Project Management 2.0

PSF Wiki from Tom Peter

2008-01-27T09:38:00.000-05:00

Tom Peter has lunched a wiki- called PSF-Wiki based on the idea of his PSF50 book. This was one of my favorite books in late 1990s.

Here is the link to the book.

In this wiki which is based on the 50 lists in his book, you can share your story. There's even a playground at the end where you can create your own pages or have PSF-related discussions that you don't think fit elsewhere.

Professional Services: The Leader's Role

2008-01-25T14:19:00.000-05:00

Sean Silverthorne , editor of HBS Working Knowledge has interviewed Thomas J. DeLong, the author of the book "When Professionals Have to Lead" in recent Research & Idea article- New Challenge in Leading Professional Services.

Thomas DeLong , the Philip J. Stomberg Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School, has studied the leadership issues in Professional Services firms and observes that ineffective leaders in PSFs are excellent professionals but as leaders they are unable to create a clear sense of direction, inspire others, or get results; or if they do get results, they are attained at great organizational and human cost.

He has proposed a leadership framework which deals with distinctly observable actions. The model consists of four distinct but highly interrelated sets of leadership activities. They are:

Setting Directions: PSF leaders should be able set-direction for the organization where churn rate is quite high- and work towards helping the professionals to relate to those long term objective to the short team assignments.

Gaining commitment : Leaders in PSFs should work towards gaining commitment from all the members of the organization so as to drive the firm, practice or project in the direction set by the leadership.

Execution: PSF leaders have a challenge to be both people oriented as well as task oriented at the same time. They need to ensure that the financial objectives of the firm are met while keeping the professional on board.

Setting a personal example: Finally, when one of the key ingredients of the PSF are people, leader should show display personal integrity, support their professionals, and take responsibility for their own actions—including mistakes.

Thomas DeLong highlights the importance of these four leaderships behavior as an integrated model and when practiced it will help help leaders in managing the conflicting requirements, intensifying client demands, and other stress-producing factors that make leading other professionals such a challenge.

Blogging as the future project communication tool.

2008-01-23T00:29:00.000-05:00

James P. MacLennan has an interesting posting about blogging as a project management tool in the enterprise in his blog. Please check out.

Web 2.0 in Construction Project Management

2008-01-21T12:17:00.000-05:00

It is interesting to see how web has not only helped IT project management, but has slowly helped non-IT projects to take advantage of web ( and web 2.0) . Procore which an on-demand ( web based) project management tool focusing on construction industry has provided some of the features which will be helpful for project managers in construction industry.

Weather Report
The first feature that strikes out is an instant weather report on the project dashboard. This helps the project manager and other project members to take appropriate decision on the day' schedule as well as the next few days plan. This is web 2.0 's mash-up at work.

Image
Visual information about the construction site or property provides a quick reference to the project details. Since new generation cell phones can capture a picture on go, a feature to send the pictures by MMS can be of great help.

In addition to the traditional document management feature, Procore allows members to fax in the documents - a nice blend of old and new world...

More about Procore in KillerStartups.

Jobs in PM2.0 software companies.

2008-01-21T10:11:00.000-05:00

A list of software jobs that is available in companies working in Web based Project Management tools. This job posting will be removed after 2 months of the date of posting.

Jan- 16-2008: teamwork: Two Java web developer positions open in Florence, Italy

List of Web 2.0 Project Management Tools

2008-01-21T09:52:00.001-05:00

Here is a list of Web 2.0 Project Management Tools which I will be updating as I review:

teamwork
Basecamp
Airset
Centraldesktop
Project360
Citadel
Dotproject
Zohoplanner
Projectspaces
goplan
ScheduleOnce - Meeting Scheduler

Top 10 Project Management tools 2008

2008-01-09T06:32:00.000-05:00

Here is a list of the to 10 project management tools for 2008 .

The ranking shows the dominance of the hosted ( SaaS) software over desktop based software in the project management software industry.

Basic Criteria for evaluating a project management software.

2008-01-09T00:18:00.000-05:00

Now days Project Managers and Organizations have a plethora of Project Management Software available for managing both small and large projects. Before using a project management software, it is necessary to evaluate these tools in terms of the certain basic features and functionalities that come with the tool.

1. Hosted ( Saas) vs Desktop based - Both Desktop and Hosted Project Management tools are available for managing projects. Depending on the nature of the project team ( virtual vs under one roof) as well as cost of the ownership of the software, a decision between hosted ( SaaS) and Desktop based software can be made.

2. Project Management Features: At the heart of a project management tool are the key project management features that is required to manage projects . These are :
1. Task Management
2. Resource Management
3. Scheduling
4. Reporting
5. Budgeting

3. Collaboration Features – Project involves collaboration inside the team as well as beyond the project team. Project Management tool should allow multiple approaches to collaboration . Some of the way that information and issues can be communicated are including email, conference calls, meetings, intranets and web-based locations etc.

4. Document & Knowledge Management Features- Every project involves development of multiple document work products which needs to be properly managed for entire life cycle of the project. At the same time, the project management team should be able to leverage these documents for the current and future projects. User-friendly Document and Knowledge management features is plus point for the tool.

5. User friendly – Project management software features and instructions should be easy to find and simple enough for anyone to use, especially given the general complexity of the software.

6. Smooth Installation – The software should be easy to install and use, whether site-based or web-based.

7. Help/Support – Project management software should offer a comprehensive user guide and help system. The manufacturer should offer a customer service email address or telephone number so you can get answers directly from their technical support team.

In my future postings, I will provide more details on each of the criteria and try to evaluate some of the project management tools that is available in the market.