Top 5 Software Project Management Mistakes

Software projects are hard. Running out of time and budget is the norm, rather than the exception.

How can you prevent your project from ending in disaster?

Here are the top 5 mistakes you should avoid:

1. Following the Waterfall model

The Waterfall development model has long been considered fundamentally flawed for software development. It works for engineering projects in the physical world, but software development is very different from building a house.

Using the Waterfall model assumes that you know absolutely everything about the final system, before you even start.

Software is a living, ever-changing organism that grows and responds to changing needs and specifications.

A much better model is iterative development. This breaks the lifecycle of software down into many "mini-waterfall" phases that help you respond effectively to ongoing changes.

2. Insufficient upfront planning

In contrast, following an iterative process can sometimes lead to lack of sufficient upfront planning. It is tempting to start writing code on day one, before the problem is fully understood.

Instead, earlier iterative phases should focus on creating high-level documents explaining the "big picture" and major problems the software aims to solve. Depending on the complexity of the software, it doesn't need to be a full functional specification. It should simply have enough information to make sure everyone on the team understands what the software is supposed to do.

Next, it helps to rough out layout and interface details using mockups or wireframes.

Finally, before full implementation, it pays to build a "working prototype" that contains most of the user interface, but perhaps not all of the backend. This allows users to try things out and make suggestions when the cost of change is low.

3. Overly optimistic estimates

Programmers are notoriously optimistic when it comes to estimating how long programming tasks will take.

I blame this primarily on the "Programmer Optimism Curve" (POC) that I describe in the popular "You are not 90% done" article. This results from the actual scope being larger (often 4-8X) than originally expected.

I recommend being prudent and following these 5 steps to estimate software development time.

4. Adding too many people

Ever since the dawn of software development, managers have assumed that building software is just like building things in the physical world.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In 1975, a brilliant computer scientist named Fred Brooks wrote a book called "The Mythical Man Month".

One of his many observations was that for a complex process like software development, you should keep your team as small as possible to reduce the total number of communication channels.

In fact, "Brook's Law" states that "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later," followed by the cheeky "Nine women can't make a baby in one month."

This holds true now just as much as it did when he wrote about it in the mid-70s.

5. Incorrect use of todo lists

Projects to-do lists often end up as a brain dump of specifications, questions to be answered, unapproved features, and miscellaneous chores that need to be done.

As I summarized in my personal blog, the best practices to make a to-do list work are:

• Using verbs
• Being specific
• Grouping by context
• Focusing on next

For a detailed account of why most todo lists don't work, and how to manage them better, be sure to read David Allen's "Getting Things Done" (GTD).

Summary and recommendations

In conclusion, to avoid making these common mistakes:

1. Use an Iterative development model, not Waterfall
2. Do enough upfront planning
3. Make realistic time estimates
4. Keep your team small
5. Use the GTD methodology for todo lists

Following these guidelines will give your project the best chance of success.

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About the author: Jason Hanley has been developing commercial software since high school, and is the founder of PMRobot.com.

5 ways to lose your job by "going agile"

 Yes, this is written from personal experience. With previous employer, I went to bat for the benefits of Agile project management. Though leaving was not a direct result of that effort, the relationship capital that I spent had a huge impact on my ability to add value. Eventually, I was clearly unhappy, they were clearly unhappy and we fairly amicably went our separate ways.

That said, the remainder of this post won't be written it in the first person. Doing so would  introduce too much of my own biases. Also, some of these points are slightly exaggerated from the actual occurrence so don't assume I'm as dumb as all that. 

I hope is that these hard-won lessons can be helpful to you in creating the change you want to see in your organization.  Regardless of  who you are or where you work, either as a project manager or team member;  in a large enterprise or a small consulting shop, in digital marketing or software development, I bet there's at least one pitfall I can help you avoid.

1. Complain about the current system

If you’re laboring under something like waterfall, or  a basic lack of project management processes, you can probably see that the grass is greener on the Agile side. If you're really antsy about it, you’ve probably read tons of great material at mountaingoatsoftware.com or maybe agilemarketing.net, and you know that things could be better.

Awesome, you are almost undeniably correct. But so what?

Bitching and moaning about the status quo is not a good way to create organizational change. Instead it’s a great way to create a rift within your team. Some of these people were involved in creating the current processes, conscious or not. Beating up on the these process doesn't make you look smarter than everyone else, it makes you look like you think you're smarter than everyone else.

Negativity begets pessimism. If you focus on what’s not working about your current project management processes, the natural tendency is to look for the downsides of any alternatives as well. Instead, paint a picture of the possibilities that you see for your team going agile.

2. Be stealthy

So, you’re using positivity to draw a compelling vision to get people on your side. Unless you’re an exceptional salesperson, you’re almost certain to get some push back. It can be frustrating. You might be tempted to just put up a taskboard in your office one day, in the hope that the value of making work visible will be immediately appreciated.

That can even work to some extent, it is really cool to actually see all the work in progress and in the backlog. But simply putting up a task board does not an agile team make. Assuming that everyone will follow your lead into agile is actually a very un-agile way of operating.

You’ve drunk the kool-aid and you know things can be better. Unfortunately, the truth is that things won’t get better if you don’t have proper buy in from the rest of your team. Take the time to have the conversations required to secure this buy-in, both above and below you. 

3. Get hung up on the software

When you’re at your most enthusiastic about the potential of transitioning to agile, it’s easy to get caught up in the fun of checking out all the different software tools out there. It is important, but it can be a distraction from the real issues.

A focus on software can easily devolve into a debate between the current “waterfall-y tool” and whichever shiny new “agile tool” you’ve got your eyes on. That’s not where you want the focus of your discussion. It should be about the processes used and cultural practices needed around those processes.

4. Drop balls

There’s nothing like an angry client or executive to put a damper on your efforts to create change. Never mind that things probably weren’t going all that smoothly in the first place; rational or not status quo bias makes it very likely that the blame will be laid at least partially on the transition to agile.

If you’re championing the transition, then you’re placing some of your own credibility on the line. Be aware of this, and be willing to put in the extra time and effort to protect your credibility by staying on top of information and deliverables.

5. Do it in a culture of fear

Take a look at your organization, and your own motivations for wanting to go agile. Maybe the agile manifesto speaks deeply to the kind of environment you’d like to work in. That may not be the case for the people around you. There’s a certain kind of safety in having a silo between you, and the developer two desks over.

Creating an agile culture requires that people step up and take responsibility for the quality of each deliverable (or story) at each stage of the process. Face it, your coworkers might not be cut out for agile.

If this describes your situation, it’s not worth the emotional energy required to fundamentally change the culture. Or more eloquently put:

Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.

-Warren Buffett

Be open to the idea that Agile will never be a fit for your organization... then polish up your resume.

Doing it right

Having gone in depth about what not to do, here's a very quick list of how it should be done.

• Be humble
• Talk to people one on one about your vision, and what you see in it for them
• Get outside help
• Get training
• Be honest about the pros and cons
• Be patient, now might not be the time for your organization

Also, make sure to do your research, so you know what you're talking about. Here are some good starting points:

Agile Software

agilemanifesto.org
http://www.agilealliance.org/
mountaingoatsoftware.com

Agile Marketing

agilemarketingmanifesto.org

http://agilemarketing.net/

What do you think? Have you had similar experience or difficulty transitioning an organization to Agile practices? Any insights to share about how it should be done? Let us know in the comments.

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- John Mardlin

A Guide to Effectively Managing Your Solo Software Project

This article will help you create some very basic systems for managing your solo software project. It won’t help you decide what projects are good ideas, or successfully market your software, but following its advice will make you more likely to get to a finished product, instead of giving up in despair.

 

Who will find this helpful?

• a hobbyist or pro using their spare time to build something they want
• an entrepreneur building a minimum viable product for a business idea
• a freelancer building a web or mobile app for a client
• anyone who wants to learn by doing

I’m sure many people are already on board with the need for some systems to help guide the creation of their software, but I can literally hear some of your bloodshot underslept eye-balls rolling in their sockets and saying “processes and project management systems are for the office, this is just overhead that gets in the way of getting stuff done".

I beg to differ.

Why you need a system

Even a simple project has multiple moving parts. It may be that you’re capable of keeping track of them all, but that requires effort and costs you brain power, your most precious resource for software development. The reason for this is known as the Zeigarnik Effect:

The Zeigarnik Effect is the tendency to experience intrusive thoughts about an objective that was once pursued and left incomplete (Baumeister & Bushman, 2008, pg. 122). The automatic system signals the conscious mind, which may be focused on new goals, that a previous activity was left incomplete. It seems to be human nature to finish what we start and, if it is not finished, we experience dissonance.

The take home is, unfinished tasks will trouble your worried mind.  Storing your tasks somewhere trusted and finishing them as fast (or faster) than you start them, will free your mind for coding.  A simple system will serve this purpose, while introducing minimal extra effort.

1. Getting Started

It may seem obvious to you what your project is; but until you’ve written it down, and explained it to a few people, you can’t be sure that it’s well defined. Figuring out why you’re doing this project and what your goals are doesn’t take long, and will pay dividends down the road.

Create a one-page project charter to outline the scope, objectives and people involved with your project.  Your charter should answer the following questions:

What are your goals?

Get high level, ask yourself WHY you’re doing this, and what success looks like. If it’s a freelance project, establish this with your client.  If it’s a side project, by straight up about it. Are you developing a minimum viable product to test a business idea or is it just something you think would be cool to see or make your life easier.

Who are the stakeholders?

Whose input is important to guide your project to success? Maybe it’s just you, maybe it’s potential customers or a client.  How will you communicate with these people? How much influence will they have?

What will the product enable you to do?

This is akin to an epic user story for your product. Don’t talk about how the product will do what you want,  focus on what you want.

A basic user story format is:  "As a <role>, I want <goal/desire> so that <benefit>". This keeps the focus on solving the problem and avoiding tunnel vision around specific features for solving the problem.  For example the epic user story for your product might be “As a bowler, I want to know how what I eat for breakfast correlates with my bowling score, so that I can always eat the right pre-bowling breakfast”

How much time are you willing to spend on this?

Particularly if this is a side project, it will almost inevitably take longer than you think. At the outset, we tend to see the work breakdown at very low resolution. Once you’re face to face with a particular task, you see the fine details and nuances much more closely. In one of the most popular quora answers ever, Michael Wolfe deals with the reasons for this very astutely.

When it’s no longer fun and exciting, will you keep plugging away, or will you accept the sunk costs and move on? Decide beforehand how far down the rabbit hole you’re willing to go.

2. Doing it and Managing it

Planning

Since you’ve already created a scope now you just have to break it down into manageable tasks, ideally things which aren’t much more than what you can do in a given evening or two worth of project time.  Keeping your tasks small will help you to see your progress and feel great when you check something off.   

Tasks that are further down the road, will inevitably be more ambiguous; no problem, as they come closer to being executed on, you can split them up further.

Write each of these tasks on a sticky note, we’re going to use them to fill up your personal kanban board.

Tools

The Kanban Board

Find a visible place in your workspace and put up a whiteboard. Keep your kanban board really simple with three columns: Backlog, Doing and Done.

There are two simple rules for using personal kanban:

1. Keep your work somewhere easy to see
2. Limit your work in progress. Typically no more than 5 tasks at a time in the “Doing” column.   

Both of these rules would make Zeigarnik happy; they ease the burden of how much you have to store in your limited grey matter and put it somewhere you can trust you’ll see it.

Even when there is extra space in your “Doing” column, have a bias towards finishing a task over starting a new one.  Only introduce new tasks into “Doing”, if everything else is stalled, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do to move it forward.  

If you’re waiting on a domain transfer, go ahead and start working on wireframing. Don’t create a separate column for stalled or waiting items, even if you’re not working on it right now, it’s occupying precious brain cycles.

Time Tracking

No one likes tracking their time, and most time tracking software makes the process even less fun, but if you keep it simple, it can help to give you very valuable data and improve your sense of how long a task really can take.

Use your personal kanban to track when you moved a task into “Doing”, when you moved it into “Done”, and how many hours you spent on it.  You can do this just by writing it on your stickies like so:

Setting up these tools adds minimal extra time to the initiation of the project, and will pay huge benefits by releasing your mind from having to track all these items and allow you to focus on the execution.

Wireframing

I do believe that wireframing and mapping out the workflow of your product are very much worth your time. We use Moqups, which is really user friendly and takes no time to figure out.

Version Control

Even though it’s just you, using version control will help you to undo your mistakes and create an easily trackable history of your progress.

Git Immersion is a great tutorial for setting up a git system. If you want a cloud based repository, with pretty graphics illustrating your branches and merges, Bitbucket’s free plan should be totally adequate for you.

Execution

Here’s the fun part, I hope that creating the charter and setting up your tools only got you more excited about the awesome code you’re going to write.  

This is your project, it’s not my place to tell you which languages, frameworks and other technologies to use, you know what works for you. Unless this is a project intended to help you learn some new technologies and frameworks, you probably just want to get going with the least amount of new learning required.

Scope creep is the great enemy of getting things done. If your imagination, your client or other stakeholders are introducing new and wonderful features to distract you, nip that in the bud.  This is why you created your project charter. Keep it beside your Kanban board, where you can see it and remember what you’d first set out to do. If the project drifts from the charter, make sure there’s good reason for it.

Keep moving, do what you can to make some progress every day to stay motivated.  

3. Releasing 1.0 and/or Closing

Maybe you release your 1.0 and this project blow up into a huge success and becomes your life’s work.  Or perhaps you’ve met the goals of your original charter, but you see potential to go further.

On the other hand, maybe you’re completely done with this piece of software;  it’s served its purpose of satisfying a client, or teaching you what you set out to learn, or is now serving you as a handy little tool.

Either way, upon completing the first version of your project, it’s worth doing some work to close it out.  The scale of this effort really depends on the project.

At a minimum, you should archive your post it notes somewhere safe.  When starting your next project, they’ll be useful for remembering what tasks and time commitments were required last time.

Now sit down, have a beer, and contemplate how awesome your shiny software is.

From D.A.K Photography

References and inspiration:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4910022

http://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/195/minimum-project-management-practices-for-one-man-software-projects

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1523418/single-person-application-development

http://kiragiannis.com/business/10-tips-to-guarantee-success-on-solo-projects/

- John Mardlin

How to Do Remote Work the Right Way: 13 Dos and Don'ts

In your day so far, how many people have you interacted with who weren’t in the same room as you?  The ease of communication has increased the amount of remote workers and distributed teams. This trend will continue, despite recent moves made by BestBuy and Yahoo to curb remote work.

This is the situation for the team behind PMRobot and part of the inspiration for our online project management app. Our team members work from their homes or in co-working spaces across 3 time zones in Canada. These are some of the things that we’ve learned about making it work.

The Dos:

1. DO use collaborative tools that promote simplicity of interaction

Google Drive (formerly Docs) is our favorite tool for creating and sharing documents. The ability to collaboratively edit and comment, as well as store any kind of file, in seemingly unlimited amounts are hugely useful.

Skype is ideal when higher bandwidth communications are needed. If you need a longer phone call, you might as well go for a Skype conversation - using video adds an extra layer of context.

Google Hangouts is emerging as another very useful tool, which is easy to get into if you’re already using Google Apps, and doesn't require a desktop client. In the past, I’ve have had some trouble with the connection, so if you’re attending an important meeting with a client or other external contact, I'd recommend using Skype.

For wireframing, we use Moqups, which at this point is completely free and very user-friendly, but doesn't yet support collaboration. For collaborative wireframing, Balsamiq is a great option.

A tool for managing your projects is also helpful, much better than a random assortment of spreadsheets and to-do lists. If you’re a digital agency or software consulting firm, PMRobot has been powering remote teams for three years now.

2. DO meet in person at the beginning of the project

In truth, communicating complex ideas and building relationships is more difficult over distances. Meeting in person beforehand is important for developing trust and alignment of goals.

You have a lot to accomplish during a project kickoff meeting: Trust is established, goals and expectations are hammered out. Even if you’re not following a waterfall model, a common understanding and preliminary specifications need to be determined at the beginning.

3. DO ask for estimated deadlines, and follow-up if they aren't met

When you’re not co-located, you can’t simply turn to the desk beside you and ask about a piece of work. Similar to a kickoff meeting, individual tasks or stories require more communication before work begins. Asking the person doing the work to choose his or her deadline not only sets expectations, but empowers him or her to set their own bar and succeed on his or her own terms.

If the problem turns out to be more work than expected, it might not be worth doing. Getting an estimated deadline from the person doing the work ensures they’re working toward a finite goal. Following up after the deadline reinforces accountability, provides a check-in, just in case things aren’t going as planned.

4. DO use a chat tool 

Email communication has its strengths, but it’s also time consuming and has a slow feedback loop. A simple chat tool removes a lot of the friction to initiating a discussion and has the advantage over email of a faster response time.

Anything works, Hipchat, Google talk, AIM, Skype or even mIRC. Just make sure you play by the common chat rules of conduct. Respect your colleagues’ “busy” status so they can dive deeply into a problem without interruption, but also ensure you make yourself “available” when you’re checking and sending emails or other less involved tasks.

5. DO set up a phone call if the email conversation is getting emotional

An over reliance on email drags things out and causes tension and writing an email probably takes longer than you think. A few 20-minute emails add up to a few hours pretty quickly - eating up your time and the recipient's! Emotional emails can take even longer to write, and then more time still spent picking up after the fallout later on.

As soon as you realize that you’re about to send an emotionally charged email, get into your chat tool and set up a call instead.

6. DO Answer questions within a MAXIMUM of 24 hours

Unanswered questions lead to stalled tasks. Stalled tasks lead workers to start new tasks. Further stalled tasks compound, creating a pileup of unfinished business. Having too much work in progress is distracting and demoralizing. Be prompt in your responses to keep open loops from accumulating.

Knowing how important this promptness is, we built a question-asking feature into PMRobot, it gently follows up by email, and allows a response to be sent back via email.

7. DO Have additional work spec'd and queued up

Inevitably, some tasks are bound to be stalled due to unavoidable circumstances. Have other work ready to go for when that happens. If you're using an agile project management methodology like Scrum or Kanban,  you must be disciplined about having your tickets, or stories, planned and ready to go in advance.

The Don’ts:

8. DON'T email file attachments

This common practice is without a doubt THE fastest way to create mass confusion and ensure that you spend a lot of time digging through your inbox searching for version-control salvation.

This is why we use Google Drive to make changes and add comments within a single, shared document - it’s simple. Dealing with files appended with “-r2”, “-rev3” or “-jm-edit4” is frustrating and it’s rare that anyone actually goes back to the old files for reference.

Keep everyone on the same page, literally, by avoiding unnecessary version-control issues with email attachments.

9. DON'T interrupt people unless absolutely necessary

The biggest advantage of working remotely is the ability to work uninterrupted and make your own choices about when to focus on the work and when to delve into communication with your team members.

If there is something you need to get clarity on and need higher bandwidth voice communication for, use a chat tool to set up a time to talk on the phone. This has the additional benefit of letting people prepare, instead of having to suddenly switch gears for an unexpected call.

When in doubt, practice a little role reversal in your head. Would YOU want to be interrupted for this specific topic or could it wait?

10. DON'T bring in more people than necessary on conference calls

Meetings are rampant and massively time consuming. Play to the strengths of being distributed and let team members focus on their work. If a meeting needs 20 minutes, schedule it for 20 minutes, not 30, and respect that time allotment. If a participant on a call has said their piece and is no longer needed, let them drop off. Otherwise, you're wasting their time, and draining their energy to listen in on an irrelevant call.

To pull this off, set a timer on your phone for ten minute increments. Each time the timer goes off, look at the attendee list and see if anyone can be spared.

11. DON'T let roadblocks hold up the project

Overcoming roadblocks is a high priority. It’s tempting to move on to a new piece of work, and in rare cases, that’s all that can be done. However, focusing on pushing through roadblocks helps limit the work in progress and actually get things done more effectively. If there is a project manager or product owner, let them know as soon as you've done all you can to move forward, so that they can begin clearing the block.

PMRobot lets you mark a blocked ticket once you’ve done all you can for the time being, letting you move on, but keeping it present and within view so you remember to resolve the issue as soon as possible.

12. DON'T send emails when you're angry or frustrated

Queue them up as a draft, wait an hour, then edit. Delay again if you're still angry.

Negative emotions can be one of the most time-consuming and inefficient time sucks, and anger inevitably clouds your better judgement. If you’re writing it in an email, then it’s not urgent, right? So stop staring at it and thinking about whether or not to hit send. Walk away from it for an hour.

Depending on your disposition, you may have to repeat this a few times. Just remember, it’s better to err on the side of caution. You’re less likely to regret a witty retort you didn’t make, than an offensive email that gets BCCd to all of your upper management and HR.

And Finally:

13. DON'T do it all in email

You may have noticed a recurrent theme in this article; encouraging you to find alternatives to email when possible. DO NOT keep your email client open at all times, this is the best way to spend all your time reacting to outside forces and wonder what you got done at the end of the day. Email is in many ways the lowest common denominator for communication. Consider who you’re emailing and for what purpose - and then consider your alternatives.

Used properly; however, email can be very powerful, allowing you the time you need to express your ideas clearly and pull together all the links and other information needed to get your point across. Make sure you’re writing clear emails, use numbered lists/bullets more often than paragraphs and when it gets really long, write a short introduction so the receiver knows what they’re about to wade into.

Email is just one of many tools on your program management communications tool belt - prove you are a true master of project communications by knowing when NOT to use email as your most effective strategy.

The Benefits of a Project Management Tool

Using a web-based project management tool is one way to minimize your email use. A tool will often allow you to split your conversations into smaller pieces that are directly related to a specific piece of work, which can then be referenced when it comes time to do that work. PMRobot is been designed and developed Syllogistic Software, a team who've been working remotely for more than five years, living in Toronto, ON; Victoria, BC; Austin, TX; New Zealand, Thailand and wherever else we feel like working from.

For digital agencies and software consultants looking for a solution to your remote working challenges and want clear communication, faster execution and happier clients, visit PMRobot.com now.

- John Mardlin

Friendly new conversation view in PMRobot

PMRobot is just a tool which helps you get your work done. It shouldn't get in the way, and it shouldn't add a layer of separation between you and your collaborators. We've made a simple, but we think significant improvement to the conversations interface to emphasize the human element of your interactions.  

Bigger faces and a clearer indication of who said what should make for a smoother reader experience.

Take a look:

Old and Busted Conversation View

New Hotness Conversation View

If you're new to PMRobot, and looking for a solution to help your team collaborate, try it out. One project is free forever.

- John Mardlin

Answer Questions in PMRobot Right from your Inbox

We know it's important not to create friction between you, your team members and your clients. Our aim is to build an agile project management tool that gets out of your way instead of adding overhead.

One of PMRobot's most popular features is Question Asking in a ticket.  It makes it easy to get the answers you need to move forward, and it puts them right where you need them.  Until now, the only problem was that you needed to go to the app to answer a question. Not the worst thing in the world, but it does interrupt your flow when you're responding to other emails.

That's why we're adding our Email Reply feature. Questions asked of you are delivered to your email inbox.  To respond, all you have to do is reply as you would to any email.  The answer will appear in the ticket and the question will be recorded as answered.  Forgot to mention something? No problem, another email reply will simply be appended after the first.

Go to PMRobot to try it out with your team members.

The First 100 Days in a new Project Management Role

Like the foundation to a building, the first one hundred days are extremely important to success in a new project management position. As a project manager, you're placed in the middle of many people—higher level managers, clients, and other staff; it takes extra effort to get off to a good start so that you can succeed in the long run.

Take it in…but keep shipping

A new company is a new cultural landscape to navigate. You must seek to understand it so that you can thrive within it. Every organization has its own peculiar DNA: a philosophy around decision making and a set of values that prioritize some actions over others. Pay attention to the language of your company’s leaders to identify those values.

It is essential to respect this time to observe and adapt to your new surroundings. At the same time, most of our readers are working in small teams where there's no room for dead weight. You'll be expected to keep your team producing without too many hiccups. This is the balancing act; breathe it all in, but don't stop the forward motion.

Improve the process by shipping

The organization that you've just walked into may be a well-oiled machine or it may be a war zone. Unless you're specifically mandated to begin process improvement immediately, keep your focus on shipping. This can be difficult, given that PMs love process. Among their kind, they can go back and forth endlessly about the best tools to use, the best ways to run meetings, and the best workflow processes.

Steve Sinofsky, former President of the Windows Division at Microsoft has an entire blog, with lengthy essays dedicated to the value of Learning by Shipping.

Never forget though that process exists to aid in the efficient creation of a great product. Keep things moving and observe keenly. Make small tweaks here and there to process and slowly but surely improve the lives of your teammates. With time you'll find yourself in a position to try out a new meeting format or introduce a new project management tool.

Serve your team and the work

Project management is not a glorious position; hopefully this isn't a surprise to you. When things go wrong, you'll take the blame; when you succeed, the accolades necessarily go to your team. Your teammates, the programmers, designers, copywriters, and analytics technicians are the experts. Your true job is to facilitate their collective brilliance toward creating great work.

All too often, managers behave as if a company exists so that they can be managers. Wrong. The purpose of your company is to do the work that it was made to do. You don't have to be subservient or obedient, but you must put yourself in the service of the work, and the people who do it.

Conclusion

The first hundred days in a position are absolutely crucial to your success. You're building your foundation, and there's a balancing act to maintain. Take the time to understand your new surroundings, don't stop your team moving, and most importantly, understand that your purpose is in service to the work that is to be done.

6 way to make your clients love you while staying sane

You work hard to get your clients. All those calls, conferences and coffee meetings aren’t just for fun. So you’d better take care of them once you have them. It may seem burdensome at times, but the effort invested in strong relationships and doing great work will pay back in growth opportunities.

In their book “Leading on the Edge of Chaos”, Emmet C. Murphy and Mark A. Murphy state that a 2% increase in customer retention has the same effect as decreasing costs by 10% . Making clients happy is one of the best ways to grow a business. They'll spread the word for you so you can spend less time selling, and more time doing great work.

Build your business on these 6 pillars to keep your clients and grow your business:

1. Make honest and realistic estimations of timelines

We all do it, and it happens in every industry. At the start of a project, you’re feeling good and you know the finished product is going to be great. You’ve made a list of everything involved, and you’ve guesstimated how long each piece will take. This is where things get dangerous. We can be tempted to over-promise when entering into a new relationship, but over-promising does not create sustainable relationships. Set realistic expectations for your timelines, and give yourself some padding for bumps in the road. Because even when you think you’re almost done, you’re probably not.

2. Be a great communicator

Find out your client’s preferred method of communication and use it. If they leave you a message, don’t email, call them back. Make sure your clients know what's going on, before they start to wonder about what you’re up to by providing them with regular updates on a schedule that makes sense for the project. Be especially conscious with formal reports; make your reports concise and understandable, use agreed upon metrics for success, and use visuals when possible.

3. Be Respectful

Your client may not have the same level of expertise that you do (that’s why they’re paying you), but they’re smart enough to know they need you. Take the time to educate them in how you work and what processes you use. Steer clear of jargon; cut down on the three letter acronyms that you throw around casually with your colleagues. Instead, pay attention to how your client speaks, and build that language into your conversations with them.

4. Agree on what success looks like

Doing work that makes your client happy requires great empathy. From the beginning, you need to understand their needs, and get a clear picture of what you're working towards. Once you think you know what you're building, tell your client what you'll be doing. Agree on what needs to be delivered, and how that will be measured. It takes more work upfront, but getting everyone on the same page creates a lot of trust. This trust enables you to do the work, without being constantly pestered. The extra effort at the beginning makes you far more likely to deliver a great product.

5. Set boundaries

You want to keep your clients happy -- that’s why you’re reading this article. You want to reach new heights, diveak down walls and meet stretch goals for them. But remember, they’re looking to you not just to do some work, but also for leadership and guidance. This means letting them know when their ideas won’t work, and not giving in to every demand. If they insist on a change, let them know, in writing, how their request differs from the original scope, and how you expect it will impact the project.

6. Do great work

Obviously! Of course you do great work, you always put your best into every project and sweat the details, right? Great, but not everyone does, and time saved by cutting corners could end up costing you many times over in rework and damaged relationships. By all means, extend yourself, take on big projects and grow, but be sure that you're willing to do what it takes to delight your clients with the finished result.

We can take another great statistic from Murphy and Murphy’s book “Leading on the Edge of Chaos”: organizations that prioritize the customer experience generate 60% higher profits than their competitors. With the rise of social media, people increasingly rely on word of mouth and reviews to make buying decisions. It becomes a virtuous cycle: This means doing great work and making clients happy can be an excellent marketing strategy, which means you can spend less time selling, and more time doing great work.

Take a vacation from project management!

Project management is great fun, but sometimes you need a break!

You might start packing up your laptop and smartphone to continue working the entire time.

Or...

Perhaps you'd like a real vacation?

In that case, you probably need to assign a point of contact to help your project run smoothly while you're away.

So how can PMRobot help with this?

We've built in a number of features to assign a "helper" to interface with your team members and clients while you're away.

All recent activity is listed in the Newsfeed, making it easy to see, at a glance, what needs attention.

The Member Overview feature lets you view another member's dashboard.

Meanwhile, you can use Redirect Clarification to redirect questions posed to people that are away.

Read the full details in our new tutorial entitled "Going on vacation."

How to: Manage Remote Projects

Managing a remote project is hard work!

Before starting Syllogistic Software, I worked for a large software corporation, and managed several remote teams. It was always a challenge to:

1. Stay on top of remote workers' task status
2. Communicate questions and answers
3. Help the remote workers keep up with everything else happening in the project

So what tools did I employ to help the situation?

1. Email
2. Conference calls
3. Microsoft Project

When I started my own software consulting company, I tried using these same tools, but found a few problems:

Problem 1: People don't answer email

Even back then, people were buried in email. They choose the easiest ones to answer and ignored the rest.

If you asked them a complicated question about the next steps of a project, it sat in their inbox for days, gradually pushed down the list by other incoming emails.

Problem 2: People forget what is said in meetings

To solve problem 1, I would often call or schedule a meeting. During the meeting, we would go over the questions, determine action items, and record them in meeting minutes.

Unfortunately, some of these actions items would sometimes still fall through the cracks, and not make it to a remote worker's todo list.

Problem 3: Microsoft Project only works for initial high-level planning

MS Project is a great tool for coming up with a "grand" plan before starting a project. But the pretty Gantt chart you create is only valid for a day or two before -- you guessed it -- something changes.

Then you have to go back and re-adjust everything, and your beautiful chart starts looking messy. A week later, there are 5 new scope items, and you're already well behind the planned schedule. Your project plan has essentially fallen to pieces, because you've been so busy putting out fires that you haven't had time to keep it current.

So how do we solve these problems?

After many years of iterating through various fixes, I came up with several techniques that worked:

Solution 1: Clarification questions

The very first version of PMRobot came with a feature called "Ask a clarification question." This remains one of the most important innovations.

When you ask someone a question, it tracks its status, and helps remind the person who has been asked the question. This way, they don't delay the entire project by forgetting to answer.

Solution 2: Track work items in one place

Instead of requiring people to keep track of everything they need to do on their own, create a central work repository that's easy to keep up-to-date.

PMRobot provides a dashboard for workers that shows them exactly what needs to be done, in the exact order they need to do it. After a quick glance, they know their next step.

In addition, if they ask a question about a particular feature, the answer isn't lost in some document called "Week 5 Meeting Minutes." The answer to their question is in the exact same place as all of the other work details.

Solution 3: Use a dynamic project management tool

Microsoft Project is great for static, high-level, upfront planning. If you need a rough overview of the "grand plan," it can help.

Once the project starts, however, you need a dynamic tool that makes it easy to add and update new information.

A major part of project management is change management. Clients change their minds, technology fails, people get sick, and generally -- things change.

Your project management tool needs to be built with change in mind.

PMRobot is built with change management at its core. Every feature helps you control the chaos, and manage each change one by one, getting you closer to meeting your project goals.

Summary

As you can see, many of the features built into PMRobot have been designed to solve very specific problems -- problems that are very common to software consulting.

If you're struggling to keep up with emails and conference calls, consider trying a new approach, and see how these techniques can help tame your chaotic project.

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About the author: Jason Hanley loves bringing order to chaos. He travels around the world, manages a team of remote developers, and is constantly iterating and improving PMRobot.com.

- Jason Hanley

Top 3 Worst Ways to Manage a Team

Five years ago, I wrote a short post about the worst possible ways to manage people. These are still popular techniques that managers often fall back to.

So what are these common management traps you should avoid?

#3 - The Ostrich Mentality

People fighting? Project running eight weeks behind schedule? New technical challenges are making success look unfeasible?

No problem! Carry on, business as usual. No need for change. Let's just keep doing things the way we've always done them.

This is what I call the Ostrich Mentality. Just stick your head in the sand and hope everything turns out alright.

What do to instead?

Admit problems frankly, have a discussion, and take action to change things.

Not tomorrow, but today!

#2 - The Ditch Digging Theory

This is when a manager believes that every task in a complex business process is equivalent to simple manual labor.

When a project is running behind schedule, they simply add more people.

This concept works fine -- if you are indeed digging a ditch. If you're doing anything more complicated, it fails miserably.

Adding more people to a project that is already late can actually make it take longer! I discussed the details in my post about keeping your teams small.

What to do instead?

Realize that business and information technology projects are complex beasts, involving specialized knowledge, and lots of communication.

If a project is running late, resist the urge to add more people to speed it up.

Instead, focus on trimming the scope to the bare essentials, and getting a solid deliverable out there. Then, create a follow-up project for the remaining lower priority pieces.

#1 - The Warm Body Theory

This one bothers me personally the most, probably because it is so prevalent and so toxic.

When managers have "warm bodies" (ie. people sitting in an office or meeting room) in their field of view, they equate this to productivity.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

If your employees are physically present at the office 10-12 hours a day, how many of those hours do you think they are mentally present, and actively contributing to the project?

Pulling five people into a two-hour meeting to "discuss the schedule" might burn $1,000-$2,000 of budget, and accomplish next to nothing.

What to do instead?

Make the schedule (the real schedule) and task commitments public and accountable.

Track everything in a live, accurate system that the manager, workers, and clients can access and update in real time.

Embrace flexible working hours and telecommuting. Let people balance their work and life commitments.

Once you've clearly defined what needs to be done, and who is responsible for doing it, you won't need to chase people down every five minutes for a status update!

Summary

To briefly summarize, here are the top 3 management "techniques" to avoid, and how:

• The Ostrich Mentality: Keep your head above the sand and take action!
• The Ditch Digging Theory: Don't add more people to a late project!
• The Warm Body Theory: Track accountability, and let people take responsibility!

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About the author: Jason M. Hanley has owned a software consulting company for 9 years, and is the founder of PMRobot.

PMRobot Google+ Hangout

Just a quick little note that this Wednesday, December 14th at 11:00am Eastern, we'll be hosting a Google+ Hangout to chat about the latest PMRobot release.

Put PMRobot in your Google+ circles and join us to learn and give your feedback.

In the meantime, check out our new front page video explaining how PMRobot is the best all-in-one solution for software consultants!

Boomerang for Gmail Review

As a "follow-up" to Ramy's article about FollowUpThen, I wanted to share my favorite email follow-up service -- Boomerang for Gmail by Baydin.

I've been using it since early beta, and it has become a powerful tool in my email productivity arsenal.

It's basically a snooze button for your email, and integrates right into the familiar Gmail interface.

At $50/year for a personal account, and $150/year for a professional account, it's not cheap compared to Gmail itself.

However, it works very well, is extremely reliable, and could end up being worth the money for someone who sends and receives ridiculous amounts of email. (like yours truly :)

The feature is use most is the basic "Boomerang incoming" functionality. Just tell Boomerang when you want the email to come back (tomorrow 8am, next thursday, etc.) and it disappears and is redelivered at that time.

For power users, here's an example of a more complicated workflow:

1. You receive an email from Bob asking whether you can meet up next Friday, but you have a tentative meeting scheduled with Mary.
2. You send an email to Mary asking if the meeting is still on, but click the "Boomerang this message if I don't hear back in 2 days" checkbox.
3. If Mary responds promptly, nothing happens.
4. However, if Mary does not reply, Boomerang puts the message back in your Inbox so you can re-ask her, or perhaps give a call or text.

Another feature I use often is the Send Later feature, which is similar to Outlook's Delay Delivery.

I sometimes find myself working at odd hours -- 2am, 3am -- and need to send various emails, like invoices, updates, etc.

Sometimes it might be consider a bit rude to send emails in the middle of the night. What if the recipient forgot to turn off their Blackberry and it buzzes and wakes them up?

I simply draft up the email, press Save, and then use Boomerang's Send Later button. A dropdown lets me specify when (usually "tomorrow morning").

In summary, Boomerang for Gmail is a nicely implemented service that does a great job of filling a void in Gmail's functionality.

Kudos to the folks at Baydin!