AceProject Archives - Page 5 of 17

Nobody likes having a rash

If we wear an ill-fitted shoe, there will be friction between our foot and the shoe. If left unchecked, this friction will turn into a painful blister. Afterward, we will be unwilling to wear the shoe again because of the pain that friction cause our poor foot.

The same process happens if there is friction in our projects. If friction prevents someone from doing their job on the project, they will associate these negative impressions with the project as a whole.

This is why we should work hard at removing friction and making things easy for the project team, internal and external.

It should be easy

It should be easy for the stakeholder to request changes
It should be easy to a member of your team to raise a flag about an issue with the project
It should be easy to the sponsor to know how the project is going.
It should be easy for everyone involved with the project to know what's the next step

How easy are these things in your project?

By Daniel Raymond|2009-10-13T16:55:00-04:002009-10-13|

Using AceProject for document check in/check out

Document management is a very convenient feature in
AceProject. Documents can be associated with a task or a project. AceProject’s document management features include: Versioning, Locking and Public/Private Availability. Locking a document doesn’t hide it. Actually, anyone who can view the document can see it even when it’s locked. It’s simply put in read-only mode.

One might be interested in document management for storage, archiving and collaboration, among other things. Today, I’d like to focus on version control (a.k.a. check in/check out) which can be achieved using the locking feature in AceProject.

Locking a document protects it against deletion and overwriting. Several scenarios can require locking documents. Here are a two examples:

Set in stone documents and document templates

Documents that should not be altered by anyone should be locked. For instance, final/approved versions, legal documents, quotes, invoices, documents from clients, etc. All templates that users start from should be locked as well. It may be forms, invoices, quotes, web pages or any other relevant source that is used over and over again in your organization.

Prevent conflicts when several users […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-10-13T16:25:00-04:002009-10-13|

PMBOK changes: it’s in the details

This week Josh from pmstudent.com contacted me to update a study help Excel sheet I built back when I was studying for my PMP exam. With the PMBOK update, the spreadsheet was obsolete.

As I was updating the processes, inputs and outputs, I noticed that while the processes themselves hadn't changed much, the inputs and outputs terminology has changed quite a bit – and for the better! For example, instead of listing all the management plans (human resources management plan, comminucations management plan, quality management plan, etc.), the PMBOK nos simply lists "project documents." A much simpler term.

I saw two new things in the inputs and outputs:

Requirements traceability matrix. It's a table designed to link requirements with their origin, like a business need or a project objective.
Stakeholder register. Similar to a risk register, it's a document where information about the stakeholders is kept. This is useful to make sure all stakeholders are involved in the project at the proper level.

Download the study helper: Excel 2000-2003

By Daniel Raymond|2009-10-08T15:42:00-04:002009-10-08|

AceProject 4.7 Source Code edition is now available!

When we release a new version of AceProject, we first make it available for hosted accounts, where it’s easy for us to fix bugs. We’ll wait a few weeks to make sure the system is stable, then make the release available to our Source Code customers.

AceProject Source Code installs on a Web server. Ends users still use a Web browser to access AceProject, but the data resides on the customer’s server instead of our servers.

Why buy the Source Code edition?

There are a few reasons why our customers who choose to purchase AceProject Source Code:

One-time payment. Since the Source Code is installed on the customer’s own web server, there is no recurring payment.
Unlimited projects, tasks, and file space. AceProject Source Code licenses are based on users only. For groups that complete a high number of projects, it may be more cost-effective to purchase AceProject Source Code.
Complete control over the system. The customer chooses where to install AceProject Source Code, how to maintain that server and – most importantly – how to secure it. […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-10-06T15:15:00-04:002009-10-06|

Video: version 4.7 overview

We officially released the Source Code version of AceProject 4.7 today. The Hosted version was released several weeks ago, so we got plenty of time to fix issues we hadn’t found during our testing process (thank you Hosted customers :-)). As a result, we’re glad to offer a stable Source Code package.

Improvements in version 4.7 have been discussed quite a few times on this blog already. Now, here’s a video presentation of those improvements.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiCpJzn2mo0

(Please visit the site to view this media)

By Daniel Raymond|2009-10-06T14:53:00-04:002009-10-06|

Finding the productivity sinkholes in your day

As we go through our day, we tend to repeat the same gestures or tasks over and over without realizing it. If we have enough of those repetitive tasks in our day, they take over and we feel we have no time for anything else! Unfrotunately, because they're the kind of thing that evolves on and creeps up on us, we don't realize their importance until they become productivity sinkholes.

Productivity sinkholes steal time from us. They force us to do and redo the same thing many times. Why? Just because we never planned on these tasks to be required so often. Or because we feel it's faster to do the task than figure out a way to automate it.

And we're right: automating a task can be longer than doing it once. But if afterward it cuts the time to perform the task in half, we will be saving a lot more time down the road.

Here's an example. We used to create our quote by hand, in Microsoft Word. We had a basic template, but it […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-10-01T17:32:00-04:002009-10-01|

Is sales a dirty word in your organization?

In most of the places where I've worked, the sales team was never seen positively. It seemed working in sales made you a worse person for it.

It seems sales is seen as a manipulation effort to extract money from people, barely above theft.

It's time to adjust our perspectives, no?

I was once travelling with a sales rep and he told me "you know, sales is the team that goes and gets the money for your paycheck. It's great that I get to sell a product that works so well." There is the symbiosis. We need sales to develop relationships with our clients and we need a great product and great service to keep the client coming back.

Sales is really only pre-sales customer service.

By Daniel Raymond|2009-09-28T18:02:00-04:002009-09-28|

Software as a service greens your workplace

Chris Thorman from SoftwareAdvice.com wrote an interesting blog post today, comparing the energy consumption of a traditions client-server architecture in your corporate Intranet to a laptop-carrying group using web-based software.

Chris' numbers are surprising: the software-as-a-service (SAAS) users end up consuming 88% less energy after the move from desktop computers and intranet-based software.

The difference in the numbers is based on two major differences:

The users in the Intranet scenario are using a desktop computer, while the SAAS scenario puts laptops on the user's desks. Desktop computers do consume a lot more energy than laptops.
It is assumed that in the Intranet scenario, the server is dedicated to the application, while in the SAAS scenario it is shared. While it is true that SAAS applications will often host hundreds (if not thousands) of accounts on the same server, we cannot assume that each Intranet application will use its dedicated server. Still, it is unlikely that an intranet server would have hundreds of applications running on it.

Software as a service is a good way to green […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-09-22T15:47:00-04:002009-09-22|

A sneak peak at AceProject 4.8

We’ve been working on AceProject 4.8’s new cost tracking features.

Cost tracking has been an often-requested feature set for AceProject, and we’re finally doing it!

While working on the cost tracking module, we realized that not everyone would want to track costs in AceProject. This is why we decided to give that flexibility to our users. While we were at it, we also added another requested feature: the ability to disable all time sheet features in AceProject. You will be able to do this via the Account Info page:

The nice thing about disabling time and cost tracking is that our clients will have the choice of either a very simple interface for project management, or a full-featured, iron-triangle project management system.

Keeping it simple is the challenge

We have worked for eight years to keep AceProject simple. Adding the cost-tracking features while keeping AceProject simple is a daunting challenge. While we need to have a complete feature set, we don’t want to confuse anyone.

Each person (within their access rights) will enter […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-09-18T14:33:00-04:002009-09-18|

About startups and time machines

Yesterday I met with a very dynamic team working at making their startup succeed. The partners, Gabriel and Samuel, were full of that enthusiasm young entrepreneurs have when they believe anything is possible.

Websystems started like that, eight years ago.

When your company is still in the nursery stage, the sky is the limit. There is never a conversation about things being technically impossible. No sentence ever starts with “we can’t do that.” There is no technological debt to live with. Just dreams and hopes and energy.

Which made me think: why does this feeling stop? As the company grows, why do things become less possible?

Ease of change is proportional the resources invested in the project

Small teams, like small companies, have the ability to turn around much faster. Likewise, when we are at the beginning of something – company or project – it’s much easier to change everything. It seems as time goes, it becomes harder to change our minds. We are blinded by the sunk costs. Sunk costs represent what we have invested already in something. […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-09-16T12:42:00-04:002009-09-16|