Other Posts Archives - Page 6 of 21

Vacations change perspective

It's the high vacation season here in Canada. Since July is the warmest month of the year, it makes sense that most people take time off during that period.

Vacations are good for the body, the mind and the soul. It's not just about resting, vacations give us an opportunity to change the focus of our lives, from our work to something else. A different place to be, different activities, more time with our families.

For me, vacations are also an opportunity to rethink an issue or gain fresh perspective on my projects. Begin out of the office changes how we see things. Sometimes this is what we need to come up with an innovative solution.

Every year, when I leave on vacation, I choose one thing to reflect upon during my vacation. When I come back, I don't always have a solution (epiphanies don't happen upon request, you know), but I always have better understanding.

What will you be thinking about during your vacation?

By Daniel Raymond|2009-07-21T11:39:00-04:002009-07-21|

Project managers who like to learn belong on Twitter

Ah, Twitter. Possibly the most misunderstood tool online.

A lot of people wonder “what’s the deal with Twitter? Why would I tell the world what I had for lunch?”

For us at Websystems, Twitter is a learning tool. The amount of information, wisdom and discussion that happens on the twitternets is simply amazing. Since each post is only 140-characters long, not only must people be concise and to the point, but it’s also very quick to browse through all those tweets.

The secret to getting good information from Twitter is to use hashtags. Hashtags are like search terms that people will put at the end of their posts. Then, through a simple search on the Twemes website or with your favorite Twitter application, you can see everything that’s going on for that keyword.

The popular one related to project management is #pmot (for project managers on twitter). There’s also #pmi, #pmp, #agile and #pmiagile

Here is what was posted recently:

Essentially, […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-07-16T12:50:00-04:002009-07-16|

Trends VS needs: know the difference

We receive suggestions for new features every week. When I do live demos with future clients, they regularly request new features as well.

We really like receiving these suggestions. They give us a pulse of the market, of what people are looking for.

A year ago people were asking for Salesforce integration a lot. Six months ago it was baselines. These days, people are asking to automated resource leveling.

Now I’m not saying those are not great features to have in AceProject. Quite the contrary. However, these requests come and go. They’re trends.

Over the last 2 years, one feature that has been requested consistently is cost-tracking. It’s a big feature.

And we’ve decided to do it!

Cost tracking will be included in AceProject 4.8

We chose to develop the cost tracking feature because it’s been requested consistently for a long time. This tells us it’s a true need for AceProject, not just a trend. Seeing how implementing cost tracking will take a lot of time and effort, we wouldn’t have done if we had identified it as a trend.

Next time: I’ll […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-07-14T12:01:00-04:002009-07-14|

That pot is not calling that kettle black: project budgets and estimates

We were sitting at the table in the conference room, discussing how we’ll implement the new cost tracking features in AceProject. And I realized the difference between budget and estimate was not clear at all to everyone sitting at that table.

What’s the difference, anyway?

Budget is defined as:

A sum of money allocated for a particular purpose

An estimate is defined as:

An approximate calculation of quantity or degree or worth; “an estimate of what it would cost.”

A budget is often something that is decided before estimating how much something will cost. The organization decides how much they can invest in the project, then they decide on the scope of the project, and finally the project team estimates how much it will really cost to do the project. When the estimate is higher than the budget, the fun begins.

Here’s an example:

I want to buy a new car. I know I can afford to pay 15 000$ for the car. That’s my budget.
I go to the car dealer and I pick the car I want, with all the options I […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-07-08T18:29:00-04:002009-07-08|

About tools and flexibility

Whenever someone wants a walk through of AceProject, I am the one who sets up the web meetings and shows them how they can manage their projects and their clients efficiently with our system. I have been giving demos every week for the last 18 months, and I have yet to see two clients with the same needs. Of course, the higher-level needs are more common (collaboration, project management, document management, etc.) But how each client wants to implement this processes in their organization is different every time.

Now AceProject is a tool. It’s something that will help you get things done. It’s not going to do the work for you. It’s not going to force you to go things a certain way.

All tools should be flexible. Not everyone who wants to manage projects needs milestones. Not everyone wants dependencies.

Each organization is unique, and each project manager is unique. Project management tools should accommodate this uniqueness in their product. After all, who are we to tell you how to run your business?

By Daniel Raymond|2009-07-06T13:21:00-04:002009-07-06|

eBook Review: Leadership and the project manager

Art Petty writes at Management Excellence. A few months ago, he published the ebook Leadership and The Project Manager: Developing the Skills that Fuel High Performance.

While there is a lot of talk about leadership and project management, Art takes an original approach. Instead of telling anecdotes to illustrate his point, he uses questions. For example, to illustrate what leadership maturity means, he lists the following questions:

Does the PM understand the true role of a leader?
Can the PM lead effectively without formal authority?
Is the PM capable of inspiring and motivating others and leading across silos?
Does the PM understand her role in creating a high performance culture?
Is she comfortable receiving and delivering constructive feedback?
Does she have high credibility as a professional and a person?
Does she understand the stages of team development and the changing leadership tasks at each stage?
Does she manage upwards and communicate with stakeholders effectively?

Art’s question-based approach creates a book where one stops and thinks at each chapter, and ponders one’s own answer […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-07-01T15:16:00-04:002009-07-01|

PMBOK 4th edition: the human at the center

I recently had the chance to sit it on a very informative presentation about the changes to the PMI’s Project Management Body of Knowledge 4th edition, aka the PMBOK. It’s important to stay up-to-date on profesionnal best practices, and there’s been a lot of discussion on the new PMBOK.

I’ll spare you the details of the new processes and the deleted processes in the system. I’ll spare you the details of the new flowcharts.

Here’s what stuck my about the changes in the new PMBOK: it put more emphasis on the human side of project management. Managing stakeholders is more important.

There’s even a whole section about interpersonal skills, Appendix G, which talks about leadership, team building, motivation, communication, and so on.

“Respect and trust, rather than fear and submission, are the key elements of effective leadership.” – PMBOK 4 th edition, page 448.

I believe it’s the first time the PMI takes a real stance about management styles and personal interaction.

It was not a minute too soon.

By Daniel Raymond|2009-06-24T11:50:00-04:002009-06-24|

Use the Pareto principle to improve project performance

The excellent post “The Lazy Project Manager” over at pmstudent got me thinking.

A common way to manage projects is management by exception. The rationale behind it is that we should only give attention to parts of the project that are not going according to plan. It makes sense. If parts of the project are going well, there is no use scrutinizing them.

However, if we’re only focussing on what’s deviating from the plan, we may be missing opportunities for improvement. If we use Pareto’s 80/20 principle, 80% of the work in the project is on 20% of the project value. This is no doubt the most expensive part of the project. Even if it’s going well, we may gain significant performance improvement by looking at the 20% most costly or most difficult part of the project, and looking for areas of improvement.

By Daniel Raymond|2009-06-22T15:31:00-04:002009-06-22|

Agile and project management

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting Bruno Larouche from Génération Agile. He helps businesses implement agile methodologies. We had a conversation on Twitter earlier about AceProject’s compatibility with agile project management.

Bruno gave us a very enlightening presentation. While I had read about agile before, I don’t think I had ever had the chance to talk with someone who lives and breathes agile. One thing that hit me as Bruno was explaining what agile project management was about, is the importance of the human in Agile development methodologies.

What I learned about Agile project management and humans

Agile is about adapting to change. The Agile project team must react to changing conditions in our environment.
Agile project management stresses fulfilling a need. It’s important to manage stakeholders’ expectations well.
It’s crucial to involve the client (or at least a representative of the end users) early in the process. There’s no point in asking for feedback when it’s too late to change anything.
Communication and motivation are essential to deliver early and often.
The project manager is never […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-06-19T11:49:00-04:002009-06-19|

Virtual is good, but you can’t replace face-to-face

We’ve been working on a project with a client for the last 6 months. The challenge of the project was not so much the technical aspect of the work, but understanding the needs of the client. We were working via email and phone conference calls with the client.

The problem was that it was difficult to get a clear decision from the client. Especially with email, the delay between the questionn and the answer made communications difficult. When we were on the phone, we were also missing an important part of communications: non-verbal.

We were stalled.

We decided to invite the client to our offices. With all of us sitting at the same table, we were able to reach an agreement as to what needed to be done and how we were going to do it. It was easy to reach the agreement because we were able to communicate more efficiently. Being face to face gives us all the information that someone transmits: the verbal AND the non-verbal.

Virtual meetings are not as rich

It’s easy to give the wrong […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-06-12T17:12:00-04:002009-06-12|