LiquidPlanner: Move over Microsoft Project?

I’ve been holding off writing a review of LiquidPlanner, a project management tool that is destined for greatness.  The reason is that, although they had already implemented a paradigm shifting solution, it had a flaw that I just couldn’t get past:  No dependencies between tasks.

I’ve been saying for years that project planning and management tools needed a top-down rethink, and the LiquidPlanner team has done just that.  The rest of their solution addresses my wish list very well, but, when I came to creating a plan, I couldn’t do it with just priorities; no matter how hard I tried, dependencies between different people’s tasks seemed necessary.  So I had a teleconference with them a month ago (mostly to find out where I was wrong – they seemed to be so innovative), and discovered that they were ‘coming soon’.  In fairness, their tool is still in ‘beta’.

So I’m delighted that, today, I received a notification that they have been implemented, and I now think that it’s probably the best tool out there!  Now that dependencies are implemented, I’m going to use the tool ‘in anger’ and see how it performs – I’ll post a review when I can make an authoritative comment.

Let me know what you think!

— Philip Greenwood

Tags: Project+management+tool, LiquidPlanner

Project Management & Leadership Search Engine

A while back we put quite a lot of effort into this custom Google search engine, and while the traffic has been steadily increasing, it can still be improved...the more people use it, the better feedback we get, the better we can make it!

The link for the search engine home page is here:

http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=011867071513363012666%3Atbng4tlbkso

The code for adding the search box to your web page is at:

http://gmodules.com/ig/creator?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fcoop/api/011867071513363012666/cse/tbng4tlbkso/gadget

If there are topics under-represented, or sites that you feel should be included, please leave a message in the comments.

— Philip Greenwood

Tags: Google, Custom, Search, Engine

On-line Project Management Tools

I recently started a question on LinkedIn:

On-line project management tools - what is the state of the industry?

There's been a recent serge in the on-line project management tools available, and web 2.0 seems to be making them more user friendly. I'd like to evaluate industry awareness, so without doing research, which on-line platforms do you know of?

Also, if you've experienced using them in earnest, which ones, and what was your experience?

I’d appreciate your responses posted on the LinkedIn site (though posting here will do fine too).

If you’re not a member of LinkedIn, why not join? It’s free – and I will accept your link to get you going.

— Philip Greenwood

P.S. Beaufortes (www.beaufortes.com) is NOT affiliated or sponsored by any supplier organisation. Please note your affiliations (if any) in your response.

Tags: Project+Management, Software, On-line, Tools

The Big Idea 2007

You can be happy at work.

(Just in case you haven’t heard.)

Unfortunately it’s not my idea, but it is being popularized by Alexander Kjerulf, who calls himself the Chief Happiness Officer.

Mr Kjerulf has written a book on the subject, called “Happy Hour is 9 to 5: How To Love Your Job, Love Your Life and Kick Butt at Work”, and also “The Happy at Work Manifesto” (free down load).

Apart from the fact that I agree with him, I’d like to point out ‘policy’ 11:  “I do my best work when I’m happy – When I’m happy I’m engaged, motivated, committed, more creative, less risk-averse, more service-minded and more productive”.  Does this sound like something you want for your team?

Great!  But not so fast, slick.  Here’s another recent book:  “Stumbling Upon Happiness” by Daniel Gilbert – an extraordinarily well informed study of how we deceive ourselves about happiness.  My three line synopsis:

1) We’re not very good at remembering what made us happy, so

2) We’re not very good at predicting what will make us happy, and

3) We often pretend we were happy when we weren’t because of societal norms.

So you’re not going to get much insight about nurturing happiness from your team’s answers to your questions about happiness.  But, according to the Hawthrone Effect, the act of asking may just inspire them to be more engaged, motivated, committed, more creative, less risk-averse and more service minded.

Sound familiar?  It turns out that the Big Idea 2007 has its roots in the Big Idea 1932.

— Philip Greenwood

wikitags : [[wiki:beaufortes:happiness]]

Tags: Hawthorne+Effect, Happiness

The Dirty Wiki

Jason Bates wrote about The Empty Wiki in a previous post, but I’d like to point out another problem with wikis (those that aren’t empty anyway):  The power of the special interest group…

Reductio Ad Absurdum?

This question has been playing on my mind:  If stories are the most effective tool of influence, but are an inefficient way to communicate facts, what kind of communication style is most effective in today’s “attention deficit” business world?  So for an experiment, let me try out a communication style:  The “reduced” story line.

MindJet Project Management JetPack for MindManager 7

The good people at MindJet have allowed me early access to their MindManager Project Management JetPack.  As I read that sentence I realize that many readers won’t have a clue what I’m talking about, so let me explain:

MindJet is the company that produces the MindManager application.

MindManager is, at its heart, a brainstorming and mind mapping software tool.

Mind mapping is a knowledge management technique for generating, organizing and communicating ideas or concepts. (Go here for more info)

Change Management Isn't a Methodology!

A few years ago I worked on a project with a client (global, ~140,000 people) that had an in-house change management methodology.  I expected that this would make the job easier – after all, they must recognise the value of change management and know how to use it, surely. 

I was astounded to discover that very few people in the company knew how to apply the methodology – I found nobody who even knew where to start!  After hours of studying the methodology I figured out why:  There was no starting point. I was just a cluster of loosely connected tools.

Project Management & Leadership Search Engine Enhancements

We’ve significantly enhanced the Google Custom Search Engine for Project Management & Leadership:  We’ve focussed it on content rich sites, and the number of selected sites is up to 46.

We’ve also been experimenting with how to get the best results from including or excluding general search results – trying to get bad matches from Wikipedia and other mega-sites out of the search results, while maintaining their valuable good matches!

The link for the search engine home page is here:

http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=011867071513363012666%3Atbng4tlbkso

The code for adding the search box to your web page is at:

http://gmodules.com/ig/creator?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fcoop/api/011867071513363012666/cse/tbng4tlbkso/gadget

If there are topics under-represented, or sites that you feel should be included, please leave a message in the comments.

— Philip Greenwood

 

Tags:  Google+Custom+Search, Search+Engine, Custom+Search+Engine, Project+Management, Project+Leadership

Why Project Leadership Books Suck!

Seeking inspiration for this blog, I’ve been re-reading all the books in my library on Project Leadership, Project Management and Leadership.  I’ve come to a few startling conclusions:

• There are surprisingly few books specifically on the subject of Project Leadership.  I find this odd because Project Leadership is a practical application of leadership.  Perhaps it’s easier to write about leadership in an abstract way than deal with the practicalities?
• There’s even less content than you might expect in those books on Project Leadership that do exist – a lot of duplication, and a lot that is impractical. Specifically:
• There’s an awful lot of writing about character types. Although it’s interesting, in the real world it’s an irrelevant distraction. You never get the choice of your own behavioural inclinations, and you rarely get enough choice of team members to select on this basis. (Caveat for clarity: You always get the choice of your own behaviour and any suggestion that you don’t is sheer manipulation!)
• None of the books talk about leadership from the perspective of enhancing team behaviours and performance.
• Their treatment of how to deal with organisational politics is feather-weight!
• None of the authors on Project Leadership have been prepared to level criticism at traditional Project Management.  The strongest criticism I’ve found is that it is necessary, but not sufficient.

My main conclusion is that you can’t learn Project Leadership from any of these books!  It’s like trying to learn to swim by reading about dolphin behaviour and hydrodynamics.  Maybe we need to start writing!

Perhaps, dear reader, you can tell me: What do you think needs to be included in an effective Project Leadership Development tool?  What form should it take?

— Philip Greenwood

Tags:  Project, Project+leadership, project+management, book+review, Leadership, Management, team, teamwork, teaming, team+behaviour, team+behavior