What's on Your Mind?
Situation: You need to brainstorm or communicate a complex idea Mind mapping (as an approach to communicating ideas) has been around for a while. At the recent PMI World Congress the Mindjet folks were demostrating some pretty neat little templates they had created in their tool. Whether this is the right tool to manage your projects in is debatable, but MindManager is one of my favorite tools for brainstorming and presenting many types of information hierarchies. I especially like it when: - breaking down a problem into manageable parts. - making sure we are covering all of our bases. That having been said, I could certainly see using these templates with a group of executive sponsors to explain what's happening on a project. If you've never tried it, they offer a free trial download on their site. |
Just for Laughs
Categories:
Time Killers
Categories: Time Killers
| Situation: Just want to see your fellow PMI pals get a little crazy on film. We try to do something fun at every PMI Global Congress - Here are some of the pictures from the gantthead photo booth on the exhibit floor. The girls from the Cadence booth (halfway down on the right) probably had more fun with it than anyone else at the show. |
Prototype Heaven
| Situation: Need a quick way for business people to show IT folks what they want. (prototype applications) |
Prototyping is often the key to giving an end user exactly what they need from an application. Amazon for Outsourcing?
Situation: Need an (hourly rate/pricing) point of reference for outsourced development I'm not sure that this is something you actually want to try, but it's an interesting point of reference from a pricing perspective. What does an outsourced .NET developer cost these days? Check ODesk and find out.Here's their description of who they are: oDesk enables buyers of services to hire, manage, and pay technology service providers from around the world. Buyers choose oDesk for top global talent, comprehensive management tools, and a flexible hourly payment model. Service Providers choose oDesk for challenging jobs and guaranteed payment. Every day, thousands of buyers and providers work together through oDesk - a unique company at the forefront of reinventing work. |
Basic Free Gantt Charts
| Situation: No Software $, No Training $, No Corporate Restrictions on installing software, Need a simple PM tool I get this question about once a month. Where can I get a low or no cost tool for drawing gantt charts? If you have Excel, you can use that, but there are also tools out there that are free or near free and actually do a pretty good job. Everyone in the simple project tool space repeats the mantra that 80% of MS Project users use 20% of its features. An example of one such tool is GanttProject. GanttProject is a scheduler driven by gantt chart and resource load chart views of your project. So you've got your basic what to do and who is doing it views. Task dependencies and some simple reporting functions are available as well. Support is provided by Gantthive, an online discussion area fo issues and future plans. A number of developers have also created third party add-ons that facilitate web page integration and add some enterprise functionality. |
