Ever tried to use your own issue tracking system only to find that it lacks the flexibility you need to track what you really want it to track?  Unfortunately, it is often so cumbersome to use or lacks the features that you need and ultimately is only used some of the time or not at all – completely negating any benefit it’s supposed to provide.  Enter, Comindware.

Comindware Tracker provides you with far more flexibility than other issue tracking and workflow management systems. That’s because Comindware is the only system built on ultra-flexible ElasticData technology, a far more flexible data management foundation for modern web-based applications.

ElasticData provides breakthrough flexibility for designing and customizing your workflow processes. And unlike other solutions in the marketplace, it allows you to change and immediately deploy new processes and form elements on-the-fly. So instead of changing your processes to accommodate the limitations of some “solution”, you can adapt Comindware to support your ideal processes, saving countless dollars, resources and days or even weeks of re-work.

Why struggle with an inflexible, over-engineered system when you can easily develop software your way with Comindware?

Features Management

Pre-designed workflow templates allow you to track product features and requirements in a more organized, efficient, and manageable way. Customizable forms and fields let you set your own feature prioritization and effort estimation levels to simplify product planning. You can then create tasks and an unlimited hierarchy of sub-tasks as well as automate workflows to coordinate and streamline development. Monitor and report on implementation progress with lists, reporting Dashboards, and advanced analytics.

Bug Tracking

Comindware Tracker provides pre-designed bug tracking workflow process management templates and forms so you can start quickly with efficient processes. Features include fully customizable workflows, forms, and fields, as well as fully editable bug statuses, priorities, severities, and classifications. You also get configurable email notifications and flexible reporting.

Test Case Management

Test case workflow templates provide for efficient test case management. Test case workflows and forms can be easily customized with visual drag-&-drop editors. Integrated collaboration features with document / file management allow requirements, test cases, discussions and more to be managed together more efficiently.

Real-Time Tracking, Reporting, Dashboards

Configurable list views, reports, and Dashboards provide real-time status updates of tracked issues and tasks. By tracking, collaborating on, and managing development issues in a single system, you and other team members and can work and manage things with less effort and greater visibility.

For more information about the Comindware suite of products contact Comindware or you can try it out yourself.  Visit their site to try it for 30 days.

There may come a time on your project when a new team member needs to be brought on to work on specific tasks.  This may be as a result of new requirements or a change in requirements.  Or it may be that the workload was larger than expected and you just need more help.  Or it may be that you had a project team member who wasn’t performing well, didn’t gel with the project client, or perhaps was so good they were needed immediately on another project.  Whatever the reason, when you’re faced with bringing in new project talent, it’s important that the transition is well planned and well orchestrated, especially if you have the luxury of time to do so.

Over the years, I’ve tried to follow the following four key steps when incorporating new project resources into a current, ongoing project engagement. 

Getting them up to speed

I’ve realized that getting a new resource prepared while still in hanging in the background allows them to look more prepared when they finally need to sit in on a status call or be introduced to the customer.  To aid with this, I always hand them the latest project schedule or give them access through the chosen project management software tool like WorkZone, the most recent project status report, a copy of the resource forecast and budget (if appropriate for their position and level of responsibility - definitely if it’s the business analyst), and – probably most importantly – the statement of work.  The presentation deck that I put together for the formal project kickoff meeting at the beginning of the engagement also serves as a nice intro to the key dates, assumptions, and roles on the project.

Depending on the project and how soon this resource needs to be ‘productive’ on the project, now is also probably the best time to give your project customer a heads-up that the new resource will be joining soon and that they are currently going through the preparation process to be ready to jump onboard shortly.

Introduction to the team

I think it’s imperative to hold weekly team meetings for your own project team in advance of the weekly call or meeting with the project customer, so this is a great time to introduce the new resource to the team and give them some general information about what’s going on with the project.  It’s also a great time to allow them to start coming together as a team with the new resource and to give them some information specifically about the project client (quarks, needs, frequent requests, pain points, etc.).  It’s always interesting to see how everyone on the project sees the customer a little differently than the others so getting everyone’s input on this topic for the new project resource can be very helpful.

Shadowing

If you have the luxury of time and resource availability, I always think it’s best to have the new resource silently shadow the outgoing resource for at least one meeting and then be formally introduced and actually participate on a call with the outgoing resource still present for at least one meeting.  I realize this isn’t possible if the exiting resource has been fired or jettisoned to a higher priority project out of urgent need, but if you can make this happen, it serves as a nice slow transition for the resource and for the project client.

Into the fire

Finally, it’s time to throw the resource into the fire and start re-assigning all relevant tasks to the new resource in your have them fully ready to carry their load in front of the project customer on status calls and on regular tasks.  Ideally, they have ramp up time of 1-3 weeks to get to this point, but if that’s not the case – and you’ll likely know all this going into this transition – then you must of course plan accordingly and spend extra time behind the scenes with the new resource getting them ready to be productive almost immediately.

This article is brought to you on behalf of WorkZone – a sophisticated yet very user-friendly, collaborative project management tool. View a product tour of WorkZone to see if it is going to work for your projects. And if you’d like to take a more personal approach, feel free to request a demo from the WorkZone site.

This isn't a survey and isn't really an article.  It's more of a call for response and discussion.  Over the past nearly 4 years on this blog I've been writing about my opinions and experiences from my project management background. What I would like to know now is this:  what are the most frustrating, problematic, and/or annoying things for you about managing projects, teams, and customers?

You can give me one item or you can me an entire list.  I would very much like to hear from each of you as I'm sure it's bound to stir some nice discussions and help us to remember frustrations we've experienced in our own pasts that we may have forgotten about (and yes, that's a good thing!).

So what are your triggers?  Is it customers who aren't participating?  Is it project clients who can't finalize requirements?.....

Your organization mandates; building security policies, expense policies, HR practices and other business processes to keep your physical and intellectual property safe. You probably have a locked file room or at least locked file cabinets and desk drawers to store confidential and proprietary paper based information. Then why do you allow employees to keep electronic data on their unsecure, at risk, desktops and laptops? Why do you allow private electronic file shares in departments with questionable security practices subject to vandalism and employee sabotage? Why is it; management will not mandate work process that centralize the storage of electronic information to ensure the security of electronic documents and, incidentally, lead to significant financial benefits?

FileHold Systems Inc. gets daily requests about document and file management related business problems from organizations:

• We need to get rid of file cabinets to create floor space!
  
  
• We are worried about an unstructured, unsecure file share!
  
  
• We need version control to reduce duplication of effort!
  
  
• We want to make compliance reporting for audits fast and easy!
  
  
• We can’t find internal information. We want Google type search!
  
  
• We want an electronic Review and Approval process for collaboration!
  
  
• We want mobile workers to have access to electronic information!
  
  
• We need to protect intellectual property as a part of our business continuity plan!
  
  

Every one of these problems (and many more) can be solved with an electronic document management system (EDMS). These companies engage with us; they ask many questions, read web content, watch product demonstrations, review features, and confirm IT capabilities and budgets. They spend lots of time and money on this evaluation process and some even take the effort to install a trial and train employees on the system. Time goes by and it is discovered that the technology works perfectly; it is easy to use and solves the business problems and it is affordable. So it should be an easy decision to proceed but it isn’t. There is resistance from some employees (often important engineers or legal workers and even management) who do not want to change their entrenched business practices of storing document s and important e-mail on their own desktop. They refuse to comply by saying the systems is too hard to use and they fight process change. In the spirit of employee relations Management allows them to do so and in most cases the project is put on hold or “back burnered” for some other priority. Time and money has been wasted doing this evaluation, the solution is at hand but management will not impose a slight change in work processes that will ensure the protection of intellectual property. 

If you want to protect your intellectual property and if you want to go Paperless you must mandate a solution in your organization. Employee adoption of document management technology is the biggest reason for system failure or in many cases the reason why the software is not even purchased after being evaluated.  A centralized document control system and electronic workflow pays off by reducing the cost of paper mailing and storage, keeps organizations in compliance and protects intellectual property.  Unfortunately these are not objectives lower level employees, or even some executives, care about very much for their organization.  If given a choice employees prefer to keep their information proprietary, on their own desktop and in their own control as opposed to taking the extra step to store or retrieve documents from a central repository and collaborate electronically.  Once in place employees willingly adopt document management software as a departmental solution but in general there is resistance by the average employee and some managers to any business process regimentation and process change. Employees like routine and a “comfort zone”. Electronic workflow will save an AP department time to get invoices approved and paid; an electronic forms feature will make HR life in capturing employee review forms at the same time protecting information and saving money. 

The point of this is that what is needed is a mandate from management for all employees to use the system to secure your intellectual property for business continuity and make the usage a condition of employment.  Document management software is not hard to use and only requires a few extra keystrokes to store documents in an organized way.  The big productivity gains come when searching, version controlling, sharing and auditing documents in your business – you cannot get these benefits until the system is used. We have customers who reduce the time it takes to gather materials for annual audits from weeks to hours because they have mandated the use of the systems by everyone. Managers; go out and mandate the use of this technology, after a short period your employees will embrace it and the downstream payoffs are substantial. It is your electronic Intellectual property and you are responsibility is to protect it in the same way you secure your physical assets.

For software development, Comindware Tracker provides you with the most flexible issue tracking, workflow process management, and task management system available. Regardless of your SDLC methodology – be it Agile, Scrum, Waterfall, RUP…whatever…Comindware’s Tracker solution can automate and streamline your collaborative development efforts while making things easier to track and manage.

Comindware Tracker provides your organization with a Pre-Designed Functional Workspace for efficient management of software development issues and tasks. The Workspace includes pre-designed workflow process management templates. These are ready to use and easily customized for your development processes, significantly reducing the time and effort required to get things running the way you need them to run.

The Workspace also includes forms and reporting Dashboards for managing development issues including bugs, requirements, test cases, change requests, risks, and more. And with integrated free Comindware Task Management and exclusive ConnectStep technology, Comindware Tracker can automatically generate tasks at each process step. So now, you can orchestrate and manage software development efforts more efficiently.

With Comindware Tracker for software development, you can:

• Simplify tracking for issues, bugs, requirements, change requests, test cases, and more
• Collaborate more efficiently via context-sensitive comments, discussions, document/file sharing, links, and more
• Coordinate and streamline your processes with flexible, standards-based workflow process management templates, workflow automation, and integrated task management
• Automatically generate next-step tasks at each step of your workflow processes via ConnectStep technology
• Visually and interactively customize workflow processes and forms to your exact needs using Comindware’s graphical Workflow Builder and Form Builder
• Organize and manage tasks, sub-tasks, and projects
• Track status of each issue or requirement and view its complete change history
• Access real-time status reports, reporting dashboards, and advanced analytics to measure and monitor development efforts

For more information about the Comindware suite of products contact Comindware or you can try it out yourself.  Visit their site to try it for 30 days.

by Jonas Andersen, Podio

Tired of working out of your inbox and trying to figure out how to coordinate and share resources between your stakeholders using email?  Maybe it’s time to get rid of email and documents and try a more collaborative tool for managing your projects.

As Gantt based tools are mainly for planning and identifying dependencies in your projects, the actual project work stays confined to email and documents. Project management software is traditionally built to support the project manager in scoping, defining, and planning each project. But the reality of the majority of people who manage projects as part of their job is that they experience that what is really broken in project management is task coordination, and team collaboration and communication.

Getting Past Spreadsheets and Email

Spreadsheets were the preferred project management tool for a generation because of their flexibility. But they fail hugely when it came to collaboration. Email was what connected projects and communication, but it lacks the context and structure needed to move fast, and run projects efficiently.

The first generation web-based tools had many advantages including access from anywhere on more devices, reducing the mess of cc-emailing and version control. In short coordination between project team members became much easier and less messy. But at a price. That price was flexibility - you had to manage each project according to your tool’s methodology, and each project had to be managed in exactly the same way as the last one.

Another problem was the disconnection between communication and the actual objects of work. The rise of project management software, and “enterprise social networks” still came with the same problem as email and Excel – doing work in one place, telling people about it in another.

The way most people have done project management for more than a generation is broken. A new, more social social and collaborative project management tool was needed.

Project Collaboration With Podio

At Podio we’re on a mission to fix this by building a next generation project management tools like Podio incorporate the flexibility of Excel – being able to quickly and easily adjust the tool you’re using to each specific project - with a social work platform that allows communication to be placed where it belongs - in the context of where you work.

• Choose from hundreds of apps. The Podio App Market contains hundreds of pre-built apps for a variety of purposes and methodologies.
• Modify your apps to work the way you want. By simply clicking ‘Modify app’  on any of your project management apps, you can change the wording, structure, and functionality of your apps as easy as drag/drop.
• If you need it - build it! With the Podio App builder you can easily build your own project management apps from scratch to suit exactly how you do project management on each and every one of your
• Share your work in real time with the activity stream and shared tasks, calendar, and files.

But don’t take my word for it. Here are a few tips from the real experts - experienced project managers - on how they manage projects more effectively. Or go ahead and get started managing your projects on a true project collaboration platform now.

It’s a given that project managers are spending most of their time managing tasks and resources on the project.  In fact, they have a hand in ‘managing’ everything including issues, risks, conflicts, people, activities, communication, the customer, and vendors as well as all of the unknowns that can and do arise. This is all true whether the project is being handled remotely or if your team and customer are sitting in the same room with you.  It’s just that the skills needed to effectively manage tend to skew more heavily on effective communication and the remote aspect can invite some challenges that don’t necessarily exist in the co-location project environment.

The project manager may need to pay more attention to certain tasks or activities when managing a virtual team in order to make the team more productive and to help better ensure project success.  In the past six years, I’ve only managed one project with an entirely co-located project team, so I’m fairly opinionated on strategies to focus on for effectively managing the virtual project team.  I’ve narrowed it down to six key strategies to discuss:

Hold meetings regularly, not sporadically

Keep every meeting.  It can be very tempting to skip what might seem like a meaningless meeting.  Even if there is nothing new to report, it’s still important to have those touch points with your team to keep them fully focused and engaged.  Even if your team status call is only 5 minutes long – you still need to have it.

Streamline communications

Consolidate and prioritize communications. Use email, texting, blogging, threaded discussions, etc. for relationship-driven communications (i.e., staying in touch and being personal). Communications of an important nature should be cohesive and never delivered in fragmentary pieces that have to be pieced together by the receiver. Mutually assess the communication preferences of yourself and your team members to develop a communication plan. Avoid assumptions and revisit your plan on a regularly basis especially when the nature of the work is about to change.

Be a good listener

When you are out of easy reach and you are tasked with managing the performance of others it’s easy to get sucked into the trap of needing to transmit lots of information.  I’ve often found myself in the role of heavy communicator on the project as the lead of a virtual team and project.  Don’t forget the listening part because the virtual project manager doesn’t have the luxury of seeing facial expressions and gestures that can portray concern.   And always be sure to keep an open mind. Be present and try to enter the perspective of those speaking to you.  This will help you ask effective questions and identify what direction to go with your own needs and agenda.  You might be very pleasantly surprised at how much more information you get from your team this way.

Manage deliverables, not activities

It’s critical in the virtual project world that you stay focused – and keep your team focused – on the project deliverables.  Activities are important, but those are the responsibilities of the individuals who are assigned to those tasks.  Don’t get too bogged down in managing the minute details because the distance you have between you and those that are performing those activities make that type of micro managing even more difficult.  Focus on the higher-level tasks and the overall deliverables and expect your team to perform.

Know your team members and manage accordingly

Every employee is different. Mobile workers make it easier for managers to take a more personalized approach in how they work and interact with members of their team. It takes more work and effort on a manager’s part but the results can be very rewarding.  Understanding what enables each employee to perform at his or her best is the most important responsibility of a manager.

Leverage technology

Today, there is literally endless technology and tools to manage your remote teams and projects effectively.  How we manage tasks, schedules, workflows, budgets, customers and communication is easier today for the virtual project manager than ever before as there are hundreds of web-based project management and collaboration tools available to assist.  Choose a solid tool – like WorkZone’s web-based PM scheduling, status and document sharing tool for teams as an example – and ensure that your project team (and customer if you so choose) know how to use it.  Putting a web-based solution in the hands of the project team can definitely make project manager’s job easier as task progress update responsibility can be delegated to those actually doing the work.  Of course, you’ll still need to use the usual spreadsheet, word processor, and other tools you would normally use to create and communicate project status information and create project deliverables for the client on the engagement.  The list available tools is endless, choose what works best for your team and project. 

View a product tour of WorkZone to see if it is going to work for your projects. And if you’d like to take a more personal approach, feel free to request a demo from the WorkZone site.

The goal of every project manager – and every PMO director – is to keep projects on time, on budget and to keep the project customer satisfied.  WorkZone – a powerful web-based project management tool – can definitely help the project manager with the first two of those directives.  The last one is….well…harder to quantitate.

WorkZone organizes projects by tasks and subtasks, assigns who's responsible and when it's due. It links tasks together to see how a change in one area affects the rest of the project.  Think of it as a ‘what if’ scenario builder.

WorkZone automatically sends notifications when tasks are late and lets project managers quickly identify projects needing immediate attention. The project manager has enough tasks on his hands…it’s nice to hand off the notifications and alerts to an automated tool like this, if possible.  I know it would have made my life easier a long time ago.

WorkZone is particularly valuable in these situations:

Marketing departments / ad agencies who support multiple clients or departments: create distinct, secure workspaces for each group, setting access by user to appropriate projects and files.

Projects that follow similar processes: create templates for projects that you do regularly (such as new product development, implementations, marketing communications), saving time and improving consistency across projects.

Staying on top of a large number of projects: WorkZone's cross-project views and automatic alerts help you focus on the specific projects that need your immediate attention.

View a product tour of WorkZone to see if it is going to work for your projects. And if you’d like to take a more personal approach, feel free to request a demo from the WorkZone site.