10/30/2012 by Brad Egeland Tags: project client, project funding, project loyalty, project manager, project sponsor
Think about this one. I mean really think. I’m not talking about the project manager who is only running internal projects…that never really presents a dilemma. But for those project managers working in professional services environments where you are leading a team of project resources who have been assembled to deliver a solution for an external customer – for example a customized implementation of your own software offering – this can become an issue.
So the question begs to be answered…where do your loyalties lie? When push comes to shove, who are you fighting for? What are you trying to accomplish and who will you listen to first? Who’s concerns weigh heaviest on your mind?
I’m not saying that your executive management team is not working in the best interest of your project client. But it is no secret that what your executive management team cares most about and what your project client cares most about are usually two or more very different things.
Generally, your management cares about:
- Profits
- Revenue
- Not exposing organizational weaknesses to customers
- Customer satisfaction and retention
Continue reading “Who Should the Project Manager Be Loyal To?”
10/26/2012 by Jackie Dembinsky Tags: gizmodo, huffington post, pc world, windows 8, windows 8 compatible
It’s here. Microsoft’s revamp of the Windows OS is now available to the masses. Designed not only for traditional Windows desktops, laptops, and ultrabooks, Windows 8 is also tablet-friendly. It’s an OS designed with touch in mind, borrowing design elements from the Windows Phone 7 operating system.
If you’re upgrading to Windows 8, rest assured that your version of FastTrack Schedule 10 will run fine on Microsoft’s new Windows OS. FastTrack Schedule 10 single-user and FastTrack Schedule 10 Concurrent-User versions are fully compatible with Windows 8.
For more insight into Windows 8, be sure to check out Gizmodo‘s Windows 8 Survival Guide, PCWorld‘s Windows 8 review, and the Huffington Post‘s great take on the fans and antifans, “7 People Who Will Love Windows 8 (And 5 Who Will Hate It).”
What do you think of Windows 8? Will you be buying a new PC with it preinstalled or upgrading your existing PC? Let us know.
10/19/2012 by Jackie Dembinsky Tags: construction computing award, construction project management software, project planning product of the year
We’re proud to announce that FastTrack Schedule is a finalist for a 2012 Construction Computing Award in the Project Planning Product of the Year category.
Affectionately known as “The Hammers,” the Construction Computing Awards showcase and reward the technology, tools and solutions for the effective design, construction, maintenance and modification of commercial buildings, residential and social housing and civil engineering projects of all sizes. Wow, that was a mouthful. Bottom line, Construction Computing recognizes the best of the best in construction tech.
We’ve always had a loyal and passionate following in the construction industry. Year after year, residential and commercial builders, contractors, and remodelers rely on FastTrack Schedule for managing construction projects and keeping their customers up-to-date on progress.
Please show your support and cast a vote for FastTrack Schedule. You can vote for products in every category or just one category (hint: Project Planning Product of the Year). Voting ends on November 8th, and the award ceremony will be held on November 22nd at the Hotel Russell in London.
10/18/2012 by Brad Egeland Tags: pmi, pmp, pmp certification, project management certification, project management professional certification
Project management certification through the Project Management Institute (PMI) is known as PMP certification (standing for Project Management Professional). If you’ve been a project manager for any length of time, this is not news to you. The question is, should you get certified? Does it have value? Is it the only way you’re going to get a good project management position in an organization? Lots of questions…with varying answers depending on who you work for, what your current employment status is, and what your resume looks like.
Let’s consider some of these concepts further…but first let’s consider the requirements for becoming certified. If you have a bachelor’s degree, then you must have 4500 hours of relevant PM work experience including three years (36 months) of PM experience within the previous eight years prior to sitting for the PMP exam. You must also have 35 contact hours of PM education. Requirements get a little higher if you don’t possess the bachelor’s degree, but for the sake of this article, we’ll assume the candidate has a bachelor’s degree. The cost for PMI membership and testing will run you about $535 and the cost of the initial training requirements may cost you anywhere from $1000-$2000. Then there is the ongoing annual training requirements, but that cost is far lower thanks to the many low-cost professional development unit (PDU) options have become available to satisfy ongoing training requirements.
Let’s consider the following scenarios…
Continue reading “PMP: To Certify or Not to Certify?”
10/16/2012 by PM Hut Tags: agile project management, agile vs waterfall, agile vs waterfall methodology, agile vs waterfall project management, agile vs waterfall pros cons
By Alan Cairns
PM Hut
Put simply project managers are in the business of making things happen. Project management can concern many different types of activity or project, and project managers are in charge of executing the planning, organization, management and control of resources to make it happen.
Project management can concern all manner of projects, from building a house to writing computer software. The manager’s skill lies in curating the resources effectively to achieve the end result.
Traditional (or Waterfall) Project Management
Project managers traditionally identify a number of steps to complete a project, which typically must be completed sequentially. In traditional project management there are typically four stages:
- Requirements
- Planning & design
- Implementation
- Completion
Not all projects will include every stage, but most projects include elements of these stages, sometimes repeatedly as one activity relies on the completion of the last. Most complicated projects require many more stages than this, which could include:
Continue reading “Comparing Agile and Waterfall Methods of Project Management”
10/11/2012 by Brad Egeland Tags: project engagement, project roadblocks, project stoppage, work stoppage
Projects are meant to be completed. No one likes to leave unfinished business, right? But there are those situations that come up from time to time where the project can’t be completed or is put on hold. The reasons can be almost endless. The most common include things like customer funding issues, a change in the customer’s organization, customer satisfaction drops to rock bottom, some roadblock arises that can’t be worked around, or perhaps the technology is presenting an unavoidable work stoppage. Whatever the reason, it’s painful and potentially embarrassing and now you may need to move into damage control mode.
When this has happened to me (and yes, I have had this happen a couple of times and it isn’t fun), I generally try to follow as many of the following actions as are appropriate for the situation – depending, of course, on what caused the project to be suspended in the first place:
Keep ongoing contact with the project client. First, it’s critical to stay in close contact with the customer. Even if you or your team were the cause for the work stoppage, stay in touch, make sure they know you’re working on whatever issues caused the stoppage, and discuss criteria or scenarios that might enable the project to restart – so you know what you’re working towards. For me, on a project that stopped because some overwhelming issues put the project way over budget, it involved detailed estimating of what it was going to take to finish the project and some negotiation of what we could absorb on the delivery side and what I still needed the customer to come up with in terms of dollars. But it was contact, ongoing discussion. At least it kept us moving forward and eventually we did restart the project.
Continue reading “When the Project is Suspended”
09/27/2012 by Brad Egeland Tags: project engagement, project management, project management best practices, project success
As project managers and professionals we’ve experienced many successes as well as failures on the projects we’ve lead and participated on. When you work on or lead a high profile, successful project, it’s human nature to want to rest on our laurels sometimes. Finish a great project, win against all odds, drag a doomed solution through the trials to a successful deployment or perhaps even take over and ‘save the day’ on a failing project….all of these scenarios may make you want to sit back, take stock of what you’ve accomplished and coast for awhile.
What’s wrong with this scenario? Mainly, your next project or your other projects on your plate at the moment probably don’t involve the same customer and may not involve any of the same team members. They really don’t care about how things went on your last project – unless you have some good take-aways from it that apply to your current project. All they care about is how you’re doing on the current project. Are you performing properly for them? Are you doing everything you can on the current project to effectively plan, manage, communicate, innovate, and document so that this project will end successfully?
When we come off an energetic, highly visible, adrenaline pumping, satisfying…perhaps even thrilling…project, how do we regroup and focus on the next endeavor? Truly we are only as good as our current project. To ensure there’s no let down, think about following these guidelines…
Continue reading “You’re Only as Good as Your Current Project”
09/21/2012 by Jackie Dembinsky Tags: ASLA, ASLA ACE Legacy Project, ASLA Expo
When the opportunity arose to lend a hand – and some scheduling prowess – to the American Society of Landscape Architect’s (ASLA) Legacy Project, we jumped at the chance. This is our first year to attend the ASLA EXPO, and the Legacy Project offered us a way to collaborate with the host ASLA chapter and give a little back to the host community.
The project will upgrade the horticulture program greenhouse and build a courtyard garden at Metro Tech High School in Phoenix, AZ. The ASLA Arizona Chapter is working with ACE mentor students, and Metro Tech students and faculty to upgrade the facilities with paved spaces, raised planters, benches, and gardens. Metro Tech provides vocational training to students from 15 high schools in the Phoenix Union High School District, and this project is a coordinated effort with the schools’ Culinary and Drafting Departments.
AEC Software provided scheduling support and FastTrack Schedule 10 licenses to project managers and the team of ASLA and AEC Mentor Program volunteers. FastTrack Schedule was used to plan all elements of the project including details on initiating the project, contacting/assigning stakeholders, construction, and public relations efforts. The project kicked off in July and is scheduled to be completed in the first quarter of 2013. Here’s a look at the project’s design charrette.
It’s been great connecting with architects, planners, and developers at chapter events and at the ASLA headquarters in DC this year. We’re looking forward to meeting more ASLA members at the EXPO next week and watching the progress of the ASLA/ACE Mentor Legacy Project over the coming months.
09/19/2012 by Brad Egeland Tags: lessons learned session, project lessons learned, project management lessons, project milestones
Here’s an interesting concept – let’s make things better now rather than in the future. Why would anyone want to think differently, especially if it might help their career and the work they are doing at this moment? Experiencing success today is better than postponing success until tomorrow, right?
What is “lessons learned”?
Ok, let’s back up for a moment and discuss the concept of lessons learned. The process can vary from PM to PM and organization to organization, but the lessons learned session is basically this: around the time of deployment or project closeout the project manager gathers the project team and, hopefully the customer, together and discusses and documents what went right and wrong on the project. The hope is we learn from our successes and our failures, we take them to our next project in order to improve our project delivery performance and we share this knowledge with others in our organization so as to improve the performance on all projects in the company.
We can’t benefit if we don’t conduct
Sadly, we don’t often take advantage of this type of session. A survey I performed of project professionals in June 2010, found that 57% of respondents indicated that they either never conduct lessons learned sessions or conduct them less than 10% of the time. Only 34% of respondents indicated that they conduct lessons learned sessions more than 50% of the time. Reasons for not performing lessons learned vary, of course. On bad projects, sometimes a PM may avoid the session so as not to receive the negative feedback. Sometimes as soon as the project is over, the entire team needs to disperse and jump on other projects. And sometimes the customer has no interest as they are immersed in the rollout and ramp-up of new system usage and user adoption and likely some internal training. I’m sure there are 50 more reasons, but you get the idea…often it just doesn’t happen.
Continue reading “Use Lessons Learned Throughout the Project”
09/14/2012 by Jackie Dembinsky Tags: best project management software, FastTrack Schedule, Microsoft Project, project management software award
We’re happy to add another feather to our FastTrack cap. FastTrack Schedule 10 has received Review Authority’s Best Project Management Software Award. Review Authority gave FastTrack Schedule top marks in Ease of Use and Customer Support and an overall score of 96 out of a possible 100.
FastTrack Schedule topped perennial rival Microsoft Project, besting both Professional 2010 and Standard 2010 versions, as well as Oracle’s enterprise-level Primavera P6.
For MS Project users or those who need to exchange data with someone who uses MS Project, it’s great to know that FastTrack Schedule 10 (Windows and Mac versions) and FastTrack Schedule Go (our new iPad version) open Microsoft Project MPP, MPT, and XML files.
Thanks to Review Authority for the recognition, and thanks to all our customers who rely on FastTrack Schedule to plan, manage, and achieve their project goals.
