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Start Your PM Day Off Right

4/30/2021

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​Think “Monday morning chaos.” Think starting the day wondering who has emailed issues to you since you last checked your messages. Think arriving at your desk with voice mails from two of your project customers already waiting for you. Headaches, right? Frustrations? Commonplace occurrences?


Let’s consider 5 things to do to get your project management day started off productively, creatively and efficiently each and every day…


Stretch the body and the mind. Stretch before work. Not everyone works out early in the morning. In fact, very few of us do or have time to – or the inclination to. But you can stretch. You can sit up straight. And you can take 5 minutes to clear your mind and leave yesterday’s emails behind. Think positively and think creatively. You’re entire day will start better just from this one lone step.


Clear the desk. This may sound like a junk step, but it’s really not. Working amongst chaos can keep you from thinking efficiently and from concentrating effectively. Eliminate any horizontal piles of whatever from your desk. I’m not saying throw it away. Throw some of it away…and don’t worry if you can’t get through your mess on Day One. But do finish it off in the first week. And for what’s left, store it vertically on your desk. Trust me on this one. I was directed to try it (by my brilliant and brilliantly organized wife) and it had an enormous affect on my outlook and organizational abilities. I was prone to leaving messes on my desk at the end of the day. No more. Do it vertically – you won’t be sorry.


Plan and organize. Take a few minutes at the beginning of the workday to look at each project and big task you’re working on. Familiarize yourself daily in a refreshed and new way on each project and task – even if it’s just 30 seconds spent on each. Each day may bring a new way of looking at a current issue that has been stumping you and the team. And this is a chance to take 10 minutes or less and make a plan of attack for your day. Yesterday is over and tomorrow hasn’t happened yet. What are you going to get done today?


Send a message to the team. Take 2-3 minutes and send out an email to the entire team at the beginning of each day. Tell them what you’re working on and refresh their memories of any upcoming meetings, project deadlines or customer contacts that need to be made. I can almost guarantee you that if your team members are working on multiple projects for multiple project managers, they will remember you the most and your project will be #1 in their mind just from this one simple act.


Attack the priorities first. People like to talk about how good they are at multi-tasking. I don’t buy it. I think multi-tasking is overrated and important work can fall through the cracks if you do too much of it. Attack the top priorities first and move down the list. And look for big priorities that can be attacked and closed out quickly. They should be high on today’s to-do list.


Summary / call for input


How you start can set the tone going forward. Whether it’s getting the project started right from kickoff or starting your project management day properly so you can have a very productive day. Forget yesterday and the past. Learn from it, but put failures away and remember…as I always say, “You’re only as successful as your last customer thinks you are…” You don’t have time to rest on past successes…succeed again today.


How about our readers? What secrets do you have for starting a productive project management day? Share your tips and let’s discuss…

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Delivering Perfect Documents to Your Project Customer

4/27/2021

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In the grand scheme of things while running a project, delivering a perfectly formatted, error-free, and absolutely grammatically correct Risk Management Plan is not probably at the top of your list, is it? I can understand that. How many of you project management readers out there have heard moaning and groaning from your team members about producing or even proofing plan documents? It’s not usually at the top of anyone’s list. It’s not the fun work on the project. And it doesn’t seem – on the surface – the type of work that really adds much value to the end solution…if any. Like when your kids say, “Why do I have to learn this math? I’ll never use it again.” Sometimes, you have a hard time disagreeing with them, right?


In school I hated to turn anything in misspelled or with handwriting that didn’t look how I wanted it to look. I took me a long time to ever start using pens because I always wanted to be able to erase and correct. Ok, I may have been a little OCD about that. Even with my articles, I run them through spell checkers first – though that doesn’t catch a correctly spelled word that may be out of place or out of context. I try to re-read everything, but sometimes things slip through.


But when we’re turning in documents - that are actually deliverables on a project - to our customer, we need to consider what they’re seeing and what message we’re sending them with the quality of our output. Do we want to come across as educated, professional, and caring of our work? Or do we want to give the customer the impression that we’re sloppy with these early project deliverables? If we’re sloppy with these deliverables, what do you think the customer will assume about the rest of our work as we build a detailed, complex software solution for them. Will they be concerned…possibly anxious? Yes, definitely. And rightly so.


Proof and Test


Extreme care needs to go into our project deliverables. Proof, proof, proof. Test, test, test. When you hand a deliverable over to the customer – unless it’s understood that this is an early draft – then you’re telling the customer that this is done and the best I can do. It better be correct. It better be accurate and read well. And it better be free of simple typos – there are no excuses for these. The best solution I’ve found is to incorporate a peer review for every piece of documentation that goes to the customer. It works, it ensures accountability, and there’s no way that the use of “they’re” instead of “their” will get past five sets of eyes, is there?


Never Assume


I personally made a huge mistake on one project that I was running. This was before I incorporated the process of peer reviews for all outgoing documentation. Actually, this example is the reason I began to incorporate the peer reviews.
I had not one, but two business analysts working on one of my software implementation projects for a major airline. I wrongly assumed they were following my instructions and working together – proofing the documents they were working on and turning error-free work into me to go to the customer. Three iterations later on the Business Requirements Document (BRD) and I realized I had a lot of egg on my face and a lot of ground to make up with our customer. What had been a happy, confident, and satisfied customer before had now turned into a very nervous and frustrated customer just as we were ready to begin developing the actual solution.


Peer review everything


It wasn’t until we started incorporating peer reviews for every single deliverable that went to the customer that we started handing over error-free documents. We conducted peer reviews on the BRD (finally), the Functional Design Document, the Test Plan, and every piece of information that went to the customer in written (or electronic) form from that point on and we got it right. I even had the full team review the status reports, weekly status meeting notes, revised project schedule, and issues/risks lists before sending them off to the customer in order to ensure that the customer did not see any more incorrect and unprofessional submissions from our team.


Summary


On the delivery side we make a lot of assumptions that can be dangerous when we look at things from the customer’s perspective. We take for granted that everyone is doing their job – and doing it well. We assume that when someone turns in work that they’ve proofed it a couple of times and that they care about it as much as we do.


Now, we put ourselves in the role of the paying customer and we tend to not take too much for granted. Instead, we’re actively looking for those errors. We’re looking for the scratches on the new refrigerator we bought (metaphorically speaking), aren’t we? We want our money’s worth. That’s the customer’s perspective. And every time we deliver a product with a dent in it then we have a new dent in our reputation. Don’t let it happen. Take the care to review what you turn over to the customer. You won’t be sorry.
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Real Project Management 101: Reasons for Project Change Management

4/27/2021

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Change management. Scope management. Change orders. Not always among the most fun or interesting tasks that a project manager involves himself with on the projects he is leading. Of course there is always the feather in the cap you get by bringing in new revenue from a newly identified change order. But if it comes as a surprise to the customer or requires negotiations or lengthy discussions and any finger pointing over mis-documented, mis-interpreted or omitted requirements then it can be very painful and even cause customer satisfaction issues. That is certainly not what we want.


The best change order I have had – hands down – was when a customer on a very large software implementation liked the business analyst on the team so much that they wanted him on site for the remainder of the project. Umm...ok. It resulted in a $95,000 change order just to ensure he remained onsite for most of the rest of the project – something he was basically already doing but wasn't part of the original project requirements. You can imagine how our management felt about that cream puff change order. Most don't go that way, though, do they?


But seriously, change management is critical to the success of the project for many reasons and I've come up with my personal top five. As you read through these please consider your own scope and change management successes and pain points and share your experiences and thoughts about what would make your personal top five. Here's mine...


Eliminate expensive gold plating. For those of you not familiar with the term “gold plating” in the world of project management and software development, here is what it means... it is the error of working on a project or task past the point where the extra effort is worth the added value. It is working on a task past the agreed upon – and paid for – work required. Gold plating can introduce a new source of risks to the original planning i.e. additional testing, documentation, costs, timelines, etc. By making change management a top priority and watching scope management closely, the project manager and development team together can eliminate gold plating any portion of the end solution and if such enhancements are truly needed, they can then be discussed in detail with the client and turned into revenue producing change orders..


Increase revenue. Change orders usually increase revenue. The aware project manager – and project team members – watch for and listen for potential requests or needs to change the scope of the project. Anything such as an added feature, functionality, report, training, etc. can and should result in a change order to the customer which identifies the additional work and cost necessary to incorporate the change. Usually these come about as a request or need stated by the customer but they can be items that are just deemed necessary based on the requirements of the project but were not part of the original scope because both the delivery team and customer were unaware of the need during that early planning phase. Hopefully the process of creating and implementing the change order is not painful and does not create customer dissatisfaction, but if it is truly needed and lies outside the original scope of work on the project, then it must happen and the customer should readily sign off on it.


Increase project profitability. With increased revenue can come increased profitability. By paying very close attention to scope on the project the project manager and team will at least definitely be able to keep profitability as high as possible on the project. Making sure that all work performed is either part of the original work required (and thus costed out and being paid for by the customer) or part of a new change order and thus being paid for by the customer is critical. No change order in place just adds cost with no associated revenue resulting in decreased profitability. Tight change management means no free work is being performed by the delivery team and that means no added costs that have no revenue associated with those costs...keeping profitability at or above (hopefully) planned levels. Your CFO will be happy.


Keep the project on time. Watching and managing scope carefully helps contain costs and increase revenue if change orders are needed, but it also helps keep the project on track in terms of timeline, task completion dates and deliverable dates and milestones. The project may end up taking longer when change orders are implemented, but that is approved work and approved timeline extensions that are part of the extra effort...and thus meaning it's ok to deliver a bit later...it's already part of the revised plan.


Keep the project on budget. I may be a but redundant here, but keeping any project on time with proper scope management should also go a long way in keeping it on budget as well. As mentioned previously, if scope is managed well, then the project will stay true to the requirements already laid out, only the planned work will be performed and it should be much easier to stay on time – and, likewise, on budget. That said, I've never managed a project that didn't have at least one change order. By managing change closely, those needed change orders actually happen – meaning they are carefully documented changes to the original scope, they are priced accordingly and signed off by the project customer resulting in new revenue and a new budget target to hit and manage against.


Summary / call for input


Managing scope and getting change orders reviewed, approved and signed off by the client is one of the least favorite activities of most project managers. But it has to be done. Next to overall project communication it may be the single most important thing a project manager does on every engagement. It ties directly into on budget and on time delivery which are two key factors determining project success on every project initiative we ever lead.


Readers – what are your thoughts on this list? What makes your top 5 reasons why change management needs to be a top project priority on every engagement?

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4 steps to right sizing the project team

4/26/2021

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Right sizing. I love that fun, ugly term that originated in the late 80's that executives started using instead of firing people. “We aren't firing, we are right sizing.” Sure, that sounds better and more forward thinking to everyone except the 4% of the company you just let go unexpectedly because you didn't meet last quarter's earning projections. “No honey, I wasn't fired or laid off, I was right sized.” Oh, then that's ok...


Now let's consider it on less permanent terms – on a current project where you aren't hiring and firing, just making sure you are properly staffed for this current project. Too many team members on the project can wreak the project budget quickly. Too few and you have a whole different set of problems to deal with including missed deadlines, work overload, dissension and frustration...and likely some quality issues and customer confidence and dissatisfaction issues. Finding that right balance – especially right out of the gate on the project before all the dust has settled and you are certain you are on the correct path to the right project solution – can be next to impossible. So, as the dust does start to settle – and even before as you're planning resources for the project – what do you do to right size the project team? Consider these scenarios and actions...


Getting it right from the start. The first step – and maybe the only step if you're lucky and do it right and nothing changes – to right sizing the project team is to get it right the first time. Leave the starting gate with whatever size team you are certain you need and then never have to change it – up or down or sideways – throughout the project engagement. This can be especially challenging for the less experienced project manager and there can be so many unpredictables and variables – often many that are beyond the control of the project manager – that can affect the project and the tasks needed to complete it. All those variables and unpredictables plus the ones that the newbie project manager didn't think of can make it extremely difficult – maybe even impossible at first – to get the project staffing and resource planning right the first time. More experienced project managers will get it right more often than not. Good, because it can be very costly to add new resources later on and bring them up to speed and equally costly to carry unnecessary resources till that point in time you realize you didn't really need that many developers or the extra data specialist you were previously convinced was going to be necessary.


Compare to other projects. We are constantly comparing our project to others. Trying to learn lessons, sharing details to make life easier on our project or helping our PM colleagues. The past is often the best predictor of the future. When you ran into resource problems on that last project and had to add resources, what was the reasoning? And how bad was the budget and timeline affected when you added them? Consider this as early as possible – probably when you are putting together your resource forecast and requesting the proper resources before you even have the full team assembled.


Keep resources on the project only as needed. Yes, many times we put the resource plan together and ask for 'x' resources and keep them throughout...sometimes with dead time for a resource in the middle of the project. There may be options for them to help out in other ways on the project during those lulls in effort for them, but complete downtime for a project resource can be problematic as they may charge idle time to the project to keep their own resource utilization percentage at a maximum...something they are often judged on for raises and performance reviews. So be careful – you could find yourself paying for resources you don't need and killing the project budget in the middle of the project. Plan resources for only those periods that you need them – make it clear to everyone that you don't need your tech lead till July 1st and that your data integrator will be free from September through December so that the resource gods can re-assign him to another project and not have you end up carrying dead weight on the project for four costly months.


Fixing the project in mid-stream. This is the one to avoid, but it often becomes necessary – all too often. Removing a resource in mid-stream on a project may not be too costly unless they have already caused irreparable harm to the project, the timeline and budget for being carried unnecessarily or for wrongful acts. But adding resources in mid-stream to replace a resource or to meet unexpected project needs can be very costly because you must go through the education process and bring one or more resources up to speed. Get them everything you can fast so they can jump on board productively as quickly as possible. The statement of work (SOW), recent status reports, the project schedule, issues list, risk plans, even the project budget forecast and resource plans can be helpful getting new key project personnel up to speed fast. Have them sit in on one or more project status meetings with the customer before they actively participate – if you can possibly have the luxury of doing that – in order to ensure they are ready. But remember, all this does come at a price – it stretches the project budget and the project timeline so be careful.


Summary / call for input


What about our readers – what are your thoughts and experiences with dealing with project resource planning and fixing the project team size along the way? It can be painful and costly, but if necessary it is the only path to take. Please share your thoughts and discuss.



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Kansas City Chiefs' Sean Culkin becomes 1st NFL player to convert entire salary to Bitcoin

4/26/2021

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If he makes the Kansas City Chiefs' roster to begin this season, tight end Sean Culkin will be the first NFL player to convert all of his salary to Bitcoin.

Culkin, who is vying to be a backup behind starter Travis Kelce, would be paid his $920,000 salary by the Chiefs in U.S. dollars but in turn will convert it to Bitcoin.

"I've always had a lot of interest in and a passion for finance and economics from my days at Mizzou," Culkin said. "Even before that, my dad was big, really bullish on gold. Early on, I was always exposed to his philosophies on what made gold an intractable investment looking at it from a macro perspective. There's a lot of overlap between gold and Bitcoin. I really spent all of my time in the offseason the past year just hearing about this growing space in crypto. It just seemed like it was getting bigger and bigger.

"Through education and learning and having a level of conviction over the course of time, I just felt like I wanted to be compensated from my services in football in Bitcoin."

Culkin, 27, joined the Chiefs this past February on a reserve/future contract. He tweeted about his decision earlier Monday, saying Bitcoin is "the future of finance."

Culkin has played 19 career NFL games and caught two passes for the Los Angeles Chargers and Baltimore Ravens. But he said the upcoming season would be his first for converting his paycheck to Bitcoin.

"I want to do this with the thought it would continue to rise over the long term," he said. "This for me is a long-term play, a generational play. The more research I did and the more I zoomed out, I didn't necessarily link volatility to risk. I saw Bitcoin was growing at such an exponential rate.

"It's going to have some large pullbacks and dips and people are probably going to say I'm crazy, but I'm focusing on the long term. Long term, it's a stored value. What makes Bitcoin so intractable is its scarcity. Over time, it's deflationary by nature. If you look at history, it appreciates over time."
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Veteran offensive lineman Russell Okung announced this past December that approximately half of his 2020 salary from the Carolina Panthers would be converted to Bitcoin. And quarterback Trevor Lawrence, the likely No. 1 overall pick in Thursday's NFL draft, signed an endorsement deal with cryptocurrency investment app Blockfolio on Monday. The company said his signing bonus will come in cryptocurrency.
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Give Me 5 Good Reasons Why My Project Team Should Use Your PM Software

4/25/2021

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Give me 5 reasons why my project team should be using your PM related software for our projects. Direct me to a demo or free trial and I will look it over. But tell me why it's the best or what features make it stand out from other competitors. What's your elevator speech? http://www.bradegeland.com/contact

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Promote Your Content Here - Guest Post on My Site

4/23/2021

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Guest post on my site - you get the credit, do-follow links a few images - fast, same day post and promotion to millions of potential readers and inclusion on a daily newsletter to 110,000+.

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Ugly New iMacs with M1 Chip Will be Superfast - butt ugly

4/23/2021

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Apple's new iMac is awesome: a technical marvel and a culmination of Apple's stunning engineering achievements over the past several years. It's also ugly as sin.

When Apple (AAPL) overdesigns its products, it's typically for form over function. You know the list: getting rid of the headphone jack to make the iPhone thinner, ditching USB-A ports on MacBooks, switching the hinges on its keyboards.... They're innovations that make Apple's products look cool, but don't make their products work any better.
Strangely, Apple has chosen function over form with its new iMacs.

Apple's new iMac lineup has a ... distinct ... new look.

They'll work great: The 8-core M1 chip on a desktop computer is going to be ohmygod fast — about twice as fast as the last iMac, Apple claims. The HD webcam, studio-grade microphones and surround-sound speakers are perfect for the Zoom era. Touch ID on the keyboard is a nice ... touch. The better-than-4K display is going to be *chef's kiss.*

The only problem is you have to look at your new iMac when you're using it.
Ugh, those colors. It comes in Easter egg blue, green, yellow, pink, orange, purple and (thankfully) silver. If the colors weren't bold enough, Apple added sorta faded complementary colors to the stand, which is an ... interesting design choice.

Even if you're a pastel fan (or you wisely choose silver), you won't be saved from the bizarre look of the new iMac. That weird chin that's been a feature of the iMac since 2004 is still there, giving the new iMac a decidedly last-generation look. And the new version ditched the Apple logo, making that odd rectangle at the bottom of your screen look even stranger.

Why?

It's the kind of unforced error that Apple rarely makes. The M1 chip gave Apple a chance to completely rethink its iMac design. Instead, it chose to stick to the familiar shape, put the computer's guts below the screen and make the iMac thinner. That comes with some advantages (more on that in a second), but the result is an aesthetic head-scratcher.

Apple's iOS 14.5 update lands next week — including new emojis, big privacy changes

The worst feature of the new iMac is the bezel — the white frame around the display. The chin makes the bezel really stand out. It was hardly noticeable in the past iMac iterations, because it was black. The white contrasts with the screen and the chin, giving the screen a seriously weird appearance.

It's not 100% clear why Apple went this route, but the company left a few clues.

The new iMac is 11.5 millimeters thick, which is the thickness of about one and a half iPhone 12s. That's insane. It comes with a magnetic power cable because you can move this thing around — it weighs less than 10 pounds. The new iMac kind of blurs the lines between desktop and laptop.

But how many people move their desktop computers so often that they need something that thin and light? And for those people, would a few millimeters of thickness and another pound make that much of a difference?When you're looking at your all-in-one desktop, how often are you really concerned about its thickness? The screen is the thing you're staring at, which is why Apple should have maximized the screen real estate and minimized everything else.
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Apple probably designed the iMac so thin because it could not because it should. The result, for a company that makes some of the most beautiful gadgets ever conceived, was a big swing and a miss — something that looks like a cross between Jay Leno and an Easter egg.

from CNN
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5 Reasons Why Every Small Business Needs an Employee Monitoring Software

4/23/2021

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Whether you are an owner of a small business or working as a manager, you must know the importance of having productive, hardworking and high performing employees drive the success of your organization. Employees play a huge part in the success or failure of your organization, no matter how long your employees work, if they are nor not productive it won’t bring any benefit for you. That is why to ensure your success it is your duty to make sure all your employees use the working hours most effectively and efficiently to impact positively in your company. Utilizing employee monitoring software is one way to ensure that your employees are not wasting their time.



Why CloudDesk is the best Employee Monitoring Software for SMB Owners?
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Clouddesk employee monitoring software is a program through which you can monitor and track your employee’s activity. There are many different features CloudDesk offer, but one of the main features include time tracking with access to random screenshot and productivity level tracking. Many small business owners consider that these software are intended to micromanage employees and you might think you don’t need such software to maintain such a small group of people. However this is not true rather this software is suitable for all kinds of small-medium businesses, especially for those who have remote teams. CloudDesk is designed to make the lives of managers and employees much easier at the same time helping them to be proactive.


Top 5 reasons why small or medium-sized businesses need Employee Monitoring Software

Benefits of CloudDesk employee monitoring tools are numerous, just stating this is not enough to convince SMB owners which is why today we will be exploring the top 5 reasons why small or medium-sized businesses need time monitoring software.


  1. Manage your project more easily with CloudDesk: When you have a remote team who are working from different locations, it becomes hard for managers to know how each project is running. The monitoring app will allow you to get the overview of the project and you will understand when it reaches the pipeline and take further preparation for the next level without the need to knock employees again and again for feedback. You can also better allocate your team members after learning more about their ability in managing projects. The monitoring will help you to grow the ability to adapt to any challenges and you will be able to finish the project on time without going over budgets.​
  2. Increase the productivity of your employees: CloudDesk will tell you how long it takes for your employee to complete a task. It also helps you to determine whether your employees are doing their work in the right way or not. You will get to know who is your most hardworking employee and who is the laziest one.
  3. Helps you better understand your projects: By properly assessing any aspects of a project- starting from commodity, time, budget and people, you can easily calculate the possible ROI. The data that you will receive from CloudDesk will help you accurately plan any future projects which is similar. You can also use this data to estimate your costs to create future proposals.
  4. Employees further Develop their Skills: The data provided by CloudDesk helps you to know about the strength and weaknesses of your remote employees. With this information, you can help them to enhance and improve their existing skills in the areas they enjoy the most.
  5. Cost Reduction All businesses want to earn as much as possible while at the same time spending as little as possible. Wasting time or spending it inefficiently reduces your profits. With employee time monitoring software, you are able to properly identify if any minor tasks are taking longer then expected instead of using that time to work on larger, much more important tasks.



Why is employee monitoring important for small businesses?

Employee monitoring is the backbone for small businesses.Without knowing how each employee is working, the business can not function well. Running a small business is this fast moving world is itself a big challenge. Managing a Small and medium business can end up in multi-tasking, there are a number of things owners need to do starting from creating a good product/service, marketing it, selling it and much more. Ignoring the people who work for your company can be quite risky. Because it can lead to serious mistakes which can adversely affect your business.


To ensure your success, there is no alternative to monitor your employees, know the metrics and analytics of the employees’ work activity. The data that you receive will also be incredibly important to track how your business is performing. Without monitoring you won’t really have any sort of actual insight on how your business is performing.


Final Thoughts
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Keep in mind that implementing employee monitoring software like CloudDesk could potentially backfire if you do not properly explain the benefits of using it for the purpose of your business to your employees. But if you take your time to educate your employees why business actually need to have certain data about employees’ work productivity, your employees will most likely be on board with it happily.



Employee monitoring software is extremely beneficial for small or medium sized businesses. It saves valuable time of worrying about how your employees are working, and helps you better plan and manage all your projects and tasks. Use of these tools will reduce your costs, helps your employees be more productive, and give you the platform to run your business seamlessly for the ultimate success.
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5 Best Practices for Continuous Testing

4/22/2021

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In the software world, “quality” is a phrase you hear a lot; it’s defined as “the degree of excellence of something.” But, what exactly is quality, and why is it so heavily emphasized upon?

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Tech projects either work or they don't. Halfway doesn't cut it. 99% there usually won't cut it either. I've worked with tech project clients closely as we try to meet deadlines and we've been 99% there, but that doesn't always comfort the nervous client who feels that if you roll the project out tomorrow and they signoff and pay that final invoice that you'll actually be around to fix the other 1% three weeks from now.


Quality is not only critical to customer satisfaction, project success, development, and design of an end user solution, it is also something that should be checked, re-checked, and reported on in detail in any project delivery initiative. At the very basis of quality delivery is thorough testing prior to delivery. In tech projects, that can be subsystem testing, system testing, user acceptance testing (UAT), or final testing prior to solution delivery or handoff. It's all about test, test, and retest. Can you test too much? Not really. That's why we should consider an option called Continuous Testing.


What is Continuous Testing?


Continuous Testing is defined as a Software Testing type that involves a process of testing early, testing often, testing everywhere, and automating your testing. It is a emphasizes on evaluating quality at every step of the Continuous Delivery process.


In Agile, where software is frequently released to production, it is extremely important ensure that the software is of high quality throughout the development. Testing needs to happen early in Agile because as development is ongoing, requirements are often being added and revised, and sprints are happening in which functionality is being user tested and then released to the end users. It is critical that organizations ensure that the requirements are both correct and detailed enough for the design and development of the software. In this case, the best scenario is to test throughout development and not leave testing until just before the release.


We’ve identified 5 best practices for implementing Continuous Testing into your Software Development Life Cycle so that you can not only improve your testing, but also your overall software quality. They are:


  • Know the business goals and processes
  • Excellent collaboration between developers and testers
  • Choose the best software for your niche
  • Incorporate appropriate quality analysis
  • Make it automated


Let's examine each of these in more detail.


Know the Business Goals and Processes


Continuous Testing means testing early and frequently. In order for our CT processes to be effective for the overall business, we must ensure that we receive all requirements from the business before we begin our development. Here are some tips for this:


  • Building a close relationship with the Business Analysts—this is important for QA!
  • Eliminating vagueness from user stories is important—you need to make sure the user story includes (a) a clear set of acceptance criteria, and (b) that it is testable.
  • Ignoring non-Functional Testing can be risky as it can hamper security and performance.
  • Building meaningful and important End-to-End Test scenarios should be emphasized significantly; you can do so by utilizing data, analytics, and trends from the production website in order to collect information about user journeys and activities throughout the application.
  • Focus on providing value for the business by organizing testing in a Lean manner. Failure to drive this concept can lead to delays, frustration, and costly miscommunication. Communication is essential to making sure that everyone on the team is on the same page about what is being tested.


Excellent Collaboration Between Developers and Testers


Developers test the software over, and over, and over again. Eventually, though, there are system tests and user acceptance test scenarios that are performed by dedicated teams who are assigned to match requirements to the end functionality and proper outputs. Collaboration here is key to ensure requirements are tested properly and that the end product is acceptable to be used by the end users. To boost collaboration between developers and testers, try implementing these ideas:


  • Pairing testers with developers is important to ensure effective Unit Testing is executed.
  • Reducing unnecessary testing artifacts—like carrying out extensive test cases and test plans—should be kept in mind.
  • Adapting a more investigative attitude towards testing while testing manually can be helpful


Choose the Best Software for Your Niche


Your organization has its own unique goals, mission, requirements, and end user demands. There are copious amounts of software options out there to explore, and finding the right fit can be a challenge! The best way to find the right software for you is to demo the software yourself; use trials and assign a team to explore and evaluate the many options. This’ll help you find a solution that scales with your needs. When choosing a software, here are a few things to keep in mind:


  • Continuous Testing can be extremely helpful in providing an error-free solution—especially in the mobile app niche, where businesses often try to differentiate themselves from their competition.
  • Choosing the best solution that matches business goals and mission and scales with the projects and business initiatives can provide the best long-term success
  • Reporting is key to testing success! Choose a Continuous Testing solution that provides both an informative dashboard for not only management and top-level sponsors, but the “down and dirty” project teams and developers as well.


Incorporate Appropriate Quality Analysis


Whether quality assurance is all hands-on, partially, or fully automated, it remains a key aspect of any testing solution. This is especially true of a Continuous Testing solution, as the organization is looking to justify its transition to and reliance upon this potential answer to delivering the highest-quality end product. No matter your quality assurance process, you need to make sure you remember the following:


  • Quality analysis and assurance in testing is critical to project success and customer satisfaction.
  • Detailed reporting of quality is key to fast compliance and understanding of quality delivery and acceptance.
  • Automated quality reporting through the right software is important to keep costs in check and eliminate increased potential for human error or subjective reporting of results—which work to increase management and customer confidence.


Make it Automated


Continuous Testing follows the test early and test often approach. Automated Testing is useful in order to get quick feedback on the application quality. When incorporating Automation, here are some tips:


  • Making Test Automation a responsibility of both developers and testers is imperative.
  • Knowing when to automate tests and when to leave them as manual is critical for an effective and speedy delivery.
  • Running automated tests from a CI server is significant
  • Automating new functionality and stories along development instead of leaving them for later should be the ultimate goal.
  • Forget pilot / sandbox deployments to QA for testing; automate to test environments for best enablement of Continuous Testing.
  • Human involvement in processes should be eliminated as much as possible—automate whatever can be automated!
  • Standardize the test environments.
  • Scale Automated Testing for best and most reliable results.


Summary / call for input


Continuous Testing has proved to be a major asset to organizations who are looking to accelerate their software development and release schedules, especially in mobile app scenarios as mentioned above. It can prove critically helpful in fulfilling delivery schedules in time and boost the software development process. As mentioned above, appropriate reporting is key in order to enable enterprise wide buy-in, adaptation and understanding. And never stray from the mentality of test, test and retest. You'll never be sorry for overtesting if budget allows. You will almost always be sorry for not testing enough.


So, what is your take on Continuous Testing? Do you agree with what we recommend? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Or, perhaps you’re looking into implementing Continuous Testing for your testing process—and we’re here to help! At LogiGear, we’ve been a leader in Silicon Valley Testing Expertise for over 25 years. We have loads of resources available to you over on our website. Remember: test early and test often, and when in doubt, think of your customers and the satisfaction they’ll receive from high-quality releases.

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    Brad Egeland


    Named the "#1 Provider of Project Management Content in the World," Brad Egeland has over 25 years of professional IT experience as a developer, manager, project manager, cybersecurity enthusiast, consultant and author.  He has written more than 8,000 expert online articles, eBooks, white papers and video articles for clients worldwide.  If you want Brad to write for your site, contact him. Want your content on this blog and promoted? Contact him. Looking for advice/menoring? Contact him.

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