Avoid Project Crashes: File a Flight Plan First! By Jigs Gaton, PM / Pilot First, let’s step back 30,000 feet We all know the drill as we start projects: pick or subserve to some PM methodology, gather your resources, erect lines of communication, etc. Agile, Waterfall, Bootcamp, Basecamp, whatever, we always begin there. But what […]

Is It Worth the Effort? In Daniel Defoe’s novel of Robinson Crusoe and his adventures at sea, a notable quote stands out: “[N]ow I [see], though too late, the folly of beginning a work before we count the cost, and before we judge rightly of our own strength to go through with it.” Judging from […]

  Putting Face-to-Face Meetings on Pause: A How-to for Project Managers Tips for Running a Successful Remote Project Meeting One of the biggest advantages of a face-to-face project meeting is that you and your team are collaborating in real-time, full-frontal, leaving little room for misunderstandings or misinterpretations. For example, in a traditional meeting, you and […]

Agile project management is an iterative and incremental approach to delivering requirements throughout the project life cycle.

Introducing Erix – Your New PM Assistant! HELLO WORLD, and welcome to the 4th wave of the Industrial Revolution. This latest iteration of tech is marked by voice-activated AI, expanded robotics, IoT, autonomous vehicles and more… including software that solves tough problems – as well as performing menial or repetitive tasks best offloaded to a virtual […]

Affiliate Marketing: what you need to know… Affiliates. Partners. Affiliate-Partners. Influencers. Marketeers, Brand Ambassadors, Bloggers, Vloggers, and in the olden days, Evangelists. All words similar in meaning and application, but what do they all mean, and why should you care? Well, to begin, folks selling a product, service or promoting an idea (other than their own) […]

  Build a Team, and Get More Work Done! We know that teamwork is important, whatever the project. We’ve learned to work with others, communicate better and in general, work collectively. But does your software help you facilitate team-building? Well, Project Plan 365 does just that, right out of the box. Watch the video and/or […]

  What’s New in the October 2019 Update… Hello World! In 1978, programmer Brian Kernighan coined the now famous digital characters ‘Hello, World’ in his landmark book on how to better code software. Since then, developers have learned to incessantly look for better ways to write code, and to provide better software – version after […]

  The PMO, Reimagined Historically speaking… The Project Management Office, or as known in the biz as a PMO, has been evolving within large and medium-size organizations for centuries. However, as with everything else corporate, new technologies are changing the face and features of the typical PMO found within. PMOs are now popping up within […]

Risk management is a fundamental part of any project management regimen, and if you are not following a process for managing any potential risks you may encounter along the way, you are in serious risk yourself; as risk not mitigated during the rollout of a project is a primary cause of project failure today.

Simple Calendaring in Project Plan 356 When scheduling a project in either Microsoft Project or Project Plan 365, you can change the calendar for your project, i.e. the days your work is ongoing – or not! In fact, you can tailor calendars in many ways, for example, you can have unique calendars for people (resources), […]

What is a Baseline? A baseline is generically known as a value or condition against which future measurements can be compared. Within the context of project management, these values and conditions are the project’s scope, cost and schedule. A project baseline can be thought of as a “snapshot” of a project’s initial condition, just before […]

  How New Technology, Better Collaboration, Simulations and Modular Designs Make for Project Success: An Examination of Nuclear Submarine Building Some of the largest and most expensive projects completed of late have been fraught with huge time & cost overruns. These unexpected delays and expenses cause partial or full project failures with much hardship for […]

What is a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)? A work breakdown structure or WBS is a common term in project management. The concept is used each time a new project is designed — and is best thought out before entering any data into a .MPP file. Yet even though the WBS is an important construct to […]

Cloud Basics for Project Managers Over the past decade or so, the concept of ‘cloud’ has become synonymous with a place where we store all things work-related (such as documents and data). In many cases, a ‘cloud’ represents the place where we work (i.e. within a digital workspace like SharePoint or Project Plan 365). For […]

Tracking Costs & Budgeting Projects using Project Plan 365 During the formulation and implementation of your team’s project schedule, your team has most likely discussed the budget, and might have asked the following: how much money are we going to spend? How is the money to be spent? What happens when new costs arise…how are […]

  Getting to Microsoft Project – on a Mac! If you are a project manager using Apple devices, then you know that a PC-bias still exists in the software industry, especially when it comes to anything Microsoft Project. But in 2019, we have options. While most all software manufactures provide versions of their apps and […]

  New Logo, New Direction… Project Plan 365 and Project Viewer 365 are undergoing dramatic changes for 2019 and beyond, and this post explains why… When we first started out with our viewer tool, we were mainly focused on providing users with a new and better way to view their Microsoft Project plans (.MPP files). Since […]

  Are you frustrated with spreadsheet-based project plans? Do you struggle when creating, editing or updating spreadsheets used as project plans and schedules? Figuring out formulas got you down? Has sharing project data via spreadsheets become cumbersome or untenable during the life of your project? If you answered YES to any of the above, then […]

  How to use mind maps to create a WBS… Mind-mapping (or as it is also known, concept mapping) is a proven method and technology for organizing your thinking, no matter what you are thinking about. Students learn this technique in school these days, so that term papers and research reports are better thought out […]

Calling all Project Management Students & Educators! If you are a student at university or enrolled in any other Project Management (PM) training, then this article is for you. For example, if you are a PMI student striving for PMP® certification or a graduate student studying for the Georgetown Master’s in Project Management degree, then […]

Turbo-charging Your PM Tools for Better Construction Productivity According to Mckinsey Research, the number one laggard in global productivity for the past several decades has been the Construction Industry, which even falls well below the total economic average for just about everything. This dismal state of affairs comes on the eve of what is expected […]

  Leverage your Microsoft Project Investment Increasingly, fellow Mac users come to me with this common challenge: how to open, edit, view or even print MPP files (the file format for Microsoft Project) when using standalone versions of Microsoft Project. After researching the problem, I found that Microsoft flat out does not provide a solution, […]

  The Importance of Resource Calendaring With so many projects of late either failing, partially failing or coming in way over budget, those of us in the business of managing projects are concerned, and rightly so. The reason for project failures and cost bloats are many fold, and this article only covers one problem that […]