Journyx Project Management Blog

The International Community for Project Managers is a repository of articles, links and other useful pieces of information for project managers. (In fact, our CEO is one of their contributing writers.) One of their recent articles, “Implications of Diversity on Project Management,” raises an issue that most of us might not always consider – the fact that diversity in project teams is not only beneficial and desirable, but is also something that must be accounted for and managed in order to maximize value. The writer says, “Of the many factors that are used in global management work, the most important – and most impulsive – are employees. While capital, land and technology can be planned and hazards predicted and managed, employees are most difficult to manage globally.” She goes on to suggest not only fostering team diversity, but also addressing it by encouraging team members to talk through their feelings about diversity and to communicate their way to a better understanding of each other.

How large a factor do you think one’s cultural and professional background plays in their interaction with other team members and with you, the project manager?

I have been having several conversations recently around the subjects of accountability vs. responsibility and titles vs. roles, specifically around who does what on a project and what they are really supposed to be doing. There were a lot of undercurrents in these conversations, but there are a few that are worth exploring as relevant to your effectiveness leading a project team. Keep these ideas in mind the next time you work with your team to determine who is doing what on your project.

Read the entire article at ProjectConnections.

Let’s take a look back at some of the pieces we’ve posted on bringing together people, processes and strategy.

1. Tips and Tricks for Facilitating Conflict Resolution
A ProjectTimes article on how to get your employees or colleagues to push past conflict and come to a resolution.

2. How to Choose the Right Collaboration Software

An article from Inc. Magazine on choosing a system that will allow employees in all different workspaces to share data and collaborate on projects.

3. Tying Projects to Organizational Strategy

A ProjectConnections article on how to ensure that the projects you take on are helping you move towards your strategic goals.

4. The New Face of Strategic Planning

A PM World Today article written by the EVP of our partner, Cognitive Technologies, on how to bring project managers and strategic planners together for optimal success.

Here at Journyx, we hold meetings about our customers. Each month, we choose a different customer and invite everyone who has ever interacted with this customer to a meeting. These meetings bring together a range of people, from the salespeople and account managers who speak to the customer regularly and learn of their needs to the implementation and professional services teams who work, sometimes on-site, to meet these needs. Often, employees who rarely have meetings together find themselves here, where their combined presence provides insight into every aspect of the customer experience. Is this customer having a problem? What can we do to solve it? Is that feasible? And solutions are born.

It is extremely useful for departments to meet every so often – Marketing, Sales, IT – but familiar faces lead to familiar insights, from which springs complacency and stagnance. Want to shake things up in your organization? Schedule a meeting that brings together people with different backgrounds, skill sets, values and opinions, and then take advantage of this group to address an important company issue. You just might be surprised by the results.

- April Boland, Journyx Communications Coordinator

According to a popular song, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need.” Words of wisdom in popular culture. We often want to bite off more than we can chew, especially when we see exciting new technology. Yet think of it this way: Would you give your grandmother an iPhone 3G for Christmas if she has never touched a PC before? It might be an incredible piece of technology that can hold her photos, her shopping lists, her favorite music … but if she cannot figure out how to turn it on, it’s not much use, is it?

Likewise, many companies get excited about business technology. Software vendors promise to solve all of their problems with the click of a button. And, to be fair, the tools they provide might be able to do just that. But if your organization is not mature enough to handle it, you might as well put the software right up on a shelf immediately after purchase. It will not be rolled out, it will not be used, and it will be a total waste of money. For example, are you looking for a complex, sophisticated PPM solution while your team members aren’t even tracking time to tasks yet? Are you hoping for the latest cutting edge resource management technology, but you can’t even say who will be available to work on your project next month?

All of us have to crawl before we walk, though we can often forget this.

- April Boland, Journyx Communications Coordinator

When employees spend a lot of time in the field, it can be difficult to manage projects and share information. Especially when those employees are actually out in the middle of a giant field. That was the situation at Stranger’s Hill Organics, an 81-acre farm in Bloomington, Indiana, that grows organic produce and sells it to Whole Foods Market, food co-ops, and farmers’ markets. Almost two years ago, the farm’s founders, Dale and Lee Jones, brought on four new partners to help fund an expansion. That created some problems. The founders continued to work at the farm, but the new partners held jobs elsewhere and could make it out there only a few hours a week. That made it difficult for the owners to discuss topics such as tax planning, marketing budgets, and which crops were ready for harvest. “It was almost impossible to get everyone together on a regular basis,” says Rick Dietz, one of the new partners.

Things changed last summer, when the owners began using Web-based collaboration software that allows them to create a central repository for information.

Read more at Inc. Magazine.

Journyx is just plain delighted to announce that ProjectXecute has been named a “Best Of Breed” Project and Portfolio Management solution by the smart folks at Business Finance Magazine.

As Business Finance Magazine puts it, PPM solutions like ProjectXecute are “about getting your house in order — whether you’re talking at the corporate level or the IT level — so that… you’re not spending your time, people, and money on operational things just to keep up with business flow, but you’re actually streamlined so that when the business opportunities arise, you can go after them.”

So if you’re looking to improve your PPM, take a look at ProjectXecute. It’s Best of Breed, after all.

The same old Gantt charts, the same old status meetings… aren’t you sick of it? Don’t you want a new and improved way of approaching projects? Here are some ways to inject life into your processes and make them more effective.

Connect Microsoft Project to Actuals

Gantt charts are pretty, but altogether useless if you don’t know some important facts, such as:

• Who is available to do the work? Do they have the right skills?
• Are these estimates and deadlines realistic?
• Has the team member completed this task or is he still working on it?
• Have we spent 30% of the budget and only completed 15% of the work?

Integrating MS Project with a resource management solution provides this information. Don’t just look at a picture of how you want the project to be. Get a view of how it really is, so you can step in and fix things when necessary.

Replace Status Meetings with Instant Status Views

No one wants to take time from their busy schedule to sit around and discuss what they are working on, how much is left, and how it is going. They just don’t. Yet this is necessary data for the project manager, so how can you compromise? Resource management solutions provide project dashboards based on team member time tracked against tasks, so the project manager can log in and see project status within minutes. Saving all of your people an hour a week means more productivity and higher morale. You should try it.

- April Boland, Journyx Communications Coordinator

Here is a short blast from the past with some of the information on resource management we’ve published in the last few months.

1. Power to the People
A post from your friends here at the Journyx Project Management Blog on why it is important to give the people (in this case, project team members) a voice.

2. Anticipating and Resolving Resource Overloads
A ProjectTimes article giving readers advice on how to deal with too many projects and too few people.

3. Do You Know What Projects Your Staff is Working On?
A guest post from Bruce McGraw at Cognitive Technologies on how the integration of tools, processes and people can make projects more successful.

About the Role of Project Manager in Encouraging Efficiency Processes

The Challenge of a Project Manager

The basic role of a project manager is to reach the project objectives while maintaining the given resources. There are two main methods for maintaining the resources:

* To prevent resource deviations in advance
* To react correctly to local deviations – in a way that will not affect the overall project resources

In this article I will present an additional strategy: utilizing the potential for improving processes during the project itself. I will present characteristics which require attention prior to intervention (aim of which is improving the project), examples for improving processes as well as the principles that are required in this regard.

Read the rest at PM World Today.