Have you been working at home recently? This blog is being directed at those around the world who have been trying to adjust to working from home. Having had personal experience at working from home in the past, hopefully these tips will provide you with the advice and guidance you need to make homeworking a success.

No pun intended, but I'm speechless over the quality, functionality, seamless connectivity, battery life and diversity of Jabra's Speak 510 bluetooth speaker. I work remotely, do conference calls, listen to music while I work and don't want to be bothered by something I need to read alot about before using. Seriously, the Speak 510 takes care of all my needs, my music - even the live music I like to listen to which can sound "challenged" through the wrong setup - and anything on my laptop sound phenomenally great with this speaker. Even my very picky wife - who has hated every other bluetooth speaker I've used - loves it. And she can tell when her van tires are 0.5 lbs off from normal... I'm not kidding.

Highlights include:

Built-in omni-directional microphone
Hear and be heard with a 360-degree microphone that picks up sounds from any angle.

15-hour rechargeable battery
Up to 15 hours of talk time on a single charge.

Smart button (off by default)
Interact with your voice assistant (smart phone dependent) or make a speed dial with the one-touch Smart button. Must be configured in the PC app Jabra Direct.

Digital Signal Processing technology and Wideband Audio/HD Voice
Crystal clear sound without echoes or distortions – even at max volume.

Jabra Link 370 USB Adapter (Bluetooth Class 1)
Easy Bluetooth connection and call control integration with your softphone system.

Bluetooth Class 1
Easy Bluetooth® connection to tablets and mobile phones. Range of up to 30 meters on Class 1 devices.

Finally...

Every call I'm on with the Speak 510, I tell the other party or parties that I'm on speaker and they all say it sounds great. You can also just plug it into anything with it's "always connected" wrap around USB cord and it instantly takes over the sound. Love it. If you need something very nice and portable (it's only about 4.5" across and about 1" thick and comes with it's own soft case), affordable, and that sounds better than speakers 3 times larger that cost 10 times more, then you can't go wrong with the Speak 510. It retails for around $105-$110 but worth much more. Get one and carry it with you everywhere. You won't be sorry.

The Coronavirus is here and greatly impacting the majority of the world right now. Organizations around the globe are shutting doors completely or sending workers home to work.

Restaurants are closing, grocery stores are either closing or limiting hours and can't keep products on the shelves long enough for panicked shoppers to get what they are there to buy or stock up on. Schools are closing. Universities are closing. Sports leagues like the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Hockey League (NHL) have suspended play. Even the casinos here in Las Vegas are starting to shut their doors. The idea, of course, is to avoid gatherings of people where the virus can spread. It's the only way to win and eventually stop the virus from spreading.

Big tech corporations are taking it seriously as well. Workers are being sent home to work. Giants like Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter wisely started the mass exodus and others are following suit. The worldwide numbers of infected individuals and deaths is still rising daily, but these measures will help.

But what how about our tech projects? How does this virus and the movement to work remotely affect projects starting up or that are in process? If you're a project manager or project centric organization, you know full well that risk planning is critical. If you haven't already been sent home to work, let's consider what the overall affect to tech projects and project managers and teams will be in project centric organizations today and when the next emergency like this comes up...

Imagine a free virtual conference focusing on your needs as a project manager or remote team member to be more productive and collaborative and effective and successful given the current push (mandate??) to work from home. Would you want to participate? Perhaps even if it features some software vendors who's products can potentially benefit your organization and PMs and teams during this trying time of serving our project clients while everyone has stay at home orders from governments and employers.

For PMs and team members - can you or will you attend? For software vendors - can you attend and are you interested in helping to lead the discussion of remote work and concerns (collaboration, security, reporting, etc.) and possibly share benefits your products lend to this type of work and team environment? No cost to attendees, no cost to software vendors...just trying to put this together as something for us to do productively while we learn and work and lead from home. Please email me with interest... planning for this to take place in early April if possible (2-4 hour conference call) thanks!

A PMO dashboard contains the summary of all the projects being run by an organization. It is a helpful tool for the project managers and the senior personnel of the business who want to keep themselves updated with the status of any project handled by their team.

A PMO Dashboard is basically required in organizations which handle multiple projects. It helps in understanding the type and the status of any work with a quick glance, thus, saving a lot of time of the senior management without the need of getting deeper in the work process. However, if needed, they can coordinate with the project handler and get going with the process.

Why do we need a PMO Dashboard?

As discussed above, the main benefit of acquiring a PMO dashboard is finding the status of the project within seconds that will help in keeping pace with the clients. It can be operated remotely and the project handlers can take the project charge with transparency. With the help of the dashboard, one can:

• View the project summary with ease
• Easily manage the schedule and the baseline cost
• Properly audit the project and the step-by-step history
• Predict whether the project will be a success or a failure based on the time taken to complete the mini goals.
• Manage the calendar set by the project managers in order to achieve the target
• Keep a check on the project deadline and the delivery dates with the help of Kanban Board
• Calculate the risks involved with the project and handle them with proper planning
• Generate project reports with the help of report generation tool of the PMO Dashboard

Why PMaspire PMO Dashboard “Baseline”

Are you tired using fancy task management software? Are you a Project Sponsor struggling to view your project status real time! Is your project team managing project baselines through proper approval process? Are you really convinced with the manual project status reporting system? Does your risks, issues or changes managed properly with proper procedures & clarity?

Here is the Ultimate Solution: PMaspire “Baseline” an AI Based PMO dashboard with cloud Project Management Tool to help project sponsor, project managers manage project online with transparency and clear visibility.

• With PMO Dashboard Baseline, you can view Project Summary with Brilliant Clarity,

• You can manage schedule and cost baseline with proper audit trail and revision history

• Forecast project Success or Failure using earn value management (EVM)

• Manage resource calendar, measure resources velocity with load management!

• Track project delivery and milestone through user friendly Kanban board

• Handle risk with risk Scoring tool and exposure!

• Manage Issues effectively with Escalations Programs

• Handle Change request through proper impact analysis and change control board

• Most importantly Generate project status report through system generated reporting tool

• Hierarchy wise Customize Approval Option for different Milestone

As a PM or Sponsor, you can ensure your maximum output of resources to for meeting the Deliverables in the Most Efficient way.

Yes, you can really manage all with just one tool meet to your project goal!
Then what are you waiting for you!
​
Login to www.pmaspire.com/pmodashboard or email at pmo@pmaspire.com

There comes a time in almost every project manager’s career when they need to give away a project. The reasons can be many….you may have just been given a critical project that requires you to lighten your overall load, a change in the project may require skills that better suit another PM, another project on your plate may be taking up too much of your time, or (gulp!) the project customer may have requested that a change be made. That last one is not what you want to have happen, but it can come up – I’ve taken over three projects in the past due to the customer requesting a leadership change.


No matter what the reason that has necessitated the project handoff, you need to go through a process to make sure you do the best job possible in handing off the project to the new project manager. Through my experience and discussions with colleagues, I’ve narrowed it down to these four key steps….


Gather the team together. The first key step is to meet with your delivery team and get all the latest task status and progress updates from them that you possibly can. It’s critical that you know the latest and greatest status of your project and all the details that go into what’s going on. You’ve likely been doing this on a weekly basis anyway as a good project manager, but you want to guarantee that the next project manager has all the information they need to hit the ground running.


Bring everything current. Take everything you learned from your team and everything you already knew and revise all status and schedule information for the engagement. Revise the project schedule, update the resource plan, make sure the project budget analysis and forecast is current, and that all risk and issue lists contain the latest and greatest status updates. You’ll want to have as much detail ready and in the next project status report as you begin the transition to the new project manager on the next status call.


Discuss the change with the customer. Call the project customer and discuss the transition with them. This may be the first they are hearing of the change so you’ll want to give them as much information as possible on the how and why of the change as well as detailed background and experience information on the new project manager so they know they’ll be in good hands going forward. You must present it in a way that will gain their confidence and not make them feel like a 2nd class project customer – especially if the reason for the handoff is because you’re taking on a new, critical project. And, if possible, plan for at least a two-week transition where you lead and mentor the next project manager as you get everyone used to the transition. Handling the transition this way rather than making an abrupt exit can go a long way in keeping customer confidence and satisfaction high.


Make the transition over time. Ideally, if your time availability, the old project tasks, the new project startup effort, and the availability of the new project manager allows for it, stretch the transition over a period of at least two project status calls with the customer and team. The outgoing project manager should lead the first one and officially introduce the new project manager and the new project manager should lead the second one, officially taking over the project in the eyes of the customer – even if it’s already happened with the team on the delivery side.


Summary


Any time there are personnel changes on a project it can disrupt the overall project momentum. And when that change is at the top – a project leadership change – it can cause the most risk and the most customer concern. Making sure you follow a detailed process to turn the reins over to a very capable and well-informed project manager will help ensure the continued success of the project and keep the customer’s satisfaction level high.


How about our readers? What processes or steps have you followed when turning an existing project over to new leadership? Looking back, what has worked best? What do you wish you had done differently?

As we work hard to find the best project management software tools and services to help our project managers best manage projects, teams and customers, I am always trying to find helpful tools to get project managers to the finish line successfully. The added twist right now is that I'm also trying to find tools that will help remote project managers and virtual teams roll out projects successfully in the wake of COVID-19, or the coronavirus, and the trek home to work for millions of project related staff and team resources. This month, MindGenius is my preferred selection and you really need to check them out... 

MindGenius is your all-in-one project management software tool, ideal for small-medium projects and organizations. MindGenius mind-mapping software allows you to bring your information to life, visualize your ideas and achieve your project goals. MindGenius is also ideal for homeworking as it allows you to include other workers to edit your maps, as well as being able to share and export your files in conjunction with a variety of different tools such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft Office Suite and more!

Project managers wear a variety of hats on nearly every project they manage. Exactly what hats they wear usually depends on several things – the complexity of the project, the culture of the organization, how much authority the PM is given, and sometimes even how the customer wants the project manager to lead the project (important customers tend to have a lot of weight on some projects). I’ve asked around, started discussions in forums and social media, and the roles that seem to come up the most often in people’s minds are these four…so I’d like to discuss them here and get your feedback as well. The four that are often mentioned are:


The strong leader. This is probably an obvious one, but remember what a PM must do as a leader. They must lead individuals for whom they do not have direct responsibility. They must lead a customer they don’t know that much about…yet. They must listen well, speak well, encourage often, agree, disagree, make on the spot decisions often without enough information, and they must do all of this while taking on full responsibility for a project where many things will happen – both good and bad - that they likely can’t control. It’s a tough leadership position to take on.


The ‘no’ person. The ability to say ‘no’ – to the customer who is off base in their notion of what they need and what the project should be, to the team member who disagrees with the path the project is on, to executive management who may be taking an action that is negatively affecting the project – is critical to the role of project manager. Agreeing is easier, but the project manager must be stubborn – must be willing to stick to their decisions and stay focused on the success of the project. It isn’t about making friends, it’s about doing what is right for the success of the engagement overall.


The expert communicator. I will never sway from my stance that the key role of the project manager is that of effective and efficient communicator. If the PM fails in this role, there is very little hope for the project to succeed. All project communication happens with the project manager – it all needs to go through this one position. And if it doesn’t – if critical communication routinely circumvents the process and goes around the PM - then the project is likely headed for disaster.


The PM is the central point for project status, project meetings, emails, revised schedules, issues tracking, risk tracking, and budget management. And if the project manager is a poor communicator, then even if all communication flows through the PM it may not be utilized properly and miscommunication and erroneous and dangerous decision-making can be the result.


The change agent. By definition a project is change. It is a one-off effort to introduce a new solution or revise a process within an organization. The project manager is delivering change with every project he manages. The project manager is the change agent and sometimes has to work hard to knock down barriers to change within an organization. They must work well with others inside the business or with the client to make that change happen and to help that change to be accepted.


Summary


That’s four….there are many many more hats that we wear as project managers…I just can’t list them all here. How about you – what key roles stand out to you as ones that the project manager must regularly fill in their leadership role within the organization?