Although you can find hundreds of offers online (and every single one is said to be better than the rest), please do not rush to spend your resources on any of them because the usefulness of any collaboration tool will depend on your ability to force others to use it. {POSITIONAL POWER}

The tool is only useful if you can make people use it.

If you can, the best will be “fast and frugal.”

I still recommend Excel, as it is excellent with any data type, including time. Moreover, Excel is ubiquitous, and you can be confident that any new collaborator is familiar with it. The key is to learn its capabilities and tailor your design to suit your project’s needs. {COMMON SENSE, ADEQUACY}

Another thing is the definition of “real-time project changes.” What are these? Are these changes that happen every second? Every minute? An hour? Do you really need to know all these?

What is the project’s sampling rate? You can lose control over the process if you receive less information than required. On the other hand, if you receive more, it becomes noise. {SAMPLING RATE}

Striking the right balance ensures you’re in control and operating efficiently. Thus, make an educated guess and try to reflect on the results.

{SIGNAL/NOISE, ADMINISTRATIVE OVERHEAD, EXPLORE VS. EXPLOIT}

We discussed the Microsoft Project.

However, MS Excel will do fine for your projects: you know it, it is ubiquitous, and it is excellent. Learn more (dates, macros, etc.) and use it.

The main idea is to spend less resources (time and money) and get more.

{ADMINISTRATIVE OVERHEAD, COMMON SENSE, POSITIONAL POWER}

The best tool will be applying two rules to the tasks at hand.

The first rule is “Say No.” Do not do things that bring you neither value nor pleasure. {WEED-OUT}

The second rule is “Delegate.”

In the adage, “If you want something done properly, do it yourself,” change “something” into “a critical thing.” Do yourself things that seriously change the outcome, i.e., bring value. Or pleasure, of course.

Delegate the rest. Explain what you need and why, and demand the result.

{ENDPOINT TIERS, ECPM}

The best tool you can use is always your brain. {COMMON SENSE}

Next, get the data from similar projects done in the past and get an expert’s opinion—preferably more than one. {EXPERT, ANALOGY}

Use obtained data as input to your estimation.

An absolutely vital tool for estimating durations is learning about your productivity. {TRACK PERFORMANCE}

It will be you and your team working on a project, and if somebody manages to do it in three days, it will not necessarily be your case.

After all, some people run marathons in three hours and a kilometer in three minutes.

Thus, whatever you do, put down durations. It won´t take long, but you will immensely increase your ability to estimate durations in the future.

If you don’t know your productivity, test it while trying to accomplish some of your work.

As we discussed, people complaining that they are poor planners are simply poor observers and trackers of their performance.

As discussed, the schedule and budget grow from the project's scope (design).

In a traditional (or predictive) project, the more time spent analyzing requirements and building scope, the more accurate the schedule and budget will be.

If you are doing something innovative, you will unlikely be accurate with the estimations. Thus, when large projects have massive overruns, you do not usually see firing squad shooting managers and cost engineers. {COMMON SENSE, GUESSWORK, TRIAL AND ERROR}

However, no matter what project we plan, accurate planning is only possible when you know your (or other employees') productivity. You need to know how many resources a particular activity used in the past to estimate resource consumption in the future.

{TRACK PERFORMANCE}

It depends on your position and relationship with the “others.”

You might mention it to a peer in a friendly manner. You might friendly ask a peer. You might confide in a supervisor—ask for help. You might say it at a meeting, yet without preaching. If you have power, you can demand. {POSITIONAL POWER}

However, it is usual that on Day 1, everybody agrees to something, eagerly follows it on Day 2, starts skipping on Day 3, and forgets about the agreement on Day 4.

Why?

First, the tool might have prohibitive overheads: using it takes too much time. {ADMINISTRATIVE OVERHEAD}

Second, people cannot force themselves to do what is needed. {PROCRASTINATION, SELF-DISCIPLINE}

Third, they do not understand what they need to do.

Find out the reason and work on it.

{LACK OF MOTIVATION, COMMUNICATION PRINCIPLES}

What is a to-do list?

In essence, it is the scope of your work for a specific period (a time box).

The most frequent are daily, yet some will prefer weekly or biweekly. Items there can belong to one project or several; their complexity, urgency, and priority might differ.

Depending on what you do and how many people are involved, it can be any of your variants. You can add monthly and annual to-do lists.

It is important to remember that the further out in time your plans are, the more uncertain they become. Like a spinning top with a sharp point in the present, certainty is highest in the “now.” The further from the present, the less certainty. {THE NOW}

If you work on something day after day, i.e., a literature review, a dissertation, or data analysis, your “to-do” will benefit from quantifying your planned effort—e.g., “to analyze and put down abstracts 230-265” or “to increase the word count of your manuscript from 22450 words to 23500.”  {EPCM, ENDPOINT TIERS}

Naturally, your list will contain things unrelated to any work; you cannot avoid other things altogether—having a haircut, changing tires or oil, etc. {HETEROGENEITY, COMMON SENSE}

Remember to fill the to-do lists with verbs, as they are “to-do” lists—not “noun” lists.

First, you must understand what endpoints you call “goals”—aspirations, goals, or tasks. The clarity of tasks increases from measurement. {ENDPOINT TIERS}

However, you unlikely mean tasks.

As for higher-level endpoints, there is a widely, even cinematically, known test for spotting aspirations: “What would you want to do in life if you did not have to earn money?” A sincere answer might help.

Next, understanding who you are—answering the “Who am I?” question—can help you know what you want. Your goals are your wants. {WHO AM I?}

It is essential to recognize that our goals have a curious relationship with the goals of our groups—family, class, and society.

Our groups usually define our values, and within the value spaces, we formulate our goals. Or, better yet, we adopt prefabricated goals. Often, these will be simple—getting a job, earning money, buying a house, and bringing kids into the world.

What is good about aiming at prefabricated goals? The high probability of achieving them.

Being a professional makes it much more probable that you will support your living and get a hobby that helps you express your innermost desires. You start, for example, dancing after work hours and even performing at some gatherings.

There is nothing wrong with it—lots of people do that. The most significant deficiency is that you will unlikely bring something new to the world.

Why?

Because aspirations demand a commitment of resources, and you might have trouble finding them.

Indeed, Anthony Trollope could write 47 novels in the morning and then go to an office and invent the Red Postal Box, yet the demand for your resources will be challenging. And the more challenging the endpoint, the lower the probability of its achievement.

The path will experience many failures, which are essential for learning. Yet, all the failed projects will often look like wasted resources, especially for your parents and spouses. {GHOST RESOURCES, FAIL FORWARD}

You started this—it failed, that—it failed. Then, “Why not get a position in a company and start doing some normal job as normal people do? Then, you will be able to spend time on your hobby!”

If you define yourself in terms of your social roles, you will likely be a “good spouse” or a “good daughter,” get a normal job, buy a house, and bring kids into the same world.

If you understand who you are, you will probably dare to follow your dream, struggle against your groups, and, if lucky, change these groups with your effort.

George Bernard Shaw said, “Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.”

He meant goals and aspirations.

{FOLLOW YOUR DREAM, WHO AM I? INFORMATION ASYMMETRY, MAP YOUR DREAM, ECPM, VALUE, GROUP GOAL MIX}

People invented a wheel before 1978, and it is still in use.

Many tools exist. Hundreds are in “Treasure Chest of Six SIGMA,” a 1000-page compendium.

The main point about Delphi is that it serves better than brainstorming.

The first reason is that Delphi lets people first tackle a problem alone, which is more “creative” than sitting, shouting over one another, and waiting when this show-off and suck-up will finally get tired and shut up.

Remember, also, that people can answer anonymously, giving more freedom of expression.

The second is that Delphi is iterative, so you can gradually improve the outcome.

And the third is that Delphi is super simple.

{COMMUNICATION PRINCIPLES, ADEQUACY, SAMPLING RATE}

I recommend Roger von Oech, for starters. His “A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative” was an eye-opener for me once.

At its best, an Activity-on-Node network is when you want to understand the logic of your project—see sequences and dependencies.

You can play with the activities and see them in couples and clusters.

You don't need much—you can use small cards as activities and play with them on a desk or a magnetic board. This interactive process allows you to see how the activities relate and create an outline of your project.

AON precedes Gantts: what you put into Gantt has already been sequentially arranged, and with Gantt, you plot the sequences on a calendar.

{DATA, TIME MANAGEMENT, COMMON SENSE}

We live in a world of information asymmetry, and what you find out and what you want to show might ultimately differ. However, for yourself, you must always have the most realistic estimates possible. Woe to the one who lies to oneself. {INFORMATION ASYMMETRY}

Therefore, first and foremost, when estimating anything, always strive for the truth. Remember, even to effectively distort something, you must understand it in its undistorted form.

Second, getting a grant is less about “uncertain environments” and more about knowing how foundations award the money.

The best policy would be to team up with somebody who has already received the grant from that organization. This person might know the critical “what” or “who” needed to get the money. {GRANTING IS NOT INVESTING, EXPERT}

Third, grant money is pseudomoney, i.e., they do not fulfill any of the two criteria: (1) they do not make money, so you cannot measure their efficiency; (2) those who grant it do not take them from their pocket—i.e., the utility of the money is low for them. They lose nothing if you fail and gain nothing if you succeed. {PSEUDOMONEY}

Fourth, in situations with “real money,” what you ask will depend on your wish to make a profit. If you want the profit, the more you can get, the better, and only competition truly limits greed.

It will be a different story if you only ask to cover the expenses.

Traditional projects use estimates in a time format: days, weeks, and months. Then they sum them up and get some duration. For instance, this activity takes three days, this - four, and these two take five days each. We sum them and arrive at 17 days.

The different approach used in agile projects is to start with a certain number of days (usually 30 days) and pack this period (a time box) with tasks.

Each task is estimated in points, which are units of measure for evaluating the effort required to implement a piece of work.

We use Fibonacci numbers; one is the easiest task, while 13 would be the hardest (20 is too big, plus it's not the Fibonacci number).

Teams assign these points relative to work complexity, amount, and uncertainty. With practice, teams understand how much they can achieve.

Yet, refrain from trying to pool these numbers from different teams. Each tea will likely have its own way of estimating complexity.

{AGILE, STORY POINTS, DAILY INCREMENTS, EXPERT, EXPLORE AND EXPLOIT} 

You log every change you make and add information on when and why you made it, as well as any relevant notes.

Yet, making an Excel spreadsheet where you mark all your moves in a project—a project diary—is better. Spend a minute on each: what, when, why, and make it systematic.

{PROJECT DIARY, DAILY INCREMENTS, COMMON SENSE}

Unlikely.

Also, remember that business (and these tools are mainly applied in business settings) as a field is not as transparent as science, so tools’ validity is not always apparent.

This opacity, coupled with attractively abundant resources, stimulates the growth of a lot of pretentious bunk.

I suggest a simple thinking process to estimate the validity of any diagramming tool. First, do you understand how it works? Second, does it stimulate your thinking? Third, can it be used to communicate? If all the answers are positive, then the tool is worthy.

{COMMON SENSE, ADEQUACY, DELAY, COMMUNICATION PRINCIPLES, EXPERT FUNNEL}