Small Business Project Management Software

Posted on July 29, 2010 by admin

Basecamp Small Business Project Management Software Hi, My name is Zach, I’m the co-founder of a small web development company. Thanks for checking out Promana and this page in particular – which I’ve dedicated to speaking to you.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a total schill for Basecamp and rightly so. Keep reading and I’ll show you how my business makes over $1200+ per month from Basecamp. But first…

Who Are You?

If you’re like me – or I should say, like I was – you’re looking for a piece of software to manage your projects. But MORE THAN ANY LIST OF FEATURES, there’s ONE THING your project management software MUST DO. And we’ll get to it in just a second ;) I promise. Before I reveal what your project management software must do let’s look at the stuff your project management software must do:

  • Web Based- Wouldn’t it be amazing to check in on your team from any where in the world!?
  • Saves You Time – Time is money, and the easier you can implement your small business project management software the more time you’ll save.
  • Allows You To Track Time – I’ve written numerous posts about the importance of time tracking, be it for your projects or for employee accountability. The PM software you use has to allow you to easily track time!

THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT OF ANY SMALL BUSINESS PROJECT MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

At the end of the day selecting a project management program is simple it must only meet the following supreme requirement:

IT MUST MAKE YOU MORE MONEY THAN IT COSTS TO IMPLEMENT AND USE

And the greater your return… the greater the software. The more it makes you the greater the return. Sure there are complicated systems that will do EVERYTHING under the sun, but if they’re complicated does it really save you time/money? If it saves you time in implementation, in coaching employees, in coaching clients, in tracking time, in compiling monthly reports and doing invoicing it.

I own two small businesses and track nearly 100 projects across each using what I feel is one of the best small business project management software out there… Basecamp. If you do nothing else for your small business, start using Basecamp today.

Basecamp costs us roughly $1200/year ($99/month).

Basecamp saves us roughly $1200/month in increased productivity.

Compiling everyone’s time used to be a huge hassle, taking nearly two days’ worth of time or 10 real hours. Now, it takes less than 1 hour. At a billable hourly rate of $120 that saves nearly $1200, in time that can be better spent servicing clients or getting new business. Invoicing has been reduced from a hassle, to a breeze, and can now be more easily handed off to someone else when the time comes.

This is just ONE EXAMPLE of how Basecamp has saved me thousands.

If you’re ready, signup with Basecamp today. And even if you don’t think you’re completely ready, just start using ONE of the tools included in Basecamp (time tracking for example) and you’ll immediately discover how Basecamp can help save your small business a TON of time and MONEY, today.

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Basecamp Competitors

Posted on July 27, 2010 by admin

Looking for a list of competitors to the project management software Basecamp? Here’s a comprehensive list:

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Dealing with Project Scope Creep

Posted on July 27, 2010 by admin

I’m just going to say it… scope creep is a pain in the ass. No matter who you are, your experience level as a project manager, or your industry, we’ve all dealt with scope creep. AND if you are in the web development or Internet marketing business in particular… scope creep is horrible. Read this article if you are looking for ways to deal with scope creep and find out why SCOPE CREEP CAN ACTUALLY BE BENEFICIAL TO YOUR BUSINESS!

What is project scope creep?

The change of a project from it’s original planned objectives is termed scope creep.  Often this creep happens in a small way through the project team accepting additional requests that seem reasonable without formal change control to assess the impact it will have on the project as a whole.

Unchecked, scope creep can result in a poorly defined project that doesn’t have clear outcomes to determine project closure or success.

Scope creep might happen due to:

  • Little or no project change control
  • Poor management
  • Unclear project objectives

Scope creep is a fundamental cause of project failure so its possibility has to be tackled from the outset. Awareness and control of scope creep starts on the very first day of the project and continues throughout its lifetime.

Ways to deal with scope creep

Dealing with scope creep is all about controlling change. Make sure you are clear about the objectives an priorities of the project and you understand the deliverables that will result.  Broken down, the deliverables will give you a good indication of the project activities that are needed to complete them.  Make sure you have key milestones and that these are supported by minor milestone, in between. Monitoring these will give you a clear view that your project is going to target.

An alternative strategy is to simply not allow changes to the project to happen.  Potential changes could, maybe, be collated and included as a later project.  This will allow the project to deliver on time and within budget as originally intended.

By having a clear vision of your project’s purpose and outlining in tight terms, the activities, timescales and resources to achieve that purpose, you will recognise scope creep for what it is and will be in a strong position to assess the proposed change and implement it, if it is justified, rather than it just creeping it’s way in!

Can scope creep be positive?

Yes! Consider a contract project manager, for example, perhaps on a daily rate, where their project is extended and this results in more contractor days!  Where scope creep could result in beneficial additional functionality or outputs, that may be welcomed but, again, only if it’s introduction is carefully considered and appropriate.

Irrespective of any potential benefits of scope creep, the cost of your project is the bottom line that matters, and you need to control that cost and deliver on time for your project to be considered a success.

In Summary…

Make sure you set the expectations correctly when the project begins. Clearly define the scope of the project and work with the key stakeholders to set their expectations when the project begins. Keep a documented record of the agreed scope so there can be no dispute.

If a change to the scope arises, assess the business benefit and impact to the project and manage the change in a controlled what to ensure it is correctly documented and communicated.

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Project Management Risk – Success

Posted on July 19, 2010 by admin

Risk management is at the heart of every successful project. Why? By identifying the things that can cause our projects problems, such as, delays and additional costs, we can prepare plans to deal with these potential threats or to help reduce the likelihood of them happening at all, to save time and money, both of which are close to the heart of our customers.

Why manage risks?

Risks exist for every project and if we choose to ignore them, they don’t just go away. Instead, we end up working reactively to try to mitigate the effects when things start to go wrong.  Identifying and managing risks in a controlled way, allows us to work out what the effects will be and allows us to identify the actions we can take to help reduce or eliminate these effects.

When to identify risks?

Very early in the project’s lifecycle, the risks should be identified and considered, but managing risks is a process that must be embedded within any project to ensure success. It is not a one-time activity.  All project staff should understand their responsibilities for identifying project risks.

Risks can be identified in a number of different ways, including:

  • Brainstorming: the project team use open-minds to come up with potential risks to the projects. Often one idea will spark another. Not all will be true risks but this is a good starting point and is one of the most widely used methods for identifying project risks, particularly at the beginning of a project.
  • Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats (SWOT): analysing each of these can help identify project risks.  Remember, risks aren’t always negative.  A positive risk is known as an opportunity!  Where-as a risk that materialises will cause our project a problem, an opportunity that materialises will bring a positive benefit to the project.
  • Review of documentation: the project plan will highlight dependencies between activities and this can be a strong source of risks.  Other project-related documentation, for example, business case & project scope, should also be considered.

Remember, you won’t find all the risks at the outset, and even if you keep looking, there are still likely to be the unexpected ones that creep up on you.  If you done a systematic job at risk management throughout your project, any unexpected ones shouldn’t cause you too much heartache!

What to do with identified risks…

Known risks should be analysed to firstly define their potential impact. You don’t want to spend a whole load of time, effort and money on a risk that turns out won’t really cause too big a problem.  So, you need to have a good idea of the level of threat each risk may cause so it can be dealt with in the right way, and there are 4 ways to handle risks:

  • Tolerate: if the impact of the risk is relatively small, you may choose to just live with it.
  • Treat: Producing a plan to mitigate the risk is the most common of all methods for handling risks.
  • Transfer: in some cases, you can transfer the risk to a third-party, for example, an insurance company.
  • Terminate: if there is a high-severity risk that can have catastrophic consequences on the project, it may be appropriate to effectively shut-down the area that is causing the threat and terminate the risk entirely. As an extreme example, in developing online clinical forms for doctors to use to assess patients, the use of non-clinical staff to produce the draft of those forms could pose such a serious clinical risk that the approach may simply be discarded.

Record all risks on a risk register. This can be (and often is) as simple as a spreadsheet – there are plenty of free downloads. Make sure all risks have a clear owner, who is the person responsible for managing that particular risk and that each owner provides regular updates for the risk register.

Who needs to know about risks?

In short, everyone involved! Communication is one of the most important factors in risk management within a project and the risk register should be an integral part of project meetings.

All projects have risks – turn them to your advantage by bringing them out into the open where they can be analysed and dealt with, helping you to ensure the success of your project!

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TimeCamp Review – Simple Time Tracking

Posted on July 18, 2010 by admin

If you’re like me you’re looking for the perfect time tracking tool. A tool that will track your time, but you wish you didn’t have to constantly switch to the application or the site, log your time, and switch back – in some cases this can waste even MORE time. The goal here is to extract value… information, extra cash, etc. from our day, not to waste it by spending precious moments tracking time.

I think I may have discovered just such tool – but there is a twist.

TimeCamp LogoTimeCamp “keep[s] track of the hours automatically.” It’s a combination installable program and web app that automatically tracks your computer behavior, and after you’ve assigned categories and productivity measures to those categories, provides invaluable information to you for tweaking your habits.

What TimeCamp Is

Before you get too excited let me explain exactly what Time Camp is… and then what it isn’t so that you aren’t disappointed. TimeCamp is a tool to automatically track your habits on your computer. As such, it is limited in what it can track. It does track open and used programs, and time spent on individual sites. It does this via a program that runs in the tray, sending your account data back to its servers.

What TimeCamp Is Not

TimeCamp will not allow you to individually track client time. It is not a replacement for a program like basecamp. Rather than allowing you to say you spent 15 minutes on client XYZ’s file, TimeCamp will simply provide you a metric on how much time you spent in basecamp in the last day, or week, or whatever timescape you input.

TimeCamp Pros

  • Easy to use – really after the install and setup, you do nothing… a dream!
  • Setup is pretty easy – just assign things categories, and categories productivity scores. For example, Basecamp.com was assigned the highest productivity value because when I’m in it… I’m doing work work.
  • Tracks EVERTHING
  • Great information - what you learn from your data is invaluable, it is tracking every moment, so you can see how distracted you get by those mass emails with links to youtube videos.
  • Ability to manage a company - This I didn’t get to experiment with, but it was very interesting. You have the ability to add accounts and track those two. Meaning you can watch every moment of your company time that is wasted on Facebook for example. Extremely valuable, but potentially big-brotherish.
  • Online App Easy - Easy to navigate through your data and see where you’re wasting time.
  • Account removal was simple – I find this important, particularly with a site like this (one that is tracking so much intimate data) account deletion was found in 1 second, and removal was simple.

TimeCamp Cons

  • Tracks EVERYTHING! – Particularly when it comes to websites, know that everything is tracked. If you’re using it in a work environment this could be damning if you’re visiting sites you shouldn’t. (Google’s Incognito window won’t help you here!)
  • Doesn’t allow you to track client time – Although it wasn’t built for this purpose, in the future combining some kind of a tool or addon to track client time would be nice.
  • Data accuracy questionable – I noticed that some of my numbers for the time I spent in applications didn’t seem to be correct. It seems timecamp may be tracking when the computer isn’t idle – ie, keystrokes, mouse movement, etc. So when reading something long for example, the time was shortened. This is just a 5000 foot observation, not sure how accurate my own predictions are.

Overall, this is a great tool. At this time I think the price is too high for such an automated tracking app. Although it provides great value, as a business owner I wouldn’t shell out the asking price. Also, the website doesn’t mention the price of the service on the outside – you’ll have to first sign up for the 14 day free trial. Definitely worth the install and trial however, if nothing else you can get an idea for how you’re spending your days on your computer… automatically.

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What Type of Project Manager are You?

Posted on July 15, 2010 by admin

What Type of Project Manager are You?

Project managers fall into different categories, according to their style of leadership and understanding what your style is puts you in a strong position to positively influence the outcome of your project by making changes to reflect the make-up and personalities within your team.

Project management styles are referred to under a number of different names but essentially fall into three main types:

An autocratic project manager follows the more traditional authoritarian style of leadership, where the manager takes responsibility for the majority of decisions and leads the team from the front, deciding who does what when and taking an overseeing view of the project as a whole.  This style of management is effective where there are tight deadlines and a need for tight control of project progress but team members can feel disenfranchised with no feeling of input into the decision-making process and, effectively, being told what to do.

An authoritative project manager is one who is, often, a technical or subject expert, confident in their knowledge and is able to command respect from their team members through this knowledge and experience.  This style of management sees the project manager encouraging and mentoring team members to improve their skills for the benefit of the project and the wider organization. Team members are engaged positively and encouraged to share their views and opinions. This style is not to be confused with the autocratic authoritarian style.

A democratic project manager co-ordinates their project team to make decisions through consultation.  A democratic project manager shares responsibility amongst team members rather than leading & directing them.  Decision making can be a slower process through the wide team consultation that needs to take place in this style of distributed responsibility. The project can sometimes suffer, too, without a leader who is ready and able to take those more difficult decisions. Team morale, however, is generally kept high and creative thinking often flows from the positive environment that is fostered by this management style.

As a successful project manager, you need to be able to adapt your style to suit the project and your project team, to keep them motivated and productive in their work, rather than assuming one-size fits all!

Work out, first of all, what your natural style of management is.  Look at your skills and consider how easy it will be for you to adapt your natural style to incorporate other approaches. Take time to understand the individuals within the team and let the dynamics of the combined personalities dictate your style.  Mix and match features from the different basic style types to develop an approach to team management that will suit your team.

The different management styles should be one of the tools in the project manager’s toolbox to help ensure successful delivery of your project.

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Project Management Stakeholder Analysis

Posted on July 9, 2010 by admin

Who’s got a stake in my project?

Projects do not exist in isolation; they deliver an outcome, for example, a service or a product, that is of use to an individual, group or organisation, which means that every project, no matter how small or large, will have stakeholders.  Stakeholders are those who have a specific interest in a project, and this may be as a direct participant in helping to deliver the project or an interest in its outcome.

In a simple project, the stakeholders may be easily identifiable with little effort. In more complex project environments, however, a stakeholder analysis activity may be needed.

Stakeholder analysis allows us to identify those with a vested interest in the project and to understand their connection to the project.

Hints for stakeholder analysis

Look at the management and organisational groups within your organisation and establish:

  • Who are the key decision-makers? Would they make decisions affecting your project? If yes, they are a stakeholder.
  • What is the benefit of the project to each group? If there is a benefit, they are a stakeholder.
  • Can the group or individuals within the group provide input to the project? If yes, they are a stakeholder.

Once you’ve worked who they are, you need to establish:

  • What their role will be in relation to the project
  • That they are available to participate

Your final list of project stakeholders will include:

  • project sponsor(s) – the champion of the project who often provides the budget
  • steering group/board members – the group that controls the project overall and provides the governance around decision-making
  • project team members
  • those who will benefit from the project’s output
  • those who supply services or resources
  • internal departments within your organization that help in the delivery of the project by providing either services or resources

What to do with stakeholders…

Identified stakeholders should be involved in the project from the outset and their expectations set and managed. Remember that different stakeholders may have quite different expectations of what the project means to them and your job, as an effective project manager, is to manage these expectations throughout the whole lifecycle of the project.

Ask your stakeholders what they think will be the measure of success of the project and that will give you a good feel for their individual expectations.

Communicating

Once you know the needs and expectations of your stakeholders, you can then work out what communications will be appropriate for them.  Your project can be progressing successfully with everything delivering to plan and budget, but if the right people don’t know that they will not recognize the success. Likewise, any deviations in the project’s progress needs to be flagged to the right stakeholders for corrective action to be agreed.  Communication has to be THE principle activity in any project.

And, finally…

At the end of the project, look at how effectively the project met the needs and expectations of each stakeholder and use these to form lessons learned for later projects.

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Resolving Project Conflict Project Management

Posted on July 6, 2010 by admin

Conflict in Project Teams – Hints for Project Managers

As a project manager, skills in resolving hostile or negative conflict are a must-have.  Conflict can have a serious negative effect on project delivery and tends to arise when team members with different backgrounds, skills and objectives have different views.  It must be tackled quickly as and when it arises.  Left untreated, conflict can cause team members to become disengaged, affecting teamwork as a unified whole.

What causes conflict?

Project team members will tend toward a particular style of operation and these styles can be categorized in broad terms:

Competitive team members are often clear in what they want to achieve and will stand firm to achieve their goals.

At the other end of the scale are those that prefer to avoid any sort of conflict at all and are happy for others to take decisions, accepting those decisions without question.

Between these two extremes, there are collaborative personalities who will work cooperatively with the aim of keeping the team happy but are comfortable also asserting themselves.

Ways to avoid conflict…

Attack is often said to be the best form of defense!  By tackling conflict before it happens, you can potentially avoid uncomfortable situations that could otherwise cause problems within the project lifecycle.

  • Understand the different types of team members and try to keep the team unified with aims and goals that are consistent.
  • Help the team to build strong working relationships with each other.

Ways to resolve conflict…

As the project manager, you can force the situation to the chosen outcome. In this case, you direct the conflict and choose who will lose.

Alternatively, a compromise can be negotiated, where the conflicting parties agree to a solution which involves a concession by each.

Tips in resolving conflict…

  • As a manager, take a positive and assertive approach.  Conflict needs to be handled as a professional difference of opinion rather than a personal argument.  All parties need to feel that they can discuss the problem without it being a personal attack on any individual.
  • Help conflicting parties to understand the wider picture. Sometimes conflict can arise because a team member takes too-narrow a view on a situation.  Highlighting the wider context can help them see and consider how they can still accomplish their own objectives without undermining those of their colleagues.
  • Establish the facts surrounding the conflict situation, then negotiate and agree the way forward in clear terms that all parties are happy with.

It’s worth bearing in mind that conflict within a project team isn’t always negative.  Provided it is handled correctly, some levels of conflict can provide an opportunity for team members to develop both personally and professionally.

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Basecamp Updates Design

Posted on July 4, 2010 by admin

37signals has updated the homepage design of Basecamp recently. I’m not totally sure if they’re doing some A/B or MultiVariate testing on the effectiveness of their homepage’s design (for sales/signups). The new site is lighter, with less of a focus on the actual design of Basecamp (the look of the software), and more focus on the problems that the software solves.

Personally I liked both the old AND the new designs, but hopefully it will have a positive impact on how quickly and effective 37Signals can communicate that their software solves a lot of their visitors’ problems.

Take a look…

Basecamp Design

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Successful Project Managers Learn Lessons!

Posted on July 3, 2010 by admin

Lessons learned are a vital part of ongoing project success. Project managers, through experience, build knowledge that they draw on with each project assignment. This internal, retained knowledge is a valuable resource, but people move on and less experienced managers can benefit from understanding how to avoid pitfalls that others have encountered.  Even the most experienced of project managers, faced with a new challenge can benefit from the previous experience of others!

Capturing lessons within your current project can not only help keep projects on track by avoiding known pitfalls that can cause delays and cost overruns but can also offer other projects the opportunity to reap real benefits from their outset.  Lessons learned allow us to capture:

  • Our project mistakes and how we can avoid them happening again
  • The things that went well and how we can ensure we repeat those successes in other projects

The potential for these lessons-learned to have a positive impact on future projects is huge, yet, in practice, the capturing of lessons is an activity in project delivery that is often overlooked.  So many organisations don’t have an embedded process for learning and sharing lessons and continue to make the same expensive mistakes time and time again. For lessons learned to be successful, there needs to be a solid (but not necessarily complex!) process for capturing, documenting, communicating and sharing them.

When do lessons-learned?

Firstly, remember to review previous lessons from other projects! Take time to dedicate to the capture and articulation of lessons. This should ideally be regular lessons-learned meetings throughout the lifetime of the project, reviewed the end of each stage and concluding with a dedicated session to collate and assess all identified lessons at the conclusion of the project.

Lessons-learned activities should begin as early as possible in the project. It’s good practice to capture lessons as soon after the learning event happened, whilst the experience and knowledge on how it was handled is fresh. Holding regular lessons-learned meetings allows project teams to share experience and solutions to problems as the project progresses.  Capture and document your project lessons in a lessons-learned log, which should include:

  • What happened (the issue/risk/challenge)
  • What the cause was
  • Action taken
  • The lesson that was learned
  • Any change to process
  • Keywords
  • Category

Allocate broad categories, such as, technical, cost, timescales. These will help future use of the lessons in ongoing projects.

How do we make lessons-learned available?

Sharing lessons-learned is the key to their success. There’s no point having them if no-one knows about them!  Make your lessons-learned log searchable. This can be as easy as having a spreadsheet available on your organisation intranet or a more complex database.  Either way, provided project managers can access the information easily and search by keywords or categories to find the lessons of use to them, your log will be successful.

In short…

Consider how many projects around you are currently suffering from delays, resource or cost overruns, materializing risks, and many other challenges?  This will give you an indication of how immature the lessons-learned philosophy often is within projects and organisations. Even where lessons are captured and shared, we will still often see projects experiencing what may well be avoidable problems.

Make your process work, your lessons count and your projects successful!

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