SPERT® News, Tips & Tricks.

Hi <<First Name>>!
Welcome to the Statistical PERT® May 2020 newsletter!

I hope you and your loved ones are doing well during the COVID-19 pandemic. My prayers are that this pandemic will subside quickly and that our lives will quickly return to normal once more.

The Free May Webinar

Want to learn ways you can modify a Statistical PERT® spreadsheet? In this month's free webinar, I will go over the different ways you can modify a SPERT spreadsheet and why you might want to do that. Our focus this month will be on modifying the Normal Edition of SPERT. 

 Here's are the questions we'll address:

• In what simple ways can I modify a SPERT spreadsheet?
• Why would I want to modify a SPERT spreadsheet?
• How does SPERT create standard deviations for the uncertainties I'm estimating?
• How can I use the Ratio Scale Modeler worksheet?
• Which worksheets can I delete without breaking anything?
• What's the best way to copy a SPERT worksheet?

Click here to register for this FREE, one-hour webinar on Tuesday, May 12 from 12P-1P (Eastern USA). Can't attend on that day & time, but still interested in the topic? Go ahead and register anyway, and I'll send you (and everyone else who registers) a link to the recorded webinar a few days after the live event.

Learn how to use a probabilistic burn-up chart

I'll be presenting at the upcoming University of Maryland's Project Management Symposium on May 7-8, 2020.  My presentation is entitled, "When Will It Be Done? How To Forecast Answers to Your Toughest Agile Questions."  Because of COVID-19, this is a very affordable virtual conference this year.  But there's another (free!) way to learn how to create a probabilistic agile burn-up chart (keep reading!).

Couldn't make the April 2020 webinar? Download this spreadsheet

If you didn't register for my free April webinar ("Introduction to Monte Carlo Simulation"), you can download the spreadsheet I used to explain how Monte Carlo simulation is used to estimate the true value of something that is unknown (using an example where we actually do know the true value).  You can download my free Monte Carlo simulation spreadsheet here.  And look for another one of these introductory Monte Carlo webinars later in 2020, as there's a lot of interest in this topic.

Coming soon! SPERT Beta Edition Version 3!

I've been working on Version 3 of SPERT Beta Edition.  Here's what's coming later this month:

• New! Monte Carlo simulation for a single, random variable using the beta distribution
• New! SPERT Scheduler will make it easy to create a plan-driven schedule for traditional (waterfall) projects at the activity level
• Enhanced! The Agile Forecast worksheet will permit modeling three scenarios instead of just one, so you can more easily do what-if analysis

SPERT Tips & Tricks

Here are some tips & tricks when using any SPERT spreadsheet:

• When you need to enter zero...  When I created SPERT five years ago, I created it for project management professionals.  For them, there was no reason to allow negative numbers or even zeros when entering inputs in the spreadsheet.  So to avoid possible divide by zero errors, I added edits so 3-point estimates have to be positive numbers.  But for those times when you really do want to enter zero (like a three-point estimate needs to have zero for the minimum point-estimate), the easy way around this is to enter any positive number that is close to zero, like 0.1 or 0.01 or 0.00001.  The rounded display will show zero, but you won't get tripped up for not using a positive number when you enter your 3-point estimate.
   
• What about that new agile burn-up chart?  In Version 4 of the Statistical PERT Normal Edition, I added a new agile burn-up chart to help agile teams forecast future delivery dates.  But it may not be easy for you to infer how to properly use this worksheet.  Be sure to join me for my free June webinar, where I'll show how to create an agile burn-up chart using this new worksheet.  I'm very excited about how agile teams can flexibly use this new chart to align with their stakeholders and create better decisions today to optimize desirable outcomes in the future.  Registration for the June webinar opens about one day after the May webinar concludes.
   
• Create a simple Monte Carlo simulation. Here's a simple way to create a Monte Carlo simulation for a random variable using the normal probability distribution.  To do this, you need to estimate what the average outcome is for your uncertainty (or calculate the average if you're using historical data), and you need to estimate (or calculate) the standard deviation.  Then, in Excel, use the NORM.INV function in 1000 or more cells to create a simulated data set for your uncertainty.  Inside the NORM.INV function, use the RAND() function for the probability argument. This is essentially what the Monte Carlo simulation worksheet does in the "SPERT® Normal MC Simulation" worksheet (in the Statistical PERT Normal Edition Version 4).