Kristyn Gunderson | AtTask Blog

About Kristyn Gunderson

Get a sneak peak to the inner workings of AtTask. I'll act as a journalist from the inside, providing updates on the latest projects, events and news for AtTask.

Work Management Tours

9 February 2012 - POSTED by Kristyn Gunderson

There’s a long list of available mediums for learning and continually progressing professionally: everything from podcasts, webinars, articles, conferences, and social media. With Work Management Tours, AtTask has found a way to engage people in face-to-face group discussion that provides professional insight into and collaboration about work management best practices.

Girard Hardy, Field Marketing at AtTask, talks about the purpose and benefit of a Work Management Tour (WMT).

Kristyn: What is a Work Management Tour and what’s the purpose?

Girard: The work management tour is an opportunity for people looking for a project management solution as well as current AtTask customers to network together, talk about the way they work and learn from one another on how people use the tool and how it can help you. In the past we only had face-to-face interaction with customers at events such as the AtTask WorkOut User Conference. There, we noticed a lot interests from clients in the customer case study sections where people were able to sit next to other customers and hear the perspective of customers on how they use the tool. From there we wanted to develop the WMT’s to establish similar situations for customers at a local level.

Kristyn: What have you seen to be the biggest benefit?

Girard: Recently we revamped it as a discussion so we get more time with customers and prospects investigating AtTask. It’s a way to take a digital online community and make it live and in person. Being able to facilitate a discussion and host a place where people can talk with one another on how they use the product we’ve often found they solve each other’s problems and learn the new ways to help improve their usability. After the discussion there is a demo of AtTask on how the tool can address many of the discussion topics. People not only learn how others use the tool, but also can see how it can best fit their company’s needs as well.

Kristyn: What are all the nitty-gritty details? When, where, how do we get information for the next one?

Girard: So far we’ve been to New York, Atlanta, London, San Francisco, Salt Lake City and Houston. We do 1-3 each quarter and of course lunch is provided. Each WMT is announced in emails sent to professionals in the major metropolitan areas of each city where they are held. Information can also be found in the AtTask Newsletter and, as always, available on social media such as twitter, @AtTask, or the AtTask Facebook page. Be sure to watch your inbox for a Work Management Tour near you.

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“Tuning” Post Implementation

25 January 2012 - POSTED by Kristyn Gunderson

Having grown up in Colorado, skiing has always been a favorite past time in my family. While skis can be costly, my father taught me how to properly take care of them. It is just as important to tune and wax your skis periodically every year, as it is to buy the right equipment. Keeping up on the maintenance of a pair of skis is not only necessary for them to last longer, but also to help skiing performance.

Just as tuning and waxing a pair of skis is essential to have high performance while skiing, it is necessary to continually “tune” the way you work.

Post Implementation Consulting Team Lead, Dave Johnston, talks about the benefits, options and processes of consulting services after AtTask implementation to help stay waxed and tuned to achieve high performance.

Kristyn: Looking at the implementation, where does your role fit in the process?

Dave: The purpose of our team is to help customers once they’ve already gone through implementation. So after implementation, they may have taken a couple education courses, finished working with the consultant, and that’s where we come in. Often times, once people have been working in the tool questions will still come up but it may be more complicated than just needing basic support. Our team is able to help customize the support and walk clients through different obstacles if they arise.

Kristyn: How does the post implementation consulting work? Are there different packages?

Dave: After the consultant works with the client and time runs out we noticed sometimes there is still a need. So when you can’t use your consulting time anymore, you can still have the customer support that is personalized to your needs.

Secondly, there are three different packages: silver-25 hours, gold-50 hours and platinum-100 hours. The time can be used on essentially anything the customer needs. We’ll do training, reporting building or sometimes a combination of the two. Having that extra time helps to walk people through it, explaining features along the way so they fully understand how it functions and how it works specifically for their needs.

Kristyn: How do you not only get in touch with a post implementation consultant, but also find out more about the packages?

Dave: Getting in touch with a post implementation consultant is easy. In the help desk there is post implementation queue where you can fill out the specific needs or complications, hit submit and AtTask contacts you. Also, to find more information on any consulting services, or the post implementation packages specifically, everything is at Community.attask.com.

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Heavy Lifting

10 January 2012 - POSTED by Kristyn Gunderson

Often I find myself overwhelmed with too many things to do with list after list for work, house chores, groceries and more work. While I’ve become accustom to juggling several balls at one time I still gladly accept help for the heavy lifting.

Eric Lopez, Sales Engineer at AtTask, has more experience than most being with AtTask for almost 5 years; he talks about the benefits of the sales engineer when investigating a new project management tool.

Kristyn: What’s your role as a Sales Engineer (SE)?

Eric: Our role is to support the sales representatives to provide a product expertise. Most of the SE’s have been consultants or trainers and have an in-depth knowledge of what AtTask can do. We have experience in applying AtTask in business settings. The sales reps engage us whenever they need help to show how AtTask can handle a business process by creating a custom demo.

Kristyn: How do you customize a demo?

Eric: Anytime a sales representative feels they are in over their head with questions from a client about specific functions of the tool they ask an SE to join them on a Q & A session. Lets say a sales rep needs an SE to help with a real life scenario, usually, we get on a discovery call with the client and sales rep to find out what functionality they want to see. Depending on what the client would like demonstrated, the SE takes the data and present it to them. It is our job to make the client feel comfortable purchasing AtTask.

Kristyn: What is the biggest benefit for the customer?

Eric: The best approach is to work with the sales rep and the SE to have them demonstrate the tool. Many people think just give me the trial and I’ll figure it out; a much more efficient process is to tell us what you want to see and we’ll show you. When people try to go at it on their own, time passes by and they might poke around in it a little, but they don’t have the time to put in the effort to find what the need is and if the tool does it.

Always make your evaluation process as efficient as possible. Out sourcing the heavy lifting to the SE saves time. The SE’s are folks with real client experience, a lot of experience in configuring AtTask and are very keen on creative ways to adapt the solution to business situations. It’s about making their set up quickly and easing the load.

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You’re Never Too Old To Learn

14 December 2011 - POSTED by Kristyn Gunderson

In the economic downturn many people are finding themselves taking new avenues and learning new skills to keep their job or even to find a new one. Like individuals, companies have had to cut back and are looking to find new ways to be more efficient in their work and are requiring more job responsibilities from employees without a pay increase. “You’re never too old to learn”, an old proverb, might just be the best attitude to take.

Nathan Greer, Manager of Education Services paints a better picture for the AtTask education courses and how to take advantage of learning the full capabilities of the AtTask tool.

Kristyn: What are the courses AtTask offers and how often do they occur?

Nathan: We have several different courses including: AtTask Fundamentals, Administrator, Reporting Essentials, Basic, Intermediate and Advance Portfolio & Resource Management. We offer 9-12 courses each week.

In the beginning of October we made a few changes and started offering courses that are only in the morning or only in the afternoon over a course of several days instead of full day classes. This makes it easier for people who are in other time zones as well as for those who have a hard time taking an entire day away from their work.

Kristyn: What percent of clients utilizes the AtTask education courses?

Nathan: Virtually all of our clients are coming to at least one of the courses, however not everyone needs to take all of the classes. On the Community.AtTask.com website you’ll find an education planner that helps people identify which classes to take in order to best fit their needs in using AtTask in their role.

Kristyn: Nathan, can you explain some of the different options on how to register for courses?

Nathan: You can purchase courses individually or a much more cost efficient approach is to purchase an education program. This allows all the users in your company to take as many courses as they want over the course of a year. It’s kind of like an all you can eat buffet for the individual company any time they want.

To register for AtTask courses or the education program go to community.attask.com.

Kristyn: What is the overall benefit of the education courses?

Nathan: The nice thing about the education courses is they are going to give a broad range of courses of how AtTask can be set-up and applied to customer needs. Our educators do a great job of individualizing the courses to the needs of our customers and how it will help each company be most success with the tool.

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Necessity

30 November 2011 - POSTED by Kristyn Gunderson

Isn’t it reassuring when a company uses their own product?

I had the opportunity to talk with Jean Achesen, Director of Revenue Accounting and Eric Sailsbery, Corporate Controller at AtTask on how they have utilized their own tool in the finance department.

Kristyn: What was the main goal when the finance team first implemented AtTask and how was it successful?

Jean: We first implemented AtTask in our department in 2009 to help be more efficient with our closed processes. Usually, for most finance departments, they are a little out of control and tend to take way too much time. We should never have to take a weeks time closing our monthly books, so we started to use AtTask to organize our dependencies by putting them into project formats. We went from taking 10 days to close the books down to 3.

Eric: Really, it’s a great documentation of the finance best practices. We’ve put all these processes in project format, loaded with a little over 200 tasks. Ad hoc assignments are also now entered into AtTask. Emails tend to get lost, but by inputting all project and ad hoc work into the tool, all work and communication is centralized into one location.

Kristyn: Did you come across any difficulties implementing the product throughout the whole team? If so how did you overcome them?

Jean: The only difficulty we really had was getting full adoption from the team and having everyone use AtTask. However, once people were committed to it they were fully utilizing the tool in all day-to-day tasks. To help people begin using AtTask we implemented a rewards system. Small prizes were given for tasks entered into AtTask, completing tasks, things like that.

Eric: Another crucial aspect to implementing AtTask into the entire department was buy-in starting at the top. Our CFO was motivated to utilize AtTask to become more efficient. Training was also always available to team members so we could learn exactly how to use AtTask to its full potential.

Kristyn: Now that AtTask is helping keep all your big projects organized and timelier, what other aspects for finance has it helped with?

Eric: We developed a project within AtTask that our auditors can see. Instead of the auditors sending us a large spreadsheet, we create a project for it that has around 100 tasks. Before, the auditors would send spreadsheets and emails back and forth. Now, they can go to a project, view documents attached to the project and have a full view of everything. They can also ask questions allowing one stream of communication to centralize all the information for the audit.

Jean: Most of the things we do in finance are hard to measure, but using AtTask we’ve been able to better measure our time and where it’s spent. It’s stream lined our projects really well because now we can take tasks and assign them throughout the department. It really localizes our communication in our team and we can always see where we are in a project. I think AtTask for a finance team is a necessity. It is easily an equivalent of one person.

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Convenient and Efficient

15 November 2011 - POSTED by Kristyn Gunderson

Today’s society is all about convenience and efficiency. I remember when I used my cell phone for making phone calls and that was it. Now, it’s also my camera, navigation system, grocery list, email, and the list goes on. It is simply more efficient when you can make one stop and get all the information you need. Josh Hardman, Customer Support Manager at AtTask, agrees as he talks about the ins-and-outs of the AtTask Community site.

Kristyn: What purpose does the AtTask Community site serve?

Josh: The Community site is a convenient one-stop location for information about all the services offered at AtTask by the global services department. Information on training courses, consulting as well as customer support into one location that is easy to find and navigate.

Kristyn: What are some of the key features located on the Community?

Josh: One of the major highlights with the Community is that is contains a calendaring systems for the training courses. Not only can you see when all the courses take place, but you can also register for courses online. Before, people had to call to register for training courses; this systems is much more efficient. Also, located on the Community is our Download Center for all AtTask plug-ins such as the integration with Outlook as well as Salesforce.

An upcoming feature to watch for on the Community site is our User Groups, which will provide a great opportunity for AtTask users to actively participate and engage with one another.

Kristyn: Can you describe what the User Groups are and what it will bring to the Community?

Josh: User groups are basically a way that users can collaborate with other AtTask users on theme-based comments, similar to discussion groups on LinkedIn. Groups are in themes such as PPM, end users, API, etc. Anyone can join any group and pose questions or comment on what they are doing that works or doesn’t work. It enables people to engage and participate in an open forum to hopefully help answer questions and better utilize AtTask. The goal with the Community is to be another avenue to help people get answers for issues or to find other methods of how other people are using AtTask.

Watch for the new User Groups coming soon on the Community at community.attask.com

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“Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood”

2 November 2011 - POSTED by Kristyn Gunderson

I recently had a discussion with a friend from college about a leadership seminar we attended together about a year ago. The seminar highlighted “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Steven Covey. The fifth habit particularly stuck out to me, “seek first to understand, then to be understood”.

Described by Steven Covey, the fifth habit is to “use empathetic listening to be genuinely influenced by a person, which compels them to reciprocate the listening and take an open mind to being influenced by you.” I thought about different ways we gather information: books, the Internet, seminars, colleagues, etc. There are so many ways, especially with the help of technology that we can continue to learn and grow.

I had the opportunity to talk with Krystal Guerra, Event Marketing Specialist at AtTask, about the new AtTask webinar series, another way to gather information to expand our learning.

Kristyn: What sets the new AtTask webinar series apart?

Krystal: We take a little bit of a different approach with the AtTask webinars. There is a three part series to help us identify with all audiences: the PPM (project and portfolio management), TalkingWork, the popular podcast hosted by Ty Kiisel and Raechel Logan, and thought leadership, which will typically be an analyst.

Kristyn: Please give a description and goal of each series.

Krystal: With the PPM and TalkingWork series, the goal is to be able to talk about common work place problems, concerns or issues in a neutral environment. And the nice thing about the TalkingWork webinar series is it is a different format so it adds a little bit of uniqueness to a typical webinar format and attracts a different audience. The PPM webinar is geared towards best practices and tips directed towards product managers. The third series is geared towards thought leadership with analyst. This gives us the opportunity to see where the industry is going as a whole and to see how things are aligning in the industry with best practices in software.

Kristyn: Where can we look for information on upcoming webinars and how often will they be held?

Krystal: Right now they are once a month. November’s webinar will be our first thought leadership webinar with Forrester Analyst Tim Harmon on the 30^th. All information on upcoming webinars as well past webinars can be found at www.AtTask.com/events.

I anticipate seeing these grow. The webinars are more educational and fun with the Q & A pieces. It’s an opportunity for attendees to give feedback and it becomes a realistic scenario. It allows for people to actively participate and have an opportunity to be an engaged audience member to get some of their concerns off their mind and have questions answered.

Upcoming Webinar:
November 30^th with Tim Harmon, Forrester Analyst

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Delightful Experience

19 October 2011 - POSTED by Kristyn Gunderson

How often do you read the owner’s manual to your car? I’m willing to bet not very often, at least I know mine is…well, it use to be in my glove box, but I’m not even sure if it’s still there. I for one, instead of reading the directions, try to figure things out first and if all else fails, then I’ll turn to the manual. But how are things so “intuitive”. What’s behind the scenes of designing products, such as our cars, computers and even our software that creates the satisfaction of just knowing how to use it?

In the case of software, AtTask User Experience (UX) Designer, Tony Fonseca, dedicates his time and talents to help create an intuitive product. I had the opportunity to talk with Tony and learn what he does as well as the importance of the user experience.

Kristyn: Describe UX and its purpose.

Tony: To me, and to AtTask, our group is responsible for being the advocate of the users. Designing a product that is powerful, useful and engaging, which allows users to accomplish their goals in a way that doesn’t “hurt”. We want to create a delightful experience. It’s easy to notice when something is wrong because it doesn’t work the way you think it should, but you don’t notice when it’s right because it works exactly how you expect it to. If the users don’t notice the design then we’ve succeeded.

Kristyn: What goes into having a clean UX?

Tony: Research is number one. Initially, when we have any type of project the first step is contextual inquiry. We’ll sit down with customers and say, “teach us how you work”. By observing, we can learn how they do their work and can learn what needs adjustments to make the UX better.

Kristyn: How do you identify any problems if/when they arise in the UX?

Tony: Usability testing is key. We usually get 80% of the problems running only 3-4 people through usability tests. By running through the tests we can learn how to design the software to work the way users think it will work. We really strive to use the mental model. For example, when you look at a doorknob, you already have an idea of how it should work; it’s the same with great software.

Kristyn: What’s the goal or theory for the AtTask User Experience?

Tony: Enterprise software as a whole has traditionally had a reputation to be really difficult to use. The reason for that is typically the people who are buying it are not the people who are going to be using it. The over all goal for us is to create a product that end-users actually perceive value in. What that will do is ultimately provide valuable information for the project managers as well as the executives.

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Looking At The Big Picture

6 October 2011 - POSTED by Kristyn Gunderson

A few weeks ago I participated in a team building activity. With approximately 20 people, we each had a picture, and without speaking we had to put the pictures in order. We quickly realized each page was part of a story. It was a children’s picture book called Zoom, by Istvan Banyai. Some pictures were unidentifiable because it was zoomed in so closely while others were zoomed way out.

After trying to solve this puzzle for about ten minutes we finally realized we couldn’t all see each picture. So we had one person step back to view everyone holding their picture to put them in order. This was a much more successful approach; all it took was looking at the big picture.

After talking with Adam Michaelson, project manager at AtTask, he describes the zoomed out image of the new release.

Kristyn: What sets the Fall Release apart?

Adam: This was a completely different type of release. We new we had something different and unique with TeamHome, but it was the first time we’ve ever done anything like this; we really stepped outside of the box and began to lay a new foundation.

Kristyn: How does this impact TeamHome?

Adam: TeamHome was originally about engaging people—specifically team members, but now we took the opportunity to extend that to all of our customers. The changes we wanted to make moving forward were very foundational. We focused on a second version of TeamHome that got us to a new playing field that we could use to extend to the rest of the application.

Kristyn: Although the changes were foundational, what does this set up for the future?

Adam: Imagine AtTask as a house. When we built the mother-in-law apartment (called TeamHome); it was a completely new idea as well as completely separate from the main house. Then, six months ago we decided to start building a new house. Since then we’ve finished the architecture, foundation, the frame, as well as one completed room where TeamHome is now. Everything is of the highest quality. Right now, AtTask is still in the old house, but will be getting ready to move into the new house in the spring.

This “new house” will allow us more room to grow and still has room to expand. It’s a lot bigger and will support even more “guests” than before.

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Beta is Like Preseason

20 September 2011 - POSTED by Kristyn Gunderson

When I was in high school I played soccer. As a team, we continually conditioned and trained together in preparation of the season. With each new season came new players and a new dynamic. By the time the season started, everyone knew how to play their position and how they worked with the team. Running a beta is like preseason, we need to know how it affects the team and how to still play our position.

I had the opportunity to talk with Andy Taylor, a program manager at AtTask, this week to learn the ins-and-outs of a beta program.

Kristyn: What is the ideal number of companies to participate in a beta and how long does it run?

Andy: It really depends on the depth of the new product. For some betas we’ve had 40 customers while others require around 200. Same with length, if there are not as many changes or the changes are localized around one area a month or two is sufficient, however for extensive changes it probably requires more customers and a six-month or longer beta.

Kristyn: What’s the purpose of having a beta?

Andy: Not only does it of course benefit the software to work out any final kinks, but more importantly, it helps customers get accustomed with the new changes, when it will change and how it will affect the way our customers work.

Kristyn: How do we make sure it benefits the customers so they want to participate?

Andy: Really it’s a partnership. We partner with our customers to help them be ready for the changes, and they also help us make the product the best it can be. We gain a lot of feedback from customers, which establish trust and a great relationship when they see the results.

Kristyn: Without giving too much away, what kind of feedback have you received for the upcoming fall release for AtTask?

Andy: This release includes some features that customers have been asking for and I think it’s definitely raised some excitement and we’ve had really positive feedback.

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