This month we moved our Michigan offices into a great new space in Southfield. Its got tons of room and a nice training center. Its perfect for our company.
Aside from the fit with our corporate goals, the space reflects our vision for the changing face of Metro Detroit and its future.
The space is located at the crux between Detroit proper and the suburbs. Its right off of 8 mile road.
The building itself is a mix of dedicated front office and light industrial. Like the location, it is a meeting point of urban and suburban, physical and virtual, industrial space and internet space -and it captures a moment in time.
These days are a fulcrum. These are the times when the citizens of this area can decide what they want to be in the future or let the forces of the past drag them down. No-one is helping. Its up to the people alone. If people don’t step up and move themselves forward, this area will be dragged down further and it won’t be pretty.
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We were having an internal meeting to pick a project management methodology for a web project we are working on for a new client. As developers of commercial software, our instinct was to lean towards an agile based approach where our process would be:
- Make an initial feature list
- Get time estimates on each feature
- Prioritize the list
- Time box the development effort
- Build and test as much as possible in that time
- Launch
- Get user feedback
This works great for a tightly defined set of deliverables and a client who has done software before. However, that’s not what this project is nor the profile of this client.
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Here’s a fast tip for making task management easy. Its called the Launch Countdown method of naming files. I use it primarily for tasks related to producing copy or creative assets.
Number all of your files or to do’s with 3, 2 or 1. Put these numbers at the start of your file name.
3 or unmarked is an open to-do or an asset before you started working on it.
2 means a first pass has been done and it is in revisions.
1 means it is complete and ready for production.
Once it is launched or in production, delete it from your to-do list or list of active files that you are working on. Move it to a warehouse or a different folder in your filing system where you keep assets that are live. In a corporate environment, this could be the general network drive where other people can access it from.
While you are working on an item, rename the files as it changes status in its lifecycle e.g. “3 write blog post” becomes “2 write blog post” then “1 write blog post.” If its in 1, the next step is to launch then the blog post itself can go into your warehouse. If you want to recycle the task, re-set it to “3 write blog post.”
QUESTION (from LinkedIn): Forecasting the same as prediction? Which one is more realistic and easier to do?
ANSWER: Forecasting is different from predicting. Predicting is much easier but far less accurate.
Predicting is when you start making guesses about things. For example, you predict that laying sheet-rock will take 45 hours to do and you guess that it will be done in 2 weeks.
Forecasting, on the other hand, is when you take information from past jobs and apply it to a new job. For example, if you have seen that laying the sheet-rock for a 3,000 sq ft space takes 65 hours and it usually done in 4 weeks then the next time you have to quote out the same job you’ll be able to forecast how much its going to cost and how long it will really take i.e. when it will really be done after work starts on it.
The big difference is predicting is based on your best guess from experience. Forecasting is based on data you’ve actually recorded and tracked from previous jobs.
As it relates to Vertabase
project management software, predicting is when you first enter in your best guess of estimated hours on a task and your estimated start and end dates for that task. Forecasting is when those estimated hours are based on actual hours tracked on those type of tasks and actual duration (the amount of time between the start date and actual end date) of that type of task. All that data is tracked automatically in the project management software and easy to report on - making forecasting a snap (and far more accurate than predicting).
There are a lot of new project managers out there - being created every day by someone else in the organization losing their job. You may not know that you are a project manager but if you are now charged with getting things done, you are a project manager.
You will have the same amount of responsibility as the last person but with likely fewer resources and a ton more stress.
It can be tremendously overwhelming.
Job Definition List
My first, and best word of advice, is to make a list of everything you are now responsible for, a Job Definition List.
This will allow you to visualize what is on your plate and breathe easier. Going through this exercise will help give shape to the amorphous feeling of doom you may be feeling.
The JDL should be bullet points with a maximum of two sentences clarifying a point, when needed. If it takes more than two sentences to explain, than the bullet point itself isn’t defined clearly enough to be actionable.
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