Project Management 2.0

Situation: It's a New Year and you're looking to get things done.

A big selling point of simple, inexpensive SaaS tools is that they give you the functionality you need & nothing else.  Tool vendors combine that with an interface that's easier to use and we assume that most of the ease of use is coming from the fact that there isn't much to do inside of the app. There is no complexity to simplify.

In our actual work lives, there is plenty of complexity built right in - which why we need tools in the first place. There is so much complexity, that even with tools we have trouble focusing our efforts. 

So the trend I've noticed recently is that tools are helping you focus on tasks or chunks of information one at a time. They effectively bring your attention to what matters now and obscure the rest. That last bit is where I see a difference in these new tools versus older ones - they completely clear away non-essential information. Yet that task or bit of information you are working on is kept in context in subtle ways - ensuring you still grasp the big picture.

For example, Workflowy is a neat little tool you could use to organize anything from a To-Do list to your life. There are lots of tools that help you create hierarchies, some of them very cool (I've always loved MindManager). The issue with these is that they do not force focus and clear away detail effectively enough.  You can still get lost in a dense hierarchy of information. Workflowy limits what you see to one focus area.  With Workflowy, higher levels of the structure are rolled up into breadcrumbs at the top, giving you context without detail. So you really only see what you should be working on now.

Example #2

Prezi has been all the rage lately as a new, flexible way of presenting dense information.  The idea is that people can absorb detail, but only in appropriate chunks. With Prezi, you essentially replace your PowerPoint Deck with a huge virtual sheet of paper that puts everything in to context like an infographic does. Then you zoom in on very specific parts of the presentation in a way that helps you tell a story. Again, dealing with complex information by breaking it into chunks - providing just enough context to have it all make sense.

What are you doing these days to help you focus?  Are the any particular software tools that help? Please share -

Situation: You organization needs to take risk management a lot more seriously.

We recently spoke with Loren Padelford, Executive Vice President & General Manager at Active Risk. The folks at Active Risk talk a lot about establishing an "Active Risk Culture" at your organization - really making risk management a way of life, rather than a set of sterile processes. As a concept that sounds interesting, but how does it really work? Loren offers some clarification in his responses below.

How much difference can having a "Risk-Aware Culture" have on a business? Can you compare it to simply having Risk Management processes in place or even just using general policies to manage risk?

The difference between risk awareness and simple risk management is immense. In a risk-aware culture, risk is part of everyone’s daily activity. Most firms would argue that they have a risk management “process” or “policy” in place, but a risk-aware culture means that risk is analyzed to a granular level - where it has the most impact. This means that every single person within an organization, from the CEO to the finance department to the newest project manager, not only understands their risks, but implements and uses risk management on a daily basis. If everyone understands that their role has a component of risk management involved and that risk management needs to be practiced every day, than the organization’s ability to understand its risk at a more in-depth, mature level, increases.

We’re seeing and research is showing that organizations with higher levels of risk maturity have improved in profitability, enterprise value, and opportunity generation.”

Q.  Could you describe how a Risk Aware Culture is established?  What are the top 3 (must do) components of the process?

Establishing a risk-aware culture can be a relatively simple process if the organization, on an individual level and as a whole, is committed. Having executive level support is number one. Having the CEO involved in the process and actively understanding his or her own role as a risk manager is a must. Without senior level support and daily involvement, risk is seen as optional and a risk-aware culture will not be achieved.

Secondly, an effective risk management process must be goal-focused. In order to draw employees into the process, each individual in an organization needs to establish tangible goals that they want to achieve through risk management. Risk needs to be a valuable process to the people who do it every day and setting goals will show them how effective risk management is in helping them achieve their goals more quickly.

Finally, organizations must be careful not to over-complicate its risk management. In order for risk to take hold in a culture and become engrained in everyday activity, it must consist of simple tools and remain focused on the risk that really matters to each individual’s goals and objectives.

Q.  How "Risk Mature" does your organization have to be to establish this sort of culture?  Are there pre-requisites to keep in mind?

Because risk is an ongoing process, there is absolutely no threshold for risk maturity. Organizations that want to become more risk mature simply need to focus on the three attributes mentioned above – executive support, setting goals and keeping the process simple. If an organization achieves these things, they will find themselves in a position where the company starts to pull in risk awareness naturally, instead of finding it pushed onto them.

Q.  When is it inappropriate to establish this sort of culture? In which industries is it more difficult?

Because every industry encounters risk on a daily basis, it is never inappropriate to establish a risk culture.

Additionally, every industry has a certain requirement to take risks in order to create opportunity. Of course, all industries have their particular challenges and some are more complicated than others, but there is never a time and place when risk is an inappropriate process to engage as a core component of a company’s strategy.

Q.  Given your company's deep experience in fostering effective Risk Aware cultures, could you tell us what this takes from a staffing and a tool perspective?

From a staffing perspective, the organization must have executive-level support. I cannot stress this point enough: the Chief Executive Officer must also serve as the Chief Risk Officer. They will be the educator of risk throughout the organization and translators of the goals and objectives of the business. They are not only imperative to the success of the process, but they are the cultural enablers bringing risk to an organization-wide level.

Without the right tools, it’s nearly impossible to execute risk management well. Organizations should look for tools, like Active Risk’s ARM solution, that provide a centralized hub for all risk information, so that the defined Chief Risk Officer is able to own the risk management process. This tool should integrate seamlessly into existing systems and processes, and have the ability to be personalized to each user’s needs.

The most successful organizations are the ones who have taken the approach of giving individuals high power and highly capable, yet simple to use tools to support risk management as a daily activity in business. These are the organizations that reap the rewards of a risk-aware culture.

_______________________________________________________________________________

About Loren Padelford

Loren is responsible for all customer-facing activities at Active Risk including sales, marketing, services, partners and customer success.

Loren has a broad track record of success in technology, advertising and business services. Prior to joining Active Risk, Loren was Vice President of Strategic Alliances and Global Sales Director for Dyadem International, a leading enterprise HSE software provider. Loren was a key member of the leadership team and instrumental in the growth of the business, which led to the acquisition of Dyadem by IHS (NYSE:IHS) in April of 2011. Prior to Dyadem, Loren was National Sales Manager at Recall Corp, Sr. Director of Sales & Account Management at advertising firm Uthink and started his career selling photocopiers with Ricoh Corp.

Loren holds an MBA in Marketing from the University of Liverpool Management School, a Bachelors of Psychology from the University of Guelph and is a Certified Sales Professional.

Situation: You are a user of Daptiv's products and need a little help from time to time.

Daptiv is launching a new online community to promote social interaction between its customers and employees. It allows you to share FAQs and new product ideas, and serves as a one-stop knowledge base and training resource.  With more than 100,000 Daptiv subscribers, this community should be fairly significant right away. It will be interesting to see what impact it has on Daptiv users and the businesses they support. We recently spent some time with Ian Knox, Vice President of Products and Marketing, from Daptiv to find out more.

Q. Tell us a little bit about this new community you are starting.  What are it's goals and what do you see as the immediate benefits to your user base? What will be the benefits for Power Users who are consistently active on the site?

The Daptiv community was conceptualized with the aim to foster product innovation and streamline the whole process of knowledge sharing through mutual collaboration. This new platform gives all its users an opportunity to collaborate directly with Daptiv peers and employees to receive timely responses to product related queries and leverage the community’s knowledge of best practices.

A highly user friendly and intuitive platform, it makes it easy for all the users to access the training courses and refer to knowledge based posts to advance expertise in Daptiv PPM whenever in need. The Greenhouse’ feature of the platform allows customers to share ideas and vote on new and innovative features for Daptiv’s product roadmap. It’s like an interactive knowledge house which is just a click away from its users. Active users and contributors will be abreast with the latest in technology, product and capabilities.

Q. How is this similar to or different from the MS Project 2010 Community or MPUG?

The Daptiv community includes a couple of unique capabilities. First, the platform is an evolved version of our Greenhouse community that was launched back in 2008 and enables customers to propose ideas and collaborate with our product team. Second, we include a library of Daptiv PPM applications and reports, which enable users to download best practice components and use them immediately in Daptiv PPM. This is addition to our blogs, videos, forums and knowledge base.

Q. Will Daptiv employee participants be pre-selected, or any anyone at the company participate?

Just like a community, this new platform is open to all of Daptiv’s users and customers. It’s an open development platform and a community of contributors. The community not only encourages exchange of knowledge, but also allows Daptiv to stay in closer contact with clients and partners.  

Q. Do you see Daptiv partners playing a role in this?

Absolutely! Daptiv partners are an integral part of this community. Our partners tailor to an array of sectors and we value the know-how that they bring in. This is a collaborative community where ideas, experiences and best practices are exchanged for better results. We are eager to listen in and drive Daptiv’s innovation process by creating a closer, more intimate dialogue with our customers.

Q. How do you see members of the community working together? 

We have designed the Daptiv Community to become the ultimate go-to resource to help customers with their PPM questions and deliver value for their businesses. We see this platform as a breeding ground for new ideas, seamless engagement and reliability.

Q. In terms of long-term vision, what do you see this evolving into over the next few years? Do you see the scope of this extending beyond Daptiv-specific best practices to more general PPM advice?

The basic premise of this community is to evolve constantly by adapting to the changing environment. Conversations are made in real world environment through open dialogue via discussion forums and an updated knowledge base.

Over the years, this community aims to serve as a one-stop entry point where both customers and employees pitch new ideas and initiate discussions with like-minded peers. Our vision is that this is the first place PPM practitioners from our user community come to ask questions, share best practices and connect with peers.

We are proud to announce that effective today, gantthead will be changing its name to ProjectManagement.com.

When gantthead launched in 2000, every project worth managing was run using a gantt chart. However, times change and many project leaders are much more focused on their KanBan Boards than on a linear schedule.  Although some of the tools and approaches may be changing, our commitment to you and your work has not. The name change doesn't mean we hate gantt charts--it just means that we want our site to be the logical destination for everything related to project management, the place you think of first when you need help. For those new to the craft, we are a lot easier to find...and by growing faster, we can only help everyone become better.

We continue to be your one-stop shop for Project Management answers, helping get you “unstuck” and helping you confidently meet every new challenge that comes your way with:
•Over 11K how-to articles to jumpstart your projects.
•Over 1K Deliverable Templates to save you time and effort.
•Over 550K Peer Connections & experts to offer specific advice

As always, if there is a way we can help you that doesn't exist on the site, please let us know at contactus@projectmanagement.com or just give me a ring at one of the numbers listed below.

We are now ProjectManagement.com.  Our mission is (as it has been for over a decade) to make you more successful.  So come out and take a look at the new site. We’ll look forward to hearing what you think.
http://www.projectmanagement.com

Situation: You need a quick new way to rank priorities or sort your ToDo list.

Kickstarter projects are sometimes useful, sometimes not - but always interesting. Today, I ran across a rather interesting project that's not complicated, but could be quite useful. This project covers two products:

• Bubblesorter - An app that helps you force-rank items into a priority list.
• Gridsorter - An app that helps you consider multiple attributes of tasks when deciding what you should work on next.

Check out the Kickstarter video and see what you think...