Ulenda Pickett

Ulenda Pickett is a Project Manager and Scrum Master at ThreeWill.  She has over 16 years of experience in managing and delivering projects.

Introduction

Recently, Ulenda Pickett, Scrum Master, shared a Project Communication Plan Template that will be helpful for your next onboarding of resources for a project. In her post, Ulenda shared insights for information gathering such as project timelines, resources, vendors, and additional helpful tips.

Wonder why some of the totals in your Project Communication Plan are not correct? Today, Ulenda shares helpful information to assist in solving the mystery.

Solving the Mystery of the Different Totals

Trying now to solve the mystery of the different totals for Estimate and Calendar notes in the screenshot below.

Let me first clear out the Estimated Weeks totals cell (B19).

Next, let me sum that cell (B19) again.

Same result. Need to do one more thing: Totally blank out cells (B16-B18).

After removing all content from B16-B18, still NOT getting the desired result for B19.

After removing all content from B16-B18, still NOT getting the desired result for B19. Expecting 7.9

Let me just zero out the cells and see what happens. Hmm, no change as shown below.

How do we resolve this mystery? Why are these totals NOT the same? Their values ultimately are the same. However, the sum Totals are different? They should both be 7.9.

Hmmm, the difference may be related to a Rounding issue. The fields in the Estimate Column, (B), are derived from calculated values from the Estimate tab, while the Calendar Column, (C) are from direct Sums on the Timeline (2) sheet.

Let me do one more thing to fully confirm this. I am going to take those values from the Estimation tab and explicitly enter them on a clean sheet with both a one-digit and two-digit rounding and see if the Estimate values total properly.

Got it!! Added the Resolve Total issue sheet. This confirms the 8.0 Estimate Total is a result of One-Digit Rounding. Mystery RESOLVED! Total values are now explainable as to why they are slightly different.

Conclusion

Keep in mind you too may want to add additional tabs to this Project Team Communication Plan Template. But this is a good start.

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