tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71668511739178350542024-03-08T00:41:24.338-08:00Project Management SoftwareRandom thoughts about Project Management software.Jill Milanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09462706758478346182noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7166851173917835054.post-83251024130640500882008-12-07T14:26:00.001-08:002008-12-07T14:26:11.143-08:00Microsoft Project ViewersUsing a Microsoft Project Viewer is simple way of saving money on Microsoft Project licenses. The best viewers that I have seen are from Steelray http://www.steelray.com and ValleySpeak Project Server http://www.valleyspeak.com. The first one is for desktop usage while the second one is hosted users.Jill Milanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09462706758478346182noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7166851173917835054.post-38060829598356754622008-12-03T15:40:00.001-08:002008-12-03T15:40:48.241-08:00Microsoft Project and ScrumRead interesting stuff about using Microsoft Project as a Scrum tool. I wonder how that compares with dedicated tools like Mingle, etc.Jill Milanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09462706758478346182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7166851173917835054.post-28625825917848716102008-11-04T11:49:00.000-08:002008-11-04T11:52:26.314-08:00Social Project Management - IIWouldn't it be cool if we could marry project management software and twitter. "What are you doing?" isn't that what most project managers are asking constantly. So all we have to do it create a twitter like system where the tweets go under a task history. Imagine how many meetings that will save.Jill Milanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09462706758478346182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7166851173917835054.post-11269503163279167982008-10-09T23:43:00.000-07:002008-10-09T23:53:27.148-07:00Social Project ManagementAnything <span style="font-style: italic;">Social </span>seems to be in fashion these days. All kinds of social networks are popping up everywhere. The world of project management still seems to be stuck in a world confined to an organizational boundary. In a global world it is quite common to come across projects that traverse organizational boundaries, yet there is no software that can reliably support this.<br /><br />Why are project management software vendors still stuck in the Island mentality?Jill Milanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09462706758478346182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7166851173917835054.post-33268306899995571082007-09-07T16:29:00.000-07:002007-09-07T16:37:25.625-07:00Who needs a Project Manager?All this talk about Flash Projects led me to an interesting question. Why do we need a Project Manager? Why can't projects manage themselves? I feel someday they will . Project Management is more of an art than a science today. Sure there are theories abound, but they are not as mature as say management theories. Once the theories get translated into software, will we still need the Project Manager? Remember we are talking about 10 - 30 years from now. Day dreaming? You bet.Jill Milanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09462706758478346182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7166851173917835054.post-37499015462777725992007-09-06T17:00:00.000-07:002007-09-08T15:59:51.341-07:00Flash ProjectsA <b>flash mob</b> is a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, do something unusual for a brief period of time, then quickly disperse (source <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_mob">Wikipedia</a> ). I feel that this type of projects will happen a lot in the future. People will collaborate on projects and then promptly disperse when the project is over. There is no thought being given to this possibility. All our Project Management software assume that people belong to a single organization. In other words the possibility of a Quasi-stable project is not considered.<br /><br />Another interesting feature of flash mob is that it is totally voluntary, no one is forced to be part of it. This turns the ideas of information dissemination and motivation on their head. In the world of Flash-Projects how will projects be scoped? How will Projects Managers do Resource Management? Do such projects need a Project Manager? How will a Flash-Project Management software differ from traditional Project Management software?Jill Milanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09462706758478346182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7166851173917835054.post-3541784509028043212007-09-03T16:06:00.000-07:002007-09-03T16:40:43.735-07:00Project Management AdaptwareMost software available today fall into three categories. You have a) Over the shelf (Microsoft Project, Office, etc), b) Customized (SAP, Oracle Financials, etc.) and c) Custom Created (Created from scratch for a single customer). I feel the future of software is Adaptware. It is a kind of software that is so malleable that the end user can literally feed business logic to it and make it behave in a unique manner without realizing that he is doing so. A "simple" example would be the Wikis of today. I feel Project Management is the first field in which Adaptware will show up. The reason is simple. All business activities eventually map to a workflow which are designed to accomplish tasks which are then part of larger projects. Each organization has a unique workflow, in contrast, most organization do not have a unique way of sending emails; so an email software does not need to be as malleable as a project management software.<br /><br />An essential quality of this Project Management Adaptware engine would be self learning. As soon as it sees steps beeing repeated it will build work flows around them. This is not as sci-fi as it sounds. Such an engine will also learn to sense Issues and Risks associated with a project. It can automatically sense that Bob's Urgent issues are more urgent that Tom's Urgent issue based on historical data and other's feedback. It will be able to do analysis on people's classification habbits and calculate weightages for their classifications.<br /><br />Too much attention is paid today by the Project Management vendors on the user interface and rightly so. This is primarily because Project Management is still in its infancy as a science. With Adaptware the GUI will cease to be important because the burden of creating the "perfect" GUI will be pushed to the end user. This will allow the vendors to focus on creating a smarter engine.<br /><br />If only we could make that day come sooner, think about the quantum leap in productivity it will bring.Jill Milanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09462706758478346182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7166851173917835054.post-41893398554208665302007-08-31T13:46:00.000-07:002007-08-31T16:04:32.505-07:00Project Management Looking ForwardI often wonder what Project Management would be like in another 50 years. What would the tools look like? How will people collaborate? Lets do some guessing here. Technology obviously will be ubiquitious and so would be mediums of communication. We are already able to share voice and video (still not there yet). If we assume a terabyte bandwidth, then the only limiting factor seems to the functionality of the project management tool. This guessing game leads me to some obvious questions. We started with single user tools like Microsoft Project, then we moved to shared tools like Microsoft Project Server, Niku, Welcom, etc. I would image a futuristic Project Management tool would have distributed Project Management. I mean distributed Project Management and not distributed Project Management Software, although the latter is a requirement for the former.<br /><br />I would image project connections much like supply chains in today's manufacturing world. What implications does it have for the atomicity of a project and task? How will the Peer To Peer Project Management world look like?<br /><br />What about automation? How much of Project Management can be automated? How about general purpose Project Management engines which will keep track of projects. So when someone wants to do a project, the first thing they will do is engage the engine. The engine will then scout and collect resources from around the world. How much learning abilities will these engines have? Will they be able to predict failures, mitigate risk and tackle issues.<br /><br />I wish more people talked about the future of Project Mangement.Jill Milanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09462706758478346182noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7166851173917835054.post-69787021720585369752007-08-29T12:17:00.000-07:002007-08-29T12:25:53.777-07:00Upswing in the Project Management industry<span style="font-family: arial;">The Project Management industry seems to be in an upswing these days. Lots of M & A activities in the last 18 months. The PMI thing seems to be getting more and more mainstream. I think there is a trend happening here and it has everything to do with technology. With collaboration technology maturing (or getting better) project portfolio management ROI is starting to show. Companies can now move from the project management world to that of project portfolio management. Unfortunately the PPM tools are still out of reach for many small and medium enterprises.<br /><br />I wish implementing a PPM tool was not a daunting project in itself.<br /></span>Jill Milanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09462706758478346182noreply@blogger.com0