Vertabase is proud to have been honored by the Michigan Council of Women and Technology at their annual Partnership Recognition and Scholarship Award event.

 This great organization encourages the advancement of women in technology related fields through mentoring, Summer tech camps for girls, laptop awards and, to-date, 0ver $300,000 in direct scholarships to a remarkable group of people (through the MCWT Foundation). Keep up the great work!

Question: How can government be made more efficient with project management software or by using project management in public administration?

Answer: Project management software provides a clear structure in which all steps of a public works project can be spelled out.

A basic break-down of the steps in a project can provide an effective operational overview of municipal or Federal government projects.  This gives executives or public sector employees a clear way to track progress, identify bottlenecks and learn from past projects -because the tasks involved and people or departments associated with those tasks are clearly identified.  This level of visibility in public administration can breed increased efficiency and transparency in the use of government resources.

Public CIO and Governing.com picked up a recent Vertabase press release highlighting the City of Fort Lauderdale’s IT department as a great example of project management software in the public sector.

“For us, the challenge was to implement a structured and formal approach to project management,” said Tim Edkin, Director of IT Services, City of Fort Lauderdale. “About a year ago, we started investigating our options. We looked at four or five project management solutions, including Microsoft Project. Eventually, we chose Vertabase because it is easy to use, it’s well designed and it’s well supported. In the past, if a project was late there wasn’t much we could learn from it. Now, we’re very analytical. We see what’s happening and manage accordingly. By providing an effective operational overview for City Hall, Vertabase has improved the way we manage our resources.”

As far as the technology involved, the City of Fort Lauderdale is running Vertabase with a flexible group of technologies that play well together, starting with Adobe’s ColdFusion using an MS SQL back-end integrated with SAP/Business Object’s Crystal Reports.

Export Reports.com added a new feature this week. ExportReports.com will now embed any images in your Basecamp project in the exported pdf. Supported formats include: bmp, gif, jfif, jpeg, jpg, png, pnm, raw, tif, tiff, wbmp

I’d been meaning to write a review of the XO Laptop for the last couple of months.

This recent article in the Wall Street Journal finally prompted me to put this response together.

I purchased one through the special promotion and our kids love it. And continue to love it.  It has proven to be a staple when they are bored at home or when we travel -particularly to places without connectivity.

The main functions they use are exactly the creative programs that come pre-loaded.

They are more intuitive than the off-the-shelf equivalents and still offer a tremendous range of creativity -particularly Tom Tom and eToys.

As a parent, I find that the XO has a different paradigm than a traditional computer. One that fosters creative thinking. It is built for kids to explore and to offer them a language/medium to express ideas that are often hard to describe but easy to show.  Whereas my PC (Windows or MAC) is designed primarily to increase productivity -to make it easier to do x or y task.

The fact that the web browser is clunky doesn’t bother them. If they want to play on the web, they’ll go to a Windows machine. Just like if they want to watch TV they’ll go to a television.  (I was hoping I could use it for using web-based software while away but neither the built in browser nor the XO ready version of Opera were up to the task.)

A big favorite with my kids is the Journal feature. They love being able to see what each one did and to add on to previous work. Its a lot easier for them than “saving” files  or searching folders or a network for someone else’s work.

Overall, its a keeper (and even something they fight over).

Happy to announce the beta launch of ExportReports.com!
It creates PDF reports of your Basecamp projects.

ExportReports.com is a collaborative effort with ColdFusion guru Terrence Ryan.

Check it out and let us know what you think.

On the technical side, Export Reports.com is written in Adobe ColdFusion 8 ’cause it works so well with PDF’s (-and we’re big fans anyway).

The popular Vertabase Timer now runs on AIR 1.0.

Visit the Timer download site to get this handy widget to track time on clients or on projects. It runs on both MAC and Windows (because its AIR). 

The current version is 0.9 and we’re still collecting feedback via the forum on what you’d like to see in the widget.

Adobe officially launched AIR 1.0 today. Congratulations!

 As an early adopter of the technology with our Timer product we are excited to see the technology reach prime-time.

It was a pleasure meeting everyone and speaking to the Mid-Michigan ColdFusion Users Group about software development, web design and project management software.

The meeting was held at Michigan State University’s beautiful new facilities.

Thank you for having me and thank you to Rick Mason for putting it together.

Nick Kwiatkowski from the Michigan Flex Users Group was also there. They’ve got a great Flex 3 and AIR program coming up on February 6th. Kevin Hoyt, one of Adobe’s Platform Evanglists will be there as part of the Flex 3 and AIR pre-release tour.

Be sure to check it out.

I’ll have the pleasure of speaking to the Mid-Michigan ColdFusion Users Group on January 8th at 7pm. 

The topic will be software development and design -specifically addressing the importance of adoption and factors that can improve adoption.  This will include a discussion on the use of AJAX, Flash in an interface and how to choose and design specific functionality.

Here are the directions to the user group meeting.

Please feel free to stop on by.

Amazon has a good example of the selective and sensible use of AJAX type controls in an interface.  In various presentations on software design I often talk about using AJAX and Javascript wisely and sparingly. Too much and the rate of confusion and user error rises significantly.

On Amazon’s holiday-ready site they use Javascript pulldowns and mouseovers to show the user the different departments they can shop from. However when letting the user select different areas to search on, the site doesn’t automatically take the user anywhere. It lets the user manually select the specific area they want to go to, enter a search term, then click GO.

If a user knows exactly where they want to go its important to make sure they can get there unhindered. The interface shouldn’t try and guess what they want or, worse yet, mistakenly take the user somewhere they don’t want to be.  A good interface should show the user all the options available to them, then let them get there quickly and directly (and help them avoid any wrong turns).  Nice job Amazon.

Found a good use for the magnetic strip, credit card style room keys from hotels - use them as a shoehorn when going through airport security. 

Its an eco-friendly re-use,  doesn’t set-off metal detectors and helps keep the backs of shoes in shape.  

Mind you, I’m not advocating taking them just for this purpose but I know how easy it is to forget to return them (and that there are plenty of people who do take the keys on purpose for fear of any personal information that’s stored on the magnetic strip.)

My recent presentation on software development and the importance of useability is available online. 

Thank you to Charlie Arehart and the Online ColdFusion User Group for hosting and recording the event.

Thank you, as well, to everyone who participated in the question and answer period.

The Vertabase Timer is now available for download directly from the Adobe Exchange.

It is a great way to track time on projects or to track time on clients (or really anything).  

This is an alpha build so please sign up for the updates or check the time track message board for known issues. 

Also, development of the Vertabase time tracking tool will be driven by user feedback, particularly early adopters. So fire away.

Microsoft recently gave a peek at its roadmap for MS Project project management software at the Microsoft Office Project conference.

After reading about the proposed direction for MS Project does anybody have any reviews or thoughts? 

I will be speaking this Thursday, October 26 at 6 pm ET at the online ColdFusion User Group run by Charlie Arehart.

http://coldfusion.meetup.com/17/boards/view/viewthread?thread=3722239

You can join in from anywhere - so feel free to stop on by.

A big thank you to the Cleveland Adobe User Group for hosting me last week.  We had a good session on designing software and on using project management software.

Thank you to Mike Cooper for arranging the meeting and to Lodestone Digital for hosting it. 

Congratulations to Brian Meloche on becoming an Adobe Community Expert (an ACE)!  Brian has been  active in the ColdFusion Community for years. Most recently he hosted some of the best sessions at MAX on ColdFusion.  Congratulations on a well-deserved achievement. 

The Vertabase Timer alpha is now available for download for free at http://timer.vertabase.com

It runs on Adobe’s new AIR platform.  It runs on both MAC and Windows.
It is great for timing anything, produces a nice time report and exports the data to xml.

What do you think of it?

Thank you to the kind people at Handshaw. They put on a successful conference on e-learning, learning management systems and general instructional design.  I was fortunate enough to attend and meet some of the impressive people behind their Lumenix product and the creative people who use it.

For those not familiar with e-learning, its more than moving content and tests onto a computer. It encompasses an understanding of how adults learn, a mastery of technical tools, project management to get e-learning projects produced and organizational politics to secure budgets and manage expectations. 

An oft discussed topic was how instructional designers and e-learning technologists work with subject matter experts. There is a delicate balance between keeping the SME involved in a project while the ID or e-learning technologist maintain their role as the trained professional in e-learning. 

Interestingly, its something I hear all the time from designers and developers with respect to clients.  It seems that in both worlds, there is a management art to building a process where everyone recognizes and respects the value each person brings to a project.

Thank you, as well to an informative presentation from Bryan Chapman on Rapid Content Development for e-learning.

Its a week past due but thank you to the Charlotte Adobe Users Group.  Had a great time with great people and lots of good conversation (both during and after the meeting). 

We talked about everything from software design, user adoption and project management to where is Adobe and ColdFusion going, and what technologies will stand the test of time.

Thank you to Sutton for putting it all together, to Lodestone Digital to hosting and to everyone who attended.

I’ll have the pleasure of speaking at the Charlotte, North Carolina Adobe Users’ Group (Adobe Charlotte) on Thursday, September 20th.

The topic will be on how design, technology and feature choices affect usability -using examples and feedback from Vertabase project management.

The meeting will take place at 6PM at Lodestone Digital, 5605 Seventy-Seven Center Dr., Suite 285, Charlotte, NC. For more information, please visit http://www.adobecharlotte.com.

A big thank you to the Toronto ColdFusion’s User Group for having me at their meeting on Wednesday -and for the “after party”

It was a pleasure meeting everyone. 

Great presentations from Ryan Favro, Byron Bignell and Laurence Middleton on CF8. And very enjoyable conversations.   Thank you to Clayton Partridge for putting it all together.

Looking forward to next time.

I’ll be speaking to software developers and ColdFusion fans at the Toronto ColdFusion Users’ Group (Toronto CFUG) meeting on Wednesday, August 15 at 7 pm ET. This is a special meeting and launch party for ColdFusion 8 (CF8) in the Toronto area. 

Come on by -there will even be a chance to win a copy of CF8!

To attend or for more information visit http://www.cfugtoronto.org/ 

I will be speaking on effective project management, particularly for development projects and IT implementations. I’ll also be giving a walk-through of Vertabase Pro, an enterprise project management application written in Adobe’s ColdFusion.  (Its a great alternative to MS Project.)

I’ll be speaking to software developers at the Detroit Area ColdFusion Users’ Group (DETCFUG) meeting on Wednesday, August 8 at 6 pm ET. Come on by.

To attend or for more information visit http://www.detcfug.org/cfug/meetingSingle.cfm?meetingID=23.

The topic will be effective project management, particularly for development projects and IT implementations. I’ll also be giving a walk-through of Vertabase Pro, an enterprise project management application written in Adobe’s ColdFusion.

Question: What are some key features to look for in a project management tool to help Executives made strategic decisions?

Answer:  Data integrity is the building block for strategic decision making. If data on a project or portfolio is not accurate or up to date, the value of the decision will suffer. Executives will be more likely to make the wrong call since the information they’re relying on is wrong. When looking at project management software, its therefore critical to make sure that it gathers and generates accurate and up to date information on projects or portfolios. 

Further, the data collected should be useful for strategic decision making. Executives require a larger scale picture so they can identify and guage the performance of longer term trends in the business. An executive is often matching the success of current operations against a set of longer-term strategic goals.  Having aggregate data on projects, portfolios, budgets and resources makes it possible for them to see if the ship is heading in the right direction, as it were, and how to best direct money and people to keep it on course.

Third, the data should be presented in a relevant and meaningful way.  Different people respond better to data presented in different ways. Some executives can pull usefull information from tables and text.  Others prefer graphs and charts.  However an executive prefers their information, it is important the format provides a clear picture and is not overly cluttered with data for data’s sake. At some point, aggregrate data can lose its relevance or utility by being too multidimensional, include too many items, or try to paint too broad a picture. 

An effective project management tool for executives will strike a careful balance between the breadth of a single report  and the easy accessibility and range of reports that can show other aspects of the business -without cramming too much on a page.

Vertabase Pro is built with these concepts in mind.

Vertabase recently made a software donation to the Michigan Council of Women and Technology to support the good work that they do. 

The MCWT is actively supports the diversification of the Michigan economy and invests in the future of women in Michigan -Vertabase’s home. 

The MCWT provides leadership, mentoring, community outreach, professional development and networking to professional women within the Michigan technology community. MCWT provides a robust web of technology resources and an industry voice for its constituents while fostering the support of an advancement of women and best practices in technology.

The project management software will be used to facilitate the administration and management of the numerous critical projects and events for the MCWT.

Along with corporate sponsors including Microsoft, Cisco Systems, and Sun Microsystems, Vertabase will be recognized for its contribution to the MCWT at the Partnership and Scholarship Event, to be held at the Birmingham Country Club, in Michigan, on May 3rd. 

The event will include a robotics demonstration by some past scholarship awardees and the presentation of laptop’s to current scholarship awardees. 

There are three key features most users look for in enterprise project management software:

1) Porftolio Views;
2) Executive Dashboards and;
3) Automatic notification.

Portfolio views allow managers, clients or executives to view projects grouped together into different portfolios, or categories, that are meangingful to that person. For example, a marketing department may have numerous initiatives active for a particular brand. The project status details of each iniatitive may be important for the resources working on them or to their manager. But an executive often wants to see the status of all projects for that brand, grouped specifically by brand, compared against other brands for which that executive may be responsible.

Executive dashboards are templated reports which convey the exact information an executive wants to see. Rather than hunt around for the metrics which are important for enterprise wide decision making, an executive dashboard gives the decision maker instant visibility into the specific status items they’ve designated as important or relevant to their decision making process. Enterprise project management software should make these reports easy to access (often with a single mouse click) and easy to create.

Automatic notification keeps people in the loop on project milestones without requiring them to constantly login to the software. It leverages the data gathering capabilities of enterprise project software while utilizing an email notification engine to distribute overall project information. This is particularly helpful for busy managers or executives who don’t want the added to-do of checking another business intelligence system but to whom the data in that system is exetremely useful.

Vertabase Pro offers these three key features in an easy to use enterprise project management system. A free test drive is available as well as a live, web-demo with an experienced project management software consultant.

Came across this post bemoaning the state of collaboration features available in enterprise content management solutions.

Our approach in Vertabase Pro is to offer collaboration and content management within the framework of doing projects (and using project management tools to accomplish and manage the projects).   

What do you think of this approach?

After taking a look at the software, what recommendations or suggestions would you have for the content management component of the software? 

Note: you can check out the software by clicking here. The content management features are in the Document section of Projects.

Here’s a review of MS Project 2007 project management software from one of our Vertabase Pro users. The review focuses on the interface of the software.

To attempt to contain complexity, MS Project 2007 introduced Ribbons — a pane that contains controls (such as buttons and icons) that are organized into a set of tabs, each one containing a grouping of relevant commands.  This type of interface replaces traditional menus and toolbars.

The Ribbon is “all about making the software do what you want to do,” as they state in their literature.  This Ribbon will also be incorporated into Microsoft Office 2007 as a main new feature “Replacing the menus and toolbars that have been the cornerstone of Office since its inception.”

While Ribbons consolidate related functionality in one place and can improve usability, they do not solve the problem of complexity. Microsoft Project will still be very complex and time consuming to learn. 

It comes down to design. They are not working from a clean apriori design. It is not targeted to a manager using a system with a team requiring a robust solution that is scalable to multiple projects and tasks but without the complexity and nuance that a professional project manager would require (and feel comfortable with).

No matter what, how the controls of a jumbo jet get automated or are easy to access it is not the right vehicle to travel from the suburbs to downtown. You will still need advanced project management expertise to create, manage and communicate projects plans in Microsoft project – even with Ribbons.

Project management built for an enterprise is generally more robust than mass market project management software.  Almost by definition, enterprise project management software includes two aspects that separate it from general project management software.

• The first is the robustness of feature set.
• The second is the number of users that touch the system.

Features that you’ll generally find in enterprise project management software include resource allocation, project portfolio view, cross project gantt charts, budgeting and potentially a host of advance project management performance metrics.

In terms of users, this type of project management software is touched by a large number of users who’s data differ and who’s background in using project management software is varied. This can range from the project managers who use the enterprise tool every day to executives or upper management who touch the software only occasionally to get updates on particular projects or specific project porfolios.

Historically, most enterprise solutions have had a hard time reconcilling robust functionality and the needs of a varied user group.  Applications like Primavera, Artemis, Planview and MS Project Enterprise Server have long been the domain of specialists.  Companies that tried integrating this kind of software throughout the organization have encounterd  long and costly training sessions with signficant interuption in people’s workflow. More often than not, the software ends up only being used by a small group of project management specialists and a burden on everyone else.

The next generation of web-based, enterprise project management software avoids this problem and increase the use of effective project management in an organization. If you want to see the differences in approaches to solving this problem compare Vertabase Pro and eProject.

Two avenues Vertabase Pro has used for solving this problem have been:

• Making the robust features easier to use and
• Not forcing people to learn the whole software -if someone doesn’t need to use a specific feature, they don’t even see it.

Overall, this has made software which is far less intimidating to implement and more likely to make a positive impact on a company’s workflow. 

Read a recent post on some of the limits people are reaching with Basecamp.  They seem to apply to the general “software should do less” approach many people associate with Web 2.0. 

The philosophy of software that “does less” can actually create more work and aggravation once users, teams or projects scale up to a certain level of complexity. The approach starts to lose its usefulness.

At a certain level of scope or scale, people can benefit from project management software (and software designers) that “do more” in terms of details and thought out interface and functional architecture/workflow.

This applies to functionality contained in the project management software (like scheduling and project planning) as well as functionality which reaches outside to users or clients (like automatic email notifications and identity management or access level management). It also speaks to the value of more involved customer support and training, where the project management software company takes time to understand the work their customer does.

Web 2.0 is about useful tools.  “Do less” type software can certainly be useful and has its place (just look at the growth of Basecamp’s project collaboration tool). But these types of software are not one size fits all solutions. There are project management software solutions that offer similar benefits as Basecamp and other first generation Web 2.0 tools, but which are built to handle projects of a larger scale.

Recent talk on the scalability of Ruby on Rails (RoR) to build a web application more advanced than Basecamp (by 37signals, the creators of RoR) e.g.  this from AKuAKu coming back from the Ruby on Rails unconference Rails Camp:

“The performance and scaling session which lasted about 5 minutes when no one could advance the high water mark for rails apps past basecamp.”

Reminds me of some earlier posts by Ben Forta, ColdFusion guru and related CF posts on the advantages of using ColdFusion (and ColdFusion on Wheels) to build larger scale apps.

To see a difference: in the project management software space compare Basecamp to Vertabase Pro (you can request a trial off the site). Vertabase Pro is written in CF.

Project management software generally falls into three categories. This article provides an overview of these categories and a broad review of some of the leading project management software in these categories.

For the PM Specialist
There are a ton of project management software tools designed to assist the theoretician or to adhere to project management theory or to a particular project management body of knowledge or approach.  Project management software solutions in this realm can measure risk factors against difference risk tolerances on a project, they can provide multiple baselines on different factors on a project, they can calculate the impact of deviations or variances, or earned value at different points of a schedule. They offer a ton of hard-core project management metrics and functionality. They are often used for large capital projects (like construction of a bridge, building a space shuttle or power-plant).

These tools vary in the functionality they offer or their complexity (like Primavera, Artemis or PlanView). But they all rely on a fundamental assumption that the project manager needs complicated project management software or a super robust, theory based project management toolbox.  Then the project manager or project management office will disseminate that data to people who need to know. No-one will make a move without consulting the project manager or project management office. They are the people ultimately in charge of process improvement, metric measurement and control of project priority and status.

Project Collaboration (without Specific PM Features)
Then there is a range of project management software solutions that give very little information about changes in key  project variables (the project plan, defined tasks durations and resource allocation). Instead, they focus or connecting people with a basic level of information or ways to organize that information online.  These are tools like Basecamp. In its place, Basecamp and Basecamp like software, offer ease-of-use and easy-adoption, which has made Basecamp one of the most popular project management type software packages out there. Though Basecamp is better classified as a project collaboration tool. The relative thin-ness, as it were, of the application, has also made it a target for small software developers or software companies to copy or replicate.

PM for a Wide Audience
Then there are tools that fall in the middle, like Microsoft Project or MS Project Server.  Software tools like those offer a middle-ground on complexity when it comes to planning and seeing the impact of changes in the project performance variables mentioned above.  But there is a trade-off in “out of the box” type ease-of-use for the addition of these project management features in their software. Most of these software offerings require some level of training and customer support.

The middle range is being augmented and made more accessible by the introduction of online or web project management software solutions.  These project management software tools offer a broad range of functionality (with varying degrees of complexity) and a range of ease of use. There are even tools which seek to mimic MS Project online, exactly, believing that the main problem with Microsoft Project or Microsoft Project Server (or tools like it) is that its not offered on-demand or in a software as a service type model.

Other companies in this category believe that there is room for improvement in a project management software product itself and that the Microsoft Project model is not the end-all/be-all in project management software functionality.

In this camp, you’ll find companies like Vertabase Pro (the company behind this blog).  The idea behind these project management software products is to offer alternatives to Microsoft Project. More recently, these project management solutions are also an alternative to Basecamp and Basecamp like Web 2.0 type project management software or strictly project collaboration products.

In comparing the software in this space, the most obvious difference between MS Project and Vertabase Pro is that the latter are native web-based, offered in a software-as-a-service type model (as well as giving someone the option to install it on their server).  The next difference you’ll see in a comparison of these project management software tools is the range of functionality compared against the level of ease-of-use or ease of adoption they have targeted.  In their flagship project management product eProject seems to have targeted a more complicated, project management theory based type of functionality, which comes at the price of a certain level of ease of use.  Vertabase Pro, on the other hand, has targeted a more practical, real-world level of project management functionality in its project management software, in order to gain usability and ease of adoption. Of course, each company, project management office and user has their own specific needs and should find the project management software tool that offers the right combination for them. But its important to keep in mind that any product in this category will require some degree of training. So make sure to evaluate the training and customer support of any potential project management software provider.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Does Google’s very economic model cause it to violate its principle to “do no evil?”

In all fairness, the same question could be asked of all automated ad distribution networks, not just Google’s Adwords program.

Looking at how the ad networks work, it seems that the more content there is on a subject (that is, the more popular or broad a keyword is), the more competition there will be for producers of that content to get noticed.

Therefore, producers will bid-up the price of an ad on that keyword. Is this the most efficient way for searchers to find relevant results?

One thing, this potential inefficiency in search relevancy has created an entire industry of search engine optimization specialists. These are people paid to understand the functioning of search algorithms for clients. It has also created an industry of link farms and black-box tactitians who exploit the gaps in the search algorithms.

(Note, this does depend on the assumption that many of the content producers are also vendors or sellers of goods or services within that broad category.)

One would think that the more content there is, the more need there is for the search engine itself to do a better job at sorting the data.

But, if the end result of this inefficiency is more revenue per click for Google, Yahoo, MSN or the owners of other ad distribution networks, do they have any incentive to improve the quality of their search, to do a better job?

Or, are they incentived to hold-back innovation and profit off the status quo?

p.s. For those with a long memory, this reminds of an observation by Jeremy Allaire, founder of ColdFusion, years ago, on why the browser stopped going forward once Internet Explorer became dominant.

Bainbridge OMPG carries on an interesting exploration on the value of automated ad distribution networks to distribute ads across offline media.  That is, does it make sense for advertisers to hire companies like Google, Yahoo or MSN to do their non-online media buying?

(Which brings up another question on how much media convergence is really valuable for brand advertisers -but that’ll have to wait for a different day).

The Bainbridge post talks in terms of relevancy and targeting.

Another angle to bring into the discussion is the supply of online content and the ease with which it can be created. While television channels have proliferated in the last two decades, and video content is ever finding new places to be viewed, it pales in comparison to the amount of content available on the web.

It is really cheap and easy to create a web page (which is not the case with a TV show).And it doesn’t require a license from the FCC to broadcast it.

The overwhelming ease of supply has the potential to destroy the integrity of the search results and therefore erode the value of ad distribution bots. Since the barriers to entry are higher for creating and broadcasting or disseminating?offline content, advertisers and media buyers should continue to get a bigger bang for their buck with offline content. -At least until the search engine networks figure out some way to further fine tune their alogrithms.

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. Take the keyword “deodorant.” There are nearly 9 million pages Google found that it thinks are relevant to the term deodorant.

There is a neat metric called the KEI (keyword effectiveness index) which compares the supply of webpages which are relevant to a term versus the demand for that term. It is a scale of 0 - 400, with 400 being the most effective keywords. The KEI for deodorant on Google is 0.00. That means that the supply of websites, the supply of content, outstrips demand by a near infinite amount.

An automated ad distribution bot doesn’t know which of those are most revelant to an advertiser. It will broadly distribute those ads. This is fine if the marginal cost of each ad is near zero.

The problem is that with such a large amount of competition, owners of those content sites will likely start to bid up the cost of that keyword to make sure their content or product gets seen. (Which, of course, doesn’t give the ad network much incentive to change since its collecting the money.)

A second problem with the ease of content creation and the volume of content is that it increases the opportunities for click-fraud, link farms, and other practices which further degrade the value of the ad network.

A third problem is that the content doesn’t cost the ad network anything. They are capitalizing on other people’s work and do not have an ownership or any accountability to the content owners. Therefore, they have very little incentive to protect the integrity of a particular ad.

Google, for example, does not have any practice in place to stop a rival advertiser for flat out stealing another advertisers ad.

A television network is dependent on advertisers for revenue. The network and media buyers protect the integrity of the ads and, to some degree, the content of the ad outlet (the content and programming).

In the world of Google and other automated ad distribution networks, it is the content providers and advertisers who are dependent on them. Its not a winning dynamic for a big brand advertiser.

Collaboration is a word that is thrown around a lot when it comes to web-based project management. Understanding the types of collaboration out there and knowing what you are looking for, can help you make a better selection when it comes to buying project management software.

Since projects are about people working together to get things done, its natural that web-based project management software facilitates people working together- collaborating. This is one of the most significant innovations of web-based project management software. It is also one of the most casually used buzzwords. Here is a quick guide to help de-code what people are talking about when they say collaboration in project management software.

There are two main categories of collaboration you’ll generally find in project management software:

1) Information Sharing

2) Working on Deliverables

Information Sharing
Information sharing is collaboration on the status of the project. Its information on the project itself. Project management software facilitates this by all the project information consolidated and collected in one central, online information portal. Then, having this portal be accessible by team members, managers or clients (as a client project portal), any time from any where.

Different project management software programs will vary on what information is collected. This can range for simple project information such as a task list and whether people are complete or not, to budget information, estimated costs and resource utilization on a project or task. More advanced project management tools such as budget variance, baselining or earned value may also be calculated and stored in a central project portal.

The project information can be collected and accessed in several different ways.

One place is the area where that part of the project is planned, managed or controlled. For example, you may be able to get schedule status or up-to-the minute task information by looking at the live project schedule. Or, if you want to get resource availability you would look at the project list, what?s on the plate of individual team members.

Some project management software tools give you the ability to see this information in pre-formatted project reports. These reports may be about single items like a single project or a single resource or a single period of time. Or, they may be cross-project or total company views. It depends on the capabilities of the project management software and what kind of project views you are looking for in a project management tool. Higher-end project management software will also allow you to run these same reports across projects and even graphically represent them.

In addition to pre-formatted project reports, some software tools may offer customizable project reports which let you pick what aspects of a project you’d like to see or monitor. For example, you may want to see a project report on the overall schedule and budget health of projects for a specific client which are managed by the Bozeman, Montana office during the last month. Most higher-end project management products will allow you to run these type of reports. Some will also give you the ability to save them as templates, share the reports with others, show the information in Gantt charts, project graphs or pie-charts and even export the data to MS Excel.

A fourth way of receiving this kind of project status information is via email. The status of deliverables, budgets or timeline can be sent out with auto email notification. These are items which you can define in most project management software tools that will trigger an email notification to go out to specific people when a specific event happens (for example when a deliverable is completed) or before or after something happens on the project (for example, prior to reaching a budget milestone or a task being late).

Working on Deliverables
The other aspect of collaboration is working on an actual deliverable or task. Some project management software packages allow for people to work together on documents through a document management system or digital asset management system.

Project management software tools may also allow people to work together on a specific project issue through an issue tracking system. These issues can be help desk type trouble tickets or general issues surround a project which are best resolved through threaded message-board type functionality. In the right environment, this kind of collaboration on project deliverables can increase the productivity and creativity of your process.

Collaborating in this way, using an online or web-based project management tool, has the added benefit of leaving tracks.

A good project management tool keeps a record of the revisions to documents so that a document history or revision history can be pulled up in the document management component of the project management software.

Likewise in an issue tracking system, the status of issues can be searched in the issue section of the project management software. The resolution, outcome and history of the discussion thread will be stored in a knowledge based of the project management software.

Working on deliverables, collaborating, online makes it easy for a company to build up an institutional memory. All the data, the process and the knowledge invovled with that work will be associated with a project or the knowledge base within the tool, making the project management software a well organized, easy to access, easy-to-use repository of company knowledge and past project activities.

Found an anecdote on Mark Cuban’s blog. Highlights the nature of the information on Wikipedia (and the process on its formation).

Along the same note, here’s a link to a now classic Stephen Colbert report on Wikipedia.

I’ve received a lot of feedback to my position on Wikipedia brought about by a recent Wall Street Journal article. The feedback has been productive. Its helped elucidate some of the key differences between Wikipedia and Britannica.

The foremost of these differences seems to be audience expectations.

There is one world, online, where people want to be part of the process of growing knowledge, of being heard and sharing. Knowledge in a particular area, for them, is something malleable and something they use to identify themselves with a community.

Then there is another world, offline, where people just want the facts, as they are. Doesn’t have to be latest greatest. Doesn’t have to be with a grain of salt. Something straightforward they can learn and then get on with their lives. Knowledge in that particular area, for them, is something they want to find out about, but not something they want to give too much commitment to.

This gets to the core of our definition of knowledge. When someone wants to “look something up” what are they hoping to find? What do that want to do with that information? How do that want to interact with that information?

Wikipedia presents a different way of interacting with knowledge.

Its seems to have unlocked a lot of pent-up demand for people to be heard. But I’m not sure its the most productive way for society as a whole. I’d worry if kids did science reports based on Wikipedia. Or if they protested the whole format of a report and pushed, instead, for an open dialogue with their class on the subject.

There is a place in this world for a fixed grounding -for clear definitions of what we know, delineated from speculation and opinion. Perhaps Wikipedia should have a disclaimer that the contents are a work in progress, take it with a grain of salt. Perhaps it would be more accurately filed in the category of an open, collaborative publishing site and not an online encyclopedia.

The Wall Street Journal has a tense interview between the founder of Wikipedia and the editor the Encyclopedia Britannica.  Raises tons of interesting questions.  The biggest one is whether the Wikipedia approach offers readers a source of knowledge? Or is it, in Stephen Colbert’s term, a source of truthiness? Feels true, we’d like it to be true. But it isn’t.

For those who don’t know how Wikipedia works, it goes like this.  Someone decides that there should be an entry on a particular topic, say project management software.  Or, they decide there should be an entry on a particular piece of software.  The author searches around and sees that other vendors of project management software have entries on their products, so why not this particular software.

They go ahead and write that entry and post it.  Suddenly, this particular software is part of the universal body of knowledge available to everyone.  (And it also benefits from having a great link-source for search engine rankings.)

The post may then be visited by other people interested in the subject or it could be totally ignored.  Or, it could be stumbled upon by someone who decides it doesn’t fit with “Wikipedia standards.” They may decide it is an advertisement and not worthy of being included in the Wikipedia body of knowledge.  This self-appointed editor then goes to work on the article.

Unbeknownst to the author or to the world at large, the self-appointed editor begins an opaque process to remove the article and any mention of it throughout Wikipedia.  Like in the Soviet Union, the article, the software and the company are quietly erased.  They no longer exist.

What remains in Wikipedia are articles which