Journyx Project Management Blog

Maybe it’s the heat. Maybe it’s the humidity. Maybe it’s just that we love you this much.

In any case, we’re here to tell you that between now and August 15th, 2008, we’re having what some people might call “a sale.” But this isn’t some sort of lame “10% off your next order” thing. No siree. This is a bona fide “we give you something for free” kind of thing.

But enough hype. You need details. So here they are:

• Buy at least 10 Timesheet Online (AKA hosted, SaaS) license seats and we’ll give you 10 more completely free.
• Switch your existing local Timesheet license to Timesheet Online (AKA hosted, SaaS) and we’ll throw in an additional 10 license seats on the house.
• Purchase at least 10 local Timesheet license seats and we’ll give you 5 more gratis.

That’s it. No gimmicks. No convoluted schemes. No need to send in box tops from your favorite breakfast grain or cereal. Just a simple, “you buy, we throw in a little extra” deal for old and new customers alike.

To take advantage of this offer - which really is only good through August 15th - just contact your Journyx Sales Rep and let them know you’d like to order from the newsletter menu.

The Obligatory Fine Print: Offer applies to new business initiated after receipt of this offer. Previous sales agreements, quotes and verbal agreements are not eligible for this offer. Tax, title and license not included. Do not use discount while showering, sleeping or operating heavy machinery.

“This is what we need. You can use these resources. And you must deliver it by that date.

Does this sound familiar? If so, you are not alone. Many project managers find themselves in just such a situation. There are lots of dictates, no flexibility, and more often than not little realism in the demands.

What value is there in estimation when your sponsor seems to have no interest in finding out what it will really take to do the project? The constraints have been chiseled in stone and we can’t change them. End of story. Our job boils down to trying to keep the project from being too much of a disaster.

Although it may not seem to be true, we can negotiate unrealistic project expectations. And the key is to do a good job of estimating what it really will take to do the project…

Read more at:
http://journyx.com/rss/redir/pcon-negotiate.html

Journyx has partnered with AimSourcing to give our customers the support of honest-to-goodness QuickBooks blackbelts.

AimSourcing is a leader in outsourced accounting and information management services. They provide innovative business solutions which enable a company to grow its business without the time, energy, and cost required to create and manage internal systems and staff.

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• Are you having trouble meeting all the tax and regulatory requirements for your industry and location?
• Do you need a forecasting system that helps you determine future cash requirements?
• Would you benefit from senior level oversight of your accounting operation, including a month-end financial review and business advice?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then AimSourcing is definitely a team you need on your side.

And just so you can see how amazing they really are, AimSourcing is offering a free 30-min consultation with one of their experts.

Sign up now!

In business, if you ask N people for their definition of risk, you likely will get N unique responses. Within any corporation, each discipline views risk through a colloquial lens. For example, the Health & Safety department typically will define risks as threats to be rooted out and eradicated. Denizens of the Finance department, however, view risk as a positive thing. They seek and embrace risk (hopefully, not more than they can handle) because their job is to maximize return – low risk, low return; higher risk, higher reward. To them risk is an opportunity…

Read more at at:
http://journyx.com/rss/redir/pmwt-riskchange.html

• How are the pre-filled dates determined for reports that prompt for date ranges?
• How can I see who hasn’t entered any time for a selected period?

Get these and other useful tidbits at:
http://journyx.com/rss/support/tips/

Hello, Gentle Reader. Welcome back to another installment of the Grumpy IT Guy. Rather than berating you and yelling, I’m just going to start out by asking you a simple question. Why must you turn my idyllic IT department into a House of Lies?

Over the years I’ve had several customers (internal and external) as well as personal friends requiring IT assistance due to anomalies on their systems. I noticed this particular aspect of you humans years ago when I ran a computer service company. When we ask you what changed, we’re not asking because we want to criticize you, although sometimes that just improves the whole experience. No, we’re asking because it will make fixing things a whole helluva lot easier if we know what happened.

Let’s turn this around to another industry for a moment, shall we? A priest walks into a doctor’s office. Okay, it doesn’t have to be a priest, and this isn’t really a joke. He says, “Doctor, my knee hurts very badly.” The doctor asks what he did. He says nothing. Don’t you think that if this guy was playing soccer, took a hard fall and wrenched his knee, that this is information the doctor might like to have?

Sure, sure. He’s a doctor. He can triage and find out what’s wrong with the knee without what you people seem to think are “unnecessary” back stories, but why not make everyone’s lives easier by being up front? In the above situation, you probably would have been.

Now, let’s invoke the power of 3…

You: “My computer got really slow. Nothing is working right.”
Me: “Okay. What happened? Has anything changed? Any virus notifications? Open any attachments? Do anything different?”
You: “Nope.”
Me: “So, you haven’t done anything different, and this just started?”
You: “Yep.”
Me: “Absolutely nothing has changed, and you’ve done nothing out of the ordinary?”
You: “Oh, well I did install this new version of iTunes.”

Why, for the love of everything with holes in it, must I ask three times? I usually do; it’s been a habit for several years. Two lies and the real answer. Almost always. With everyone.

Second, don’t get me started on iTunes. Maybe I’ll create a whole column about that.

Third, yes, I can triage the machine and find out why iTunes has suddenly decided to install 9 versions of QuickTime, 12 million helper applications, and basically do everything it can to overtake your machine. However, actually telling me this up front points me in the right direction immediately.

This happened with another guy I helped, after the problem had been resolved:

Him: “What could cause something like that?”
Me: “Usually an unclean system shutdown or a power outage.”
Him: “You mean like if a server closet gets overheated?”
Me: “Heat won’t usually do that if the box is still running.”
Him: “You mean like if a server closet gets overheated, and everything shuts down?”
Me: “Yes, that could certainly do it. Out of curiosity, why do you ask?” I sighed, knowing the answer.
Him: “That happened this weekend.”
Me: “So, um… when you said ‘nothing changed,’ you meant…”

Yeah. Installing programs, your machine crashing just prior to bad behavior… those things just don’t qualify as “nothing changed.”

Someone else entirely upgraded their back-end database over the weekend, but nothing changed. Someone else replaced a hard drive and reinstalled the system, and they couldn’t find programs that they didn’t install, but nothing changed. Someone else actually had a power surge which caught their monitor on fire, they replaced the monitor, but the machine was “acting flaky.” Nope. They didn’t mention the FIRE until later.

Sometimes it’s pretty obvious why we’re grumpy.

Jason Averbook flies around the country advising major corporations how to weave social networks and Web 2.0 tools into recruiting and other human-resources practices. So when Averbook needed to add staff to his 50-person HR industry consulting firm recently, he knew he had to practice what he preached.

Instead of going through traditional channels, Averbook updated the “Status” section of his profiles on three social networking sites, Facebook, LinkedIn and Plaxo, to show he was “desperately” seeking new employees. It worked. He got 19 qualified candidates in two days, compared to the five that his Minneapolis-based firm, Knowledge Infusion, attracted through a job listing on their website over the past three months. “Based on interviews that are already happening I predict we’ll end up hiring some of them,” Averbook says.

Like Knowledge Infusion, other small businesses are using social networks to recruit employees at all levels. Because networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo and Ning cost little or nothing to join, there’s no reason small and mid-sized businesses shouldn’t try them for recruiting purposes, according to recruiting industry sources.

Read the rest at Inc. Technology.

As I write this, Cinda is exactly where she should be: the middle of nowhere. She has taken a much-needed vacation, which puts her a couple weeks ahead of me for the year. Now, before you think I’m downtrodden and bereft, think again. I’m well stocked with vacation days, and my coworkers have no problem with me taking them. (I believe, in fact, that I’ve detected a pleading note from certain quarters lately.) But there always seems to be a good reason to stay behind, doesn’t there? I’ve turned staying put into an art form. Instead of truly getting away, I delude myself into believing that it’s enough to indulge myself on weekends—like my “vacation” to the bookstore last Saturday.

I usually head to the bookstore to get away from people for a little while. The joke was on me this time—it was crawling with customers. (It seems people like to shop after holidays. Clearly, I need to get out more.) I’m not the eavesdropper sort, but in a store that packed with people, it’s impossible not to overhear some conversation. I was struck by how many of them were about vacation plans. In Periodicals, a couple browsing the international magazines commented about how a cover photo reminded them of some exotic European city. In the children’s section, a mother helped her preschooler pick out a pair of sticker books, “one for now and one for later,” for their road trip to Napa Valley the next day. But it was the conversation overheard as I was browsing idly through the craft books, near the travelogues, that really got my attention. A young child’s voice piped up cheerfully, asking, “What’s that?”

“That’s Hawaii,” his mother replied casually. “That’s where we’re going next year.”

“Can I walk there?” the child asked.

“No, we’ll fly again,” was the equally casual response.

Aside from my shock at the sheer number of people strolling through this packed store who obviously made it a point to get away, it was the simple, matter-of-fact nature of the conversation that penetrated my consciousness. Her inflection—next year—made it clear that another, just as impressive trip was already in the works or had just concluded. The child took it just as much for granted. It was vacation time, and they were going someplace fun this year, and Hawaii next year, and clearly there would be a trip the year after and had been before. These are people that know how to take vacations. It made me realize how long it’s been since I went all out and took a vacation; not just time out of the office but still home, furtively checking emails and watching the phone lights, but a real stretch away from everything to rest and recharge and completely break the routine.

When was the last time you took a vacation?

Read the rest at ProjectConnections.

World-class leaders have the personal resolve and willpower to create effective plans and the organization to implement their strategies. They energize their organizations through these plans. They act decisively. They assess and adjust their plans constantly on the basis of sound situational awareness and outer directed information gathering.

This level of adaptability depends on a few leadership strategies, techniques and principles. When you follow my advice below you will achieve success.

My Top 7 Leadership Strategies You Need to Lead Your Organization Under All Circumstances

1. Get clear on objectives and stick to them.

If you don’t know your destination, you and your organization will meander aimlessly and enter storm-tossed seas.

Effective leaders know where they are and where they want to go. And, they stick to their aim.

2. Create robust plans.

Plans have three key benefits.

* Effective planning allows you and your team to delve into a situation beforehand
* Plans create a common language for everyone involved in the organization’s mission.
* Plans tell you what needs to be done, by when, and with what resources.

Read the rest at the CEO Refresher.

Fair warning: Journyx is based in Texas, the 4th hottest place on earth. Also, it’s the middle of July. And yet I am about to complain about the heat. If I were to read a piece written by someone in upstate New York that complained about the cold in the winter time I’d feel pretty comfortable telling the whiner to shut up and live with it. But I’m asking you to stick with me because despite the whining, I really do have a point that’s germane to projects. Trust me. Would a marketing guy lie to you? Don’t answer that. Just keep reading.

It’s been a very hot summer. Incredibly, painfully hot, even for Texas. It was the hottest June on record, with 20 days at 100° F or higher. It’s also been very dry - like 3 inches below average dry. Why am I going on about this? To make the point clear that, unlike last year’s temperate and waterlogged June, this season hasn’t been very good - or very inspiring - for gardening. You remember my bit about gardening (oh, and time boxing) from back in February, don’t you?

Anyway, the garden has fared rather poorly. Almost entirely due to the heat. Well, that freak hailstorm back in May that utterly destroyed the tomatoes and demolished our bean pole tripod (lovingly lashed together by yours truly - thanks knot-tying merit badge!) didn’t help. But really, it’s the heat. If you have to work the land to survive, it’s one thing. But if it’s really just a hobby, well, there are indoor hobbies that keep you safe from the raging anger of the sun. And that means that the garden suffers alone.

Right, so here’s where we get to the point. Said green brown patch is part of a community garden, and that means that other people care about the state of the plot almost as much as we do. They care because it can affect their plots - if it gets too weedy, say, or if it gets overgrown and blocks out the sun (normally bad, though possibly a good thing this year). You get the idea. So, last weekend an email went out to the gardener list barking at everyone to clean up their plots by the end of Sunday or have their ownership of said plots revoked. Apparently, we’re not the only ones hiding from the intense ball of fusion in the sky.

Now, I’m all for keeping the garden looking nice and going strong, but to threaten to revoke ownership in July - after membership fees have been paid for the entire year, no less - is a bit, well, unreasonable. I suppose the tone was taken to try to spur action, but instead it really just sounded petulant and overly-demanding. Kind of like the way upper management sounds when they demand completion of a project without any effort at understanding the situation on the ground. You see, it’s easy to look at a situation, see something you don’t like and decree that changes be enacted. Heck, it’s probably human nature to do so. But we’re out to change that - in project land, if not in community gardens across the country.

How does a Timesheet company aim to help management get a better idea of what the lay of the land looks like, you ask? Sssssh. It’s a secret.

- Andrew Trent, Journyx Director of Web Content