How should you go about creating your first Time Location Chart on a real project?
Here’s a quick video overview of how I’d recommend you go about the task. Or, scroll down if you prefer to read.
Getting the Tools: Turbo-Chart
With some software products, Tilos for example, it is a very difficult and expensive process just to get your hands on the software.
But, a product like Turbo-Chart is a very simple tool. It’s not expensive, it doesn’t need any complex IT infrastructure. It simply installs on your desktop.
Once Turbo Chart is installed, you or your users can generate Time Location Chart outputs without a lot of time or investment. You won’t need anyone to disappear for 4 or 5 days to do a training course, you can learn this from just watching a few videos.
You might be tempted to use something like excel. While it might seem easy at first, trust me, you’ll end up needing to modify it so much, it’ll consume most of your time! Much better to get a purpose-built tool that’s designed to make your life easier.
Run a Pilot Project
When you’re ready to proceed, you can pilot it on a small project or even a small section of your project.
Pick a specific type of task, like the tunneling of the project to present in Time-Location format. It only requires a little bit more effort than what you’re already doing.
You’re probably already creating tasks, adding relationships, and rescheduling in your scheduling tool. All you need is those extra fields of data against those tasks. Now, just decide on the outputs and how you want to see them.
Once you start presenting the charts, people might start asking “I want one just for this area” or “I want one that’s just showing me a certain filtered set of tasks.” You can do all that very easily using Turbo-Chart.
From there, just keep updating your schedule and adding that extra information required to produce the time location charts. Turbo-Chart is specifically designed to update your Time Location Chart every time you make a change in P6, MS Project, or whatever tool you’re using.
You’ll know you’ve been successful with these Time Location charts when you see them being hung around the walls and replacing the piles of schedule printouts usually laying around.
Now why is this great to see? Because it means everyone is now interested in understanding what the schedule is saying, they don’t have to flick through, or ignore, 30, 50, 100 pages of Gantt Charts. It’s there on 1 page, easy for them to see. You’ve literally brought everyone on a project onto the same page.
Get the Full Video Course On Time Location Charts
If you want to learn about Time Location Charts, we’ve created a 30-minute video course that covers everything you need to know, including:
- What are Time Location Charts
- Why they are the best way to communicate a project schedule
- Who can benefit from Time Location Charts
- How to read Time Location Charts
- How to optimize a schedule using a Time Location Chart
- The best (and worst) ways to generate Time Location Charts
- A 90-second demo of how to create a Time Location Chart with Turbo-Chart
- Tips on getting your team on board with using Time Location Charts
If you find it helpful, feel free to share it and send it along to anyone that can benefit. And, contact me with any questions about Time Location Charts and Turbo-Chart!
