Can Project Management Software be as Engaging as Facebook?

 

Situation: You want your PM software to be more playful.

Recently we spoke with Alex Leblanc, founding partner of Upstart Industries and creator of Vantage Software.  His ideas around making PM software as painless as facebook are very compelling.  If you think about it, everything in our world is moving in that direction.  The presentations we give have to be more interesting and entertaining than they were a decade ago.  Your personal brand is becoming more important by the day. People expect everything they do to be engaging.  If it’s not, the chances of it getting any attention at all go way down.  So it makes perfect sense that the next generation of business software would move in the same direction.

I personally love the idea of “software that works like you play”.  Here’s what Alex had to say about it…

DG.  You say that VANTAGE^TM software "works like you play".   What do you mean by that?

AL:If we have one guiding principle, it's to build intuitively.  Software is no longer the domain of productivity and businesses.  With the evolution of cloud and mobility, the proliferation of consumer apps, and the explosion of social media through Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Color, and so on, expectations are raised.  There's an ever-increasing chasm between the software used on the job, and the apps we're willing spend our free time on.  And it's more than just the underlying purpose. 

Businesses don't think twice about implementing software that requires every employee to attend a week's of training before they can even begin to use it.  Think about that. Training.  How many hours of classroom time do people put in before posting on their friend's Facebook page?  Now, imagine implementing software in your business that your employees can simply use, because they already know how.  Because they use apps in their daily life that have familiar design patterns, familiar commands, familiar gestures.  And as a SaaS tool, they can access their new easy-to-use project app at home, at the office, waiting for their delayed flight at the airport, and so on. 

Vantage has its own internal social media stream called VantagePoint. A common project process is requiring review and consensus. An intuitive and extremely valuable feature of our product is the ability to gather consensus on these activities by posting a VantagePoint message for your team and having them simply clicking “Agree, Disagree or Tune Out”. That’s what we mean.  Work like you play.  Everything should be that intuitive, that easy.

DG.  Are there specific industries or types of projects that you think VANTAGE^TM is particularly well suited for?  

AL:Well, we don't build for industries, we build for usefulness.  So I guess you could say it's most appropriate to anyone that needs an intuitive app to help them manage and work on their projects.  On a personal level, our team has a great deal of project experience in a number of industry sectors and areas including financial, insurance, retail, aerospace, public sector, healthcare, emergency services, technology and we've built VANTAGE^TM leveraging and applying these experiences.

DG.   You view the ability to look across all resources in all projects in the organization as an advantage with your tool.  Are these just all resources involved in projects or does it non-project utilization as well?

AL:Both.  We originally viewed it as project utilization, across all projects.  But during some feedback sessions and demonstrations we held with various user groups in multiple industry verticals, our eyes were opened to how valuable it is to useVANTAGE^TM to combine those worlds - to give visibility to the operational and project day-to-day battle for resources and priorities. 

Our pre-beta users showed us how they can begin use VANTAGE^TM for both project AND operational initiatives and resource utilization in its current form, and that really sparked some ideas within the team.  So our engineers of course are off and running with some great new concepts of how we can develop this even more.

DG.  Many simple SAAS tools target small companies with less complex projects.  Do you feel that the tool is better suited to this sort of environment?

AL:No – not necessarily “better suited”.  I think small and medium sized companies naturally gravitate to us, as they tend to be higher adopters of SaaS in general, and VANTAGE^TM is a fantastic and much needed SaaS tool.  VANTAGE^TM is a full-fledged PPM app, with the ability to handle small simple projects to large multi-dimensional complex projects and programs. A good example is the flexibility that  comes with VANTAGE^TM to select the ‘type’ of project you’d like to use within the app;  either  a “task only schedule” or a fully robust “project plan with Gantt”.  Its intuitive design and ease-of-use tend to mask a lot of the complexity that resides under the covers. 

We invested a great deal in the underlying architecture of the tool, with a very clear vision of where we're going with it and what it needs to support and accomplish.  It's a workhorse.  It works for you, not the other way around, and it can handle whatever you throw at it.

DG.  To what degree can your clients customize or integrate VANTAGE^TM with existing software? (either through direct connections, importing or exporting data and files)

AL:We're providing an API in the coming months, for developers to go crazy with.  We're not as fond of imports/exports, only because we think there are better ways to achieve better results.  And we'll help you do it.  We'll be offering technical tips and support through our blogs and forums and such, so some great opportunities ahead.

DG.  What makes this tool a better choice than Basecamp?

AL:Project management is more than task management.  It's a constant juggling of priorities, resources, schedules, risks, issues and dependencies to name a few.  And when you add to that the need to manage multiple projects at the same time, and keep all of those balls in the air until you can gently guide them to where they're supposed to be, all perfectly timed, then you need VANTAGE^TM.

And also, project managers aren't miracle workers.  They rely on each project participant to contribute their part to the project's success.  So they have a real need to empower their resources.  Sure, resources need to know what's expected of them and when, and that's Task Management 101.  But beyond that, they need to see the whole picture.  What's the goal of the project?  What's the project schedule?  What are fellow project participants working on? How does their work impact others, and vice versa?

With VANTAGE^TM, all of that information and more is at your fingertips, and all in one place.  And the best part?  It's not passive.  It's not, "go look at your task list and get it done".  VANTAGE^TM is a virtual project workspace where participants can flag issues, identify risks, request approvals, discuss, question, comment, solve, and engage - with each other, with the project manager, with other project teams, and other project managers throughout their organization.  Imagine that.