Project planning - free programs

[Triassic]

My wife wants to create a project plan for our build. Can anyone suggest any suitable free software?

[ProDave]

I am a bit cynical about "project planning" (historical from experiences at work)

 

Anything you do will at best be inaccurate as you are at the whims of different trades and suppliers and their estimates will at best be approximate and at worse a complete guess. Then throw in weather, availability of trades, changes you may make and the whole thing gets very approximate.

 

I think what I am saying is anything you want can simply be done with a pencil and paper?

[Dreadnaught]

(Sorry for going of topic slightly off topic)

 

22 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I am a bit cynical about "project planning" (historical from experiences at work)

 

Having been involved in business planning, I tend to agree. Mere numbers within a spreadsheet sadly do not advertise their reliability. They wear a disguise: they don't shout "I am nothing but a misleading guess".

 

Having said that, I assume OP is referring to a project schedule (the GANTT-chart-like thing) showing the sequence of events, not a budget. That is something I am keen to have my architect prepare for my project soon (she is experienced in running builds, not only drawing plans) and, as a beginner, will leant a lot from seeing it. 

 

I would imagine that such a schedule, when combined with a budget full of guesses and the various detailed plans, make up the key "bible" of documents which form the core set that are referred to throughout the build.

 

Am I right about the core set?

Edited January 6, 2019 by Dreadnaught

[Sue B]

It’s easy enough to create a Gantt chart in excel.  That is how I do my schedules at work in it’s simplist form.  No formulas, just coloured cells.

 

If you are good with excel, you can get as complex as you like and use it to self filll using date criteria - I have never bothered (and I love excel and use it every day for real stuff).

 

Excel is of course not free but most people have access to it (or an alternative of some

description).

We do have MS Project at work but for a one off build, as others have said, you are just guessing upon more guessing, and getting a false sense of where you should be and it is far too complex to learn just for this. 

 

I did do do a simple Gantt chart (excel cells coloured in) for our last build and it helped a little to know when things needed ordering by in the first 6 months when all the trades were on site.  It also worked as an helpful list for me of the various tasks in the order they needed to happen in..  Once it was just us, getting labour as and when needed, it was no use whatsoever anymore of course.

 

 

[Onoff]

MS Project...what a load of b@ll@cks. Been there, done the course. 

[Dreadnaught]

Personally I’m keen to try Google Sheets for this. It’s collaboration features are strong. But it’s key of course that whomever else is involved is willing to play along. 

[newhome]

+1 to the excel suggestion if it's just to track milestones. You can work out the critical path, add key milestones etc if you wish but having completed a build I can say that mine were less accurate than predicting the lottery numbers . There are too many variables and unquantifiables to make it really meaningful and you can't really learn from previous experience as this is a one off project for most. As long as it's used as a very rough guide that's probably the best you can hope for. A better idea is to work out the budget as accurately as you can and constantly check where you are against planned spend at any point. I suspect that for most people budget is a rather larger constraint than slippage against timeline. 

 

[Sue B]

20 minutes ago, Onoff said:

MS Project...what a load of b@ll@cks. Been there, done the course. 

Yep - it looks good, I watched videos, and then I tried using it!

 

I went back to excel and my lovely simple coloured cells

Edited January 6, 2019 by Sue B

[Dreadnaught]

Those of us with IT project management experience, and I know there are a quite a few here, know that open communication and trust is key. 

 

I visited a build in Buckinghamshire where the owner was a seasoned old fashioned IT project manager (Prince2 for those who know about such things). After watching progress by his team for a few weeks with growing horror he intervened to set up a weekly all hands face-to-face meeting for coordination and communication. 

[newhome]

The other thing to note is that the more trades you have one site at any one time the more complex it becomes to manage especially if one trade is dependent on another. If time is on your side you can mitigate that to a degree by building in some additional time at the end of each main task so that you aren't frantically trying to reschedule something as soon as something slips. You can still generally use that time to do some of the tasks that you intend to do yourself if it becomes available (assuming you will be getting hands on at any point). And a follow on trade with always blame the previous trade if something doesn't work out as envisaged. Goes with the territory, although that's not project planning per se. You can mitigate that to a degree by getting the follow on trade to attend to have a look before the previous trade disappears. Easier said than done though ... 

[ProDave]

The reason I am very cynical about Project management is one previous roll I had, as well as designing the bloody machine I had to keep updating the project plan.  Of course things kept changing, the spec kept changing, estimates of timescale kept changing.  I was ending up spending more time keep adjusting the project plan than doing any design. Had it not been for the fact I needed to maintain employment and an income, I would have told the managers "just forget this project plan and just let me get on and design and build it, you will get your machine a lot quicker that way"