Effective Group Task Lists
Situation: You Need a Simple Way to Organize Small Group Activities.  Sometimes you don't need a full-blown PM software package to track things. Especially with smaller operational projects and for people who are more in a team lead position. For those situations, tools exist that are more like a hopped up version of outlook.For example, Project360 is a very simple online collaboration tool that includes: Task Management— task assignments to team members, set start and end dates, priority level, and a clear view of task level status. Milestones—identify and review key accomplishments related to individual tasks. Calendar— a schedule at a glance, highlighting overdue tasks, etc. File Sharing—a shared team repository. Time Tracking—Simple time tracking. (probably redundant to your ordinary timekeeping system) Gantt Chart—The Gantt Chart gives you a visual representation of your project timeline. (just at the task level) Project Templates—This time-saving feature allows you to create projects based on already existing projects. (for projects you engage in repeatedly) General Project Calendar—This feature allows you to see all of your projects in a single calendar. |
Posted on: July 15, 2007 12:35 PM
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More Ways to Find WiFi HotSpots
| Situation: You Need to Get Connected Away from the Office (or Home) In earlier posts, I've written about WeFi and keychain-based WiFi detectors. Here are a couple more options I've run across. WiFiFreeSpot, Like WeFi is another directory that's useful if your good at planning ahead. If planning ahead isnt really your thing, Jwire offers a database or WiFi HotSpots that you can download. That way you can find a "connection" before being "connected". Kensington also produces a really inexpensive (again key chain) WiFi Finder that looks pretty interesting. |
Posted on: July 07, 2007 11:29 PM
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Another Free WEBEX Alternative
Situation: You Need to Conduct an Online PowerPoint Presentation (with no budget) With WEBEX, you can not only only deliver ppt presentations, but also chat, enable audio, record sessions, etc. Slidelive limits its offering to basic (but free) online delivery of PowerPoint presentations - which is what most people want anyway.If you don't have WEBEX, it's not a bad alternative to emailing the file over and saying "now on the next slide..." every 2-3 minutes. Delivering the presentation online gives you more control over the flow of the presentation. The signup on this tool is pretty painless as well. |
Posted on: July 07, 2007 01:32 PM
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Get Your Team Organized - With Little Overhead
Situation: You Need to Have All of Your Project Documentation Organized and No One Has Time To Do It. Foldera is an interesting SAAS (software as a service) product that might change the way you interact with software. In the traditional world we live in, every thing is "me"-centric, meaning I manage everything on my computer. My computer is where:- all of my documents are created - all of my documents are stored - all emai I generate is created and stored. ...then I categorize and organize everything (or hope google desktop indexed it) Foldera allows you to create and store things within the context of a project folder. When you do that, it's automatically stored in a way that relates it (and later versions of "it") to the project itself. This is an interesting approach that's worth a look. There's a cute video on the web site that explains some of the benefits of the software. |
Posted on: July 01, 2007 01:25 AM
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Project, Product Innovation & PPM
| Situation: You Need to Better Manage the Processes Around Innovation at Your Organization. When the people heading up your PMO decide which projects get funding - Does innovation matter? I think that being familiar with a PPM approach or two can help you generate some really interesting conversation and be more effective when promoting our own project. Last week I gave a talk at a meeting of the Enterpise Portfolio Management Council (EPMC) and most of the presentations given that day made some mention of the "innovation challenge" most companies face. How do you take appropriate risks, allocate funds, and manage resources in the face of such uncertainty? It's a problem that every company faces, but few even have a good approach to. One fairly well defined approach to managing potential projects is the "Stage-Gate" process. The idea is that at each step in the process you make a decision about whethere or not you should kep moving forward. At a high-level it looks like this -
 PMI Standard for Portfolio Management, June 3, 2007
The Standard gives a good an concise guidance on how to handle Portfolio management. It's very practical to apply. |
Here's the only review on the Amazon web site...
Posted on: June 26, 2007 02:22 PM
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