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 […]
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 […]
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?
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 […]
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.
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.
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 […]
AceProject 4.7 released: what’s new
We’ve been talking about it for a few months, and now it’s official. AceProject 4.7 is released. While we’ve fixed a lot of little things, 4.7 was also about making project management easier.
Project portfolio: out of Administration
We’ve separated portfolio management from account administration. This way, everyone can see all their projects, calendars and Gantt charts in one window. The Admin section is where you manage your account users, subscription, and other settings.
Workload over-allocation jumps at you
Besides the Portfolio tab, this is the most visual change. Based on the account default and the specific users settings, AceProject will highlight when someone is assigned more work than they can do in a day. This simple red highlight makes all the difference when running the workload report. We also like that the typical work day can be adjusted per user, to accommodate part-time employees, for example.
Task dependencies without the pain
Let’s be honest here: Task dependencies can get complicated by nature, and AceProject was not making it […]
AceProject V4.7
- New Project Portfolio – AceProject has a new Portfolio tab, which shows all assigned projects together. Gantt charts, Calendars, and reports can now be produced regardless of project, without requiring access to the Admin tab. The “Administration-Limited Mode” access right was renamed to Portfolio.
- User Workload report improvements – The User Workload report now highlights over-allocated days when time assigned exceeds what is configured as a typical workday for the user. A default value for the typical workday can be entered at the account level, and adjusted on a user-by-user basis.
- Custom SMTP Server – Administrators can now configure their own email server to send email notifications. This will help fix email notification delivery issues for many users.
- Mandatory Task dependencies – Dependencies can now be mandatory or not, allowing a task to be started while its predecessor is not completed.
- This adds flexibility, especially when unplanned changes occur in a project. AceProject now also proposes start and end dates […]
- This adds flexibility, especially when unplanned changes occur in a project. AceProject now also proposes start and end dates […]
AceProject 4.7 to be released tomorrow night!
Yes, it’s finally ready! AceProject server will be upgraded tomorrow night to version 4.7.
Here are the release notes.
Congratulations to the team for such good work, and I hope you like the new version!