I answered a couple of queries yesterday about aspects of Legal Project Management around tools and techniques. I thought it might make sense to share the answers (concealing, of course, any information that might point to who asked them or in what context.)

Process Mapping Tools

Question: Is there process-mapping software?

Here’s a guide to process mapping software (it’s about a year old). None of these tools is inexpensive ($300-$1000), but some may have a free trial period. I haven’t used most of them, but it seems like a decent list.

That said, I think the best tool, if you have the wall space, is 3×5 notecards, thumbtacks, colored yarn, and a very large corkboard — and then take digital pictures of it regularly as a backup!

I’ve used this method effectively myself. I bought a bunch of one-foot-square tiles and glued them to the wall outside my office when I worked at a large corporation (not that we couldn’t afford a big corkboard, but I actually wanted to emphasize the do-it-yourself approach to make a point to my teams). It’s tactile, it allows many people to participate at once, and it’s downright fun to play with the yarn — and anything that makes what can be a frustrating exercise more fun is a good thing.

If I wanted an electronic version, didn’t want to learn new software (e.g., I didn’t think I’d do this type of thing regularly), and wanted to get it going today, I’d use PowerPoint 2010. It has very good shape connectors a la Visio – but with a better interface – and they seem to stay reasonably well connected to the shapes as you move them around. The PPT 2010 beta may still be available for download, and the real thing will be released in a couple of months.

Visio would work well too. However, Visio has a different-from-everything-else-in-the-known-universe interface. I wouldn’t classify Visio as easy to learn, though it’s easy to use once someone is comfortable with it. There is a significant learning curve involved.

Gantt Charts

Question: Is there a good tool for creating Gantt charts other than MS-Project (or similar complex project-management tools)?

I discourage all but sophisticated users from using tools such as MS-Project because of Project’s complexity. (It’s great for construction projects, not so great for legal projects… though it would likely be useful for eDiscovery LPOs.) I’m a fan of MS-Project for PMs who are familiar with the tool, understand the limitations of PM tools in general and especially in “soft” areas such as Legal Project Management, and deeply realize the implications of Garbage In, Garbage Out — and even Data In, Garbage Out.

People managing projects use Gantt charts for all sorts of things:

1. Building a task list, often with durations (and then sometimes pricing the resources on the various tasks)
2. Building a chart of dependencies, a variant of a work-breakdown structure
3. Building a work-breakdown structure itself
4. Tracking actuals against estimated durations both as a guide to how you’re doing against schedule or budget and as a way to get smarter about estimating the next time around (the former is much less useful than the latter in LPM)
5. Making pretty wall charts to convince others that you’re managing the project effectively
6. Various other uses

Once you’re clear on what you’re actually trying to accomplish, then you can decide on a good approach to accomplishing it. Are you really looking for a Gantt chart? Or is that simply the default impulse because to many people Gantt chart = project management toolset.

Excel works quite well for #1, #3, and #4 in the list above.(So does Project, of course.)

#2 would be tough to do well in Excel, but then it’s not all that easy to get right in Project either. ZThe biggest issue isn’t the tool but actually understanding the real dependency chain. However, if you do understand that, a tool with easy entry of dependency data and automatic calculation is a good answer, and Project fits the bill. (So do other PM tools, but I’m most familiar with Project, having used it since it first came out. I used Scitor before Project, which was similar in many ways.)

#5… well, no comment, other than to note that I’ve seen this use in too many projects for which I was a customer, an observer, or the please-fix-this-mess guy.

You can’t manage a construction project without a tool of this sort. Legal matters aren’t construction projects, however, and other approaches may be more appropriate depending on both the matter and the skills and proclivities of the matter’s manager.

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On the road for the rest of the week and much of next week. Don’t know if I’ll get a chance to post next week. But hey, you can always come to my Master Class on Legal Project Management next week in New York if you’d rather listen to me than read me — and the class will be a lot more interactive than Internet articles!