Project Management

Project Management 2.0

by
New technologies, concepts, and Web 2.0 tools are popping up everywhere. How can you use them to help your project team collaborate, communicate - or just give your project an extra boost? [Contact Dave]

About this Blog

RSS

Recent Posts

Are You Prepping For The PMP 24/7?

Are You Just Too Darn Busy?

Eliciting Requirements... Creatively!

What To Expect When Your Stakeholders Are Expecting

8 More Templates to Save You Time

Categories

Advice, Certification, Collaboration Tools, Decision Making, Estimating, Interviews, Learning, Management Approaches, New Templates, Personal Productivity, PM Software, PPM Software, Presentation Tools, Reporting Tools, Requirements Management, Research, Risk Management, Scheduling Software, Security, shameless self promotion, Techie Tools, Time Killers, Time Tracking Software, Training, Virtual Team Tools, Web-based Tools, workshops

Date

Is This Interesting?

linkedin twitter facebook Request to reuse this  
Situation: You're a bright PM ISO extra cash.

My CIO, Shirzad, hates it when I go window shopping on the web for potentially interesting technologies and business models.  When I first looked at BitWine I immediately pictured him rolling his eyes in disgust.

The idea is that subject matter experts sell their time by the minute via the web.  It doesnt necessarily work on the context of a "do everything" portal.  The closest thing I could find to PM as a category was Risk Management and I can't say I would pay for the advice of the people there based on the info they've provided.  Still, I wonder if it would work within the gantthead community.  Right this minute, we have 281,747 members and we're pretty focused.  So I think the people who come to us know what they are looking for and are likely to find it.  I also think there are a lot of smart people out there - experts in our field, who don't mind helping others.

Would something like this be appealing?  Does the money matter at all?  Please comment or just send me an email at [email protected].
Posted on: November 30, 2006 12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Free Project Extranet Software

linkedin twitter facebook Request to reuse this  
Situation: You run simple projects with remote clients and are on a tight budget.

dotProject is an open source project management application that has a great reputation (as freeware) for helping people manage small projects.  One feature to note is the trouble ticketing system.  So it you are say --- a design firm and you need a way to communicate project progress to clients or work with them more efficiently in a shared environment.  Then this might be the tool for you.

I wouldnt recommend it for projects that are at all complex, but as a free tool to manage simple projects - give it a look.

Posted on: November 26, 2006 11:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

What's on Your Mind?

linkedin twitter facebook Request to reuse this  
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.


Posted on: November 26, 2006 10:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just for Laughs

Categories: Time Killers

linkedin twitter facebook Request to reuse this  
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.
Posted on: November 26, 2006 09:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Prototype Heaven

linkedin twitter facebook Request to reuse this  

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.  Ruby on Rails is an exceeding popular open source platform that allows non-technical people to create actual working applications.  There are a number of web-based businesses running on this platform already.  In fact, it's what Project Basecamp is built in.  Maybe it's not for apps you want to put into production at your business, but it's terrific for quickly putting together a simple working model of your app.

It's pretty well supported online  and the Introduction materials in the wiki are a must-view if you are thinking about using the platform.

Here are a couple of  examples of how people are using it:

- to prototype
- to build commercial applications

Posted on: November 25, 2006 08:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
ADVERTISEMENTS

I hope, when they die, cartoon characters have to answer for their sins.

- Jack Handey

ADVERTISEMENT

Sponsors