There is no question that issue management is a critical process for project management and for any organization, for that matter.  And, of course, doing it right is just as important.  After all, if it doesn’t serve your needs, doesn’t provide meaningful reporting, and doesn’t all for the proper identification, oversight and ongoing management of issues then it isn’t going to provide much value to your organization and it won’t get used.

You could plan forever

So should we take months designing the right issue management platform to make sure it’s right the first time and usable forever?  No….absolutely not.  It’s like couples who decide to wait till they have enough money to start a family, or a big enough house or just the right jobs.  Their youth passes them by and they end up with no children at all, no family and no grandchildren and so on.  And they get bored looking at each other 20 years later. 

Don’t wait for perfection

They key is, you have to start somewhere.  No one gets it right the first time.  Projects ‘fail’ more than 50% of the time, but that doesn’t mean a usable solution hasn’t been implemented.  It means they went over budget, or over the timeframe for implementation, or something was out of whack at deployment that was probably fixed later.  A majority of projects aren’t a complete success at deployment…but most get the job done and with some post deployment tweaking they are successful or at least basically delivered the anticipated outcome.

The same is true for an issue management platform.  Issues need tracked…period.  It’s imperative that you don’t miss critical windows of issue management and issue tracking on key projects just because you’re trying to build or select the perfect tracking system.  The key is to hold some planning meetings to identify what the major issue elements are that need to be tracked and reported on for your organization and develop or buy something that will meet those requirements – at least as much as possible.  You can tweak it later because it’s highly unlikely that you’ll get it completely right the first time.  Despite what my first manager told me about his first software application, no code was ever written error-free the first time, no project was implemented issue-free from beginning to end, and no tracking platform has ever been developed that will do everything you need it to do right out of the gate.  Design it to capture what you think you need today and in the near future, and plan to revisit those needs along the way.  Assume that it will need to grow and flex with your organization’s needs.  Don’t wait to start with perfection – or you will never get started and you’ll miss tracking critical issues on your early projects.

For issue management and project tracking on your ongoing engagements, check out Gemini.  Gemini uses understandable and consistent industry-specific terminology to facilitate the most collaborative situation possible for everyone involved on the project.  Gemini can meet all of your task management needs for your organization.

When you’re thinking project management practices, what comes to mind?  Are these things you do when the CEO is watching?  Things you do if you’re part of a project management office (PMO)?  Things you only do if you’re running a $1+ million engagement? 

I hope not…but sadly it is an easy trap to fit in to.  When you’re running a two-month, $10,000 project, you have to admit that it’s hard to get into the details of applying best practices to your project...especially if you have four or five other projects happening at the same time.  Let’s say, you’re running a large JD Edwards ERP solution implementation with significant executive management buy-in and oversight at the same time you’re leading an effort to upgrade the website of an internal business unit in your organization.  Which one gets the most attention?  Which one might fall through the cracks?  Yes, the popular thought would be to apply best practices to the large project and do as little as possible for the internal customer, right? 

Well, in a true best practices organization it really can’t work that way…and it shouldn’t.  Not if you’re really trying to build a consistent PM methodology and have repeatable practices and processes that lead to ongoing success.  You can make those processes scalable – certainly.  You don’t have to create a 30-page communication plan for a $10,000 project…2-3 pages will probably do it.  But still do it.  So, even for the small stuff, be sure to:

Kick the project off right.  No matter how big or small the project, conduct a formal kickoff session, even if it’s a short one for those extremely small projects.  Don’t blow this off – it’s a bad way to start any project off.  Start off doing it right and be thorough about it – it sets a nice example for the project team because I’m sure you want them operating at the top of their game for every size project, right?

Conduct weekly status meetings.  Always product a weekly status report and revised project schedule and always…always conduct a weekly status call or meeting with the customer.  It doesn’t matter if it’s just a five-minute phone call some weeks, but be sure to do it. The minute you start letting yourself and others skip it or cancel it, is the minute the project may start to slip away.  And I don’t care how small the project may be, the customer can still get frustrated.

Keep the customer engaged.  Keep tasks assigned to the customer throughout the engagement even if it’s a small project and they seem like meaningless or ‘filler’ tasks.  Keeping things assigned to them forces them to report on them and forces their attendance on a weekly status call.  Trust me, this one is important.

Forecast and reforecast dollars and resources.  Finally, don’t forget to review the resource usage and upcoming needs weekly as well as the budget actuals and forecast.  It’s easy to fix and get back on track if you stray a little as long as you’re watching it weekly.  Don’t think that just because the budget is very small that it’s ok to just let it go.  It’s not.  If you can keep a project within budget by watching resource usage and dollars expended, then do so…it means the difference between project success and project failure.

Privilege management is often at the very core of IT security for most companies and also a major stress point for most IT directors and CIOs.  It doesn’t come easy, and if it’s not carried out right…or carefully…major security breaches or unintentional security incidences can result.

Indeed, careful control of administrator rights as well is at the very foundation of IT security and when users have widespread administrator rights, this opens the network to a variety of security risks.  This can be easily mitigated because users do not need to have full administrator rights to accomplish daily tasks, and privileged users should have restricted access to tasks related to their role/responsibilities only.  What an IT group needs is an product that can control end user and privileged user rights for applications and systems which require elevated permissions.  Viewfinity can do just that.  Let’s examine further…

The Viewfinity Privilege Management Suite

Viewfinity Privilege Management offers granular-level control for managing least privilege environments by providing elevation of privileges for applications and to reduce and control permissions for privileged users. Privilege control for data extends privilege management policies to control permissions by elevating or reducing privileges and permissions on folders, files and shares.

The Viewfinity Privilege Management Suite provides regulation of administrator rights via these critical features:   

• Application Blocking/Whitelisting
• Privilege elevation, including self-elevation or workflow approval
• Automated policy creation, management and intelligent policy aggregation
• Automated analysis to determine user needs and prepare the environment
• Readiness indicator determines optimal point to remove administrator rights
• Compliance, Audit trail, policy validation reporting and privileged account activity auditing
• Windows UAC Management and UAC Auditing Reports
• Control permissions for data by elevating or reducing privileges on folders, files & shares
• Mobile Workforce Support

Interested in trying it out?  Signup here for an evaluation trial, go here for a demo, or contact Viewfinity for more information.

There are literally thousands of Project Management tools on the market. THOUSANDS. While so many choices may seem like a dream, it can quickly become a nightmare. Each product comes with its own methodology, UI, structure, and functionality which makes finding, learning and using the ideal one for your project and team difficult.

It’s also why most people, after they search for their ideal purpose-built tool, return to old standby: the trusty spreadsheet.

Outside of power users who rely on tools such as Microsoft Project, spreadsheets are the dominant tool of choice (along with email) for coordinating work, gathering information, and updating tasks within teams. They're the instinctive ‘go-to’ tool because they're seemingly free, infinitely flexible to 'set up your way', and don't require IT involvement or approval.

If you send a spreadsheet to a colleague, client, or partner to edit or review, you’re confident he or she will be able to understand and update the work. But Project is too complicated - and expensive - for an extended team or clients to access directly. (If you’ve ever had to print Gantts or email PDFs, you know what I’m talking about.)

Look around your company. If you’re like most, the majority of your coworkers are using spreadsheets to manage all types of work -- projects, tasks, simple to-do lists, and ongoing programs. And, for the most part they work pretty well...

Until they don’t.

They don’t work when it comes to real-time collaboration with teams, adding automated workflows, finding out who’s made changes (and when), or housing related information like documents, graphics or PDFs. Plus, it gets complicated establishing cross-project dependencies, automating workflows, integrating schedules with your calendar - to name a few issues.

If you’ve ever tried to quickly roll up several spreadsheets into one master sheet with data automatically pulled from other sheets, or wanted dates on one sheet to drive a dependency on another, you’ve probably experienced “spreadsheet hell.” Linking cells across sheets is often challenging – and maddening. Links get broken when the source sheet is moved from the designated directory, and trying to figure out the source of a value, or whether other sheets reference data you are about to change, creates uncertainty and errors.

When we founded Smartsheet, we decided to keep what works about the spreadsheet, but fix the problems. It turns out that beyond data and number crunching, there hasn't been much fundamental innovation in spreadsheets in 20 years.  Even as the cloud has fundamentally changed the nature of enterprise apps, spreadsheet providers haven't responded. (“Why” they haven’t responded is worthy of a whole other post.)

Think of Smartsheet as a foundational SaaS app for managing work -- blending the most widely used and valued features of Project, SharePoint and Excel, with the collaboration capabilities of the cloud. Because it can be used to manage everything -- projects, marketing campaigns, HR onboarding, sales pipelines, manufacturing processes, and more -- it’s earned a seat at the table when companies evaluate productivity tools to deploy across the organization.

All within a familiar spreadsheet-like interface, you have the ability to attach files, view project dates in calendar or Gantt chart view, share the entire sheet or send individual rows to others via email to get updates, link cells across sheets, automate workflows and establish conditional formatting rules. It’s the tool that, as a former CEO of a global enterprise, I wish my teams had been able to use to manage work.

We’re betting the world doesn’t need another project management tool. It just needs to take what already works, and make it work better. We think we’re on the right track with our fresh alternative for managing work. Let us know what you think.

About the Author 

Brent Frei is the founder and executive chairman of Smartsheet.com. Previously he served as CEO and co-founder of Onyx Software Corporation and has also held roles at Intellectual Ventures, Microsoft and Motorola. He can be reached at brent.frei@smartsheet.com and you can read more about his thoughts at his blog at http://www.smartsheet.com/blogs/