In a previous post i talked about how useful a Wiki is within a project and how opening up a wiki and expecting team members to use it productively will probably not give you the best results.

Once you figured out which wiki tool to leverage ( if any ) and have rolled it out within your project the next big challenge is to promote its use.

Some considerations:

• Well, the biggest step to overcome is the inertia. Users seldom want to contribute when they see a completely blank space. Start putting up some of your own content and talk to a few of your team members to help build it into something substantial that you can then showcase to the rest of your team.
• Please keep in mind that being a corporate wiki every contribution made to it is tracked, there is no such thing as anonymity. Once you get over this hurdle you can leverage the fact that it is a great way to promote an individual as a knowledge creator.
• Don’t put too many rules and structures in place at the beginning, this is a sure way to derail the entire process. Allow your team the flexibility to grow the wiki the way they want it to. If you feel at any point that it is getting unmanageable you can always step in.
• The Wiki should be the first place your team looks for information, which means do not keep copies of this information sitting around in other places.
• Don’t expect an immediate return - A wiki takes time to grow.
• Educate your team - Take them through the entire process of creating an article on the wiki so they understand how it works. Do not make the mistake of assuming that just because everyone has seen Wikipedia they know how to use a wiki.
• Allow people to make mistakes and deviate from the “norm” - This is a creative process that will take some time to evolve, encourage a level of experimentation and allow your team to make mistakes. That is the only way they will learn how to use this effectively.
• Promote the wiki whenever you can

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Doing things better and in less time seems to be a standard requirement of most clients in long term maintenance engagements.

The thought process here is - you’ve spent the past year figuring out what we do and how we do it so now you need to to it little bit better - and this story continue year in and year out.

So while the organization at large agrees to this in principle ( i.e: the wordy contracts and service level agreements ) its’ up the Project Manager to actually make good on this promise.

The challenge now is to fine tune existing processes and this is where your team comes in. The more heads you put together to figure out a better way of doing things the better your results are going to be ( well most of the time anyway ).

In one such project they set up something called the innovation challenge. Here, employees were asked to suggest process changes that could improve the efficiency of the system and in some extreme cases suggest which processes could be retired.

This serves two purposes, your team can now speak up about changes they feel need to be made or archaic and impractical process that need to be done away with, and the fact that if their change is accepted they get the recognition of helping to achieve a few goals.

You can do this both informally or formally, you might need to put together a panel that evaluates these suggestions before any of them are put into place. Let’s face it, changing an organization process is not the simplest thing to do!

The benefits of doing this correctly:

• Improvement to the processes within the project and hopefully within the organization as well
• Will lead to meeting and in some cases exceeding the service level agreements in the project
• An increased understanding of the process in the organization by your team.
• Motivation by your team as they are contributing to something larger than the project and the recognition that comes with getting it right.
• Appreciation from the client.

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How important is it to get the Customer Involved during the execution of a project? And I don’t mean superficially. Instead, have the customer working with you every step of the way to ensure that together a solid solution is delivered.

Now, while I do understand that this is very difficult to accomplish in most cases as you have to deal with a variety of customers. For e.g: Those that expect to hand over everything to you and wash their hands of things, those that haven’t the faintest idea of what they want and so on.

Having experienced a bit of both there is something to be said about working hand in hand with that one customer who wants to build a partnership rather than just a client - vendor relationship and develop something that both parties can be proud of.

Domain Knowledge and an understanding of how the customer does business plays a huge role in delivering a successful service. Therefore it is in the best interests of the project team to get the customer involved in the building process. Soliciting inputs and clarifying positions are a necessity of doing such work and while we do try to restrict everything to the first phase of the project there are cases where issues need to be revisited during the course of development.

Visualization sessions are another great tool to use when doing business with the customer, integrate this into your project plan and at fixed intervals show the customer how the solution is evolving. This will give them a great understanding of what the end product will look like as well as helping you clarify questions that your team might have.

We have all dealt with changes that crop up right at the end of a project and this becomes a powerful tool to maybe mitigate some of that risk.

Some of the benefits of developing a close working relationship with the customer:

• Greater project success
• Increased ownership from the customer
• A decrease in the potential for misunderstandings.
• Greater value-adds and possibly better outputs as a result of more people working together.
• Less effort wasted in last minute changes.

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Successfully managing enterprise knowledge yields big dividends. The 2008 Global MAKE Winners trading on the NYSE/NASDAQ showed a Total Return to Shareholders (TRS) for the ten-year period 1997-2007 of 16.3% – over twice the average Fortune 500 company median.

Some of the findings that the report threw up:

•     By the year 2012, there will be 3-5 global companies in each of the major business sectors. Consolidation is rapidly occurring in the automotive, computer, consulting, defense, energy, information technology, Internet, media and pharmaceutical sectors. Those companies with strong knowledge-driven strategies are most likely to survive and prosper.
•     The capability to innovate and manage enterprise intellectual capital are seen as the competitive advantages across a wide range of business sectors.
•     Asian knowledge-driven organizations now are competing on an equal knowledge ‘footing’ with their European and North American counterparts.
•     A growing number of organizations are taking on ‘Global’ characteristics – especially consulting and professional services firms, financial services, energy and media companies.  These ‘Global’ organizations tend to operate as ‘independent’ companies within a Federal structure and without the traditional corporate head office.

- 2008, MAKE Awards

The executive summary reports that you can download are:

• The 2008 Global MAKE Executive Summary
• The 2008 Asia MAKE Executive Summary
• The 2008 Japan MAKE Executive Summary
• The 2008 India MAKE Executive Summary
• The 2008 Europe MAKE Executive Summary
• The 2008 North America MAKE Executive Summary

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Ensuring that you execute projects on time and with high quality is just a small part of making sure your customers are happy. A lot goes into managing a successful engagement apart from what is “stated”.

Setting expectations is one such activity, ensure that the client knows exactly what you are going to deliver. This does not mean having someone sign off on requirements documentation, while contractually you might be in the clear it does not mean the client is happy with what he got.

Unstated expectations can ruin an engagement and the next time this customer has some work he will look to someone else to carry it out.

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

Transparency and constant communication is essential as this ensures everyone is on the same page.

If there is a problem let the customer know and also make sure you have a plan in place to handle the issue. Leaving issues to the last minute and then telling your client will only make matters worse.

While formal communication forums like weekly status meetings are important it does not mean these are the only times when issues should be brought up. Clearing the air earlier will solve a lot of headaches instead if you were to unload a whole host of issues on them during the weekly status meeting.

Establishing a well planned operational process with customer’s concurrence where you clearly identify roles/ responsibilities and dependencies is essential to a project success.

Thing to keep in mind

Always work with the customer to meet his needs instead of just what they’ve put down on paper, this will result in higher satisfaction and an opportunity to perhaps get more business down the road.

Ensure that you have the necessary authorization to proceed at various stages in the project, do not assume. Decisions like these can come back to haunt you later.

Never shirk responsibility or play the blame game. Step up and take ownership of problems that arise, your customers will respect you for that.

Conduct workshops/ brainstorming sessions with active participation from the customer’s organization when faced with issues that requires inputs/ concurrence from multiple stakeholders.

Be Proactive!

Benefits:

• Increasing Client Satisfaction
• Increasing the chance of ensuring your project is successful ( on-time and within the budget )
• Strengthens the relationship with your customer. ( Promotes a partner ship with the customer instead of just a client - vendor relationship )
  
• Increased awareness amongst your team on what the client wants ( stated and unstated expectations )

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I’ve been a little lax in updating my blog in the last few months and have decided to start again with renewed vigour, i hope.  The first post is a quick look at the Project Office.net application that is designed to target the PM community.

For the last few months I have been familiarizing myself with the Project Management Tool ProjectOffice.net and found that it is a very simple and easy to use product.

They have an exhaustive feature list ( that continues to grow )  that will take a few weeks to dissect and what really makes it impressive is the fact this is a product that undergoes revision constantly to provide better value.

So what does ProjectOffice.net Offer?

• Virtual office - The concept of ProjectOffice.net is based on spaces. Imagine that you work in your own office, however if you have to work with John you will go in his office and work there. Each space in ProjectOffice.net represents each office where you work at, except that you don’t have to actually go anywhere.
• Project management - Creating and managing projects has never been easier. With ProjectOffice.net all relevant project attributes are easily defined. Also, a visual representation of each project is presented with the Gantt chart.
• Task management - For each project unlimited number of tasks can be created, also subtasks, predecessors and milestones can be set. Additionally, every team member assigned to a task can update the time spent working on the task.
• Import projects from MS Excel - If you use MS Excel 2003/2007 to create your tasks or enter team members’ time, it is time you start to use a real project management solution that will make your team’s work easier and more productive. Thus, import your projects, tasks and already reported time as it is in Excel and get a better visual presentation of your project status.
• Add/import contacts - Keep all important contacts in a single location. With ProjectOffice.net you can add your contacts or import them from Yahoo, MS Outlook 2003/2007, Gmail, Hotmail, AOL as well as from the resource pool in your space.
• Resource management - In ProjectOffice.net the resource pool is defined at space level, so the project managers can assign them at various projects and tasks in a single step. Resources can also be activated or deactivated in a space depending on the company needs.
• Time management - Every team member updates task progress on a daily basis and submits the timesheet to the project owner for approval. Also, overtime and grand total are automatically calculated. Moreover, time-off requests for various reasons can be submitted for approval.
• Expense management -  ProjectOffice.net allows reporting expenses at a basic level. Besides the general expense, subexpenses can be added. After submission the project owner approves or rejects the expense request.
• Issue tracking - Important characteristic of successful project management is tracking the inevitable issues that always emerge along the way. With the issue tracking system that ProjectOffice.net has, issues can be associated with particular projects and tasks and can be assigned to the responsible team member.
• Wiki collaboration - Project collaboration is critical to successful project management. Creating and editing wikis in ProjectOffice.net provides each team member with the opportunity to become an active contributor in sharing knowledge with the rest of the project team.
• Reporting - General project reports requested from our users are now available in ProjectOffice.net: General overview, project summary and milestones list.Soon to come are more predefined as well as custom made reports.
• Search - If you can’t find certain information the search functionality searches all over the application as well is inside of every attached document.
• Project templates - Project managers do not have to waste time and create recurring projects every time since ProjectOffice.net offers predefined templates that can be used when needed. Also, project managers can save their own projects as templates for further use.
• Data privacy/Permissions - Data in ProjectOffice.net is secured and can be viewed only by project managers/team members/guests who are assigned to the particular project or task. Moreover, if you want to give your clients with the opportunity to supervise a project, you can invite them as guests in the project.
• Dashboard - The Dashboard in ProjectOffice.net is the central place where an overall summary from all tabs in all spaces is presented. What is most important is that every user can customize the Dashboard to his likes.
• SSL secured data - All information stored in ProjectOffice.net is secured with a SSL certificate which prevents any possibility of privacy invasion, data theft or data loss.

A complete overview of the features is available here. and I would recommend setting up a free account and experimenting with it.

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After the huge uproar caused by Faceboooks’ change in their terms of use the company has decided to tread very cautiously in this direction and have created the “Facebook Bill of Rights & Responsibilities “. This group gained close to 75000 members within just a day of its opening.

The focus here is for the group to revise the terms of use to ensure its written in a clean language and is not ambiguous.

“It will reflect the principles I described yesterday around how people share and control their information,” Zuckerberg said, “and it will be written clearly in language everyone can understand. Since this will be the governing document that we’ll all live by, Facebook users will have a lot of input in crafting these terms.”

There has been a lot thought that has gone to ensure that the user community is kept happy. Users will continue to own their content and when an account is deleted or deactivated this will promptly delete all user information.  Facebook is going out of its way to ensure that users do not get the impression that they will use any information from their profile pages.

“We apologize for the confusion around these issues,” the group administrators said. “We never intended to claim ownership over people’s content, even though that’s what it seems like to many people. This was a mistake and we apologize for the confusion.”

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Brandon LeBlanc explained the nature of the updates in a blog posting Thursday:

Starting February 24, we will be releasing up to 5 test updates to PCs running the Windows 7 Beta (Build 7000) via Windows Update. These updates allow us to test and verify our ability to deliver and manage the updating of Windows 7. We typically verify servicing scenarios during a beta.

Windows 7 Beta users will be notified that new updates are available beginning February 24 through Windows Update. Even if the user has Windows Update configured for automatic update - these test updates will not install automatically. Users will need to manually install the test updates through Windows Update.

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