About the Founder of SummaryPro

Miles Goodchild has been a Project and Programme planner, PMO lead and Project Manager since 1998.  Used to producing and managing the plans for complex programs or simple projects, Miles recognised early on in his career that one of the key tools for project planners is a Plan On A Page, to communicate complex plans and the impact of various situations to other stakeholders. 

Over the years, Miles became increasingly frustrated with the time it took to produce, and more importantly, maintain these summaries. Frequent headaches included:

• analysing changes in the detailed plans
• interpreting the plans and remembering what tasks, milestones and summary sections in the detailed plan should drive each item in the summary plan
• aligning summary tasks/milestones with dates and dependent items
• reacting to changes in the plans

To avoid these frustrating, time-consuming activities, Miles developed the tool that would become Summary Pro over several years.  He now uses it every week in his normal role as a successful Program Planner and Project Manager.

“One interesting consequence I’ve observed when using SummaryPro within a PMO (and indeed as a PM myself) is that it tends to drive the quality of planning up.  Given that the detailed plan directly drives the Plan On A Page, the detailed plan needs to be properly set up and maintained.  Thus the use of SummaryPro tends to increase the quality of the plans and the maintenance activity.

“Over the years that I have been producing summaries, a lot of people admired this tool and the ease with which I can produce even a complex suite of reports and told me I should market it.  Eventually, enough positive feedback convinced me I should do this and this site is the result. “

Miles Goodchild, Founder, Summary Pro