New features of 5.1 include:

Improved Project Schedule Usability by adding
•    New functionality directly on the project schedule pages,
•    Re-organizing the schedule action columns,
•    One-click task adding,
•    Custom and default schedule filter views and
•    Improved highlighting for better visibility when working with a project schedule;

Faster Resource and Personnel Management with a
•    Redesigned user account page
•    One click to add someone to all projects
•    One click to remove someone from all projects
•    Easy access for people to manage their vacations
•    One click view of a person’s availability.

More Online Timesheets Options by introducing a
•    Weekly timesheet grid format by days of the week
•    Copy entries for easy updating
•    See daily totals of hours by project and task
•    Quick project search to find projects and tasks to add time to
•    Filter project list to only see assigned projects to find projects faster
•    There are now five ways to enter time onto tasks: weekly timesheet online, free form online timesheet, the desktop Timer, directly on a personal daily task list, and through your mobile device.

Reporting Enhancements and Gantt PDF output.

The current release continues on the theme of the 5.0 product line: Do what you do, only better!

The rapid release of this level of new features and interface improvements, coming seven months after 5.0 was launched,  represents the first fruits of the company’s internal move to increased agility with a blended project management methodology and comes on the heels of the company’s 15th anniversary.

I just learned about this conference focused on people who make things and had to pass it along.

Products Are Hard

The focus is on the craft of product creation…

What a great idea -product makers unite!

That was the resounding conclusion from an informal survey of roughly 180 people who attended my session today at the PMI GLC Spring Symposium.

Technology gets in the way of people interacting. And what’s worse,  since technology makes it easy for anyone to publish information/communication and republish/forward it, technology actually makes it harder for people to communicate by raising the level of background “noise.”

Considering that a large chunk of “meaning” in a communication comes from context, this extra background noise degrades the value of any content.

Technology makes it easy for us to create, publish and share content, but more reach doesn’t translate into better communication.

Here is a list of communication/technology challenges which people in the group are facing (no particular order).

1. Too much communication,  too much email (repeated refrain)
2. Cultural differences across diverse teams
3. No visual cues or body language when using IM
4. Strong personality that dominates the meeting
5. People are afraid to ask questions
6. Vendor doesn’t respond in timely fashion.
7. Causes delays for whole project
8. Work in a virtual team
9. Teamwork suffers
10. No one knows who each other is. No faces, just names
11. IM culture is weird
12. Hard to communicate when there are issues/problems. Nobody talks about problems.
13. Too many formats for status reports
14. Too many communication channels
15. People drop out of communication
16. People don’t communicate in all the communication streams
17. People are not comfortable speaking out
18. Info overload
19. Output becomes meaningless
20. No standard tech for communication or presentations. Too many channels.
21. Inconsistent use of IM –some people are often “unavailable” others talk too much
22. Time zones and sound quality are a problem for International conference calls.
23. The tech used is unsupported so meeting time and personnel get focused on getting the tech to work, instead of doing work
24. Multiple stakeholders in different locations. Hard to get people on same page.
25. People aren’t using all the tools at their disposal.
26. With video conferences, how to get people to be more accountable.
27. In a matrix organization, people have multiple projects. Who decides when someone is required to attend a particular meeting or the meeting for a particular project?
28. With web meeting technology, are people paying attention?
29. Losing face to face meetings, it is hard to know if communication is truly being understood.
30. Communication is getting stuck in silos.
31. Departments have different levels of tech expertise. Choice of channel becomes an issue. Not everyone uses the same tools.

Vertabase is happy to announce the release of our newly revamped price packages.

We have 4 easy pricing plans starting at $150/month for 5 users with 500MB of storage space. There is a package for everyone. And the great thing about each package is that you have access to the full suite of features that makes Vertabase a comprehensive tool set for non-technical and technical users.

The pricing applies across all user levels, eliminating the need to figure out license types.  You can customize permissions and people’s roles directly to fit your workflow using our popular, flexible user rights systems. 

Technology is an integral component of the modern, distributed project team. But it can be a double-edged sword.  It makes distributed teams possible, on the one hand. While on the other, it can get in the way of true, effective communication –especially across cultural boundaries.

I am giving a presentation at the Spring Symposium of the PMI Great Lakes Chapter on this topic. The presentation will give real-world, hands-on information on how to use technology to improve communication and avoid the pitfalls of using technology for communication. It is geared for project managers and executives who operate in environments with virtual or distributed teams, as well as team members who’s work makes extensive use of technology for communications.  It will be an interactive session with hands-on exercises.

Agile Acquisition is a new approach to product development and acquisition of third-party products being implemented by groups in the U.S. Military.  Like many ideas first tested by the military, if this one works, it could soon find its way into the private sector. I’ll be giving a webinar to the PMI’s Aerospace and Defense Industry Community of Practice on this environment and how suppliers can work within it. It is called “Implementing Agile PM Techniques in an Agile Acquisition Environment.”

While the Agile Acquisition approach promises cost savings and better, more integrated products. From a supplier’s perspective, it creates an atmosphere of increased uncertainty and higher risk. Agile project management techniques may be the best approach to developing products in this environment of higher uncertainty. Agile Acquisition, however, imposes specific constraints that run counter to the tenants of Agile Development and its application, particularly when applied to developing innovative, integrated products. This webinar explores the theoretical boundaries between Agile Acquisition and Agile Project management. It will provide suggestions on how Agile project management techniques can be applied in an Agile Acquisition environment to deliver better products while allowing a supplier to manage risk.

I’ve been selected to speak at EVM World in May, a premier conference on Earned Value Management put on by the College of Performance Management. It will be in Naples, Florida.

I’ll be speaking on Using Twitter to Create a Performance Management Baseline for Communication.

Here is an abstract of the presentation.

A baseline is fundamental for EVM.  A baseline enables EVM practitioners to utilize rigorous analytic tools to improve the performance of resources expended on producing a project’s outcomes. Creating performance baselines for communication can be challenging. Considering communication’s fundamental role in project success, this is disheartening and suggest that any improvement in this area can make a significant impact on the field of project management and project outcomes.  Essentially, without a baseline, communication has been isolated from the benefits of EVM.

The problem can been seen as one of “what to measure?”  Communication is often intangible, and immeasurable. How can we measure the “value” of a communication method or of a particular artifact?

This presentation introduces a framework for tracking and measuring communication. It will use Tweets as a sample generator of artifacts to track but the analytic techniques presented will be generalizable to creating a performance baseline for other artifacts and tools.

By measuring communication we can create a baseline against which we can apply analytic tools to monitor, control, forecast and improve the outcome from applying resources, tools and techniques to project communication. In this way, communication and projects in general can further benefit from an EVM oriented approach.

This will be a highly interactive presentation, a collaboration between presenter and participants, soliciting direct feedback and brainstorming with the goal of improving the approach so it can be of service to practitioners.

Another technique I’ve been using to increase Agility in our production process is to be less patient with team members when a customer’s need is not met.  This has shifted the focus of the team directly on creating value to the customer. Agile has breathed new life into this classic management principal, from Peter Drucker (perhaps because Agile ties it directly to project management and a production process rather than remaining an overarching corporate philosophy).

Cultural boundaries have become less important using this approach. We operate in a culturally diverse environment. People have different definitions on what it means to put in a good day’s work. By rating performance directly against customer value, people’s perspectives have started to converge and cultural backgrounds matter less.  Problem solving becomes the focus. Each person brings their unique talent to the table. Constraints like cultural norms or a person’s title fade into the background.

We’ve been adding more Agility into our production process here at Vertabase.  As product manager, I’m leading this effort.  One of the techniques I’m using is to push-back at the development team when they ask me questions, particularly about features.

One of my favorite responses is “Do I need to make a decision on this now?”

The urge to make a decision now is strong, coming from a plan driven background. But it unduly locks-up the team, our customers and our product.

While it is comforting for the team to have me (or a customer, for that matter) make a decision, it makes them less nimble and responsive. It focuses them on meeting a set of requirements, as opposed to the customers’ needs. The responsibility for the feature is no longer in their hands. They can simply follow directions and meet a spec.

So far, the team has been empowered by seeing that a decision doesn’t have to be made nor a policy/spec adhered to, and re-focused instead,  on the simple art of the right feature implemented well.