AceProject Archives - Page 15 of 17

International Project Management Day

Yesterday was International Project Management Day. Surprised? Me too! I only found out at the end of the day, by chance.

Having a day to promote project management is a good idea, it’s a great opportunity to discuss project management and promote best practices.

Already quite a few states in the USA have adopted International Project Management Day. However, it’s turning into a project management week. Some states celebrate it on November 1st, others November 2nd, and yet another state has a project management week. The official date for International Project Management Day is the first Thursday of November.

By Daniel Raymond|2008-11-06T21:40:00-05:002008-11-06|

What the client wants, needs, and asks for: it’s up to you to find out!

I’m sure most of you have had this situation when they deliver a product:

Situation 1: What the client wants and what the client asks for are two different things

Client: It’s really nice, but that’s not what I wanted

Supplier: This product was built to meet the specifications you gave us.

Client: Yes, but that not what I want.

Supplier: …

Situation 2: What the client needs and what the client asks for are two different things

Client: This product is great, but it’s not doing what I need it to do.

Supplier: We built the product you wanted.

Client: I know, but it turns out I need the product to do something different

Supplier: ???

What do you do?

Now, you end up with a dilemma in these situations: should you rebuild the product so it does what the client wants/needs, at you cost, or at their cost?

After all, you built a product to meet their specs, and it’s not your fault if it’s not what they really wanted.

Or is it?

What should you have done?

As the project manager, you should have made sure you […]

By Daniel Raymond|2008-11-03T15:31:00-05:002008-11-03|

5 ways to involve your client in your projects

When managing a project, it’s important not to lose sight with who you’re working for. Your client is not always an actual customer. Not always the person who pays for the project, your client can also be the person who will use the product or service you are making. For example, if you’re reorganizing archives at your work, the client could be those who need to search the archives: administrative and customer service teams.

It can be quite disheartening to deliver something that disappoints the client. After all, you worked hard on that project, and you would like people to be impressed. If you want to make sure your client is happy with your work, involve them from the start, and keep them involved all the way through.

Start from a client request
A project for the sake of a project is useless. Find something that someone needs, and do it. Most organizations have wish lists where clients or other employees contribute; they are a great starting place.

Right from the start
Even before you start planning your project, contact […]

By Daniel Raymond|2008-10-31T18:57:00-04:002008-10-31|

The apple of frustration never gets eaten

A while ago we went grocery shopping at a different shop than our usual place. It’s surprising how we get used to a specific customer experience.

Long story short, we were confronted with rules that seemed illogical in the purchasing of apples. It made our experience at this store negative, and we are very unlikely to shop there again.

A few days later, we bought more apples from our regular store, and the experience seemed even better, because of the frustration we experienced at the other store.

Which apples do you think were eaten first?

We kept looking at the “apples of frustration” and just didn’t want to eat them. The apples themselves were fine, but the memory of buying them was so negative that it spilled on the product.

In the end, we ate those apples, but not before all the other options were exhausted.

Do you want to be that choice?

How people interact with you influences how they see your product. If their experience with your organization is good, they will see your product favorably, maybe even better than […]

By Daniel Raymond|2008-10-29T14:53:00-04:002008-10-29|

Eveyrone thinks about dealines, but what about effort?

When planning a project, we think about how long it will take to complete it. This is what we ask our team members: how long for you to code this module/wire this house/print these brochures?

We forget how hard it will be, how much effort we will have to put into the task to complete it.

It may take 3 days for paint to dry, but there is not much effort involved in this.
It may take 3 days to code a module, for a team of 3 developers who will have to rewrite part of the software core to make it work.

Same duration, different effort.

If something has a high level of difficulty and requires a lot of effort, the risk of delay is much greater, and you should plan for it in your schedule, that is, how long you allow for the task to be completed.

By Daniel Raymond|2008-10-27T14:53:00-04:002008-10-27|

A fun trick: DON’T build your projects reports in AceProject

All the boss wants is to know how the project is going. She’s not interested in the task specifics. She wants to know if the project is on track or not.

Of course, who manages just one project these days? You need to be able to show all your projects together.

2 little reports will do the trick for you: the Project Gantt Chart and a customized Projects list.

Start with the Projects list.

Go to My Office > My Projects > My Assigned Projects.

This page shows all the projects you’re assigned to. You can customize the look of this list to show computed fields like Actual Hours and Estimated Hours.

I suggest you choose these fields:

This will give you a nice report that you can simply print or export to Excel:

A Projects report like this takes 5 seconds to make – you won’t need to reset the columns once you’ve done it. It’s dynamic, so the data is always up-to-date. It […]

By Daniel Raymond|2008-10-23T21:37:00-04:002008-10-23|

Irritants should be your first priority

I tried to print a fax today. In Windows Vista’s Picture Viewer.

No can do. Vista sees my .tif file as an image, and tries to print is in landscape orientation. There was nothing I could do to change it. This highly aggravated. Vista was getting in the way of getting things done, a big no-no for tools – tools should help you get things done, not prevent you from that.

I turned to Vista’s help with no luck, and googled my problem. Lo an behold, I found several forum threads on that very subject.

The solution: download a fax viewer that works.

I am so irritated that I will download the software. If I could entirely replace Vista’s picture viewer feature, I would.

Don’t be like Vista. Don’t get in the way of your client’s work.

By Daniel Raymond|2008-10-21T18:36:00-04:002008-10-21|

What’s your plan B?

Do you have a plan in case something goes wrong in your project?

Let’s say a key team member accepts a position at another company. Are you prepared to reallocate her tasks to someone else? Is there someone else who could take over?

Or, let’s say the 5 more people that human resources were to hire for your team take longer than expected. Will your project still be on time without them? What are you going to do: overwork the people that are there, negotiate a new deadline?

It’s not about being pessimistic, but about being prepared. About knowing where the project could be endangered and thinking about how you’re going to deal with that.

Often, we don’t want to think about those risks, because we are confident that we will succeed, and because we don’t want to “jinx” it. But not planning ahead your risk management strategy is playing with fire. With risk management, you will be able to deal with potentially disastrous issues better, because you thought of what to do beforehand, not in the heat of […]

By Daniel Raymond|2008-10-15T17:03:00-04:002008-10-15|

How to prevent your clients from breaking up with you

Yesterday I wrote about my heart-breaking separation from my beloved Xobni. So how can we keep this from happening at our company? How do we keep our clients happy?

1. Close mouth, open ears

It’s the most basic part. Listen to your clients. REALLY listen to them, don’t just hear them talk while imagining reasons why they’re wrong. If you really pay attention to what your product’s users are saying, you’ll know exactly where the pain points are in the product and you’ll have your priority list all drawn up for you.

A few days after people create an account with AceProject, we send them an email and ask them what they think of the product, if they can suggest improvements or missing feature. The response we get is a very good source of inspiration for us.

2. Aggravation is really bad

An exasperated client should never be ignored or dismissed. If you let aggravation at your product go unchecked, it only grows and never brings anything good to you, your product or your users. When someone is angry at […]

By Daniel Raymond|2008-10-09T13:45:00-04:002008-10-09|

Breaking up with a product you love

This week, I had finally had enough. There was no apology that could fix the relationship, no reparations possible. It broke my heart but I had to do it.

I broke up with a product I love.

Xobni is a great Outlook Add-on that indexes all your email, provides neat metrics (like response times) and had a highly usable search interface. I had been using Xobni for months.

Xobni had only one problem: it slowed down not only outlook, but my whole computer. At first I didn’t want to admit it: I blamed it on the anti-virus software, then I did numerous registry cleaning sweeps, all to no avail.

So even though I love Xobni and I love using it, I just can’t take the slow-downs anymore.

It’s not me, it’s Xobni

When I uninstalled it, Xobni asked me if I wanted to know when performance issues were fixed. So Xobni knew there problem was on its end, and it admitted to it.

Now I am eagerly waiting for an email, hoping that I can reconcile with my beloved […]

By Daniel Raymond|2008-10-09T13:00:00-04:002008-10-09|