Corralling An Insane Number of Small Efforts

Situation: You have a small to mid-size business and need to get a handle on all of those small projects.

The needs of a small to sort of "mid-size, but still small" companies are different from those of the Fortune 500 crowd.  People wear more hats at smaller companies and sometimes "Project Manager" is just one of those hats.  In instances where there is little complexity and structure, but a lot going on - you still need a view of what's on the organization's "list" of efforts.  Entry software is one of the companies working to address those needs.  

We recently spoke with Barry, Cousins, CEO of Entry Software and author of One Task List, a teamwork fable to get an overview of what makes Entry Software special and his insights on the "One Task List" concept.  Here is what he had to say...


Q.  Tell us about the "One Task List" concept and why its so powerful.
 
One Task List is about managing all of an organization's work in a single place.  Most of our clients are small to medium sized organizations made up of employees who have to balance a variety of roles between projects and support work.  Having all of the work in a single system makes it easier to prioritize, allocate resources, and ensure that the right work is done by the right people at the right time. 
 

Q.  What industries are the best fit for Entry Software?
     
Entry's products and services fit best in the IT shops of Health Care, Education, Government, Professional Services, and Software Development organizations.
 

Q.  What size projects are the best fit for Entry Software?
    
We specialize in organizing work for people who manage a large number of smaller projects, typically less than 50 Effort-Months.


Q.  Who do you consider to be competitors?  What makes Entry software different from them?

Our competitors are the identifiable stand-alone HelpDesk and Project Management vendors targeting the Small and Medium Business marketplace. What makes Entry.com different is our ability to provide an integrated environment for both Project Management and Help desk and that it is available as a hosted managed service. 
 

Q.  When I looked at the components of the system, "Help Desk" seemed out of place, sitting alongside Portfolio Management, Project Management, and time sheets.  Looking at it more deeply it seems that the value is more in the capture of best practices.  Could you talk a little about that?
 
Our mix of functionality makes perfect sense to those organizations who have to balance project and support work.  When projects fail to deliver on time, it's often because support tickets are taking resources away from project allocations.  Many support issues arise from recently implemented projects, and many projects are funded as a result of support incidents.  As a result, we built our software to allow new support incidents to be related directly back to projects and quality assurance cycles.  We developed the ability to start a new project directly from a support ticket, and that project's requirements can be developed by dragging in other tickets.  For the executive leadership, we make it possible to allocate resources and manage a portfolio that incorporates both kinds of work, across the entire enterprise.  People in smaller organizations tend to wear many different hats, and our software helps them to succeed in those different roles within one toolset.  


Q.  If you have project management software and a time sheet system in house that you are already happy with, can it be integrated with Entry Software?
 
We have a variety of ways to integrate with other systems, from feeding data into a common reporting platform to feeding support requests from external sources.  We look at each need on an individual basis to determine the best fit.
 

Q.  How do you deal with requirements tracking and financial management within this toolset?  Is there integration with other tools to address these issues?

Requirements tracking is one of our hidden gems, because our users can assemble project requirements from other projects, past support incidents, and the body of requirements that are documented on a day to day basis.  Regardless of their source, requirements carry the comprehensive historical audit trail of our support tickets so that product managers have access to the richest possible context for each requirement.
 
Our software includes functionality to manage the budget, cost, and benefits associated with any activity.  Integrating with other tools for transaction processing and/or reporting is possible through our XML Web Services layer
 

Q.  Who should NOT use Entry Software?
 
With our software and service design, we targeted smaller organizations who have to manage a variety of project and support activities.  Entry's offerings have 10 years of traction within that customer profile.