Saw a PM using an old school whiteboard at a huge job site in Austin

I was out at a mixed use project in Austin last week and the project manager had this massive whiteboard setup with every trade scheduled by hand. I mean, this was a $40 million project with all the latest tech tools available. He told me he tried Procore and Bluebeam but kept coming back to the whiteboard because he could see the whole week at a glance. Has anyone else run into a situation where the old analog method just works better than the expensive software?

2 comments

2 Comments

fiona9859d ago

Hold on, I gotta push back a little on the "old school" part. A whiteboard is just a tool, and using it well is a skill. He's not being old school, he's being smart about how he uses his time. The software is great for tracking, but the board is for thinking. I mean, the real issue is that a lot of these apps make you work for the data instead of the other way around. So it's not about analog vs digital, it's about what saves you the most time on site. And honestly, if it works for a $40 million job, that says more about the PM than the board.

anthony_campbell889d ago

$40 million project and the guy is using a dry erase board? That's wild. I've seen old school methods on small jobs, but at that scale it seems almost risky. Honestly though, I get it. I've watched guys spend 20 minutes logging updates into software while the board just shows you the whole mess in two seconds. The software is great for the back office, but out in the field, sometimes you just need to see where the bottleneck is without clicking through three screens. I bet his board has more actual decision making on it than most of the digital dashboards I've seen. Not saying it's the right call for everyone, but it clearly works for him.