Project Smart is the project management resource that helps managers at all levels improve their performance. The website is now in its 15th year of providing free and ethical information about project management.  New content, downloads and discussions are going up daily and I have personally found it very rewarding – and informative – to visit daily and to join in the discussions to both increase my knowledge and help others with their questions and needs.

Project management is a core skill for everyone in business. In today's modern world, everyone is a project manager, so understanding the tools, techniques and terminology of project management is more important than ever.

Here are 5 reasons why I believe you should visit Project Smart:

The articles: An extensive library containing the joint project management knowledge of dozens of subject matter experts. It forms a unique self-help tool for both experienced and aspiring project managers.

The forum: A friendly place where you can ask questions, get advice from other people and share your experience.

The free project health-check: Will your project be a success? Find out in 5 minutes with a free project health-check. There are 18 questions to help us give you your answer.

The great social channels: Join the conversation and keep up to date with new insights and news. Share helpful information with your friends and colleagues.

The available – and project-proven – templates: Download useful templates as used by experienced project managers to run successful projects.

Check them out!

You've nothing to lose, so go pay them a visit. If you have any ideas or suggestions feel free to contact them directly at info@projectsmart.co.uk. And here’s one testimonial that might make you want to visit…"I just found your website and so far everything has been fantastically helpful. I look forward to utilizing your materials regularly. Glad I found it! Thanks.”

And their “yes” may not be exactly possible, but I think they sometimes like to say “yes” now and ask for forgiveness later. I can’t really fault them…how many of us have done the same thing, thinking we would just figure it out later? I think we all have. But I digress.

Why we should say ‘yes'

When we feel that sales has oversold our solution we often think we have to go into the engagement saying ‘no’ and resetting expectations. And we think that we need to monitor scope – which we do. Unfortunately, we often think we need to go in saying ‘no’ constantly to client changes and requests – which we don’t. Here’s why….

Starting a project with a clean slate, for me, is far more desirable than taking over an ongoing project and being forced to take over where another project manager has screwed things up and was removed from. You can save the day, yes, but you may also be walking into an irreversible mess. At the very least, you may be taking over a project schedule that makes no sense to you, or to anyone for that matter. I have been there and usually take the remainder of the schedule and work it out my way.

Now, I'm not saying the alternative, taking the project from the very beginning, is a piece of cake. It isn't, and that is what this article is about: that paralysis one feels when trying to get the schedule in order and everything properly in place to get started. You want it to be right, you don't want to look foolish by leaving something "obvious" out, and you want it to make sense for everyone. It can sort of be like the young married couple waiting until the timing is right to start a family. If you look at it from too many different ways, the timing will never be right, and you'll go through iteration after iteration trying to make it "right," or at least to feel "right." Sometimes, you just have to take the plunge.

Being able to document lessons learned after a project is complete (or even in the middle of it) is one of the biggest responsibilities a project manager has on a project. If one does not understand the mistakes of past projects, then one is doomed to repeat them over and over. In this role, the project manager becomes part historian and part archivist. Lessons learned are not just useful in the business world; they can be helpful on any project in which one is involved - at home or in your volunteer work or in your own personal hobbies. Lessons learned can make all the difference on future projects and help them to succeed, but first, they must be documented correctly.

My wife knows better than to trust me to go into a coffee shop and order beverages - be they hot or cold - and get the order right. Or at least to her liking. But somehow she still trusts me. Even though she knows I can easily get lost in malls and I didn't really drink coffee drinks of any kind until just a few years ago. Still, she somehow trusts me and pushes me to give it a try with the confidence that I will get it right this time.

As project managers, we have to do the same with less experienced project team members. If we don't, they will never learn or grow professionally. I've learned this lesson slowly as a father of ten kids. I have to stop doing for them and instead instruct them and watch them fail sometimes and then begin to succeed more and more often and build confidence...just as my wife has done with me. (Maybe that means she has eleven kids!)

What does project stakeholder mean to you?  Someone who is interested in your project?  Someone with a financial stake?  The sponsor?  Your team?  The term ‘Stakeholder’ is an extremely common term in project management. According to Wikipedia, project stakeholders are “individuals and organizations that are actively involved in the project, or whose interests may be affected as a result of project execution or project completion. They may also exert influence over the project's objectives and outcomes.”

Although you can probably find a wide variety of definitions for the term, it all comes down to one common thread – they care about your project in one way or another. Below are several of the more widely accepted ways or reasons these stakeholders care about your project….

The next installment in my “5 Reasons Why…” focuses on the many good reasons to own and use FileHold document management software.  The software improves workflow productivity, reduces paper waste, and protects your intellectual property.  FileHold software makes your companies documentation fully version controlled and easily searchable  Users can access FileHold directly from Microsoft Office, any 3rd party application, or from anywhere there is access to the internet including via mobile devices.

The internet has changed the way people store and find information.  We find things by searching (Google) and the results are weighted to our preferences.  Customers store music and pictures with innovative and easy to use software like iTunes and Flickr.  FileHold software has borrowed heavily from these new ideas.  Documents can be stored by any classification customers choose – meaning you store your project documents the way you are comfortable storing them and finding them.  The software search techniques take these classifications into consideration to provide meaningful results.  A personalized dashboard with bookmarked lists of documents frequently used is provided.  Folders for favorite documents with document-to document linking or document to folder shortcuts that allow customers to bundle files into logical groups.  A document tray utility makes link management for files across the library a snap.  Virtual folders allow the aggregation of files throughout the library into their own personal "views" or custom folders.

I have to admit, I’m not much into using products with a big learning curve.  FileHold is not like that…I found the webinars and online documentation to be very detailed and self-explanatory and the solution would be easily customizable and ready to handle the documentation needs for the types of projects and consulting initiatives that I generally lead.

After reviewing the product, the documentation and taking the video tours and discussing the product with the organization, here are my 5 reasons you should use FileHold software to make the documentation of your business more secure.

Control your Total Cost of Software Ownership:   Historically the licensing fee for document management and document workflow software (i.e. SharePoint) is a fraction of the professional service fees required to install, modify, add plug ins, train users and finish implementation.  FileHold is a complete enterprise grade “off the shelf” COTS solution.  FileHold software can be configured by users to meet their own unique requirements – no customizations and no add ons!  That works for me.  FileHold uses a proven, remote, web based implementation methodology that reduces the time and cost of implementation of the software.  FileHold guarantees a complete “user ready” installation in less than 2 hours or will work at no charge until it is done.

FileHold offers an ongoing support program (FileCare) that provides unlimited technical assistance and product upgrades.  The technology world will change as your Microsoft, and mobile device, operating systems are upgraded and security patches are installed.  With the FileCare program in place your document management software will evolve with you and your system.

Flexible and Practical Licensing model:  FileHold pricing is simple and flexible.  The licensing can be purchased by a onetime licensing fee or on a monthly per user Software as a Service fee.  There are never fees for the number of documents being stored or scanned.  The average cost per user reduces as users are added to the system.  There is no price penalty for starting small and growing as needed which is encouraged by FileHold.  Customers may purchase FileHold on an interest free (walk away anytime you want) payment plan and a generous trade in is provided for replacing competitive systems.

Easy Software to Learn / Feature rich: FileHold mimics the cabinet / drawer/ folder / file system everyone has used for years.  Extensive use is made of the vocabulary of the internet and of the Microsoft desktop (i.e. Drag and drop, right click, on line help, favorite folders, and search buttons are all familiar and intuitive to software clients).

FileHold software imposes document schemas that provide central control over how each type of documents is classified (metatags) when being added to the library. Metadata is the “gold” of the content search and retrieval world.  What good is searching by customer name when you want a contract and get a bunch of invoices?  Metadata fields can be populated with text entry, checkboxes, or drop down menus when a document is added or updated.

FileHold ships with powerful but easy to use scanning and imaging software to OCR, index, and store documents as fully searchable.  FileHold fully supports; high-speed document scanning, image enhancement, OCR, viewing, annotation, printing, storing images for both black-and-white and color pages, barcode and patchcode recognition for automatic document separation as well as advanced scanner features such as multi stream and auto color detection

Rights Management and Audit Trails Drives Compliance: To be compliant with Sarbanes Oxley, HIPPA and other regulatory requirements, document and record management software must have granular user rights and the ability to create audit trails of all document touch points.  When configured and backed up appropriately all document activities within FileHold have a non-reversible and permanent audit trail.  For fast and easy user management, and the highest possible level of security, FileHold software ships with 12 predefined user roles and integrates with Active Directory for the synchronization with the domain and groups that reside in Active Directory. 

Integration with other Business Applications: Many companies want document and record management to be a component of a larger integrated knowledge management system.  In addition to being tightly integrated with Microsoft Office FileHold software is based on the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) model which exposes, in a secure way, web services to the outside world and other applications. There is a free, fully documented, easy to program, web service API which accommodates every possible integration scenario.  Out of the box it is possible to search FileHold or to send documents to FileHold from any other application.

It is possible drag and drop files to and from the desktop to the FileHold library using the desktop application.  The smart client provides a quick and easy way to add files en masse to the system.  The desktop client can “watch folders” and queue documents for upload to the library.

Ready to See for Yourself?

FileHold is feature rich and holds several public webinars each month to demonstrate those features.  You can easily sign up for any of these webinars or request a free trial to see the platform in action for yourself.

FileHold resembles the software and business processes people work with every day.  This friendly interface together with on-line video tours, lots of detailed and helpful online documentation, web based train the IT administrator / librarian seminars eliminate the need for expensive on site user training.

The software is designed to meet a high percentage of the operating requirements of customers “out of the box”. The document workflow processes follow many industries best practices. This keeps everyone on a standard code base thus customer software support incidents are kept very low.

The next installment in my “5 Reasons Why…” focuses on Insightly’s online Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application. Insightly provides customer relationship and project management software to small businesses worldwide. More than 550,000 users in 180 countries leverage Insightly’s cloud-based application to manage customer interactions, leads, proposals, sales opportunities and projects from any device at any time. Designed to work the way you work, I found Insightly is very easy to use, yet powerful and it includes integrations with Google Apps, Microsoft Outlook, Mailchimp, Evernote and more making it an extremely flexible integration into just about any organization. As I perused the Insightly offering, I narrowed the pluses down to these five key features to focus on for this review.

Opportunity Tracking and Project management.  The top reasons people turn to a CRM are organization, efficiency and sales. A business’s major use for a CRM is to manage their contact interactions and sales but what happens to when the product you sell is a service or that your business model revolves around project management, then what do you do? Hearing that this was a big issue, Insightly stepped in and created a CRM with project management integrated, which was the first of its kind. With opportunity tracking you can see incoming business as well as closed deals so you can predict revenue along with the ability to know if a customer is in need of a renewal. You can easily convert these opportunities to projects! With Insightly project management you can assign tasks to people and groups, track projects against milestone dates and receive notifications with reminders, tasks assigned and tasks that are completed.  This capability gives your business the full visibility to see customer journey, from first touch to sale to service received to make sure that nothing was missed and there are no inefficiencies in the process.  

Ease of use.  There are a lot of CRMs out there, and all claim to transform your business into an efficient sales machine. I can tell you from experience that you will not see these success metrics unless your CRM is fully utilized by your company. Insightly has created a system for small businesses that is easy to use and easy to manage so that adoption is fast.  Everyone can easily learn how to use Insightly and how to make it work for them. With this you will see productivity soar instead of getting lost in your CRM.

Contacts and Linking.  Managing contacts is a critical component of a CRM and I found it to be very easy with Insightly.  Unlike many CRM’s which only allow hierarchical relationships, Insightly developed an easy way to create a network of your contacts called linking which allows you to link multiple items to multiple items.  So for example, your contacts might have relationships with multiple companies -- maybe a former employee is not a supplier or a current customer is a referrer -- all this information is important for you to maintain your overall business relationships.  The Insightly interface allows you to create and view these links easily and so all the important contact information you need is at your fingertips. You can also assign tasks to yourself or other team members and have them linked to a contact, so no vital activity is missed.

Email.  Knowing that most people work from their email, you need to use an application that has this seamless integration between email and CRM so that all communications are easy accessible.  Insightly’s great integration with Google apps allows you to not only save an email into Insightly, but to create tasks, contacts, projects, opportunities or events all from your Google GMail. Same goes for Microsoft Outlook 2013 and Office 365. If you don’t use any of those particular email clients, Insightly provides you with an email link to forward any email to Insightly and it will link to the contact of that email address. It’s extremely simple.

Customization and Integration. Certain CRMs have different focuses on either different departments or verticals and are hard to customize. Insightly prides itself on being a general all purpose tracking system which allows you to make Insightly work for your business needs and requirements. Adding custom fields, custom categories, custom stages and more are easy with Insightly. Also Insightly has great integrations with apps like MailChimp, Quote Roller, Evernote, Zapier, and is constantly releasing new ones to give their customers the ability to seamlessly manage all their applications.  They are also working on an integration with Quickbooks Online (available later this year).  Since businesses are changing the way they work everyday why not have a system that is flexible yet powerful like Insightly.

Ready to See for Yourself?

Are you ready to check it out yourself?  You can watch a very informative video on the Insightly product offering and capabilities.  Next, stop by their pricing page to compare your options. You can also instantly signup for a free account and start using it today.

Wondering why the topic of ‘project management’ came to me today?  Good guess…because today is one of those days that I don’t want to lead.  I don’t want to be in charge.  I don’t even really want to be the parent today.  Thankfully, that is always temporary and usually only when I am sick or very sleep deprived or both – which is the case today.

 What about the project management role?  Raise your hand if you’ve ever thought, “today I don’t feel like leading…I just want to follow.”  Come on…you know it’s happened at least a couple of times and it’s ok to admit it.  The problem is, as the project manager, you do still have to lead.  But it doesn’t always have to be hard.  In fact, the more you focus on best practices routinely in your project management leadership roles, the less chaotic that leadership will be and the less burdensome that leadership will seem.

Your customer is critical. And from most project managers’ perspectives, that is the person sitting across from him at the table or the one on the other end of the phone on the status call. That’s right… that is the customer. But what about the customer’s ultimate end user? Where do they fit in? When is the end user part of the project? On many projects the end user is the one who needs the solution.

I ran across this quote and it troubles me – partly because it is often true and because we are all guilty sometimes of overlooking end users as a central point of reference and information for the project. Here it is… “A user is somebody who tells you what they want the day you give them what they asked for.” This can be taken to mean that the user often does a poor job telling us at first what they want and the gives us a better definition once the project is over and the solution doesn’t really meet their needs.