This blogpost is written to help you out understanding the exhibition projectmanagement excel tool we provide to you free of charge. Reading this blogpost is only useful having the excel tool, either on your screen, or printed out with you. As a general rule we say; Tweak this excel file so that you can best use it. Add roles that you have in your company, but are not in the excel file. Or delete roles. Add actions that you execute in your company or delete an action that you feel is not relevant to your situation.

We will briefly pinpoint various elements and give a brief explanation.

Project roles (and project team member abbreviations)

List everybody who has a role to play in making the show a success. The abbreviations could be changed into i.e. the initials of their names (makes it easier to link them to the actions to be executed)

The projectteam members need to be added in the; R A C I – fields, depending on their involvement in a certain action.

RACI

R = Responsible; Carries responsibility for the (timely) execution of the action and its result

A = Accountable; Carries the final responsibility for the (timely) execution of the action and its result

C = Consulted; Needs to be consulted regarding the to be performed action

I = Informed; Needs to be informed about / Needs to be aware of the execution of the action

The RACI approach makes sure that all stakeholders are involved and therefore the result will be both the required result and will also be supported by the entire team.

Date of deadline

Self explanatory we guess. Add the date on which the action needs to be executed. However our advise is to put a date 2/3 weeks before the actual deadline, so there is still time if things ‘do not go your way’.

Start managing the project

When in the excel file all actions, all responsibilities and all deadlines are defined, we advise managing the project in dedicated project management software. For our own expo projects we use Trello .