Ever Lose a Project Plan?

I know people who have lost it… one team in particular who spent one beautiful weekend trying to fix a file, only to give up and start over. Of course this only happens on projects that are under stress.

Two thoughts this month. First, protecting yourself against features and updates that inadvertently damage the plan file, and my perennial favorite, backups.

Features Run Amuck…

The team that lost the file actually had a file that was in good shape, it’s just that they used a feature to automatically load-level the project resources. By the time they found out that the feature had scrambled their data, the changes were in the main and backup copies. After some effort to back-out the changes, they gave up and rebuilt the plan from a paper copy.

What caused this? Lots of discussion about if it was a bug in the program or a feature so un-friendly that its side affects were as bad as if it had been a bug. From my perspective, there is no difference… if the outcome is so bad that you can’t recover the file, it’s a bug even if the company claims that it works as intended.

My solution is simple. When I am working on a plan in MS Project or any other tool, I do a save-as and rename the file before every significant revision. This is easy on a non-shared copy; it just uses disk space. On a shared copy you would need to talk with your system admin about how to do this. In one recent project I ended up with over 50 named copies over a several month period. A cheap investment for the piece of mind that it bought.

Losing It…

Ever lose a file? I have, but it’s been a few years. For some reason everyone resists backups. I’d like to talk about how easy it is to be safe.

My description is not aimed at a big company that has the resources to copy the files off your computer and send them to offsite storage. This is aimed at smaller businesses or individuals that need something simple.

Most of the folks I have run into have no backups, or have backups that are on disks that sit right next to their computer. Neither is satisfactory. My suggestions follow:

1.                  Get a copy on some media other than just having a copy on your hard drive. Drives crash, viruses erase, people steal, coffee spills, and you can even get into a situation where it is on your hard disk, but a computer problem forces you to erase it (the voice of experience on that last one). Getting a copy off of the computer is the first step.

2.                  The next step is to store the backup copies away from the building where the computer is located. It’s easy to mail it to your sister, have an employee take it home with them, or keep a copy in your car. This almost eliminates the possibility of loosing the computer and your backup at the same time.