On-Demand Project Management

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The Art of Simplicity

15 June 2011 - POSTED by Russ Drury

Dilbert Recently I have been working with 2 large customers to implement their project management software and both of the implementations have moved at different paces. Of course there are many factors which contribute to the speed at which we are able to work but the one factor that stands out to me the most is the position each has taken on the complexity of their configuration.

Company A has several processes involving large numbers of gates, approvals, forms, reports, inputs and people. Company A has matured its processes over time and have developed a very admirable methodology and approach to delivering projects, so I’m not disputing the necessity. Due to the nature of their work some would argue that they need this maturity in order to get the work done.

Company B on the other hand has slightly fewer processes, but of those processes each one requires fewer steps, sign-offs, stakeholders and documentation. Again it is fitting for the nature of the work that they are doing nevertheless it is simpler.

In working with both companies I have observed that it is Company B who has been able to realise some of the benefits of using an on-demand project management tool much faster. I would like to highlight three area’s where ‘keeping things simple’ has enabled us to create an advantage in implementing the software and getting good adoption. Dilbert

Project Plans. How much detail do you really need in a project plan? If you’re project lasts 6 months do you need 400 tasks? Probably not, you can probably plan out the same project with less than a quarter the number of tasks. Think about the value each of those tasks in your plan adds, if its low then cut them out. If you’re designing a template for repetitive projects to be based on then think about what is necessary, not only for the project manager to have to maintain but also for the purposes of reporting. If it takes as long for you to update and report on all of the tasks as it would for you to actually complete the task then your project plan is too complex!

Processes. I’ve seen some unwieldy project processes in my time. I think sometimes people can get a little carried away once they’ve learnt how to use Microsoft Visio and so end up producing page after page of process flows. Remember that when you are designing a process it has to be followed by the rest of your user group. Not only that but they will inevitably have had just a fraction of the training and introduction to the process. Complex processes get in the way of actually getting work done, they slow down the execution of work which may otherwise be relatively straightforward. I understand the need for guidance and structure but sometimes the end user is a good judge of what works well and what doesn’t. Consult them.

Configuration. Back to the subject of configuring project management software, keeping the setup simple to begin with will enable users to pick it up faster and start do the things that will get you results sooner. Yes the software can probably do complex things but every person has their own learning process. We’ve all heard of the saying ‘learn to walk before you run’ and the same can be applied here too. Start with the things that you know will be adopted quickest and easiest and once the user group matures a little then you can introduce the more complex stuff.

Simplicity is underrated whilst complexity is overstated. In the words of Albert Einstein… “any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius, and a lot of courage, to move in the opposite direction”.

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Doctor’s On Demand

18 October 2010 - POSTED by Russ Drury

Traveling as much as I do often doesn’t leave much time to prioritise essential chores and appointments. I recently sought some medical help for a troubled knee injury and visited the local doctor’s surgery. It was Monday and I asked if they had an appointment the same week. The receptionist looked at me, laughed, and said "Come on Sir, be realistic". The earliest they could offer me was later the next week. Because of work travel commitments I left the surgery 5 minues later, some-what disgruntled, with an appointment for 6 weeks hence! All I want to do was see a doctor.

It was at this point I came to realise that I’ve come to expect far too many things ‘on demand’ these days. Whether it be my favorite TV programme from last night, a 24 hour supermarket for my soda fix, free WiFi somewhere other than McDonalds, or simply some medical attention. For some things, however, we should expect no less than instantaneous.

In business we seem to have become acustomed to waiting too. Two weeks for a project report, a week for the next status meeting, or hours for someone to return a call. Why should we have to wait when the information we so often capture is right at our finger tips?

I visit many companies looking to transform the way their project management practices work simply because the pain of waiting for project status information is no longer acceptable. Often, in order to produce the necessary project reporting information, the reporting cycle starts up to two weeks before the actual delivery date. By the time the report data is gathered, collated, formatted, and distributed its already started to become stale. Its no longer current. The amount of effort required to pull all of this information together, especially for larger project management practices, can sometimes be the equivalent of several full time resources. The processes to achieve this are manual and labour intensivie. There’s nothing instantaneous about it.

But with the coming forth of on-demand project management software all of this is changing.

The term ‘On-Demand’ refers more specifically to the sales and delivery model by which software customers are purchasing products. Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce.com, changed the way we thought about software when in 1999 he started, and what has since become, the first $1billion On-Demand Software Company. No longer do we think of project management software as a huge piece of software that requires teams of technically trained developers, months to install and set up on numerous servers and systems, behind firewalls that can only be accessed from the office. With On-Demand software we not only receive the software as a service but we can get to the information when we want, from wherever we want, and as quickly as we want.

The power of an online project management tool comes because it can be accessed from anywhere in the world, not only does the information reporting become on-demand, but the information input also becomes on-demand. As information becomes more visbile and accessible, more people see the benefit of sharing information. As this happens reporting information becomes more accurate, reliable and current. Functionality of on-demand project management software is such that most reports can be created at the click of a button, and some don’t even require you to be that involved!

Now that we can get a project health checks on-demand what a shame I can’t get an actual health check as fast.

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PPM Performance Testing For PMs

27 July 2010 - POSTED by Doug Den Hoed

Food for Thought

It was over 20 years ago, around 8 pm. Three Business Analysts and two fellow coders crowded around my desk with the sinking realization that it was going to take an all-nighter to pull off our deliverable. Just then, the senior PM poked her head in with a concerned look and a "What can I do to help?" We shot a round of blank looks at each other, but before we could even formulate a polite reply, she nodded quickly, and said: "Right: I’ll go get some food."

Surely, figuring out what the team needs to keep them going efficiently is one of the most important skills a PM can offer.

But what happens when your team’s Online Project Management itself isn’t keeping up? The prospect of assessing the performance of sophisticated Web-based PPM Software is pretty daunting, even if you are a technical PM.

This spreadsheet can help you performance test your On-Demand Project Management environment and keep your team going:

Peek Performance

The spreadsheet has several practical features:

a cell (B2) of the maximum allowable time for any test (e.g. 120 seconds)
a cell (B5) to define the Date and Reason for the tests
a column (C) to define and describe three tests
a column (D) to define two physical locations for each tests (e.g. Office, Offsite)
a column (E) to define four different types of connections (e.g. LAN, Proxy, etc.)
a grid (F3:K16) to record the results of the tests across two environments and three browsers
three graphs — one per test — with fixed Y-axis scales that illustrate the test results
two lines across all graphs dividing acceptable, borderline, and unacceptable performance

You too can take your own Performance Testing. Download the spreadsheet, update the ranges above to suit your tests, and then each time you want to test:

duplicate the tab and date it
update the Date and Reason (B5)
clear the results grid (F3:K16)
run the tests and enter the new results (F3:K16)
use the tabs to "flip" between the tests, effectively animating the graphs

The performance tracking spreadsheet is simple to use and easy to understand. If certain aspects of your Project Management Software are not running as quickly as your team needs them to, you — as PM — can take the initiative to quantify what’s really happening, initiate a solution with your vendor, and keep your team going efficiently.

But food’s always appreciated, too.

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Project Professionals, I Need Your Help

1 July 2010 - POSTED by Ty Kiisel

I’m amazed at the wealth of knowledge available to project managers online. With blog posts, webinars, user groups, podcasts, and forums—it’s never been easier to learn best practices and implement them into your work management methodology.

I certainly enjoy the time I spend with my peers in person, on the phone, and online. I think it helps me be better at what I do and inspires me to share with the rest of the community. As I talk to other project managers about what makes them successful, it’s rarely a discussion about on-demand project management software (although the right project management tools do contribute to project success). It’s usually about implementing sound methodology and best practice.

A New Podcast

I’m preparing to launch a video podcast and webinar series that will be dedicated to sharing these same ideas and was hoping that you would offer some suggestions as to the kind of topics we should talk about, the people we might interview, and even project management software vendors we might talk to.

Please feel free to comment on this blog with your suggestions for my upcoming podcast and webinar series. I’m excited to hear back from you.

—Ty

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Spiral Adoption

22 June 2010 - POSTED by Doug Den Hoed

Chasing the Rainbow

Today’s Project Portfolio Management Software packages have incredible features to help teams collaborate and visualize their project based work like never before. Some of the best are also intended to be customized to meet specific business terminology and events. Given that resources and schedules are often shared, this powerful combination of insight and adaptability can help companies reach an elusive goal that faces every PPM Software implementation: how can you increase adoption across related departments?

Provide and Conquer

This diagram illustrates "Spiral Adoption", a new techique I developed on a recent project. Here’s how it works.

Dept A licensed @task for their On-Demand Project Management Software, entered their data, and used it to generate the status of their Project based work. Several Related Departments relied on the Dept A data but for a variety of reasons did not have direct access to the Project Managment Software. To share the data, Dept A generated a Daily Extract to Excel and posted it on the network. The Related Departments pulled copies of the Extract, transformed it to suit their own needs (e.g. dropping certain columns and rows), added their own updates (e.g. new status values, revised dates, % complete), and created their own Excel based reports (e.g. pivot tables, summary tabs). Unfortunately, despite these best efforts, the process was time consuming, inefficient, and prone to wasteful confusion caused by stale-dated reports.

Given the realtime nature of the data and excellent reporting features, Dept A quickly became recognized as the most current and reliable source of Project information. Management wanted to consolidate both the timing and the format of their reports. They asked Dept A to add extra custom data fields to cover the key data points from the other departments. There were thousands of Tasks already being tracked and edited within the Related Departments. To minimize the impact on those teams and avoid data entry errors, we used a web-based applet that let Dept A users upload an Excel file of edits from the Related Departments straight into @task.

In short, the Project Management Software effectively widened to accomodate Dept A, B, C, and D, giving Management the comprehensive reporting they were after, but without substantially impacting how the Related Departments were performing their work.

Revolution

There were some very interesting and pleasant side effects to the Spiral Adoption technique:

Dept A now prepares for review meetings by exporting the rows and columns they need to Excel, editing on the fly in Excel during the meeting (faster, no internet required), and then uses the Excel Uploader to push up the changes
Dept B moved all of its data needs into the Project Management Software, became full fledged users themselves, and dropped their entire extract > update > Excel loop
Dept C created a tailored view of only their information and effectively owns and administers that data via the Excel Updater
Dept D has no immediate plans to change their processes, which is fine because…
Management now has regular, reliable, comprehensive reporting across the departments

The Spiral Adoption technique offers a way to consolidate data without duress, and instead win over additional departments on merit, over time. If you’d like to know more about the Excel Updater for @task, please drop a comment to this article.

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One Chart to Rule them All

19 May 2010 - POSTED by Doug Den Hoed

One Ring Yessssss….My Preciousssssss…

Can you imagine Golum as a Project Manager? Instead of a ring, though, he’d be clutching a printout of the latest status report with his favorite chart. It’s funny to picture. But I must admit: I’m starting to see the attraction.

My Favorite Chart

I just returned from the Second Annual @task User Conference. It was my privilege to speak for the second time. My presentation this year was "Four Webthings and a Funeral" (NOTE: this is a BIG file), where I shared four of the most important configurations we’d made to our Project Management Software. The first was a chart called the Big Picture. It helped all our team members visualize the progress of our Projects — Drilling Gas Wells, in our case — as they moved from left to right through the various Phases of work. Here’s an example:
The Big Picture

The main reasons that this chart is "Precious" to me are that it is:

Intuitive: in the beginning, all Projects were stacked on the left, and at the end, they’ll all be on the right
Scalable: no matter how many Projects there are, the Y-Axis will adjust to accommodate
Adaptable: the Phases can be redefined to suit any industry
Data Driven: as Project Based Work progresses, the underlying data drives each Project into the appropriate Phase
Informative: grouping Projects by their overall schedule status (Red = Late, Yellow = At Risk, Green = On Track) helps qualify the progress and spot trends over time
Functional: in @task, users can simply click a section of the chart to drill down into the underlying Projects

Ring of Truth?

One of the promises of On-Demand Project Management is to give everyone a common vision of what’s going on. If you have a standard process that can be represented as an assembly line, I hope you’ll consider adopting a Big Picture such as the one shown above. And if you don’t, perhaps you can forge another to bind your team together.

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Who’s On First?

4 May 2010 - POSTED by Doug Den Hoed

Abbot and Costello’s routing is still funny. Unless it’s YOUR Project.

In traditional work management, one of the key positions is the person who provides the actual work assignments. Project Managers may use placeholders such as Business Lead 1 and Developer 4 in their preliminary plans, but eventually, someone has to pick who’s on first. Depending on the size of the project, that might be a full time job or even a team of people. I’ve been on Projects where that group ends up becoming a bottleneck, despite having really good PPM Software.

By the time I find out Who’s been picked and What’s been worked on, I Don’t Know Why and I Don’t Care!

Thank goodness we don’t staff baseball games the same way.

In baseball, everyone has the same objectives. The team’s picked. The game starts. The players know what to do, what each other is going to do, and they cover for each other. They can see the play as it develops, and move to help as best they can. It’s trust and teamwork at its finest.

Last year, one of my clients rediscovered this baseball concept and embraced it in their on-demand project management environment. In project management terms, I call it "Self Assignment".

Here’s the pitch…

Each year, my client has a series of repeatable Projects (hundreds) with the same Tasks (dozens); but depending on the geographical area and time of the year, the players change. When we set up the Projects, we carefully assigned a Role to every Task. Then, for each user, we assigned the Roles — often more than one — that they can perform.

Nothing new so far: standard Project Management stuff.

…it’s a hit…

For each team member that logs into the Project Software, we display all the Tasks that are ready to be performed, but restrict them to only the Tasks the user can perform, given their Roles. We also group it by geographical area and month, which draws their attention to what’s logically "their" Tasks, in chronological order. But since other Tasks they could perform are visually nearby, they can easily call for help, or offer to cover for each other. Everyone is encouraged and expected to work on the most important thing that they can, from what’s ready to go.

That’s Self Assignment. It encourages teamwork, but without the overhead of having to explicitly assign the Tasks.

…now here’s the catch.

Self assignment isn’t for everyone. Team size, geography, politics, and deadlines; there are lots of ways to drop the ball. But if you’re working with a team that just wants to get out of the inning regardless of who makes the play, consider Self Assignment.

I think it might catch on.

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Hot showers and comfortable beds

29 April 2010 - POSTED by Russ Drury

Traveling from city to city and country to country certainly gives you plenty of opportunities to experience the best, and worst, of the worlds’ hotels. As I walk into the hotel reception I silently plead ‘please be a nice room, please be a nice room’. I’m now at the point where I’ve subconsciously created a wish-list of hotel ideals in my head…

Close to the customers office. I need somewhere that’s quick to get to and easily accessible.
Good TV channels. After a hard day at the office there’s nothing worse than trying to interpret what the French newsreader is saying. I need something I can understand.
A clean, modern and fresh room. If this is going to be my home from home for a week I need to feel relaxed.
Hot shower and comfortable bed. These two things alone are guaranteed to give me a less stressful day.

Now that I’m happy the room meets my ideals I turn my thoughts to the implementation. I look forward to working with another customer and finding out what they need out of their new PPM Software.

Not unlike my needs for a good hotel room, a good project management tool could be chosen for the same reasons. Of course, these will differ from company to company according to individual likes and specific needs but in general I’d say the following makes for a good foundation.

Quick and Accessible. An On-Demand Project Management tool means that your information can be accessed via a web browser anywhere in the world. For a multi-national organisation, with globally dispersed teams, that’s an important thing.
Easy to Understand. It needs to be easy to configure, navigate and learn. You don’t want something that require a computer degree or months of training to get to grips with.
Modern and Fresh. Make sure the project management software you’re choosing has a slick look and feel. If it looks modern thats often half the battle won with your end users. Software that uses the latest technologies will provide valuable functionality.
Less stressful day. Project Management can be tough on the best of days. People, information, reports, all in different places with different degree’s of usefulness. But when you have a project management tool that brings all people, all work, all together it makes for a much happier day.

Something as simple as choosing the right hotel room can have a much larger impact than you’d imagine.

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Don’t get stuck in the Ice Age

28 April 2010 - POSTED by Russ Drury

I went to visit my mum recently for her birthday. Upon my arrival she bounded toward me to ‘show off’ her newest acquisition. She had been bought an iPhone. Even I don’t have an iPhone! I couldn’t quite believe it. She looked at my somewhat bewildered face and sincerely asked… "does this make me a modern mum?"

It can sometimes feel like you’ve been left behind in the work place too. You’re managing your projects with emails, spreadsheets and presentation slides when all around you are apps for this and software for that. It feels like you’ve been left in the cold.

Something that I have come to recognize, however, is that almost every company I have done an @task implementation with has been managing their projects on Excel spreadsheet up until that point. You’d be surprised at how many companies do, and who they are. I constantly am. Some of the largest companies I’ve worked with have been crippled and slowed down because of the antiquated methods of project management they have employed. Spreadsheets that run into thousands of lines and too many columns to comprehend, not to mention file sizes that would make even the largest of iPhones blush.

Moving to a formal Project Management Software tool isn’t difficult, but you do have to be bold. Leaving the seemingly comfortable world of managing projects on spreadsheets behind can be daunting, especially if you opt to go for an On-Demand Project Management solution, but from my experience nobody has ever turned around at the end of an implementation and said "you know what, I think we’ll go back to the spreadsheets, its more efficient and saves me time"

If my ‘modern mum’ has adopted an iPhone, then surely its time to think about modernizing your project management tools?

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Work Management Using Social Media

13 April 2010 - POSTED by Ty Kiisel

A few days ago Elizabeth Harrin of the Girl’s Guide to Project Management blog, published the results of her survey Social Media in a Project Environment. A colleague introduced me to the study knowing I supported incorporating the communication and collaboration aspects of social media into project management tools. Harrin explains her reasons for compiling the survey like this, "There’s growing evidence that ways of working are adapting to include social media tools and that these are becoming prevalent in the workplace. While social media practices are established for marketing, brand awareness and customer outreach, I felt that project managers should be taking advantage of the available tools—and I wanted to find out if they were."

If you follow the link provided above you can download a PDF of the survey (which is very informative). That being said, rather than plow through the entire thing, there are a couple of highlights I found interesting:

One of the most widely used social media tools by project managers for business is Linkedin. 47% of respondents use Linkedin, which makes sense to me. Linkedin provides an opportunity to connect with friends and peers along with the ability to participate in a broader community of project managers. As I’ve mentioned before, participation in an online community is a great way to share best practices and experiences that ultimately benefit individuals and the profession.
Wikis are a popular social media collaboration tool. A useful tool for encouraging collaboration and communication, at 35%, it looks like a lot of project managers are using wikis.
At 24%, it looks like project managers are active bloggers and blog readers. Of course a blog doesn’t offer a very practical way for project teams to collaborate, but like wikis, blogs are a great place to learn from others within the project management community.
Interestingly, online project management tools are used by 27% of the respondents. For anyone providing on-demand project management software like @task, this is good news.
Facebook, Twitter, SharePoint, MySpace, Microsoft LiveMeeting, Skype, Instant Messaging, Podcasts, and Video podcasts round out the rest of the survey. From as low as 1% for MySpace to the 48% that identify themselves as SharePoint users, social media appears to be alive and well within project management.

The primary way project managers are using social media is to stay in touch with friends and colleagues, however document sharing, communicating status updates, sharing project information, and even task tracking made the list. I guess the question then becomes, "Does social media provide any benefit to the project in terms of increases in productivity?"

The answer seems to be yes. 62% of the respondents said that it improved communication while another 56% claimed improved collaboration. According to Harrin, "More people report gaining efficiency benefits than financial benefits, and the two seen most often were improved collaboration and communications." However, "Not all companies are tracking benefits of the social media tools deployed."

The final question of the survey was, "Social media tools can/do improve the way I manage projects." 83% of respondents agreed.

So I guess we can put all the discussion about social media to bed because it is obviously increasing productivity, right? I don’t think so. Those who responded to Harrin’s survey were social media users, who at the very least read her blog, which would skew the results in favor of applying social media to the project management process, in my opinion.

However, I believe it does say that there are aspects of social media that can help facilitate, and even encourage, collaboration and communication among project teams. Social media tools not typically used by the surveyed population, like Facebook and Twitter jump from 3% and 11% respectively for those using that media for business purposes to 23% and 29% respectively for those who use the tools for business and personal use. I don’t believe it’s the specific media that is as important as how the media is used. Linkedin, blogs, podcasts, and video seem to be very effective ways to share best practice and educate, while wikis, Twitter, and Facebook offer something that encourages people to interact and collaborate—important activities for successful projects.

I have gone on record as an advocate of making project management software more "social." I believe the PPM software that is successful at incorporating those features of social media into their products that facilitate communication and collaboration will provide incredible value to the work management process—those who can’t will ultimately become obsolete and irrelevant.

How does your organization stack up to the results of this survey? Are you incorporating social media into your processes?

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