Jeff Peters has a nice article in ColdFusion Developer’s Journal giving an overview on some of the basics that can be accomplished when using an organized project management process for development using project management software available from www.GrokFusebox.com.

There are an additional set of project management software tools that can surround the software development process as a whole, providing a framework in which the development work takes place. Functionality in this framework includes tracking tasks, priorities, resource allocation across projects or a department and budgetary tracking and reporting.

These features create a more positive environment for software development or for a software development project.

Essentially, with minimal data input from a developer, management can get all the data they need to monitor the project or portfolio of projects (which they’re going to do anyway), without having to interrupt the developers or waste people’s time in meetings.

Vertabase Pro is a ColdFusion based project management software tool that does just this. You can get a look at it by checking out a screenshot tour or requesting a test drive. (If you don’t want to submit a form, you can email blevy@vertabase.com for a test drive.)

Nothing is going to be easier than just being left alone to do your work. But these kind of project management tools can make a big impact on the overall long-term success of a software development project or IT department within a company or in a client/developer relationship.

Major sporting events can get in the way of even the best managed projects, particularly a best of 7 type event like the World Series of Major League Baseball that can go on for a week.

Take this year’s series between the Cinderella story Detroit Tigers and the St. Louis Cardinals. It can definitely take its toll on the productivity (measured in sleep deprivation) and morale of fans involved in the whole event.

For those inclined, coffee or Diet Coke can make-up for the sleep.

The morale component, though, is harder.

There is no magic pill. It is not something easily assuaged by project managers, project management software or a therapeutic cursing-out and finger point on play by error-filled painful play by the water-cooler or coffee machine.

While the kind of visibility and replay that project management software or reports offer can sometimes be valuable to a project (and certainly to know who to hold accountable -like a young pitcher or two, perhaps) when your team is down -and there’s no reason it should be, it doesn’t seem to help.

Sometimes, it just takes time and the commitment to keep putting one foot in front of the other, moving along the path to get the project or deliverable done.

Communication is one of the biggest challenges in project management.

Its bad enough when a project manager has trouble communicating with the team that will be doing the project. But it can be down-right dangerous for a manager when there is a lack of clear communication with the project sponsor the person who navigated corporate politics to get the project approved.

The problem stems from not understanding what each person is looking for or unrealistically expecting the other party to speak your language. This can be aggravated by the project manager’s insistence on using only the project management tools which suite their needs, regardless of whether the project management solutions generate the kind of information the political sponsors of the project are looking for.

Sometimes is takes an artist to bridge the communication gap. But for those without an artistic flair, good online project management software has the flexibility to act almost like translation software and provide both project managers and sponsors with the data they need(like the Yamagato translation software used by Hiro Nakamura on his blog).

A project manager can use online project management software to get the information they need to have visibility and control of a project. And if they want to continue to use a personal favorite project management application like Microsoft Project, for example, most good online project management applications can import and export MS Project files or make it easy to talk to other project management tools.

But a good online project management application can also generate the kind of information political project sponsors require, bridging the communication gap. This can include cross-project, portfolio or executive dashboard views on budgets, resource utilization and overall project health that the sponsor can use to manage the expectations of their bosses making it easier to maintain political and budgetary support for the project.

Companies can bill faster and more efficiently by using project management software that integrates or interoperates with Quickbooks accounting software. They can also bill more and increase revenue by using project management software to set-up of their projects and track time against specific tasks within those projects.

The interoperability or integration with Quickbooks means that book-keeping or accounting people don’t have to spend time entering in timesheet data from one system to the next. The timesheet information can be exported to Quickbooks accounting software, allowing for an invoice to be generated in a few simple steps.

Setting up specific tasks and projects in a project management software that integrates with accounting software means that its much easier for an account manager or accountant to see every single step that was taken to get a project done. Steps and time that were previously overlooked can be seen and billed.

Companies have experienced 90% gains in efficiency in billing by using project management software that works with Quickbooks, cutting down the amount of time it takes to bill a customer from 16 hours a month to less than two.

Companies have also experienced near 100% increases in revenue and billing by using project management software that integrates or interoperates with accounting software, catching time that was previously overlooked on projects.

So many things have to go right for projects to be delivered, its amazing that projects get done at all. Not to even speak of the near miracle status of an on-time or on-budget delivery.

No less a Hero than Hiro Nakamura from Yamagato Industries has to travel through time and space to make sure things go right on his project.

Most project managers don’t have this ability. Instead, a project manager has to rely on a unique combination of people skills, experience, communication and patience.

Even with perfect knowledge of what’s going to happen, Hiro Nakamura still needs to exercise hands-on control of critical project variables. He understands risks and manages them while the project is live and ongoing, during the control phase of project management.

This is a poorly publicized secret in project management.

Risks Can’t Be Planned Away
Risk assessment and risk management are often lumped into the planning phase of a project. The idea being that once identified, the risks can be planned away.

The secret is, though, that risks can never be planned away.

Identifying risks during project planning should give a manager an edge is seeing risks before they become too big or expensive to do anything about. But the success of managing those risks takes place while the project is live.

And that means that real-time information is risk management’s best friend.

Information is Control
A project manager’s control on a project depends on what they know and how they affect the variables on a project. This means that information, visibility and control are fundamental to managing projects of all kinds, including marketing projects and IT projects.

There are a lot of project management solutions people use to manage projects. These range from specific project management applications like MS Project to Microsoft Office solutions like MS Excel spreadsheets or CRM solutions like Goldmine, Salesforce.com or ACT!, rigged-up to do some project management functionality. (Some people also try to turn their accounting software, like QuickBooks, into project management software.) These software tools might be good for project planning and for a project manager or PMO (project management office) to track how different reality is from their pre-conceived project plan.

They may also help managers think through projects or schedules.

But they aren’t very good for helping manage risks while a project is live since they don’t provide real-time project information. They give very little to no visibility or control of a project’s critical variables.

Projects Need to be Controlled
And without visibility and control, a project manager is flying blind, their projects easy prey to the smallest of risks.

A dangerous situation -just ask Hiro, he’ll tell you the risks we all face…

Thinking about buying collaborative project management software?

Have you outgrown Basecamp or are you looking for a replacement to Basecamp or a Basecamp like tool?

Here is a review which compares Basecamp to Vertabase Pro. It also provides a framework in which to evaluate Basecamp against other online or web-based project management solutions.

Project Collaboration vs. Project Management

BASECAMP
Basecamp is a project collaboration tool designed to be used by people looking to bring a level of organization into their work lives.

It accomplishes this by giving team members and project resources a central information portal and some useful, share-able, functionality on which different people can contribute or collaborate.

The Basecamp software is a true web-based solution and works on both Mac OS and Microsoft Windows.

VERTABASE PRO
In contrast, Vertabase Pro is a project management tool designed to be used by non-project experts to centralize and control all project and work information in corporate groups and divisions using proven project management features. It is built to be a deep product that people can grow with and that can scale elegantly.

The Vertabase Pro project management solution is an easy-to-use, web based alternative to traditional project management tools like Microsoft Project, MS Project Server or Primavera’s SureTrak, which are often viewed as too hard for the average worker or manager to learn quickly or to use effectively in every day work environments.

Vertabase Pro is a true web-based solution and works of both Mac OS and Microsoft Windows.

The Vertabase Pro project management product encompasses a wider breadth of functionality than Basecamp and also features deeper levels of project management functionality.

BOTH
Both Basecamp and Vertabase Pro strive to replace the use of programs like Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel which are often inefficient for managing projects or work.

Overview and Review of Features

BASECAMP
Reviewing Basecamp’s collaborative features you’ll find calendaring functionality similar to what you might find in Microsoft Outlook.

The project collaboration software also has
*milestone tracking
*document sharing
*messaging and
*to-do lists.

Basecamp also offers time tracking on its plus and premium plans.

VERTABASE PRO
Vertabase Pro’s functionality is structured in a different way.

The project management software breaks down work into projects. It then subdivides the project itself into areas of specific project management functionality. These specific areas are project details, schedules, budgets, issues, and documents.

Within each area you then have features like:
*project scheduling
*task tracking
*resource allocation
*issue tracking
*budgeting and
*document/asset management.

Timesheet data in Vertabase Pro can be exported directly to QuickBooks for invoicing.

This is a model or work breakdown approach that is found in more traditional project management solutions but made easier and more accessible in Vertabase Pro than in older tools. Unlike Basecamp, Vertabase Pro does not offer calendaring functionality.

AUTOMATIC NOTIFICATION
Each section in the Vertabase Pro project management software is tied into a notification engine which can send automatic email notifications triggered by various events in the project. For example, it can send an email reminder to someone to finish their task or tell someone in accounting that a particular budget milestone has been reached.

ACCESS LEVELS
Further, access levels and user rights in Vertabase Pro can be controlled and defined down to the specific features within each subsection.

Reporting

Another core difference between Basecamp and Vertabase Pro is reporting.

BASECAMP
The Basecamp software has a dashboard view where Basecamp users can view the elements of data that they feel are important from the main functional categories. For instance, you can see your late milestones, your current to-do’s, etc.

However, Basecamp does not offer any reporting functionality similar to other web based project management software tools.

VERTABASE PRO
The Vertabase Pro project management solution has a comprehensive reporting engine.

Users can create any number of custom reports on:
*project status
*budgets
*timesheets
*resource allocation
*resource utilization
*tasks lists and more.

The reporting engine in the project management software also includes cross-project or overall company views and reports.

Each of these reports in the Vertabase Pro software can be saved as a template to share with other people and the data can be graphically represented in
*pie-charts
*bar graphs
*Gantt charts.

These graphics can be saved and imported into other documents for presentations.

The reporting data in Vertabase Pro can also be exported to Microsoft Excel for further manipulation and analysis.

Scope of the Product

Vertabase Pro is a much larger and more comprehensive web-based solution than Basecamp and is suited for different needs.

Basecamp has set-out to be a project collaboration tool and has functionality which facilitates ease-of-use and rapid adoption of those type of collaborative features which can be a great step in getting people more organized.

Vertabase Pro has set-out to be a project management tool and has functionality, a design philosophy and an overall offering which facilitates ease-of-use and adoption of some more advanced project management features to help people better manage their projects and work.

Training and Support

This difference in approach can be seen when comparing the training and customer support options offered by the two companies.

BASECAMP
People use Basecamp straight out of the box, as it were. It is built to be that way. It comes with no training and limited email and web-based customer support. The software is made to focus on adoption rather than depth of offering.

The creators of the product have claimed that they would rather deliver to market half a product, that people will use, than release a whole product which people will ignore.

They have done a good job with this and Basecamp has become an extremely popular tool because it is simple and easy to understand.

VERTABASE PRO
Vertabase Pro is a deeper and more robust tool. It is built to make powerful and essential management tools accessible and useful to a wide range of users regardless of their experience with project management or project management software in the past.

The makers of Vertabase are focused on providing the tools and service offerings that will aide this adoption to help make companies more efficient.

For that reason, Vertabase Pro comes (for no extra charge) with project management consulting, integration and implementation consulting, extensive training and live ongoing customer support.

Customers can also get training and support on the project management software via email, online help files and an online video training library.

If you are interested in learning more about Vertabase Pro project management software or taking a free test drive of the product, contact us.

Hiro Nakamura from NBC’s show Heroes has done the truly remarkable. The man from Yamagato Industries has broken all rules in project management and set new boundaries. Sure he can move time with his mind, bend the space time continuum and teleport. But yesterday he did something even more remarkable.

He executed a project using a comic book as the project plan.

Most project managers plan projects using some form of project management software or a Microsoft Project like tool. Even those that don’t use any project management software will, at least, use a spreadsheet like MS Excel to list all their tasks and keep note of their status. (These can get pretty complicated -as complicated as some project management software, with a variety of Excel Macros and built-in MS Excel functions set to automatically track and calculate the overall health of their projects.)

But Hiro used a comic book.

Some will say that he was able to execute so flawlessly because the comic book was an exact and perfect picture of the future. It told him what was going to happen. True, he does have the advantage of moving through time to take a peak.

But a good project plan, while not a perfect picture of the future, should be an accurate representation of the tasks and steps involved in getting from a to b, in getting a project completed and delivered. That means that project planning should be more than guesswork. Planning a project should be an exercise in applying past experience to a new goal, seeing what’s different, defining which variables could change on the project and planning for those changes.

The exact format in which the plan is written and recorded is less important than the process of planning the project and the act itself of going through project planning. Unfortunately, this how step of project planning is often overlooked.

For some people, the right format is some form of project management software or MS Project like tool. For others, it could be an MS Excel like spreadsheet they use for project management or tracking tasks. Or, it could even be a long list in an MS Word doc. or a physical folder with sticky tabs all over it (not the most elegant or efficient way -but hey, everyone’s got to start somewhere).

For Hiro, the right format and planning tool was a comic book. But that’s probably what makes him so super.

YouTube would be a bad move for Google.

It is bad for shareholders since it makes Google less competitive on search since it provides a disincentive to make any advances in search technology. It also may create additional legal exposure for Google in terms of click-fraud lawsuits.

It is also bad for advertisers since it dilutes the value of Google’s ad distribution network. Advertisers are the life-blood of Google’s revenue model.

Hurting Search.Search is ultimately the utility that has made Google popular and that has made Google the default start for most people on the internet. Search is still extremely important to the internet and has a ton of value left in it as a function.

There are plenty of competitors ready and waiting to eat Google’s lunch in search.

The more content that is covered by Google’s ad distribution network, the less incentive Google has to fine tune its search technology.This is discussed in previous posts.This is especially the case for the untargeted, un-controlled content of YouTube.

Legal Exposure. The YouTube acquisition also creates another arena for link farms and click fraud. Only, in this case, it would be video click fraud and Google would own the content distribution network.

Google already has a challenge protecting its advertisers from click-fraud and the integrity of its search results from link farms and the such without owning the content or the content distribution network. This has provided a clear line in the sand.

By acquiring YouTube, Google may be opening up a whole new set of boundaries it will have to define in court as to where its liability/responsibilities stop and where it becomes the content producer’s fault.

Bad for Advertisers. It is the kind of untargeted content of YouTube which is a negative to brand advertising. (Unless Google plans on taking a more network Television type approach to having input with the content creators on YouTube -which is highly unlikely and would likely squash YouTube’s popularity). Brand advertisers crave targeted, well defined channels. By aggregating more untargeted content in its network, Google is creating a larger market place for bidding on big umbrella keywords, like deodorant, without adding additional value to the advertisers.

By increasing the demand without providing more value-ad, the short term result maybe higher prices for the keywords (and more revenue for Google). The longer-term results may be the defection of advertisers of all sizes.

Brand advertisers are often cited as a large avenue for future online revenue as big brand companies move a larger portion of their advertising budgets to online advertising.

Microsoft in the late ’90’s? In some ways, the talk of Google and YouTube is reminiscent of Microsoft’s foray into content in the mid to late 1990’s. In hindsight, Microsoft’s acquisitions and investments in those areas now look like a distraction. And while Microsoft was distracted, it’s growth slowed and the door opened to a whole new wave of competitors -including Google.

Here is a rough translation of an internal memo to Hiro Nakamura (from NBC’s new television show Heroes). It is from the project management office of Yamagoto Industries.

While the PMO has been enthusiastically trying to recruit Hiro for a project management job, the memo points out two areas where Hiro needs to improve his project management skills.

These are lessons all project managers face.

The memo begins

Hiro, you have done it again. I urge you to consider a position as a project manager. Your unique abilities make you very well qualified for a project management job.

In the spirit of constructive criticism to improve your potential performance while in service to our company, let me point out two issues you need to overcome in your project management skills. These are common problems in project management, experienced by many project managers, both novices and experts. I am sure you can surmount these challenges in no time (for you, literally) with the proper project management training and coaching,

Communication Problems in Projects
Like many project managers, upon reaching a milestone, the joy was yours alone. Moreover, your joy quickly turned to frustration when your accomplishment simply landed you in hot-water with the people around you.

You soon found yourself in a situation where you were in trouble and unable to communicate with those around you. It was like you were speaking a different language.

You couldn’t answer anyone’s questions. You weren’t able to help anyone around you, including yourself. And nobody seemed to care about the successful completion of your milestone. In fact, it was your success that got you into trouble.

I am, of course, referring to your teleporting to New York City and soon winding up in a police station suddenly finding yourself held responsible for something you didn’t do and that was only tangentially related to your initial project.

Welcome to the world of project management.

Improving your communication skills should be a top project priority for you upon accepting a position with our project management office.

Wishing Won’t Make It Go Away (Usually)
Like many project managers, you saw a massive disaster approaching, well after it was too late to do anything about. And, like many project managers, you shut your eyes tightly to make it go away.

Unlike most project managers, though, in your case, it worked. Well, I’m actually not sure if it worked, but you certainly seemed to be successful in extricating yourself from the situation before you caught any flack.

This is a most prized skill among the elite of the project management world, and of the corporate world in general.

You have garnered the envy of many in upper management. I urge you to apply your natural abilities to job it seems you were born to do.

Come speak to me soon in the project management office: 34th floor, room 17, Yamagoto Industries.

So ends the internal memo.

If you didn’t see the show, in the second point, the author was referring to the blast of a nuclear bomb exploding outside the window of the police station where Hiro was being questioned. He looked at it. Shut his eyes. And poof (or bamf) was back on a subway in Tokyo, well out of harms way. A great skill indeed.

For those without Hiro’s amazing abilities, tools like project management software can give you the control, reports and visibility you need to see disasters in the making, before they have chance to demolish your project. You may even have a chance to solve the problem before you need to delicately extricate yourself or backpedal to safe your career.

Thinking about buying collaborative project management software?

If you are benchmarking or comparing Microsoft Project to newer web-based project management software (like Vertabase Pro), here are 3 key factors to consider when reviewing this type of project management software.

1. Difference in Philosophy.

Microsoft Project’s philosophy keeps the traditional project management paradigm but patches the tool with collaborative features. It has many robust project planning and resource allocation tools. However, it is very much a project manager’s tool. It is geared towards people with training both in project management methods and in using Microsoft Project project management software itself.

A good example of this is that the collaborative features in the software are not real-time. Information needs to be pro-actively published either by the project manager out to the team or from team members back to the project manager. Practically speaking, the project manager and team members work on their local copies of MS Project and then submit or publish their work to the server.

This adds in an additional layer of adoption and is an extra task that managers and team members need to manage on a project. It does add in some collaboration to the information flow of project management but it reduces some of the benefit of having collaborative project management software by adding a barrier to the flow of information (and it creates more work).

Web-based project management software like Vertabase Pro takes out the layer of pro-active submitting and publishing. Information is published instantly and available in real-time, dynamically changing as factors on the project change. Project information can still be controlled by managing user’s access levels (that is, what they are allowed to see and do in the project management software).  But the barrier to adoption, the extra layer of work created in tools like MS Project, is eliminated.

2. Multiple Components.

Microsoft does not offer Microsoft Project as an ASP or Software as a Service model. To use Microsoft Project project management software a company needs to buy multiple components and host it themselves. These components include desktop copies of the software, a copy of the server software, non-project manager licenses, Microsoft Sharepoint Server software and MS Windows Server software.

Project management software like Vertabase Pro, which is native web-based software, can be purchased on an ASP (also called On-Demand project management software or Software as a Service -SaaS). Licenses to use the software are purchased on an annual basis and it runs on any browser or operating system. That means the project management software can work on Mac OS or Windows operating system. It can work using Microsoft Internet Explorer, Apple’s Safari browser or even Mozilla Firefox. Further, there are no additional components to buy or install.

For people who do want to manage and host their own installation of the project management software, some web-based products offer versions that can be installed on a company’s internal network. Unlike the SaaS model, to run the project management software this would require the purchase and installation of several other software components. Though, in the case of Vertabase Pro, it is still a far smaller number of “parts” than with Microsoft Project.

3. Training and Support.

Training and support must be purchased separately for Microsoft Project project management software. In many cases, training for Microsoft Project can cost thousands and thousands of dollars. Since the software is designed for more experienced or professionally trained project managers, the training is important for people to get the most out of the project management system.

If people don’t get trained properly or if there is not a culture or politics enforcing use of the project management tool, the tool can quickly fall into dis-use.

Support is a la carte with Microsoft Project Server. It needs to be purchased separately or on a per-incident basis. Support calls for Microsoft Project project management software are often handled much like other customer support calls from larger software vendors.

Training and support are included with every purchase of Vertabase Pro project management software, as it is with other web-based project management tools. In some cases, the tools are so intuitive that training is not even needed. Some software, like Vertabase Pro, also include video’s on using the project management software and extensive online help files to get the most out of the application.

Training, though, is not just about using the software. Training and support for project management include making sure that a company’s workflow and processes are organized to get the real benefits out of whatever project management software is used.

Companies like Vertabase Pro provides this hands-on project management consulting both in the set-up, and in the training and ongoing support of users of the project management software.

Whether you use Microsoft Project or some other application, make sure you have all your ducks in a row so that you can see the significant benefit project management can have on your organization.

These 3 critical factors should help you review and compare project management software. We invite you to take a test drive of Vertabase Pro. Or, if you have other questions on Microsoft Project and how it compares to other project management software, feel free to contact us.