Other Posts Archives - Page 10 of 21

Good customer service leads to sales

We’re shopping around for a CMS for AceProject’s web site. In our search, we found KenticoCMS, a nice product that seemed to fit our needs. So we installed the demo to play around with it.

That’s not the interesting part. The interesting part happened a couple of day later. I received an email from Juraj, asking if I had installed Kentico yet and if I got started evaluating it.

No sales pitch. Just a nice offer to help me and answer my questions.

I have to admit this was one of the best sales pitch I ever received. Because it was not about Kentico getting something from me. It was about me getting something out of them.

The value of a customer does not appear after the sale

A lot of companies will put value on a customer once the sale is made. They want to make sure the customer will remain loyal. That is a valuable goal to have.

However, getting a customer to like you enough to stay with your product for a long time should […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-02-19T14:05:00-05:002009-02-19|

The tale of two icons

In AceProject 4.7, we introduce non-mandatory dependencies. Those are dependencies that don’t require the predecessor task to be completed before the successor can start. For example, you don’t need to be done buying presents before you can start wrapping the ones you’ve got already.

Graphically speaking, we needed an icon that people would click to switch the dependency from mandatory to non-mandatory.

And that’s where things get interesting

How do you symbolize mandatory? Our graphic designer, Michel, and I looked up on Google images and in icon banks, we could not find a consensus, a standard symbol that would mean mandatory. We didn’t want to invent something. If you need to explain your icon, you’ve defeated the purpose of using an icon.

This is when Michel had a great idea: why not use the line that illustrated the dependency between tasks so show whether it’s mandatory? A dotted line () would mean non-mandatory, and a solid line () would mean mandatory.

The solution was simple, but the road to reach […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-02-17T15:48:00-05:002009-02-17|

Motivational Friday: punish inaction?

Bob Sutton, the famous guy behind the “No *** Rule“, wrote a very interesting post titled: Reward Success and Failure, Punish Inaction.

Why would we reward failure?

Bob then goes to make a very good point:

“It is worth remembering research on difference between the most
creative and successful people versus their more ordinary peers.
Einstein and da Vinci had more bad ideas than their peers. Babe Ruth
struck out more. That is because they acted, failed, learned, and kept
moving forward.”

What Bob argues is that not doing anything is worse than doing something wrong. I agree with him. Inaction breeds a passive attitude towards problems and life in general.

Inaction gets you nowhere

Go ahead. Read Bob’s post. And think about what you could do to fix things in your project. No need to know for sure if it will work. Just try something.

By Daniel Raymond|2009-02-13T16:17:00-05:002009-02-13|

Optimization: observe yourself

We often think about optimizing our day, our work life, our home life. And by optimizing we thing or improving how we do things.

Here’s something else to think about: how many things to you do every day? How many of those things could you automate?

A good place to start is email. Most of us start the day by sorting and processing the email that came in since we left work the day before. Could you setup rules to automatically sort emails, automatically forward emails to the right people? The amount of time you will invest in setting up the automation will pay for itself in no time.

Here at Websystems, we receive payment confirmations via email and we need to sort those emails in the morning. It doesn’t seem like a time-consuming activity (it takes Sylvain about 20 minutes every morning to sort payments). However, if we count 20 minutes per work day, the total is 80+ hours! That means that Sylvain spends over two weeks a year just sorting emails.

Implementing an automated system to sort […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-02-12T19:46:00-05:002009-02-12|

New case studies available

We’ve added two case studies to AceProject’s web site. Those are stories from real clients, telling us how AceProject helps them work better with their clients, with their employees, and with their students.

How AceProject helps a video game creator to manage time sheets

Beenox, a video game studio from Quebec City, needed a new employee time management system. Véronique Lessard, recruitment coordinator at Beenox, explains: “We needed to be able to manage vacations, time off and banked time. Since we are a video game company, it is essential for us to be able to know how many hours were worked on each project, and even per trade.”

Teaching project management – the hands-on approach

The engineering department at Quebec’s University in Rimouski (UQAR) regroups three disciplines: mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and electro mechanic systems engineering. During their academic journey, students must pass three courses that include a real design project, during their third and fourth year of training.

By Daniel Raymond|2009-02-04T16:27:00-05:002009-02-04|

A development process without a good dose of crazyness is wrong

I saw this great comic at Stack Overflow this morning, and I though I would share it with you.

No matter how much method we want to have in our development process, there is always a part of it that looks (or feels) like the comic above. It’s normal. When it’s over, it’s funny. Some of the best ideas can come out of those all-nighters.

Even though at Websystems we feel our development methods yields a much higher quality of product that the “lone coder” ways of our beginnings, there always comes a point when we all run around in circles. Usually in the bug fixing stage: everyone wants the software to be perfect, and we all want the software to be released. Inevitably, something will happen to threaten both our desires, and that’s when the running starts!

By Daniel Raymond|2009-02-02T15:29:00-05:002009-02-02|

Estimates, guesstimates

We are currently working on AceProject 4.7. Since we’ve implemented agile-style development methods, we have been packing more into our version releases. The issue we are having is estimating how long it’s going to take to build something, and ultimately how much new stuff we can put in the next version.

Because our developers hate to be late, they tend to over-estimate the time it will take to code something. So we end up with a nice problem: things get finished faster than expected. It’s better than being late. But then, how much more could we put in the release if we had estimated better?

By Daniel Raymond|2009-01-28T19:42:00-05:002009-01-28|

Human resources management: what do you bring to the table?

I’ve been reading on HR management for my upcoming PMP exam. According to the PMI, HR management is about getting the right team for the right project, and developing that team so that the product of the project is delivered on time and on budget.

As the project manager, what do you bring to the table?

It’s is easy to know what the software developer brings to the project. It’s harder to know what the PM brings to the project. We’re usually the cat herders: we do our best to keep the project on track, the team happy, the stakeholders under control and the deliverables…delivered!

It doesn’t feel like a productive job. But without a project manager, how many projects would ever end, let alone on time?

That’s what project managers bring to the table: cohesion and coordination.

By Daniel Raymond|2009-01-26T19:24:00-05:002009-01-26|

The downfall of Internet Explorer

It seems to me it’s only a few years ago that Internet Explorer took 80%+ of the browser share from my website visitors.

How things have changed. Internet Explorer is now used by only 49% of AceProject’s visitors, while FireFox is preferred by 40% of them. FireFox and Internet Explorer are now nose-to-nose.

By Daniel Raymond|2009-01-22T18:50:00-05:002009-01-22|