christian Buckley] Treb, I always like to kick off these interviews with the origin story: how exactly did you get your super powers? Maybe you can share some of your background, such as how long you have been an MVP, technologies that you've focused on over the past couple decades, and what your company focuses on today.
[Treb Gatte] I started out as an AS/400 RPG developer after graduating from Louisiana State University, doing document management projects and projects involving working with very large datasets of the time (100 Million rows per table). My first day in industry, 4/30/1990 is the same day that Microsoft Project v1 was originally released. Interesting coincidence. I got my MBA from Wake Forest University in NC, which lead to doing Process Development in a Business Incubator, during the Dot Com days.
[CB] You've hit some of my favorite dot com era buzzwords. Nicely done. What was your first official "project management" job?
[TG] A Project Management Tool Implementation project at Wachovia Bank caught my eye, which turned out to be one of the first ever done using a new Microsoft product called Project Server 2002. New beta tool and no documentation meant learning a lot directly from the Microsoft team. I left that role to join the Project Engineering team at Microsoft in Redmond for several years, focusing on Business Intelligence. I went on to learn about the consulting world while working for a Microsoft partner teaching and implementing Project Server. Once I was on a first name basis with the United crew between Seattle and Newark, I decided to take over management of the Project Server instances at Starbucks here in Seattle. Finally, I got the entrepreneurial bug and founded TumbleRoad.com, where we design and implement Project and Power BI based solutions. We also do a great deal of custom product and process training as well.
And to answer the first part of your question, I’ve been a Project MVP now for three years. I’ve written books on Project and I currently write a blog for CIO Magazine.
[CB] As you and I were discussing recently, the project management landscape has evolved -- even over the past 5 years. Dedicated hosted solutions in the space have been around for more than a decade, but the rise of more simplistic web-based tools seems to have forced the more structured, enterprise-scale solutions to rethink their cloud strategies. Of course, I am not as plugged in as you are. What is the state of project management in this new era of cloud services -- specifically, from a technology standpoint?
[TG] We are living in interesting times in the project management space. There’s a few different trends which are creating shifts in what we are seeing.
First, the economic downturn of the past few years meant a lot of companies didn’t hire PMP Certified Project Managers and designated on hand resources instead to serve as Project Managers. These “incidental PMs” didn’t have the requisite knowledge to use Microsoft Project or any of the various other formal tools well. Their focus was on getting the work done, usually doing management by checklist. If they were using a Project Management tool, the plans were used primarily for coordination and communication and not for formal scheduling.
Second, the economic downturn also meant a lot of companies downsized workforces. However, they didn’t downsize the businesses as well so now less people are spending more time doing more operational work than before. Time that would normally be spent working on projects. This greater demand for operational time also tended to fragment the work day, leading to less effective use of time for project work. All of this leads to lower project throughput.
Lastly, new work management methodologies and tools have arisen, which focus on managing conversations and information flow rather than managing schedules. These methods and tools tended to be more adaptive, easier to learn and worked better in the more chaotic work place. Some tools like Trello are visual and are free, two very attractive aspects for many small and medium sized companies. Most of these new tools are cloud based, allowing groups within a company to adopt them quickly, when they need it, without IT involvement. Formal tools were regarded as not supportive of these new methodologies, hard to use, costly and you had to get IT involved to implement it. This meant you might get the tool two years after you needed it.
Large companies still want the formal Project Management tools. The question is: what is the Fortune 500 of tomorrow going to use?
[CB] The free tools certainly have been changing things up. I am a huge Trello fan, because it's just simple and flexible, and most important to me -- it doesn't try to do 20 things while excelling at none of them. It's just a simple kanban list management tool, which for me is perfect. But there are other tools which scale much better to small to medium-sized business needs, such as Basecamp. With all of these options now available and gaining more attention, where does Microsoft fit into all of this?
[TG] Microsoft Project has traditionally been the tool of Professional Project Managers and was first introduced in 1990. It’s a powerful scheduling engine and does that job very well. Microsoft Project holds one of the largest market share segments in the PM space. You can usually hire people with Microsoft Project experience pretty easily. However, the market is growing increasingly fragmented.
[CB] Great points. Between MS Project and Excel, it's safe to say that Microsoft is the leader in project management tools….but for PM professionals, the field is wide open, with no truly dominant player.
[TG] True. There are literally hundreds of tools out there for managing work. Project Server, introduced in 2002, added consolidated resource management, cost management and portfolio management functionality. It offers a much more robust feature set than most of the smaller players, but in the end it all comes down to understanding your requirements.
[CB] While at Microsoft, my team owned most of the SharePoint sites within Online Services, and a common request was for us to help teams build out basic project management and reporting solutions. SharePoint lists are actually a great was to capture and track projects, and with a little bit of elbow grease, can even serve as a portfolio management solution for an organization. But I've always thought Microsoft was missing an opportunity to introduce people to the more advanced features of Project. When they announced the deprecation of tasks capability in SharePoint 2013, people were upset -- but we were promised a better solution. And now we have the recent announcement of Office 365 Planner, formerly Project Highlander, which does some of what SharePoint could do around task management -- but its really something different. Do you see a shift in how Microsoft is approaching the space?
[TG] The shift reflects the market need for better support of collaboration and managing the conversation. Visual tools like Planner are good at managing knowledge work and this keeps Microsoft in the game. Being willing to not push Project for everything work management related is a big change for Microsoft. What’s missing is the Operational work management piece that is consolidated with the other work management tools.
[CB] For many organizations, using Project, SharePoint team sites and lists, and even Excel (and to some degree, Excel Services) was simple and “good enough.” But with the rise of web-based tools such as Wunderlist and Trello, as well as Basecamp and seemingly hundreds of others, the space has become crowded. How does Microsoft keep things simple while also gaining new customers? I know this is a big question, but what are thoughts on how Microsoft can/should cut through the noise?
[TG] This is a huge challenge for Microsoft. Almost every Office tool today provides a way to manage a task. Excel is Project’s biggest competitor. Adding more products increases the risk that customers may choose the wrong tool for the need. Outside of Office, other tools like Team Foundation Server also do task management. The lack of a clear channel through the products makes it confusing for the customer to find their way.
Creating a Planner tool for Office 365 allows Microsoft to create an easy Work Management on-ramp for a large user base, to adopt Microsoft technology for work management. If Planner data can scale up and out into other work management tools like Project, people will tend to stay with the Microsoft suite as it will simply be easier. If we get Power BI integration, the overall integration makes it a much harder decision to use other products.
[CB] I agree -- it will be a challenge for Microsoft, but it is a massive opportunity. Of course, with the growth of Office 365 and Microsoft’s push into PM-lite capabilities, I have to ask: what do you think is the future of server-based project or portfolio management? It's been your bread-and-butter for a while, so I'm interested in your perspective.
[TG] There’s a lot of companies out there who need project and portfolio management but aren’t quite ready for the organizational rigor. Resource Management is now the most common pain point for companies, especially after the recent economic downturn.
A coherent PM Lite strategy gives Microsoft a way allow these companies to use Work Management while giving them a way to grow into a Project/Portfolio Management solution. I do see more demand eventually for Project and Portfolio Management, but the growth rate won’t be the same as Office 365.
If all of the work management products are aligned, work items should be able to be spawned from any Microsoft product (OneNote task, Outlook task, TFS, etc.) and be able to scale up to a Project plan in a straightforward way. Project work should be more accessible and be able to flow down into mobile applications like Wunderlist.
The other change I see coming in Project/Portfolio Management is more off the shelf vertical solutions. Many smaller companies can’t afford a custom-built “perfect” solution. It’s easier for them to buy something close enough to their needs and gain value quickly. The challenge for Microsoft is to enable the monetization of content and configuration, something that they’ve historically not done. This isn’t an app per se so the Office Store approach doesn’t quite fit here. Power BI is close with the Content Pack idea but we need a more holistic solution pack that can be installed over Office 365 and Power BI.
[CB] Where does the industry need to go, in your opinion? If you were Supreme Leader of all things project within the Office family, where would you make changes?
[TG] There’s no clear ownership of Task across Microsoft the way that there is for Document or Spreadsheet. I think this is needed if they truly want to fulfill their Productivity objectives. By assigning an internal champion for all things Task, the messaging, planning and enhancements around Task management (and project management by extension) becomes more cohesive and consistent across all tools. Microsoft’s strength is its ability to integrate functionality across its massive suite of products. It’s time to do the same for Tasks.
As always, some great insights from Treb on what is happening within the SharePoint space around project management tools and practices. If you have more questions about the discussion above or around Project and Project Server, you can reach Treb via email at treb.gatte@tumbleroad.com or through Twitter at @tgatte.
Thank you again, Treb, for taking the time to chat., See you at the next PSSPUG meeting.
by Christian Buckley via Everyone's Blog Posts - SharePoint Community
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