If you could build a project schedule up front from scratch that was right for your project, you would want to do that, wouldn’t you?  I know I would.  Usually I take an existing template and force my new project to fit into it.  What I’m left with is a project schedule that needs constant tweaking and revisions for the first few weeks as I become more aware of the garbage I left in it from the last project that doesn’t apply to this project.

Starting out with a more meaningful project plan from the outset means you assign real, meaningful tasks to your team at the beginning of the project instead of handing them tasks that aren’t really applicable this time around – they’re just still in the schedule because you neglected to remove those old tasks that really don’t apply.  Same goes for tasks you’ve assigned to the unsuspecting customer.  And what you’ve now done is confused your team and your customer and left them less than confident in your ability to fully understand this project’s tasks and lead them on a successful engagement.  Ouch!

There is a webinar coming up later this month that we should all think about signing up for.  The Project Butler is a new, interactive product from adaQuest that helps walk the project manager – and team if applicable – through the process of creating a meaningful and accurate project schedule – FOR THE CURRENT PROJECT - at the outset.  And it’s all done through a series of questions and answers.  You answer the questions about your specific project and let The Project Butler build the right task structure into the project schedule for you.  Period.  Easy.  Accurate. 

Go to the adaQuest webinar site to signup – it’s one hour, it’s free, and it’s scheduled for Monday, March 26th at 10:00am PDT.  

AtTask is a recognized leader in the PM software industry and is definitely a great choice for your project management software solution. 

AtTask originated in 2001 and have positioned themselves as thought leaders over the last decade.  Collaboration is critical to project success and the AtTask user interface lends to easy adoption for the project manager, team and customer. 

Beyond just regular projects, I found that AtTask excelled at helping organizations manage reactive work and template best practices to better manage repetitive types of tasks and projects. The changing nature of the way organizations manage work and the workforce demands tools that provide value at every level of the project management process. AtTask seems to do this very well. A UI which will seem familiar to project professionals used to current social media tools facilitates the collaborative environment where project team members can share contextual information along with status information about projects, tasks and issues - giving project managers and executives a more complete picture of exactly what’s going on within projects.

The cost

AtTask is very reasonably priced at $25 per user.  There are special packages available if you want to rollout it out at an enterprise level.

Requirements

AtTask doesn’t require much – since it’s cloud-based it only requires a current web-browser to run so it runs well in either a Windows or Mac OS environment.

Who is it for?

AtTask is really intended for any business that needs to better understand and organize their work.  This can mean traditional IT or software shops – large or small – consulting practices, professional service providers, general business operations, or marketing-focused companies.

As tested, the project management software was very robust and should appeal to project mangers across the board regardless of industry.  That, along with the business intelligence tools needed by executives to inform decisions and a UI designed to engage individual team members makes AtTask a great solution for more experienced project professionals as well as organizations new to managing project-based work.

AtTask is available in seven different languages to it is truly a global solution for any organization that needs a good project management software tool.

Some key features

Easy to use interface

Project management software usually isn’t known for making it easy for anyone but experienced project professionals to use their software and participate in the process. However, AtTask appears to have broken this stereotype by seemingly making their software accessible to everyone on the project team: project managers, individual team members and project stakeholders should all have no trouble mastering this web-based software. The TeamHome interface makes project management accessible to everyone by leveraging the familiar collaboration metaphors associated with social media.

Seamless integration with Microsoft Outlook

Outlook users have access to all the sophisticated project management tools available in AtTask making it possible for project managers and team members to organize and understand their work without ever leaving Outlook. It’s as easy as simply dragging an email message into the AtTask tab and naming the task.

Available for iPhone and Android

There is an iPhone and Android app for AtTask making it available for PMs and teams on the two most popular smartphone platforms. Everything available on the desktop via TeamHome is available with both the iPhone and Android apps.  While I didn’t have the right equipment to test the Android app, I do have an iPhone and was impressed with the interface and functionality.

Comprehensive reporting

The reporting capability of the product right out of the box (figuratively speaking, of course) was solid.  If you need more, though, it’s easy to create customer views and dashboards as needed.

What is wrong?

Local vs. cloud

Because AtTask operates in the cloud, offline users are out of luck.  But this is usually only a rare or periodic need.

Too much configurability?

I immediately recognized that AtTask offers a significant degree of configurability.  This is a good thing, unless you get overwhelmed or a very novice user – or possibly a new PM.  Just be careful and you should be fine.

Who is the competition?

• Daptiv
  
• Innotas
  
• Clarizen
  
• Microsoft Project
  
• Liquid Planner
  
• CA Clarity
  
• Primavera

Bottom line for business

AtTask offers one of the most innovative solutions for managing not just projects but all kinds of tasks. Its unique approach to UI makes it easy for project team members (with little or no training) to start using AtTask to organize and execute on their work right away.  To me this is an important consideration as few busy project professionals have time for additional training tasks. (NOTE: Information I was given by AtTask indicates an upswing of 400 percent in end user adoption attributed to their new UI.) Whether you’re a seasoned project professional or the CEO of a small to midsized business, AtTask can help you get your work done and keep your team working together cohesively.

Your competition is using me and my 1.5 million connections, fellow group members, contacts, and followers - you should, too.  If you aren't at least doing what your main competitors are doing, then you may be losing ground.  Whether it's my expert written content, your own PRs, whitepapers, and product overviews, or my relevant tips of the day, I can draw followers, traffic and buyers to your site, products and services just as I have been doing for some of your competition for the past three years.

Content marketing is creating your own valuable, relevant and compelling content to position yourself as the true industry expert.

Contact me to discuss - we can get started tomorrow.  Content marketing and social media is critical in the very competitive web-based project management and IT software world.  I can bring your products to the forefront - I'm doing it now for your competition and I can do it for you.

What do you think?  Are you going to buy the new iPad?  Do you already own one?  Today's lackluster announcement from Apple CEO Tim Cook showed us two things:  How much Apple probably misses Steve Jobs and how unspectacular this newest iPad release is compared to the jump from iPad to iPad2.  

The key is - will you buy one?  Is that resolution improvement enough to make you do it?  My wife loves the iPad - she owned the first one and immediately bought the iPad2 when it came out because it was thinner, came in white and for a few other reasons that escape me now.  But the newest one isn't doing it for her.  

What I'm most curious about is this:  Will the fastest buyers be current iPad owners, current iPad2 owners, or iPad holdouts who have been using other tablet devices or are like me - haven't succumed to the tablet devices' lure yet.  I don't think I ever will - I love my Macbook too much.  And a real keyboard.

Let's hear it...are you going to buy one when they come out on March 16th?  And what do you own now for a touchpad / tablet device?  Let's discuss...

Every day, more and more companies are harnessing the power of social media to enhance their online marketing efforts. While many B2B marketers’ key focus is Facebook, there’s no way Twitter should be ignored. This vastly popular micro-blogging site has 500 million registered users comprised of both individual and business accounts. That’s a huge amount of potential clients just waiting for news, product offers, retweets and more at 140 characters apiece!

Companies who venture into the Twitterverse for B2B marketing have many goals.

These include:

• The need to gather business intelligence and marketing data
  
• Interaction with customers, clients and industry insiders
  
• Monitoring their brand identity online and more
  
• B2B marketers can even chat about the state of B2B marketing in general by using the hashtag (#) “b2bchat.” 

How To Get To The Top
The top B2B Twitter accounts understand how to use social media correctly.

• They recognize the need to engage, not just to sell.
  
• They promote two-way conversation, not a one-way broadcast.
  
• They know what their message is and they stick to it.

What follows is a list of some of the most exemplary B2B Twitter accounts, what they’re doing right, how they do it and what you can learn from them.

Gartner

@Gartner_inc is a business advisory firm best known for “The Gartner Quadrant,” a four-section diagram analyzing the key players in a given field. High-level professionals understand the value of Gartner’s research, and the firm uses their place in industry to promote their own products as well as lots of helpful B2B information.

A look at recent Tweets shows promotion of free Gartner webinars, management tips, jobs at Gartner, links to helpful non-Gartner blog posts and much more! Tweets like this build loyalty by giving managers and industry professionals a reason to keep coming back.

Allstream

One of Canada’s top business-class communications providers, @Allstream uses their Twitter podium to do more than just sell their products. This can’t be stressed enough as a key to successful social media marketing.

Sure,  Allstream frequently Tweet about communications industry news, client success stories, technology news and information on new trends and products.

Allstream’s Twitter behavior is diverse, which is exactly what any B2B marketing communication needs to be in the social realm.

eMarketer

@eMarketer needs to be bookmarked and followed daily by any serious B2B marketing professional. eMarketer describes themselves as “the go-to authority on digital marketing, media and commerce,” and you will agree. Marketing pros could spend hours wading through eMarketer’s Tweeted links to amazingly helpful articles about building advertiser relationships, social media advertising tips, cutting edge marketing trends and vital information about how to properly execute marketing strategies in the digital age.

GeniusRocket

@GeniusRocket won the 2011 B2B Twitterer of the year award in the “B2B Small/Medium Size Business” category. This Washington, DC-based advertising firm approaches marketing and advertising differently, using a crowdsourcing approach to execute well-rounded campaigns with the help of hundreds of industry pros.

A unique, cutting edge approach is characteristic of GeniusRocket’s Twitter use, as well. B2B marketers can learn more about the power and value of crowdsourcing, how to execute a better web design plan and how to market smarter, not harder.

One glance at GeniusRocket’s feed also shows a very high level of one-on-one interaction with their followers. This is vital but, sadly, severely lacking on the part of many companies’ marketing efforts. B2B marketers need to follow GeniusRocket’s lead with regard to real, personal interaction. It’s the major advantage of social media over any other marketing effort.

Cisco Systems    

@CiscoSystems won a B2B Twitterer award for themselves back in 2010. This manufacturer of any and all networking products is a vital source of information for IT professionals, but that’s just part of their appeal. Cisco doesn’t just Tweet the latest tech news and tips, though. They also offer management strategy, tips on business presentations, marketing help and more.

If you’re avoiding following Cisco because “that’s just geek stuff,” think again. 

Which great B2B Twitter accounts are you following? Help spread valuable information and share your knowledge with us!

Brian S is an IT professional, entrepreneur and freelance writer. When he's not keeping computers talking to each other or writing, he's working out, enjoying time with his wife and his cat or traveling.

There’s no question that issue management is a big-ticket item on many projects.  In my entire project management career, I’ve never managed a project that was completely issue free.  And the longer and bigger the project, the more potential for issues, the more likelihood that bigger issues will arise, and absolutely it becomes more critical to identify, track and review those issues.

What do we do to track those issues?  Sometimes we just wing it, right?  Raise your hand if you sometimes do almost nothing to separately track issues.  Raise your hand if you handle them through some handwritten list or through email or similar weakly managed process.  It’s ok…admission is the first step in fixing the problem.

The bottom line is we often don’t give issue management and issue tracking enough of a focus to help ensure that we’re properly managing critical problems.  We don’t often give it enough attention to ensure that we are not adversely affecting our customers and threatening our projects.  Denial, ignorance, or just plain laziness…whatever the reason…it still isn’t good and it’s no excuse.  As project managers and experienced project professionals, we need to give as much focus to issue management as we do the rest of our critical project management tasks. 

Let’s consider what type of process or system we need.  What considerations should there be when deciding how to track issues and what tool or tools we should be using as part of the issue management process?  Two key areas of consideration are these: our users and the types of projects we’re managing.

Users

Knowing who will be using the issue management system and processes and how they will be used is an important consideration as you move forward on implementing an issue tracking platform.  Are the users technical?  Are they key project stakeholders?  How many will play a daily role in the projects themselves?  And what type of reporting will be required for each type of issue management platform user?  Of course, the more users and the more detailed the reporting and tracking process needs to be, then the more formal and evolved the tracking tool needs to be.

Project types

Another important consideration is the types of projects that you are managing.  Certainly government projects require a different level of tracking, management and documentation then do, say, some private sector projects.  Are your projects long term, high dollar engagements?  Or are they very short term, one-off projects with small budgets.  Certainly the length of your projects, the criticality of those projects, and the size of the project budget can play a determining factor in how much detail you build into your issue management system process and how much money you inject into it.

This issue management discussion is part of an ongoing six part series.  In part 2 will look at issue management in terms of the business processes that must be managed. 

If you’re looking for a solid enterprise issue management tool, check out Gemini.  Gemini gives maximum flexibility with minimal effort to manage real world problems efficiently and quickly.

In this second part of a six part series on issue management, we’ll examine the process of identifying the customer’s business processes and how issues and changes will be managed against those identified processes. 

Identifying business processes

The key to a rock-solid project and a usable end solution delivered to the customer is a detailed understanding – and, yes, mapping – of the customer organization’s business processes.  You can know the requirements, you can know the stakeholders, you can connect with the ultimate end users, but unless you understand the customer’s business processes then you still may not deliver a usable end solution.  Furthermore, you can’t always assume that the customer understands their own business processes.  Indeed, mapping those out is going to be similar to the grueling task of extracting the detailed project requirements from your customer.  They know some of what they need to know, but the rest is something you’re going to have to help extract and document.  Otherwise, the requirements you start to build a solution against may not completely align with the customer’s business processes and goals.  It’s a process – and it’s one you must plan for in your project planning and schedule.

Once you and your customer fully understand the business processes and have documented detailed project requirements that do, indeed, align well with those business processes, then you’re ready to move forward with the project.  At this point, you’re managing two things – the design and development of the solution AND the issues and changes that will undoubtedly arise through better understanding of the requirements and how they correlate to the needs of the customer and their business processes.

Managing the issues and changes

Managing project issues on any project is an ongoing endeavor.  No project makes it’s full run without some critical issues arising that need tracked, managed, and dealt with.  The same goes for change requests.  It’s a rare case when a project completes with out at least one or two sizeable change requests that needed to be initiated, tracked, and implemented in order to keep the final solution in line with the business processes and requirements for the project. 

Those issues and changes can be managed using a spreadsheet or as part of the weekly project status report.  However, the use of a web-based automated tool is likely going to be your best bet in order to provide the project manager, project team, project customer, and all stakeholders with meaningful reporting and insight into the nature and status of all issues and change requests.  The key to accurate management and resolution of issues and changes is the capture and reporting of critical and detailed information about each issue and change.  Those responsible for the main tasks of resolve the issues and implementing the changes will perform better in those roles if they know exactly what needs to be done and what the expectations are that they are performing against.  The online issue and change management tool will perform these tasks better than any spreadsheet or table the project manager can create.

This issue management discussion is part of an ongoing six part series.  In part 3 will look at the detailed part of issue management and change management in terms of what data needs to be captured and managed.

If you’re looking for a solid enterprise issue management tool, check out Gemini.  Gemini gives maximum flexibility with minimal effort to manage real world problems efficiently and quickly.

There is a webinar coming up later this month that every PM should put on their calendars.  Have you ever wished there were a way to build most of your project schedule out based on what you know about the project at hand?  And I don’t mean starting from scratch.  That’s a pain and none of us like to do that.  I almost never do that and I’m betting that most of my readers are like that, too.

My habit is to pull out my last schedule – or some schedule that is vaguely similar to my new project – and use it as a starting point.  That works…sort of.  It may get you 25% of the way there…or maybe even 50% of the way there if you’re lucky.  Well, now we have a better option – The Project Butler from adaQuest.

The concept beyond The Project Butler seems easy enough – you’ll wish you thought of it yourself.  Basically, The Project Butler is an application that lets users answer questions which are linked to groups of tasks.  The end result is a mostly built project schedule ready for you to tweak and finalize to use on your project.  You won’t be left 25% of the way there, or 50% of the way there…this tool will get you 80-90% of the way to a final, ready-to-use project schedule.

The questions The Project Butler asks you can have Yes/No answers or can have answers based on a custom choice list of valid answers.  Some questions may even be free text.  All answers become attributes associated to the project schedule at the project level.

Each answer and question match may “trigger” a set of tasks to be added to the project schedule.  Task lists are actually stored in SharePoint task lists and are intended to be small sets of tasks that represent the best practice way to support the question and answer in the project schedule.  Yes, the tool actually asks you questions and walks you through the process of building the right schedule with relevant tasks to your current project.

Sign up for the March 26th webinar here.  It’s one hour, it’s free, and it may save you lots of headaches and make you look like a genius at the same time. 

How many times have you sat down at your computer ready to start a project and drawn a blank as to where to start with your project schedule?  Most of us just grab our last project schedule and start stripping stuff out if it, right?  Or perhaps you have that one ‘go-to’ schedule from that great project you ran way back when and since it went so well you use that one as a template over and over and over again even if it isn’t even close to the same type of project.  Sound familiar?

Think about it.  What if you could just answer a series of questions and let an application build most of your project schedule for you?  Think of Turbo Tax walking you through the process of completing your taxes.  Yes, there are a few of us stubborn ones out there who still just want to do it ourselves.  But even I succumbed to the ease of being led by the hand last tax season.  Now, if you could apply that process to building most of your project schedule for each upcoming project, would you?  Just answer a series of questions and Project Butler can put most of your schedule together.  Yes, it’s that easy.

adaQuest is offering a very informative webinar on this new product.  I’m just a project manager – like many of the rest of you.  But this product has me excited because I think it’s going to fill a void – a huge void – in the PM workspace somewhere between uncertainty and overconfidence.  And isn’t any automated process that can get you 80% of the way to a real, usable project schedule a good thing?  Sign up for the March 26th webinar here.  I’m headed there now.

Diskeeper promise to keep IT organizations running at maximum efficiency by removing performance bottlenecks with its patented data optimization and fragmentation prevention technologies.  With over 40 million licenses sold and over 90% adoption at Fortune 1000 companies, small business to large corporations rely on Diskeeper software to provide unparalleled storage performance and reliability to their laptops, desktops and servers. Diskeeper Corporation further provides real-time data protection and instant file recovery with Undelete software.

What Diskeeper is all about

As the IT environment becomes more complex, performance bottlenecks in the underlying infrastructure can seriously affect an entire site’s productivity. Diskeeper® 2011 data performance technology brings a critical efficiency boost to IT sites that is constant, automatic and cost-effective. It proactively prevents up to 85% of all fragmentation (scattered file fragments randomly stored across the hard drive) before it can even occur and instantly defrags the rest.

Key Diskeeper business features:

IntelliWrite® technology.   Dramatically improves system response no other solution can touch. At the deepest level of system activity, files are written in pieces and scattered around the disk, creating a profound waste of system resources and progressively accumulating I/O bottlenecks. IntelliWrite prevents this fragmentation before it can happen by writing files contiguously.  IntelliWrite is the only technology that can prevent fragmentation on thin provisioned disks without requiring movement of any data and consequent increases in thin provisioned storage.

NEW! InvisiTasking® technology. The most intelligent and adaptive background processing technology ever available has been improved to use even more idle system resources faster, so Diskeeper can maintain performance on even the largest and busiest systems with zero resource conflicts.

NEW! Instant Defrag™ engine. For the first time ever, no newly fragmented files can slow performance, because Instant Defrag immediately defrags those files before they can be read. Instant Defrag is a new intelligence that understands how your files are used and ensures they never have to be read in pieces. Combined with IntelliWrite, every system runs at peak performance 24/7 regardless of workload. No system has ever been able to do this before!

NEW! Efficient Mode. In addition to an extensive defragmentation mode, Efficient Mode offers the greatest net gain in system I/O resource savings ever available. It is smart enough to know what fragmentation is a problem and immediately targets and eliminates fragmentation that directly affects system performance.

NEW! Free space consolidation engine. This new and advanced engine swiftly consolidates free space and tightly integrates with Instant Defrag to handle new fragmentation as soon as it is created.

The Titan Defrag Engine™ technology, which runs on volumes of 60GB or greater is the only solution capable of handling volumes of many terabytes and millions of files. Titan Defrag Engine takes only hours to defragment volumes of a few terabytes where other methods take days, if they can function at all. Exclusive to Diskeeper EnterpriseServer, the Titan Defrag Engine is the only technology that can defragment volumes of 10-20+ terabytes.

Terabyte Volume Engine® technology. The only defrag technology with the necessary horsepower to eliminate the rapid fragmentation build-up occurring in high-traffic system volumes handling millions of files.

I-FAAST® (Intelligent File Access Acceleration Sequencing Technology) improves file access and creation on an average of 10-20% beyond the benefits gained with defragmentation alone, by optimizing placement of your most frequently accessed data.
In future articles, we will learn more about Diskeeper’s other product offerings including those that serve home and home office settings as well as Diskeeper for the public sector. To download trialware for some of Diskeeper’s many products, visit their site here.