Familiar & instinctive
This is what first struck me as I stared at a surprisingly familiar project set up screen (very much like your classic spreadsheet) and my fingers itched to unburden my mind of my list of things to do by filling in some invitingly blank action boxes. As it happened, two benefits became instantly apparent. Jeremy's past house-moving experience and therefore remembered list of things to do put mine in the shade (how I thought I'd get away with so few actions quite frankly beggars belief) and he also already had his in an excel spreadsheet which he simply cut and pasted into the program within seconds. So the "knowledge sharing" advantage of a PM system became instantly apparent.

Having taken a girly moment to appreciate the beauty of a virgin list of to dos (ranging from putting in an offer on a new house to establishing a completion date) given the system a name for my project and entered a start date on which the whole process would be kicking off, I was soon anxing out over whether we had entered these tasks in the right order and which ones would take the longest and therefore what should I tackle first. At this stage, I would normally endure a fit of blind panic and reach for the wine bottle to steady my nerve. Not so Jeremy.

Instinctively I was right about the next thought process but wrong to worry about it. First we assigned a period of time (duration) that we felt each action on the list should take and typed it into the column adjacent to each task. For example, making an offer on the desired property was just one day, where as the solicitor's required conveyancing period was three weeks. (Clearly Jeremy began to realise at this point that my moving experience was either next to nothing or my grasp of conveyancing timeframes was frankly not of this planet.)  But that didn't matter, as we could refine our thinking and change the time periods against any action at will and while we did this, a graphical representation of these action durations from the project start date appeared on a horizontal weekly planner in the right hand half of the screen. Additionally start and finish dates for each action according to its stated duration appeared automatically.

Milestones
Now even I know there are certain critical dates in the house moving process that everyone does his or her level best to achieve. Namely contract exchange and subsequent completion, when with luck and a new set of keys you actually enter your new home and can immediately start therapy to help you get over the whole process.

In project management circles, these are known as "milestones" and have zero duration (otherwise they wouldn't be milestones) and can be labelled as such in the system so they subsequently appear marked with a helpful symbol. This has the effect of fixing them in "electronic stone" so the practicalities of how other more fluid tasks need to fit around these dates can be assessed.

Sequencing
Next came possibly the most therapeutic and empowering part of the entire exercise: "sequencing" your tasks. This involved simply drawing a line with your mouse linking one action box to another related action box and with two or three simple clicks you can tell the system what the relationship is between these two actions. For example, once you have chosen a house, you can then make an offer on it. This is set as a "finish-to-start" relationship - once the first action is finished the second may then take place. You can also have "start-to-start" relationships, where a series of actions can all happen concurrently. For example, once my offer on the new house has been accepted, I can instruct my solicitor, confirm my mortgage requirements and initiate any survey requirements I might still have, all at the same time.   

As you sequence all your actions, your weekly planner is changing, organising your life right there in front of your eyes via a series of task bars linked by arrows. The task bars have status colours as well: red bars trace the tasks that dictate the overall timeframe (critical path) from project start to finish, where as blue bars indicate tasks that have a time "float." In other words, could if required take longer than their scheduled duration without changing the project's critical path.

Baseline
Having sequenced our entire list of actions to the best of our abilities, we allowed the system to save this as our "baseline" plan, aptly indicated by a solid black underline of the task bars. All projects have a baseline plan, which should represent all the gathered knowledge from all the project participants at that given time. An educated snapshot if you like, against which implications of any future real-time project changes such as unforeseen delays, acts of God etc can be viewed and discussed. Simple huh?      

So simple in fact, I was also wondering (with my industry hat on) how any construction project client could not expect or demand this automated way of working, particularly as the ability to discuss deadlines collectively and examine "what if" scenarios relating to baseline plan changes could be made available so easily and so promptly on a weekly or even daily basis. 

If so far I had been finding project management a liberating experience and rapidly deciding that my entire life (and that of my family and friends) could do with a spot of it (which I have to say Jeremy thought was a little sad) my own project was heading for a nightmare of its own.

Re-scheduling
Christmas cropped up in the middle of my move. Jeremy coolly informed me that it's always a good idea to input known holidays into the system up front so it automatically takes them into account when scheduling the project (now he tells me). Everyone would down tools for the Christmas break right in the middle of my hoped-for exchange and completion dates, meaning that my solicitor's conveyancing action now had "negative float" (he couldn't get it all done in the time he had been given.) My completion date went "super critical" i.e. it now fell beyond my original baseline date. How did I know this? My task bar had turned a different colour and I had an error light that I could not ignore.

There was no doubt that I would either have to let the system work backwards review and re-schedule my critical path or I would just have to accept that my completion date would be later in the New Year. No prizes for guessing which I had to settle for! But I was able to write a note by this particular item on my action list (you can document any circumstances against any action explaining delays or completion status) that said: "Note to self - Christmas is a lousy time of year to move house."

Resource management
Finally, project management is also about how best to deploy your workforce against workload and workflow. In our case my workforce was a small group of professionals - a very small group of professionals - namely my husband and I. Once again, it was a simple matter of linking an action with a resource (for example "packing" and "Alison") and the system is able to graphically represent when and for how long I would be deployed on this action.

Of course, when all the actions were allocated, it was instantly apparent from my cumulative workload bar chart that on some days, I would be working a double shift (no change there then) so I would either a) need to call in reinforcements b) allocate the task to someone else or c) change the timing /duration of the actions in question so I could cope. I settled for option b - it seemed the sensible thing to do.

Someone once told Jeremy to treat a project as you would a badly behaved child: the moment your back's turned, it can misbehave so make sure you keep a watchful eye. Project Management software is that watchful eye. It predicts, monitors and assesses the implications of  "bad project behaviour" and enables easy sharing of that data with the "worried parents" or project team. And the good news is, a basic PM tool is way more cost effective than expensive therapy!