Bamboo and Project Management

No, this is not about some Project Management software from China. This is about using a flexible, light weight structure to support the Project Management efforts. There is a large amount of confusing about Project Management. My approach has been to use it to apply structure and form. While traveling through Asia, I saw people using bamboo as scaffolding for construction work on buildings. Most people see Project Management structure modeled on traditional Western scaffolding, heavy, strong, durable, and complex. My approach has been more aligned with the properties of bamboo, light weight, flexible, and simple to use. That is not to say that it is flimsy or fragile. As with the bamboo scaffold, your Project Management structure gains strength by adding more where you need it.

Ok, it is a great metaphor, but how do we turn that into action? The obvious but often overlooked starting point is to keep it simple. People, especially senior mangers, need to see the message with minimal explanation. While a number have are familiar with Gantt charts and other views from project software, it is not the right answer for everyone. So, I start with a pretty picture on a MS PowerPoint slide. The picture should show everyone, at-a-glance, what projects are underway, top level time based depiction of each phase in each project, and a simple stoplight color scheme to illustrate the project status. Based on that one slide, we have a great deal of information to talk about resources, risks, project portfolio management, and candidates for extra resources or termination.

Of course, a large amount of detail and data needs to be collected and analyzed to create that simple picture. I do not think that this task should mandate using any specific tool. Instead, you should be free to use or not to use any tool or software that makes collecting and updating the information easy. I have worked at places where they had a full time person whose job was to update a MS Project schedule each day. Projects that have short durations or are in a high state of change need a more light weight and flexible approach.

I found that giving the tasks owners a simple template in MS Word or MS Excel provides enough structure and easily gets me the information I need. But there is one hole in this system that still needs to be plugged, tracking resources for each task. If you are careful, you can use MS Project to map it out. And this can serve as the building block when you need to show an “official” project Gantt chart.

Keeping the Project Management structure flexible and light weight, like bamboo, provides the tools to support the work without diverting a large amount of work into changing the scaffolding when the project changes. This approach is even more useful when you are introducing Project Management into an organization.




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