Last week I gave a presentation at the Internet User Experience conference on Social Networking, Permission Boundaries and User Adoption.  Based on the many requests for it, the presentation is now available online.

The presentation introduces a framework for deciding which social media components to include in your company or in any software you run.

Given the tremendous growth of Facebook, Twitter and other social media networks, many companies and organizations are rushing to add social media components to their software or marketing mix.  However, there is little in the way of how to decide on what to implement nor how to figure out if people will use it or interact with it.

The presentation takes a classic user adoption approach (the user’s cost/benefit calculation on whether some is a pain to do or not) and applies it Social Media components.

It introduces the concept of PERMISSION BOUNDARIES as a way of capturing the cost side of the equation.

It recommends identifying and describing specific SOCIAL TRANSACTIONS to capture the target benefit the user is going for.

This should provide a robust way to help make decisions on what will likely work or not, to think about whether people will interact with your company or not before you invest in the social media tools they could engage with.

A new case study was released describing how Creativity, Inc. of Van Nuys, California doubled the productivity of their internal art department using Vertabase project management software. The case study looks at performance over the last four years and concludes:

“I would strongly recommend Vertabase to coordinate project management activities for internal creative teams. There is absolutely no downside.”

Here are links to the case study, a pdf of the case study and the press release about it.

I read an interesting analysis comparing the permission settings of Facebook and MySpace and how the permissioning impacts

• the type of information people share and
• the adoption of the websites.

The article makes the point that people feel comfortable sharing meaningful information on Facebook because it has more controlled and tighter permissioning than MySpace. It also states that this is one of the secrets behind the increased adoption of Facebook.

Facebook, the article continues, has an “exclusive” feel, like a club or fraternity. You can decide your circle of friends and therefore who gets to see the information you post.  Because you can control the connections, you are comfortable sharing meaningful information. Because the information remains meaningful, you keep coming back to the website.

MySpace has the feel of almost any place on the web. It is less exclusive. Information posted on MySpace can be seen by a wider audience. This openness, the article points out, leads to people posting less meaningful information, fewer discussions and, ultimately, less participation by each person.

ROLES IN A PROJECT

People’s roles in a project are defined. They may be defined by the project plan, by a person’s skillset, an organizational chart or the formal relationship among the project team.  The connections are not made in public, as it were.  There is a relationship in place.

Good project management software (like Vertabase) can map these roles into specific access levels and leverage those roles to improve projects.

Like with Facebook, you can increase the value of the information shared on projects by

• defining the type of information people can share
• controlling who gets to see that information and
• defining how that information is shared.

This will drive adoption of the project management software as a whole, and keep ongoing participation in projects high.

Wanted to pass on some great feedback from a new Vertabase customer and their first-hand experience using the timesheets on the iPhone.

Feedback has been positive so far with regards to how simple and easy the system is to use. I even tested timesheet entry using Safari and our iPhones and it works great. I looked at many web-only timesheet/project management products and Vertabase has exceeded my expectations so far.

The company is a strategic marketing and research firm.

We released a minor update to the Vertabase Timer time tracking software today.

The biggest new addition is an auto-stop option which will automatically stop tracking time on an item when your computer is inactive for a specific period of time. You can choose if you want to use auto-stop or not and how long the Vertabase Timer should wait before auto-stopping.

This should be helpful for people who step away from their desk and the Timer was still running. Currently, you can edit the time afterwards, but this should help prevent accidental time being recorded in the first place.

You can read about the Vertabase Timer or click to Try or Buy the Timer directly.

As with all our features, this is a direct result of feedback from our users. Keep it coming.

A mid-level manager I know expressed concern that adopting project management software would give him less control of projects. He thought that if there were a plan everyone could see and update themselves, they wouldn’t need to contact him for instructions.  And thus, he would have less control.

I explained to him that, on an objective level, he would actually

1. Have more control
2. Identify people who aren’t performing more easily and
3. Could get more done.

He would have more control since he could objectively measure progress against the plan.  He could point to specific deliverables and deadlines.  Sure, their would be less politics -and fewer meetings, but he would still be able to direct people’s actions. Only this time, instead of it seeming like the random instructions of a manager, the directions would be part of a coherent plan to accomplish specific goals. In fact, politics could be further removed from the process by having upper management sign-off on the plan before it goes into execution.

Those same objective measures can help identify where people aren’t performing and make it easier to document.  If a manager continuously needs to harp on someone for them to get anything done, it might not be a good fit. Fingers could be pointed at either the manager or the team member. But if you can consistently show that someone is not meeting the stated objectives, the finger pointing becomes much less.

His team could get more done since less time would be reporting on what they were doing or waiting to find out what they should be doing.  Updates can be made and populated automatically in the software. There will be less time in meetings. More time would be available for people to get things done.

MANAGEMENT STYLE

Of course, their may be other factors at play within the organization that make this manager reluctant to put a plan on paper or in a collaborative tool. This is totally legitimate.  A huge percentage of managers still rely on a direct and personal authoritarian approach. It can be very effective.

The vision for a good implementation of project management software is a well-oiled machine. People doing their work and following a plan, following a process that sets-up a constructive feedback loop between management and team members.  While there will always be hiccups, project management practices and project management software can help overcome them quickly and efficiently.

Regardless of management style, collaborative project management software like Vertabase gives a level of visibility, control and accountability without the administrative overhead of having meetings to find out who is doing what.

We are excited to announce the latest version of the Vertabase Timer. This coincides with the launch of a new try-before-you-buy service from Adobe. We were honored to be part of only a handful of applications chosen to help launch this service.

The new Vertabase Timer (version 3.0) has a ton of new features like:

• A sleeker new look
• New charting and graphing functionality
• New personalization options including user names, skins and more
• Billing rates for profitability analysis
• Adding notes and contact information per task
• Reminders when you are working on tasks

As with the previous versions, it runs on Adobe AIR and is written Flex. It works on Windows and MAC as a desktop timer. It is a fast and fun way to track time on projects, clients or tasks.

The new Vertabase Timer is available for Trial Download or Purchase. There is a special introductory price of $5.

I have a few coupon codes from Adobe to offer the application for free. Contact me directly on the contact form if you’d like one of codes.

I’ve been talking to a number of people lately who don’t know what project management is all about and how it can help them. They tend to think of project management as something reserved for large engineering projects or specifically IT projects. Project management can be used on projects of all sizes and in almost any field. It is a way of organizing, tracking and managing resources.

At its most basic, project management and by extension, project management software, can help them:

1. Assign people to tasks
2. Keep all those task assignments in one place
3. Let people know when to start at task
4. Let people know when a task is due
5. Give managers visibility on where everyone is on their tasks
6. Keep all that information in one centralized place

It differs from creating simple tasks lists in that tasks here, are done in the context of completing a project.

That is, the tasks are a coordinated effort by individuals working over a period of time to achieve a specific goal.

Often, that goal has a defined due date and thus knowing how people are doing on their tasks gives you good information for knowing how likely you are to hit the due date or what may need to be done to get to that due date.

Project management software provides a framework for those tasks and the projects they roll up into. It makes it easy to what’s going on. The project owner or manager can track progress and make course corrections as necessary.

Project management software, like Vertabase, can also do micromanaging with automatic email reminders to managers or team members and notifications of when things change.

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.

I’m happy to announce that Vertabase 4.5 launched today (official press release).

This is the biggest launch of our project management software to date.  It includes a totally new interface and tons of great new features. 

It was built entirely with a rich internet application approach powered by ColdFusion.   To me this means:

1. An intuitive, immersive user experience
2. Enabling quick visibility and access to information
3. Facilitating sharing, data portability and data visualization
4. Integration with the user’s eco-system.

You can see how Vertabase 4.5 adheres to these principles in the 2 minute Quick Tour.  To read about specific new features check out the Vertabase 4.5 Release Notes.

Along with the version, there’s a new, searchable video learning center and we added customer support via instant message using Skype (search for Vertabase Support).