Automated Nagging - Let The Software Do It
Situation: You Spend WAY Too Much Time Following Up With People... Sometimes its hard to stay on top of all of the little tasks and emails that are a huge part of managing these days. Not everyone is good at responding, which can leave you holding the bag. As much as you try to stay organized you end up digging through old emails as you remember things until "follow-up" completely dominates your work days.Wrike is an interesting, very very simple tool that tasks tasks as they are assigned via email, reminds the person being tasked, and puts the onus on them to monitor and change status. In other words, it takes offloads a huge part of the administration. It's also free, which certainly helps. Here's how simple it is: - register (takes 2 minutes) - copy [email protected] on emails that inlcude task assignments - organize and categorize tasks, if and when you need to, online (2-5 minutes) I think this is one of those very simple targeted tools that solves a very common problem. If any of this speaks to you, give it a shot! |
Posted on: April 18, 2007 05:03 PM
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Beyond CMMI... PEMM
| Situation: You're Planning to Change Important Business Processes... |
In IT we talked forever about CMMI. Lately, to judge any offshore effort you must at least consider the outsourcers' CMMI maturity level.
Posted on: April 17, 2007 02:48 PM
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Going Agile? Process First, Then Tool...
Situation: You're Shopping for Agile PM Tools...  TargetProcess offers an Agile Project Management software package called TP v.2 . Version 1.7 won the 16th annual Jolt Productivity Award. Software to manage Agile projects tends to focus more on results and less on time and tasks. We recently spoke with Michael Dubakov, the Founder of TargetProcess, who gave us a little more insight into what makes TP v.2 special. Here are his responses to our questions. Q. Do your naming conventions and tool functions align with any particular flavor of Agile? How important is the concept of "stories" within the tool?
TargetProcess terminology is primarily Extreme Programming based, however in the upcoming release (early May) we will add custom terms. It will be possible to create your own terminology in TargetProcess to support any in-house agile process. Moreover, it will be possible to create unique terminology for each department inside the company if required. TargetProcess is agile-focused for sure. It may be used with almost any agile process, but will not work perfectly with waterfall. It is designed to solve exact problems in agile environment and not follow a one-process-fits-all approach.
A User Story translates to “Requirement” in traditional PM language. There are two types of requirements in TP: Feature and User Story. A feature is conceptually larger and it may consist of several user stories. A User story is a key thing in TargetProcess as well as in real life. In fact user stories are an attempt to describe “people needs”, and those needs are why software is created. They are the most important thing in any project regardless project type, size or methodology.
Q. Can you describe the process of scope management using TP v.2?
We manage scope using the Release Planning / Iteration Planning areas. The release planning area allows you to create a product roadmap and balance effort for all releases, while the iteration planning area powers the creation and balancing of iterations. The Release Burn Down chart show how is the release going. It provides insight into whether it is possible to add more stories/features in the release or if there is a need to reduce release scope and drop some stories to meet the deadline.
Q. Is TP v.2 particularly good for projects of any particular size, industry, or type? What makes it unique among Agile PM software packages?
In general TP works best for very experienced agile teams. We feel it works perfectly for distributed teams as well. "We do not recommend using ANY agile PM tool when changing your overall development approach from waterfall to agile, since it may shift focus from people and process to tool itself. The process change should be made first. Then the a tool can be introduced to make that process work more effectively." If team feels the need for a replacement for manual tools (whiteboards/excel/cards/etc.), then TargetProcess may be a perfect choice.
TargetProcess is used in small companies with several developers and in quite large departments with up to 300 people. Project fit is a matter of agile process, not a tool. Any agile focused team may use TargetProcess. Teams using waterfall approaches likely will not benefit from TP usage.
Simplicity, integrity and productivity are what make Target Process unique. TP is simple in comparison with other APM tools. The user interface is AJAX based and very responsive. It provides many productivity tools like screenshot capture, a bug submission utility or integration with Subversion that saves a lot of time from the developer’s perspective. (TP automatically changes the state of user stories or bugs, add comments and spent time from a single commit message). Our customers love the interface. Most are happy with the tool and that is the best indicator that we’re headed in the right direction. |
Posted on: April 09, 2007 04:21 PM
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Going Postal
Situation: You Want a Better Way to Send Out Snail Mail... Postful is a new service that allows you to send actual letters through email. For just under a buck you can send a single page document to someone's physical mailbox. Why would you do this? Well the pitch goes something like this:- For recipients who do not have email, it's easier than putting together a letter. - For those who need to track all correspondence, this application lets you track everything from your computer. |
Posted on: April 07, 2007 11:34 PM
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Leave me Alone...
Categories:
Time Killers
Categories: Time Killers
Situation: You HATE Social Networks... I think half of my offline friends feel this way. Enjoy Isolator. |
Posted on: April 07, 2007 10:16 PM
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