Author Archives: Perri Pappas

Distributing budget

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Hi, this is me, Perri…

in my last project, planning moving houses for a friend, I have learned how to work with budget in Merlin projects. There is nothing to it actually, it is very easy.
I simply need to define a budget for the project in the closed ‘Budget’ section in the ‘Finance’ pane of the inspector and see it get transferred in the ‘approved’ and ‘undistributed’ areas. To distribute my budget to the various activities I enable the display of the column set ‘Budget planning’, showing among others the columns ‘approved budget’ and ‘approved budget undistributed’.
If I now enter the amount of ‘approved budget’ to the activities of my project, the project’s ‘approved budget undistributed’ gets recalculated accordingly.
In case I mistakenly distribute more than my approved budget, Merlin will show up a warning in the scheduling conflicts.
Cool and easy?
Well, I have told you it was very simple.

Warning…

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Hi, this is me, Perri…

the moving houses project is in progress and the Gantt in Merlin’s project very colorful by now. Lot’s of green diamonds and bars, some in yellow and the rest in blue. The actual move is planned to happen in 3 days. What? In only 3 days? I hope you do not mind me not writing any further. There is so much to be done until then… and we will have to check their progress. So here you are, my motto for the following days:

  • Dates in a calendar are closer than they appear to be.
  • The more you plan, the luckier you get.

    • Which is your motto, when planing?

    Can you cope when things happen earlier than expected?

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    Hi, this is Perri…

    remember me? I am Perri Pappas, coming from Greece, doing my internship by ProjectWizards. I am into this moving houses project right now. The project is up and running. Significant milestones are completed. The painters are renovating the new home. Everything is still on time. Lot’s of people around to help. We even got a big lorry from a friend for free. So everything is cool one may think.
    Everything? Well almost everything.

    Today we got a call from the Internet provider. They would send a technician to enable DSL over cable at 11 o’ clock… Great, wonderful, it is 2 weeks before schedule. Stupid that we cannot be there to let the technician in… But wait.. the painter is there, he can let him in. So no problem, everything is cool.
    Everything? Well almost everything.

    Because what happens if at the time point when one technician arrives the other one goes for a lunch break?
    You’ve guessed right. Now we need to set a new appointment for the technician enabling ‘DSL over cable’. Hmmmm….

    Moving houses or House moving?

    Posted on by

    Hi, this is me Perri…

    while helping this friend planing moving houses, I consider everything making our tasks planned easier. We sync all events on iCal, iPhones, iPod, setup a Merlin plan (which we decided to plan backwards by the way), we engaged craftsmen to do the house improvements and of course tell everyone who does not want to hear it, that we need people on the moving day to carry the boxes 😉

    Great what you can do when you apply project management to your goals. It helps you see whether your plans are realistic or not. If you do it right, and foresee the risks involved, there will be no problem if a craftsman fails to deliver on time. Small things going wrong will not throw you off the plan.

    Right now, we can cope with a certain amount on more costs or over utilization, but we simply have to avoid breaking the deadline.

    Here some links in case you are interested:

    What to know about moving houses: For better packing

    How House Moving Works: When you simply love your house but hate the neighbors  😉

    How would you do it?

    Posted on by

    Hi, this is me Perri…

    I friend of mine is about to move houses and asked for my help. Of course I am going to do my best not to let him down. There is so much to do and to plan. Informing the old landlady, the electricity and phone company. Finding a painter, packing, finding helpers and a big car…
    I proposed setting up a project in Merlin for us to know, how to proceed and as I am entering the activities and milestones in the activity view I wonder:

    Shall we plan the project starting today and running forwards?
    Or
    define the project’s latest end date and set the project planning direction ‘backwards’?

    Hmmm…. How would you do it?