Top 12 Knowledge Requirements for 2012

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2011 gave a very powerful positive impact on specialized business life for Social Media and Smart Phone Professionals - many new Gadgets, Applications, Job Profiles, Start-ups and Success Stories.

2012 – Definitely, is coming with lot more new opportunities for IT communities.

Well, what is essential for your success in 2012 – Let’s take a quick look on top knowledge requirements.

• Mobile Application Programming – It is not just Android, Windows Phone and IOS Programming. Look into HTML5, CSS3, Advance Java-script, JSON, JQuery and PHP. Mobile WEB Frameworks are going to be an excellent option for “Develop Once-Deploy to All” Concept.


• Customized Agile Project Management – Agile is still not professionally implemented in many organizations. Most of the Small and Medium size companies are using it as simplified version of traditional project management – but in the name of Agile. Certified Scrum Master and Agile Scrum Trainings for your Project Team are essential for a success with quality.


• Location Based Services – There are very few applications with Location based Content Identification as a feature and most of them are just social and Infotainment. There are lot more requirements which can be fulfilled with LBS – for Example: Tourism, Education etc.


• Data Center / Networking Technologies- The demand for networking professionals is high with virtualization and cloud computing projects. Virtualization and the Cloud could also be behind the increased need for IT professionals with backgrounds in data center operations and systems integration.


• Smartphone Security – Smartphones are becoming part of corporate network elements now days and security for official and personal data becomes major question. Data Security Applications, Anti-virus Tools, Remote Content Management, Policies for using Smartphones are high in requirement.


• User Interface Design – UI Design and Development is an important presentation layer element, which decides the success of many Smartphone and Tablets apps, and also PC and WEB Apps. There are certification course available to educate you about best practices and standards and it is a hot item in job market too.


• Mobile Commerce / Payment – Smartphones and Feature phones are fully capable for Money Management now days with Applications from various vendors. There were few banking apps, mobile malls and payment apps showed success stories last year, and I am expecting more to come in 2012.


•  Context Aware Applications – A new technology provides improved user experiences by using the information about a person's interests, intentions, history, environment, activities, schedule, priorities, connections and preferences to anticipate their needs and proactively serve up the most appropriate content, product or service.


• Gaming Smartphones, Devices – estimated to $800 million business, it provides numerous opportunities for business owners and technical professionals.


• Help Desk/Technical Support–Mobile operating systems have added a new dimension to help desk and tech support community and this will improve a lot in future.


• Business Intelligence – from Cost saving to investing in Technology, I am expecting many new prospects with BI.  There are certifications, Business Analysis best practices to improve it.


• Life with Open Source – Open source is not just limited to PHP and MYSQL, but there are more useful, free to use, efficient platforms for developers, designers, project managers, analysts, testers, business owners and general IT end-users.

I wish you all the best in this New Year 2012 for many new success stories, career improvements and business values.

Project Management for .Mobi Website Development

Project Management for mobile websites is a special kind of approach based on its various requirements and limitations. In my experience I handled Mobile websites for Social Media, Business Functional Applications, Online Product Purchase, News and Media presentations, Entertainment Content downloads, and Travel and location based services. For every single project, we faced a small change in our process, basically learned from experiences. We followed agile approach for almost all our projects in simple way to make the project management painless.

I am planning to write more about project management for this platform, but as a start, let me share some key points.

• Organize a basic requirements analysis meeting with all stakeholders and document the requirements in easy functional stories


• Build a product Backlog from the requirement analysis and consider it as first level defined scope


• Present the overall project goals – the overall solution model , as a guide for priority setting


• Build a team & assign key roles – the team should include stakeholders, quality assurance and implementation team members. Key roles and responsibilities should be assigned for scrum master, product owner, designers, developers, quality assurance and stakeholders. Document it for future benefits


• Define and publish a communication plan for the community of stakeholders


• Define backlog stories derived from basic analysis and user stories


• Prioritize backlog and communicate sprint release goals with stakeholders


• Plan your sprint – a scrum master is responsible for ensuring tasks are completed
  
  
  
  • Define sprint length – we plan for 10 days
  
  
  • The product owner should present stories to lead the team through the project proposal document, and define acceptance test criteria
  
  
  • Scrum master and QA should sit with the developer to confirm scope, expectations, and technical implementation details – including the QA level and documentation details.
  
  
  • Estimate the time – Scrum master, Developer and Product owner should decide based on discussions
  
  
  • Scrum master prepares a Scrum Board for tracking project activities
  
  
  • Daily scrum meetings should be planned – everyone should attend without fail
  
  
  • In Daily Scrum meetings – we normally take one story for the development, and design its solution. We also get updates of stories in progress, and identify-track-resolve blockers. We review the burn down chart and calculate time still required
  
  
  •  In sprint presentation stage – we review sprint status – basically health, discuss about areas need improvement, and changes required. We come to a agreement on how the next sprint will be run
  
  
  • The Demo normally goes through product owner – and we review the feedbacks received. The comments – improvement suggestions – and additional requirements will be added in backlog after an impact analysis
  
  
  
  

As you can see, the agile way of project management is almost same as website or any web application development – but the best thing is … it keeps us happy in developing … some kind of good professional way.

Project Status Reports

Regular status report is a necessary expectation from any stakeholder. A project manager is expected to decide, the frequency and format of this report. Ensure it satisfies these points

• What has been completed


• What has not been completed and why


• What is being done about the incomplete work


• What concerns, issues and risks remain  unsolved


• What needs to be done about these unsolved problems

I always suggest using a simple PPT, but few stakeholder s expect word / excel documents too. Fine, try these important elements in your reports and discuss with me, what else you usually expect.

• Slide 1: A graphical summery of overall process – Ex: Dashboard, Gantt Chart


• Slide 2: Completed Tasks, Milestones


• Slide 3: Not Completed Tasks – and Action points


• Slide 4: Issues/Concerns/Risks – and Action points


• Slide 5: List of milestones with due dates – in next reporting period

Estimations – Some best practices

Estimation is a decision about how much time and resources are required to carry out a piece of work to acceptable standards of performance. Fine, most of the project managers do this estimation practice, with the help of tech leads, or key team members. Here, I would like to share some best practices based on my experiences in estimation process.

• Schedule full-time team members at three and a half to four working (productive)days per week to allow for holidays, absences, and training sessions
• Always include management time where appropriate as an additional 10%
• In planning, avoid splitting tasks between individuals – when tasks are split between two individuals do not reduce the time by 50% - allow time for communication and coordination
• Take individual experience and ability into account
• Allow time for cross functional data transfer and responses
• Build in time for unscheduled urgent tasks arising on other non-project activities
• Build in spare time for problem solving and project meetings

For each key stage keep a record of
• Any assumptions made during estimations
• Where contingencies have been added & how much added.

What are the customer needs?

How do you meet the customer’s expectation? How to understand the needs of a customer clearly before producing project definition to them? Well, this is an important activity in any mobile application development project, but it is easy if you follow these simple steps.

• Understand your customer and business


• Understand the customer’s environment – technical & business beliefs


• Demonstrate your awareness of the customer’s technical and business needs


• Ensure Customer and End-user needs are aligned – see from different views


• Expose and hidden expectations – technical mostly

Milestone schedule – a view to success

The milestone is a flag or signal, at some clearly defined point in the project. The milestone flag indicates, that something special should have happened, or it is about to happen. The milestone is a point of control, placing target points in the project plan for certain events, to be signed off as completed.

Try to build a Milestone chart using these points and let’s discuss how it improved your planning.

• Completion of a Key Task – Example: Functional Analysis based on business requirements


• Completion of project deliverables – Example: First cut working demo, Database Design


• Stage for generation of benefits – Example: Reports


• Completion of third party significant event – Example: acceptance tests


• Completion of third party activity – Example: Delivery of equipment / Mobile


• Financial Audit Point


• Project Audit Point


• Quality Audit Point


• Significant decision point


• Completion of project stage to release further funding

How to satisfy your customer?

Recognize that customer expectations directly relate to customer satisfaction. Ensure that you are following these simple instructions.

• Serve them with professional competence


• Behave in a cooperative and friendly manner


• Understand the customer business and technical environment


• Understand the difficulties and constraints your customer face in real time business


• Always avoid springing negative surprises


• Always provide positive results, not excuse for poor performance

How to - Improving the Scrum Practice

Daily Scrum meeting alias Daily Standup meeting is an important element of Scrum Process Practice. It is usually a 15 minutes discussion and it makes everyone to answer three basic questions. "What did you do since the last meeting?", "What are you going to do until the next meeting?", "What impedes you from being more productive?". The purpose of this rigidness is for making sure that daily Scrum is to help team members synchronize between themselves, not to solve problems.

There are few quick improvement ideas below.

• Visual Progress Artifact board based discussion – ideally in front of the task board with the sprint and backlog.


• Everyone should attend – because this meeting should be utilized as a wide communication bandwidth as possible.


• Don’t take Notes – Take only micro notes by hand. Don’t use the laptop typing.


• Concentrate on "What are you going to do until the next meeting?", "What impedes you from being more productive?" – to figure out what’s blocking the efficient work and who could help it.

The above mentioned simple tips can be good starting points or reminders. However, every team knows best how to adjust its stand-ups to serve them better. The important part is the goal, not the method.

American Society for the Advancement of Project Management (ASAPM)

While discussing about the ethics in Project management through Facebook – one of my friends shared the below listed interesting information - I am just sharing the same for your views.

We, the members of asapm, in recognition of our personal obligation to our profession, to its members, and to the communities we serve, do hereby commit ourselves to the highest ethical and professional conduct and agree:

To maintain high standards of integrity and professional conduct, and to accept responsibility for our actions.

To avoid real or perceived conflicts of interest whenever possible, and to disclose them to affected parties when they do exist.

To be honest in representing our project management capability, and realistic in the application of project management.

To reject bribery in the conduct of our professional responsibilities.

To improve and promote the understanding of project management, of its appropriate application, and of its potential consequences.

To maintain and improve our project management capability.

To seek, accept, and offer honest criticism for the purpose of enhancing the project management body of work, and to credit properly the contributions of others.

To treat all persons fairly regardless of their race, religion, gender, disability, age, national origin, or other differences.

To avoid injuring others, their property, reputation, or employment by false or misleading words or action.

To assist colleagues and coworkers in their professional development and to support them in following this code of ethics.

Scope Management

Scope Management is an important knowledge area for PMP masters. It is all about making sure that the project includes only the work required to complete the project successfully. Here the success is Time + Quality + Content. To be effective in scope management, the manager must learn to control what is and what is not in the scope of the project. There are some best practices I learned from my discussions with many mangers in recent years.

1. Collect requirements in early stage itself and get a sign-off – It happens by clearly understanding the business of client, by understanding the needs of the stakeholders and the capabilities and constraints of our resources. I suggest interviews as best method of requirement collection. The manager must ask questions about stakeholder’s views of the finished product, the deliverables they expect to receive and mainly the schedule of the project.

2. Change Management Board – Change Control or Change Management board is a group of members including the key technical and management team of the project. The scope of the project should be well defined in a document and shared. Any amount of variation in the scope of the project can affect the project schedule, budget and ultimately the success of the project. The change request should first come into CCB for a discussion. The impact analysis results should be discussed. The approved Change should be published with its impact on other areas to all stakeholders. The change should be logged for any further clarifications. The roll-back scenarios should be planned.

There are more, lets discuss in coming days.

How to Motivate your Employees

The business success comes from a team of motivated, hard/smart working employees – in any small and medium size company. In a seminar, I attended few years ago – I noted few valuable points about this topic, and I would like to share them here.

Creating a Positive Environment – Every employee should feel worthwhile and important. Such office environment gives a positive energy to employees, and it makes a productive office. The manager’s office door should be always open for staffs – their questions and concerns.

Career oriented growth – The manager should help the employees to reach to the next level professionally by providing on-site coaching – through their day to day works. There is professional one-to-one counseling available, which can help people learn how to overcome personal and professional obstacles on their career path.

Acknowledge every contributions – A manager can make a very big difference in employee morale simply by taking the time to recognize the contributions and accomplishments of every members in team.

Incentives – Offering incentives to members for best performance is a good practice. It can be something small like a gift certificate, or something more such as performance based bonus. “Employee of the Month”, “Star Performer” kind of treats will help a lot in motivating employees.

In my experiences, I crossed many success stories in my team – of course by implementing the above mentioned ideas.

Project Management and Trends

Changing or additional requirements are the leading cause of project delays, according to the results of a recent Survey Says online poll by ProjectsAtWork. Project management practitioners also cite lack of stakeholder involvement and poor communication as common reasons that projects fall behind schedule.

The September 2010 poll found that 41 percent of respondents said that “additional or changing requirements” were the No. 1 reason for project delays, followed by “lack of stakeholder involvement or knowledge” (30 percent) and “poor communication” (24 percent). Only 5 percent said “new or unfamiliar processes or technologies” were a cause for project delays.

Asked to choose the No. 2 reason for project delays, 35 percent of respondents chose changing requirements, followed by poor communication (29 percent), lack of stakeholder involvement (21 percent) and unfamiliar processes (14 percent).

Conflict Management – Key Guidelines for Managers

Conflict Management in Office Workspace is a critical challenge for many managers – including me. Conflict is when two or more values, perspectives and opinions are contradictory in nature and haven't been aligned or agreed about yet, including:

1. Within yourself when you're not living according to your values;
2. When your values and perspectives are threatened; or
3. Discomfort from fear of the unknown or from lack of fulfillment.

Conflict is inevitable and often good, for example, good teams always go through a "form, storm, norm and perform" period. Getting the most out of diversity means often-contradictory values, perspectives and opinions.

"Conflict is not the same as discomfort. The conflict isn't the problem - it is when conflict is poorly managed that is the problem."

Conflict becomes a severe problem when it:
1. Hampers productivity.
2. Lowers morale.
3. Causes more and continued conflicts.

In my experiences, the primary managerial actions that cause Workplace conflicts are Poor communications and leadership problems.

Poor communication makes the following causes.
a. Employees experience continuing surprises, they aren't informed of new decisions, programs, etc.
b. Employees don't understand reasons for decisions, they aren't involved in decision-making.
c. As a result, employees trust the "rumor mill" more than management.

Leadership problems including inconsistent, missing, too-strong or uninformed leadership (at any level in the organization), evidenced by:
a. Avoiding conflict, "passing the buck" with little follow-through on decisions.
b. Employees see the same continued issues in the workplace.
c. Supervisors don't understand the jobs of their subordinates.

Fine, these all happens with most of the situations – but how to manage it. My mentor suggested few Key Managerial Actions / Structures to Minimize Conflicts. I am listing them below.
1. Regularly review job descriptions.
2. Intentionally build relationships with all subordinates and discuss about accomplishments, plans, challenges and issues.
3. Develop procedures for routine tasks and include the employees' input - review with employees, and distribute it. If required provide training.
4. Regularly hold management meetings, for example, every month, to communicate new initiatives and status of current programs.
5. Consider an anonymous suggestion box in which employees can provide suggestions.

More few ways for Conflict Management – from the people I discussed about this challenge. Actually, there is no one best way to deal with conflict. It depends on the current situation.
1. Avoid it. Pretend it is not there or ignore it.
2. Accommodate it. Give in to others, sometimes to the extent that you compromise yourself.
3. Competing. Work to get your way, rather than clarifying and addressing the issue. Competitors love accommodators.
4. Compromising. Mutual give-and-take
5. Collaborating. Focus on working together.

The case by case challenges can give us more lessons – learning it solves many issues, and makes us good managers in future.

Executive EPMO Dashboards

Executive Dashboards are key IT requirements now days in many EPMO Groups. It is a tool that provides you with a graphical view of the progress of your project, so that you can see at a glance whether you're on track. It's basically a set of Charts that gives you the current status of the project at any time. You can create the Charts manually in Excel, or use smart software that does it for you.

Recently I delivered design specification for a client, for their Executive EPMO dashboard application. Let me share some observations regarding constructing a dashboard, so that it can be helpful for those, who are into same kind of processes.

Define the success criteria of Project: list the things that determine the success of your project – for example schedule, quality, resource loading, budget tracking, key milestones etc.

Collect required data from real time: The project data needed to measure the success criteria we have already defined. The data can come from project plans, quality reports, issue spreadsheets, budget reports, Timesheets, Change/Issue/Risk Logs etc.

Model Graphical Views: Filter your data, sort them into groups and file it all in one place – mostly a database. Use Reporting engines to generate appropriate graphical views. There are many available for .NET and Java based platforms. I see many for PHP / Open source too.

Let’s see some most wanted Charts required in Executive EPMO Dashboard.

Time Charts: Required for schedule tracking. Planned versus actual completion status for key milestones can be showed. Critical Paths and their status can be added here. Summarized view of this data will help to find out whether the project is ahead of behind schedule. A detailed Task level progress chart can be a presented in drill-down manner. Group them in “Not Started”, “Not Completed”, “In-Progress” and “Complete” - and show dependencies always.

Budget / Cost Chart: Required for Budget Management. I suggest calculating the total cost of resources, materials, equipments and any expense forms completed by staff and present them single view. Earned value, Cost comparison charts can also be added.

Resource Usage: This report can be generated from Project plans. The resource graphs from project plans gives us clear view about over-loaded or underutilized resourced.

Risk Reports: Give a graphical view of Risks, Issues and changes that will have impact on delivery timelines. Show dependencies wherever required. This report can be generated from Log Files. The data in graphical view should be grouped as low, medium and high impact.

There are many Executive Dashboards available in online for reference – I suggest projectmanager.com – just give a try.

Let us discuss more about defining best practices in working with Dashboard development in near future.

Success in Fixed Bid Projects

Improving the success rate of fixed bid Projects is a challenge for any project manager in IT services. Most of the service projects come with tight deadline and requirements unfreeze. In my experience, in most of the small and medium size organizations, the pre-sales and sales team decides the timeline based on their rough estimations. The project comes to project manager as a semi-finished document, with fixed final delivery date. The success rate improves with quality management, scope management, communications management, and of course Issue management. Let us discuss few important points, which can help the project managers to achieve success rate in their fixed bid projects. This can be applied to T&M, and Retainer projects too, based on few or no modifications.

1. In the project Initiation meeting, make sure that your customer defines their requirements in detail – at the maximum level. You need to know exactly what it is that must be delivered, to whom and when. Try to make it specific, write it up formally and get them sign it off. This document will become the basis upon which to measure your success.

2. Try to involve your customer throughout the entire project lifecycle – including analysis and planning as well as executions. Inform about every status, including the risks. This helps us to manage their expectations. Make sure the communication is happening with right information at right time. Weekly status reports, regular weekly calls and use defined templates as much as possible.

3. Plan your delivery timelines short and more realistic. I suggest never agree to lengthy timelines. If possible, split your project into “mini-phases” – and keep them short – less than 4 weeks. This keeps everyone motivated and focused on targets. Let every “mini-phase” include a milestone and add delivery deadlines to your milestones. Try to deliver the commitment on every deadline, no matter what. If you can’t deliver, inform your customer about it as early as possible and give them realistic re-scheduled plan.

4. Organize a small change control board which includes your sales team, account manager and customer. Only authorize changes to your project scope if there is no impact on immediate and final timelines. Get approval from Change control board and then get their buy-in to extend the delivery dates if you need to.

5. Let the Quality be the most important achievement anytime. Keep it high with your deliverables as much as possible. Constantly review quality and never let it slip. Implement “peer-reviews”, external reviews, and web-Ex demos with customer to improve the solution, and to meet your customer’s needs.

6. For every phase – including the mini-phases, with their integrated phases – hand it formally over to customers and get them to sign an acceptance form to say that it meets their expectations. It makes your deliverable 100% complete.

7. Issues Management is an important phase – in support level. Plan about handling your issues and risks as soon as they are identified. Prioritize and resolve them before any impact in project. If required, prepare a separate issue management plan and publish regular burn-down chart.

Share with me, your experiences and techniques in improving success rate of fixed bid projects. It can help us to discuss more.

PMO for Medium Size Organizations

PMO – Project Management Office is becoming an interesting keyword now days in many medium size organizations too. When a project manager hears that PMP is going to be established, the first thought would be “MORE ADMIN WORKS”. Actually … NO it is NOT.

Let’s see the Top 7 advantages of PMO in medium size organizations

1. Improve project portfolio management. A PMO can help you select the mix of projects that will most effectively meet strategic objectives. IT leaders need to make sure that their IT projects are not in a silo, but connected to the company's larger objectives.

2. Provide project support. A PMO can be a conduit for project management guidance to project managers in other business units. Think about the pockets of project management excellence that you have and how powerful it would be to spread the expertise around.

3. Create a project management process and methodology. A PMO can develop and implement a consistent, standardized process so that you aren't constantly reinventing the wheel.

4. Conduct training. A PMO can build training programs and develop a staff of program managers who can manage multiple projects across the enterprise. This is especially important for IT leaders in a world where technology is a critical part of an organization's efficiency.

5. Establish a home base for project managers. A PMO can create a centralized office from which project managers operate as a cohesive team that works across the organization.

6. Become internal consultants and mentors. A PMO becomes valuable when it can share best practices and help to educate managers throughout a company.

7. Assess project management software tools. Part of a PMO's job is to select and maintain project management software that will be useful for the capabilities of the staff.

PMO creates work with a value – in fact a meaningful work. It needs to be a living breathing system within any organization. The overall control and accountability are important outcomes.

EPMO – Status Reporting

The EPMO status reporting process is a method for reporting and reviewing project / portfolio status within the framework of a program or project management office.

The basic process steps are –
• Collect Project Status information – Discuss with Plan Owners
• Transfer Project Status line
• Update Project Actual in MSP
• Generate Verification Report
• Review Verification Report with stakeholders
• Revise Project Actual in MSP
• Generate Project Performance Report – Project level / Account Level
• Analyze schedules and Status information
• Review Status with stakeholders

Required Tools
• MS Project Professional Server and Client Tools
• MS Office [Powerpoint, Excel etc]
• Sharepoint Server

Do these for efficiency in results
• Always use your MS-Project status information for reports
• Review reports with stakeholders and discuss + escalate risks
• Publish performance reports and discuss about improvement for productivity
• Publish RAG Status Reports for Backlog and Dependencies
• Publish status reports, revised schedules, Risks and Issues in common share-point portal – include clients to provide better visibility.

Using EPMO Reporting in efficient way improves the deliverable performance, limits the risks, and provides valuable visibility to stakeholders.

Enterprise Program Management Office

In recent days, whenever I introduce myself to anyone as EPMO project planning manager, they ask - “What is EPMO?” - :-). Enterprise Program Management Office is really new to many of the small and medium size organizations, because of less experience in such big projects. Let me take this opportunity to discuss few major points about EPMO and its operations here.

What is EPMO, and its responsibilities?

As a quick view Enterprise Program Management Office helps to speed up project implementations within existing company guidelines and improves efficiency in the realizations of the business delivery.

The main responsibilities of an EPMO regarding the different programs are basically

1. Strategic Resource Planning
2. Inter-project co-ordination
3. Overall project oversight
4. Cost estimations
5. Contingency planning
6. Quality Assurance
7. Resource Management
8. Professional Development
9. Coaching & Guidance of Management
10. Process and Change Management
11. Tool Support and Training

In our future articles, let’s discuss more about every single functional sections of EPMO…

Professional communications

Now days, the Indian economy is getting better after the big bad recession times. It is good for everyone to get into business. Everything goes fine in many small and medium size organizations – but I feel adding little more values in good communication makes most of the work flow, and performance even better. I would like to share few suggestions here about building a good communication for small and medium size business clients’ management.

1. A simple communication plan should contain following information

a. Stakeholder Information – I prefer to have names, email IDs and phone numbers

b. The objectives, schedules and mode of communication – what information will be communicated in what schedules. For example: Weekly Status Calls, Status Reports, monthly reports, Issues and risks discussions, etc.

2. Use your minutes of meeting document

a. Have a clear agenda – this saves times in meetings

b. Summary of Discussions – important comments from stakeholders

c. Action Items and Status monitoring

d. Have an action Item log for continuous follow ups and results

3. Weekly Status Report

a. I prefer to have content from Project plan here.

b. What is completed, what is re-scheduled and what is not completed / not started should be informed. Not started and not completed should be rescheduled and communicated.

c. Achieved milestones should be mentioned

d. Issues, Risks and concerns should be notified

e. Important decisions made by stakeholders should be added in every week status report

4. Customer Calls – Conference calls, Mobile Calls

a. I suggest to take calls as much as possible from inside closed room – this gives chances to listen clear and white board important points

b. Listen carefully – most of client communications will not be clear enough – sometimes, language, sometimes their way of presentations and sometimes because of their understanding of situations. [This is based on my personal experience J]

c. Talk loud and clear – Don’t talk fast – be slow, and if required get confirmations for his understanding

d. Record your call – if possible.

e. Circulate Minutes of Meeting as early as possible after the call

Note: Re-post from SiliconIndia Blog

6 Microsoft Office Live Workspace Services for Better Project Management

Every project - regardless of its complexity and budget, requires lots of planning, organization, co-ordination and communication between members. In early days we used MS-Excel for scheduling and tracking tasks and member activities, after few years - it moved to MS-Project standalone and MS-project server editions. Now days, there are many small and medium size organizations, working into Web 2.0 and Mobile Development projects and their investment is less – practically the implementation of project management server is becoming a costly thing. But they have requirements to plan, organize and share contents with stakeholders. Microsoft Office Live workspace helps here with lots of useful services – all for FREE.

1. Visit here [http://workspace.officelive.com/en-GB/ ] and use your Office Live ID or MSN ID to log-in. Don’t have an ID – No problem. Create a new ID for FREE.

2. Free Web Space to Store and Share Documents – It is good to store and share your SRS Documents, Bug Reports, Log Files, Specification documents in one place. Microsoft Office Live Workspace helps you with 5 GB space. You can Store your documents, Sheets, scripts and Presentations and share them with access limitations – if required. You can also use this space to deploy your content to clients – Just like an FTP.

3. There are many free Pre-built template Web-spaces available for quick start. You can choose from one of them and start working on documents. For every new project I suggest to have separate Workspaces.

4. You can create Small Notes, Lists, Tasks Lists, Contact Lists, Event Lists
a. Small Notes – helps you for quick information storage – I suggest this for instructions management – for example: Release notes, Updates in current build etc.
b. Lists – General list – it can be books list for reference, web links, or sample data for testing etc.
c. Tasks List – Create a simple Work Breakdown Structure of Tasks and set priority with due dates. You can share this with your tea m and stakeholders. It helps to give better visibility of planned works to everyone.
d. Contact List – Store Phone numbers, Email IDs and share them for quick reference.
e. Event List – Schedules of your releases, builds, holidays, milestones etc.

5. You can also store, edit and share familiar MS word, MS Excel and MS Power-point files.

6. For Quick communications – use comments pane. Add comments and it is visible to everyone. Use this for instructions, quick requests etc.

7. You can use “Add Documents” for uploading files from your Desktop. It can be shared via a centralized workspace.

I hope this will help many project leaders to handle their projects and deliver things efficiently.