Tricks of the Trade

Sep 8, 2011 | | 0 comments |
Here's some cool stuff:


•If you like to organize your personal goals, professional certifications, hobbies and measure them over time Jenny Blake’s templates are awesome. And you can get them by signing up in her monthly newsletter
•Do women make better project managers- want to know read this guest post 
•Like to learn but not the boring way- say Hello to PMChat 
•Industrial Psychology Perspective on Project management is here. Finally.

•Joined your first PM job and need to revamp your image. Your makeup tricks here.
Need some white noise while you work, try this. No downloads required.


(Pic Courtesy: Google Images)


Who's your boss? Part 2

Sep 5, 2011 | | 0 comments |
This is part 2 of Who’s your boss? Read part 1 here.

The Buddy-Baseball caps, high-fives

What they do:
The Buddy wants to be your friend, not your boss. Too bad for him you’ve already got friends and wouldn’t want to hang with him anyway. From “happy” hours that seem more like a punishment to unfunny jokes that you’ve just got to laugh at (or else!) The Buddy really has a way of making fun into a chore. And don’t get us started on his habit of trying to start questionable relationships with subordinates. It’s just painful to watch.

How to make him love you:
Laugh at his funnier jokes, but don’t stoop to laughing at every joke – being a suck-up isn’t a great way to maintain your dignity. Say no thanks to all the invitations you can, and keep your own interactions with The Buddy on an extremely professional level – you’ll be helping him in the long run, and he’ll respect you for it. Protect yourself with a thick layer of decorum and common sense, because he sure isn’t going to do it for you.

The Miracle- An office that looks like yours, encouraging emails

What they do:
Fun, supportive, capable, and inspiring, The Miracle is truly an employee’s dream come true. She does what she says, always follows up, and usually can push you to do your best in a way that makes the hardest work seem like play. If you’re working for The Miracle you’ll know it, from the smile on your face at the end of the day to your rewarding paycheck at the end of the week. Just try not to brag too much!

How to make her love you:
Work your butt off and thank your lucky stars, since The Miracle doesn’t come along very often. Use this great opportunity to really see how far you can go, and at the end of The Miracle’s tenure, make sure you get a letter of reference.

The Monster-Thrown coffee cups, restraining orders!

What they do:
The question is more “What don’t they do?” The Monster lives to make your own life hell, and he’s good at it. From screaming at you in front of the customers to lying about your results to engaging in borderline criminal harassment, The Monster repeatedly demonstrates that has no pity, human decency, or shame. He’s the worst boss around, hands down, and we’re sorry for anyone who has to deal with him.

How to make him love you:
Unfortunately, with this one you just have to run. Get out. There’s no hope for improvement when you work for someone who has no scruples at al

The Number Cruncher- Incredible Excel skills, a calculator watch.

What they do:
The Number Cruncher’s best quality is her ability to break things down into measurable statistics — and sometimes, that means the actual employees, too. The Number Cruncher can only read math, and if your performance appears to be declining on paper rest assured you will get a lecture, even if you’ve been working as hard as you can. Ever feel like you are “just a number?” We’re here to confirm that you definitely are.

How to make her love you:
Give her something she can understand: Numbers. Track your successes (and your failures) with painstaking detail and fanatical devotion. Even if it’s a chore in the immediate future, your data mining will pay off and you will have something on paper that proves you’ve been working hard, even if your efforts haven’t been working. Who knows, her approach might teach you something!

The Innovator- Brainstorming sessions, expensive toys, subscription to Entrepreneur magazine

What they do:
The Innovator’s head is full of big ideas, and he wastes no time dreaming them up and then making sure they actually come true. Great for business, but it usually means you get no life outside the office because you’re the one actually making his dream come to life. The pros? This boss can be incredibly charismatic and inspiring, and truly cares about the work. The cons? Sometimes it seems like the only thing this boss cares about is work. Hope that’s all you care about, too!

How to make him love you:
Work hard and show commitment, but keep your sense of self outside of work. Remind the boss that the outside world does exist: Ask The Innovator about his weekend, his children (if he has any, which is a total mystery) about any hobby he has outside work. After you’re done chitchatting, give your all and The Innovator will respect your work and hopefully, your own need for work-life balance.

The Tuft Hunter- The CEO’s wardrobe, car, and haircut.

What they do:
In the old days, a tuft hunter was a nobleman’s parasite, one who tried to curry favor with the rich and powerful in order to gain favor or influence. The Tuft Hunter as a boss, however, is always looking for her own next promotion. Does that mean she’ll create an opening for you once she makes it up that ladder — or are you merely a rung on her own to be stepped on? That’s something only The Tuft Hunter knows. You’ll probably find out too late.

How to make her love you:
Do everything in your power to make The Tuft Hunter look good, and you’ll be one step closer to a promotion of your very own. Watch her back and tell her every bit of news that you come across from upper management and you’ll earn her respect and maybe even her loyalty — if she has any.

The Patronizer- Terrible computer skills, degree in law or medicine

What they do:
If you’ve worked for someone who explained how to turn your computer on or how to change the toner on the printer, you’ve experienced The Patronizer. The Patronizer makes sure you know exactly how much time and effort it takes for him just to grace you with his presence every morning. He leaves you to your own devices mostly, but is sure to micromanage the simplest and most mundane tasks whenever he gets the opportunity.

How to make him love you:
Keep your eye on the ball, whether it’s getting better at your job or getting a foot out the door. If you feel you are being made to look stupid, you can interrupt The Patronizer mid-sentence during one of his boring lectures by saying, “I already know how to do that, but I am interested what you think about …” If the condescending behavior just doesn’t stop, or if he’s being outright rude, it’s important to tell The Patronizer to knock it off. The Patronizer believes you’re beneath him, and when you show him you’re not, you’ll gain his respect.

The Nitpicker- Fierce attention to detail, red pens, lots of spare time.

What they do:
The Nitpicker is a micro-manager who likes to control all of your work, all the time. Did you save the company money on office supplies? It’s not nearly enough. Work hard on a killer presentation? There’s a punctuation error on the 10th slide. Nothing you do is ever good enough for The Nitpicker, and that can cause your own faith in your abilities to slip. You’ll spend all your time second-guessing yourself instead of innovating.

How to make her love you:
Instead of letting the Nitpicker drain you of all motivation, learn to work by your own standards. Try finding someone else in the company to be your mentor, because you surely won’t get coaching out of her, unless it’s to point out all your faults. You might also try working one step ahead of The Nitpicker, detailing every single thing you do, so you’ll be ready for the inevitable barrage of questions.

(Pic Courtesy: google images. Article source)

Who’s your boss?

Sep 2, 2011 | | 1 comments |

Love him, hate her...its a never ending saga.
Find out who they are.

The Robot- Empty desk with no family picture.

What they do:
All business, all the time: That’s The Robot. We’re not saying she’s not human, but we’ve definitely got our doubts on the matter sometimes. The sworn enemy of fun, levity, and emotion, The Robot would rather you just get to work. At all times. While it can be nice to have someone driving you to do your best, it would be nice to feel a little bit of emotional connection from time to time, right?

How to make her love you:
It may not sound like a lot of fun, but you’ll probably have to conceal your own feelings and buckle down to The Robot’s schedule. On the up side, she can teach you discipline and efficiency. Try making allies of your coworkers. They’re probably as frustrated as you are! Inside jokes and friendly chit-chat can make the day seem brighter.

The Softy- they give second chances.

What they do:
They think they’re making things easier on their employees, but in the long run The Softy’s kid-glove approach to management just makes it harder for great workers to succeed and easier for slackers to stick around. Being a boss involves making difficult decisions sometimes, especially when it comes to employees, but The Softy doesn’t seem to realize this.

How to make him love you:
The worst thing to do is hurt The Softy’s feelings, so try changing things up by commending them on his toughest calls, however rare. A little positive reinforcement can go a long way when The Softy learns that being the bad cop doesn’t have to be the worst job in the world.

The Weasel- Empty promises
What they do:
Promising one thing but delivering another, The Weasel will say anything — and we do mean anything — to get what she wants out of you. A raise? A promotion? Some time off? Sure, you’ll get what you’ve been dreaming about eventually if you take on extra work or a hellish new project. Or so she says, but we wouldn’t recommend holding your breath for The Weasel to actually deliver. Why should she? You’re already doing the extra work for free.

How to make her love you:
Completing all the grunt work will get you great distances with The Weasel, but just remember to trust nothing The Weasel says, ever. Or, at very least, get it in writing and double-check with whomever The Weasel answers to in upper management. A paper trail will be your best defense against lies and false promises. Maybe you’ll actually get that promotion!

The Mystery- Closed doors, Out Of Office messages.

What they do: 
Who knows? The Mystery is an expert at the arts of subterfuge, denial, and … whatever it is he does. Either he’s on a business trip or in a locked-door meeting or plotting world domination all day or … something. Whatever it is, you’re left to your own devices to figure things out, minus any guidance at all. Too bad you’ll still be on the hook if things go wrong. The Mystery will be gone when it comes down to it.

How to make him love you: 
Wait it out and give him space. If you stay patient (and we mean really patient) you may be able, like a persevering biologist in the jungle observing shy animals, to learn a little bit more about The Mystery’s habits.

The Viper- Backhanded compliments, fake smiles.

What they do:
Does The Viper wake up on the wrong side of the bed every single morning? It sure seems like it. From snippy comments about personal matters (“Are you pregnant? Oh, it just seemed like you were gaining weight.”) to undermining your efforts at work (“So you’re just learning Excel, right?”), The Viper has a real talent for making you feel bad about yourself. No matter how thick your skin is, it’s hard not to let her get to you.

How to make her love you:
We’re not actually certain that the Viper is capable of loving an employee, so it’s probably best to just stay a good distance away from her. Keep feelings to yourself, and share as little information about your life as possible, all the while being extremely pleasant. The Viper can’t hurt you if she doesn’t know where you’re sensitive.

Part 2 of Who's your boss coming next!

(Pic Courtesy: google images. Article source)

Virtual Style- are you doing it?

Virtual workers have increased. You can find them in the coffee shops, airports, and pretty much everywhere. 


Life is easy- a laptop and good internet connection is all you need. Needless to say, it isn’t bad sitting in your home office and still have the feeling of a job well done and your salary deposited.


If you are planning to turn virtual, remember:
•Plan it well. Have a good laptop, good speed internet (keep a back up or use USB internet connections for travelling).
•A portable hard drive with you, to back up your work. Or use virtual backups.
•Coordinate well with your team.
•Make sure your team has Skype id’s to communicate frequently.
•Share your work style; it’s important for people to have a close working relationship to get work done virtually and without hiccups.
•Spread out your breaks. Plan your day well. Keep a home office or a space where you work every day away from clutter and noise.
•It’s a state of mind. Don’t let people tell you it can’t be done. 


(pic courtesy: Google images)

Interview with Microproject

I'm lucky to have Andreas Sundgren (@AndreasSundgren) take the questions about Microproject-  project management software.

If you want to go straight to the point and check out their product, see the videos here.

•Why the need to build this software?
After working for a long time in project based environments developing products we felt that there was no web based management service that catered to small teams specifically and that combined visuality with ease of use so we decided we would build one ourselves.

•How long did it take to release the beta version?
About three months of hard development.

•Tell us about the software.
Microproject combines the elements that we think necessary to run a project within a small team. It's built to be without learning curve and to fit all functions in a single window. At the same time it sports features that lets it be run with many small groups parallell which means it coukd also suit larger operations. The focus is to help the small team work more efficiently. We've limited functionalities when leaving messages etc to force focus on participants and we've combined the classic gantt view lay-out with an extremely simple to-do list functionality.

•Three things project managers should expect from this software
- zero learning curve
- visual overview
- intentional limitations implemented to create focus on result. Our motto is: Reduce, Focus, Deliver.

•What's next? Any new features coming up?
We're looking at improving the resource alert functionality further (among many other things) but also trying to find the best mobile applications to fit our philosophy.

All the best and thanks for stopping by!

A Peek into the Fabulous Life of Project Managers (e-book)

The much awaited E-book is finally ready and you can download it.

It's free.

The E-book has contributions from:

  • Andreas Splett
  • Deepa Koshy
  • Elizabeth Harrin
  • Geoff Crane
  • Josh Nankivel
  • Peter Taylor
  • Raj Menon
  • Robert Kelly
  • Samad Aidane
The e-book takes you through the fantastic journey of all these project managers and their stepping into it. From their inspiration to their regular routine the book covers all you have ever wanted to know about being a Project Manager.

If you like what you read, share it and drop a line or tweet to the lovely contributors (you will find their contact info in the e-book). What an honor to have them all together.

For download, click here.

Product Interview With Water Flowon

If you remember my last post, I wrote about a bunch of Project Management software’s, so today I asked WaterFlowon  about their journey in creating this software.

Why the need to build this software?

We ourselves have several ongoing projects. We found that it is really a challenge to manage them in parallel without any effective tools. We are often lost in the email and phone call chaos, never having a good solution for managing our files and documents, although we have tried many methods. We tried shared drives, Drop-box, SVN + VPN, and Google Apps, but finally we gave up. There are just no tools on the market that can satisfy our needs perfectly. If we want to work smarter, and stop losing our digital assets in the future, we need a solid solution. Then, we came up with the idea of Waterflow, a tool with just our needs in mind.
 
How long did it take to release the beta version?
It took us 3 month to release the beta version, and we started to use it internally. We tweaked it, changed it everyday, and especially tried to make it much simpler, lighter and more secure.

Tell us about the software.
We hope it will be extremely simple, really useful and as light as it can be.

Simple
It should be simple, so simple that everyone can learn it in 10 minutes.

In the enterprise software industry, there is a common and strange phenomenon: companies have invested tons of money to buy expensive software for their staff, expecting it to improve the productivity of employees. On the other contrary, the staff  refuse to use it, so they hire “experts” to do the training job, and if this still can’t persuade them to adopt the software, they write it into the rules of the company, so finally the staff starts to use it.

However, not more than one month later they return to where they were, or they complain about it every time they have to use it. We call it adoption failure. We don’t want to be put into that category. Why don’t people use the software? Things are very simple. You didn’t give them a tool, but rather a new burden. Why were you cheated by a burden instead of a real tool? When they can’t make things simple, they do not understand the problem, not to mention solve\ the problem. In fact, they solve a problem by creating a new and even bigger one. People will be easily cheated by them at the start, but never for the long term, as they can feel a problem even if they can’t tell where it is. We don’t want to make those kinds of software.

We tried to solve the real problems without creating new ones. We know that’s the source of the complexity, distractions and useless features. Just the opposite, we just identified the essential and got rid of the rest. This lead us to a simple endpoint.

Useful
As a tool, it should be useful. In my opinion, useful software is just that; people can use it to get their jobs done without any problems. It’s like air, you can’t live without it, but breathing it doesn’t cause you any difficulties most of the time. When things come to project management, we think our software can be really useful for the following:

1.Put every thing, files, artworks, and plans in one secure environment and enable stockholders to access it anytime anywhere.
2.Helps a team discuss anything securely and easily, and store everything discussed neatly. Any time you need them, they are at your fingertips.
3.Assign tasks and keep track of them. Track project deadlines and milestones, view late content, view upcoming and completed tasks, and reassign them to team members if necessary.
4.Organize events and meetings easily. With milestones with titles like: “meeting: discuss the launch date of our new company website”, you can add and track events and meetings effortlessly.
5.Manage team member profiles and contact details. When they have a problem they always know whom to turn to. When they want to have a talk, they have the contact information at their fingertips.
6.Manage multi-project parallels effortlessly. Waterflow will keep every project’s information neatly organized. Even one year later, you can go back to see that project, and you will feel like you were working on this project yesterday.

Light
Good software should be light, and never ask users to learn many things, or to follow this and that. Users know best how to deal with their jobs, so they can just use it their way and there are many ways to use it in conjunction with Microsoft Word and Google. We don’t want to lock you into anything either. People use Waterflow as a project management portal, as corporate intranet, client extranet, a secure collaboration space, a knowledge management base and even as a private online club space. Personally I use it to plan trips and weddings or to write books. We encourage you to do things your way and share your tips with us.

Three things project managers should expect from this software.
a.Use it as your project management portal to manage multi-project parallels effectively.
b.Use it as your corporate intranet or client extranet to work with your staff and your clients.
c.Use it as a knowledge portal to accumulate knowledge and make good use of it.

What’s next? Any new features coming up?

Goals- One thing: in project management the thing you can’t emphasize more is the goal.

It’s too easy to ignore the goal to instead do something irrelevant. You always have millions of things to do instead of the goal you need to reach, such as working on the things you like, working on short term interests, getting lost in a department war, walking too far toward the details, emphasizing the method too much, and even the technology itself. I could go on, but you get the idea and I don’t want to bore you. Doing the right thing is infinitely more important than doing things right.

 Furthermore, if you want everybody to feel that something is meaningful, to engage in the project, to make the right decisions, to get their priorities straight, and so on, don’t waste any time or budget on anything not needed by the real goal. You have to make your goal clear and make sure it makes sense for everyone in your team. Then you can start to enjoy the power of a team composed of engaged doers.

Rules- Nowadays everyone in the world talks about less control, letting your team manage themselves, follow their passions and so on. It seems like we can do things without rules or as few rules as possible.  We tried this theory ourselves and did a lot of crazy things to test it out. We let go of the normal office hour routine, let projects go without plans or milestones, and let people manage themselves.

Did we get the results we expected? No, we got the opposite results instead. People did things they liked rather than their duties, wasted their time on Facebook, Twitter, or whatever was at hand.  People collaborated badly, as they tried not to interfere with the “freedom” of their coworkers.

What’s wrong with rules and what’s wrong with a world without rules?  Could you image a society without law? You get the idea. Outdated rules are wrong.  Ignoring the rules is wrong. Not changing your rules according your changing reality is wrong. Having rules isn’t wrong at all. If there are no rules, then nothing can be accomplished.

With updated rules:
1.Avoid mistakes happening repeatedly
2.Set a fire wall for the “bad guy” who wants to do bad things to your business.
3.Provide a heathy environment for the positive or kindhearted people to be more positive and nicer.
4.They can be guidelines to the frontline worker who wants to be a good decision maker.
5.Set solid, good examples for people to follow
6.Set solid, bad examples for people to avoid
7.Set the tune of your culture. You can easily build the culture you dream of by setting the rules and obeying them strictly.

These two features are completely new in the online collaboration tools market. We are excited about them, and I hope you will love them as much as we do.

As a giveaway, 10 winners get 10 year "standard subscription" of their product. Email or tweet me with text "Want water Flowon" .

Bird View Projects- A Peek

Jul 18, 2011 | | 0 comments |
Simple, clean and intuitive- this piece of online software makes it easy to work on projects!

To work with Bird View, you won’t need additional hours of training or blank stares to figure it out. It’s right there for you.

Create projects, add people and empower them with user access rights by a simple grouping of:
•No access- cant access any new project
•Participant-  can see task and post comment on them
•Contributor- can see project task, edit assigned, and create new ones. Also can post messages.
•Manager- can create new projects, see all task including private, create and edit everything

Come with standard features creating projects, tasks, sub- tasks and assigning resources. Billing has 3 options provided:
•Specific rate
•Fixed cost

Need additional fields to cover your projects and business flow, simply "add" it to get:
•Text
•Numeric
•Memo
•Date
•Yes/no
•List

You can also provide “allowed values” for each of these customized fields. What fun!
With each task, include alerts.

The Dashboard is not cluttered at all and like most software’s shows your assigned tasks . Of course you can re-brand it with your own logo and organization name.

I started using it for my personal projects and will use it. If you have used basecamp before, it has a similar feel to it. A collaborative tool for projects where the members are all in hose , virtual or located at different places.

Thumbs up Bird View!

(Pic courtesy: Birdview)

Burger and PM Tools

I have been craving burgers for a month now and finding a good joint in Kolkata (India) isn’t easy. So, I finally gave up and made one at home this Sunday.


It tasted awesome, almost like Chicago.


And I read.


I have a list of book all piled up that needs reading. I finished off Seth Godin's Linchpin  and next is Good to Great.


I have been doing plenty of things- working on the e-book that I keep on mentioning about and finally will be available this month. It’s my give away to all my readers, no tweets, comments or answers required and no lottery involved. The book’s awesome by the way- I’d pay for such insight and personal stories from these Project managers fro all over the world. This one is Free!


I have been dabbling around with Google Apps and the very new Google +  this weekend. Liking the Google + so far. Google Apps has a bunch of project management software out there which have to be tried out very soon. 


By the way, I have eben looking into a couple of these PM software’s this month:


•This one looks promising Microproject and let’s see if I can try it out. See their review here. Pricing details can be found here
•Another’s called Planning Force  and it’s a free downloadable software. For details, read up here 
Water FlowOn , see pricing here   
BirdView Projects , more on their plans here 


Detailed reviews will be coming up later. They all look awesome so far and focus on the easy use and promise great results.


So, to tell the tale- I am creating projects! You never know the benefits until you get one. So, one project in one software! 


(Image Courtesy: Google images)

3

This July is special.

3 years ago I started this blog. Here is my first post from 2008:

I am an aspiring project manager.

When I was a kid, I wanted to become a teacher, novelist, professor, copywriter but I never dreamt of becoming a project manager. I had never heard about Project Management. How, I wish I did!

One thing lead to another and I stumbled upon this arena just by chance. I had completed my post graduation in Mass Communication and joined a small IT company in Chicago as a management trainee. While on one hand I got involved with marketing for the company, on the other providing a helping hand to the project side got me curious.

I never looked back again, few presentation and documentation later I switched to the IT department. Currently I work as a business analyst and part of the project management team and have had the opportunity to have some great mentors who trusted and inspired me.

So, why the blog? I have been reading blogs about project management for a while now; it was fascinating to see people sharing their knowledge. I have learnt so much from these blogs, that I am in debt to all these authors (If you see the blog list to your right, you will know what I mean).

However, most of the blogs don't advise you on how you can become a PM. Most of the bloggers are hugely successful Project Managers in their respective fields and sometimes talk about issues that might sound alien to most of us.

This blog, is my commitment to become a PM- to talk about my mistakes, my learning process and blog my journey with dollops of honest writings, scouting for some advises for me and everyone else who would like to be a PM.

The day I wrote this, I didn’t think I would continue it for the next three years. I am glad I did.

I met you in my journey. Thank you for making it so special.

There will be giveaways, so watch this space.