- 10 min read
that I attended in October, I met many project management practitioners. Some of them asked me about my views on Project Management 2.0. One of the questions was “How is Project Management 2.0 different from what many organizations have today?” I decided to summarize my answers and came up with a short list of key factors that distinguish Project Management 2.0 from traditional project management. They are: Environment. Manuel Castells, the author of "The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture (v. 1-3)" and a visiting professor in 15 universities around the world, states that we are currently experiencing an IT revolution, just like our predecessors lived through an agricultural revolution and an industrial revolution. According to Castells, there is a shift from industrialism (mass production) to informationalism (flexible production), and this new type of economy is empowered by the development of technologies— first of all, the Internet. As the world shifts from an industrial economy to an information economy and big part of the workforce becomes information workers, the importance of innovation, creativity and productivity rises. In traditional project management, people are often managed like any other resource, just like bricks and machines. In the present economy, people cannot be managed the same way, as it will simply be counterproductive. In Project Management 2.0, people are encouraged to participate in project planning, to introduce their ideas on project development and to give their feedback on other team members’ jobs. Environment as the main differentiator drives the other distinctions listed below: Collaboration and collective intelligence. In an information economy, only organizations that are flexible enough, so that people and capacity can be rearranged and recombined quickly without major structural change, will be able to thrive. Quick access to information and rapid data-sharing become critically important in this environment, as they help companies minimize expenses, innovate, make better decisions and make them faster. Project Management 2.0 emphasizes the importance of leveraging the collective intelligence of the whole team, no matter where the team members are located, at the same office or on different continents. At the same time, Project Management 2.0 stimulates collaboration and catalyzes the change in processes. Here I’d like to paraphrase Andrew MacAfee’s quote about Enterprise 2.0 and apply it to the new trend in project management: Project Management 2.0 technologies are “trying hard not to impose on users any preconceived notions about how work should proceed or how output should be categorized or structured. Instead, they’re building tools that let these aspects of knowledge work emerge.” Emergent structures, one of the basic principles of Project Management 2.0, empowers people on the team level to easily share information and make changes to their part of the project plan. This way, bottom-up field knowledge makes its way into a project schedule, and the schedule becomes more realistic. Comparing this approach with the one represented by most current project management platforms, wiki inventor Ward Cunningham highlights an important shortcoming of the traditional way. He says: “For questions like ‘What’s going on in the project?’ we could design a database. But whatever fields we put in the database would turn out to be what’s not important about what’s going on in the project. What’s important about the project is the stuff you don’t anticipate.” The Project Management 2.0 focus on collective intelligence stipulates the next differentiator. Shift in the project manager’s role. Traditionally, the project management role is focused a lot on tight control of the budget and schedule. This part of the project management job becomes more subtle in a talent economy. Organizational agility requires a more flexible approach to budgeting and deadlines. At the same time, the importance of leveraging the human talent becomes more prominent. Therefore, other parts of a project manager’s job, such as leadership skills, become more important. It's no longer enough for project managers to possess good people skills and to be fluent in project management best practices, tools and methodologies. To succeed today, project managers need enhanced leadership skills. They need to be flexible and focused on business value, writes Forrester Analyst Mary Gerush in “Define, Hire and Develop Your Next Generation Project Managers.” Productivity. Web 2.0 tools allow an unprecedented productivity increase when it comes to information-sharing and communications. There are many examples spanning from the consumer arena to the enterprise space, from Wikipedia and Facebook to GE’s corporate collaboration system. Project Management 2.0 focuses on taking advantage of this productivity to achieve better results in shorter periods of time. Have I enumerated all the distinguishing traits of Project Management 2.0? What’s your take on the main differentiators of Project Management 2.0? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
Now we’ve prepared some efficiency tips for you from a project management professional — and, of course, a devoted Wrike user! Francesco Mangone, with 15 years of experience in the business consulting field, shares how he saves time and makes the most of our cloud-based solution. Here’s an overview of Francesco’s main ideas: #1 - Log everything into Wrike. Literally Of course, you already log all important tasks and milestones into Wrike project management software. But we bet there are some minor tasks or personal to-dos that you still keep in your head, thinking they aren’t worth logging. The devil is in the details, for sure. No matter how tiny they are, they still take away some of your attention and make you wonder whether you have forgotten anything or not. Francesco suggests taking them off your brain completely so you can perfectly concentrate. Don’t spend even a few seconds thinking of whether the task should be logged or not – log it right away. “My memory is as long as my pencil. Basically, as all things are logged into the system, there’s no chance I can forget anything,” Francesco says. By the way, with our quick task creation feature, logging all the assignments you have on your mind takes just a few seconds: [caption id="attachment_460998" align="aligncenter" width="461" class="center"] Wrike's Quick Task Creation feature helps you get everything off your mind[/caption] #2 - Create a 100% transparent working environment Thanks to Wrike, you have a 100% transparent picture of all your current projects. Let everyone else have it, too! Grant user (or viewer) licenses not only to your team members, but also to all your clients and contractors, and don’t forget to make sure they see just as much as needed. The goal is to save your precious time on keeping the team on the same page and answering status requests from customers. “Now I can avoid all those e-mails about the current state of things or the schedule. [My clients and teammates] simply log into Wrike, and they can instantly see what’s going on,” Francesco Mangone shares. #3 - Maintain a complete history of your tasks The task activity stream is a powerful tool both to brief a new person on what’s going on and to keep others in the loop. [caption id="attachment_461011" align="alignnone" width="772"] Wrike's Task Activity Stream provides a complete history of updates[/caption] Don’t keep your team’s brainstorming ideas and interim file versions locked in the assignees’ inboxes or buried in the history of instant messages. Instead, simply put Wrike in the CC field when sending them to each other. See our cheat sheet to learn all the great things you can do in Wrike project management software from your inbox. Lately, the full task history may be very useful to make the final decision. “[Keeping the conversation within a task] is a huge time-saver and helps eliminate a lot of e-mails. You no longer need to search for the related e-mails by subject. You just look through the task newsfeed and tap your comment – that’s it!” Francesco comments. #4 - Don’t waste time downloading files Nowadays, people are moving a lot, and it no longer makes sense to keep your important data on numerous PCs. Make the most of the ubiquitous power of the cloud and attach all files you create through Google Docs or MS Office to tasks in Wrike. [caption id="attachment_461018" align="alignnone" width="831"] Wrike can keep documents in the cloud, attached directly to the relevant work[/caption] As your team edits them online without downloading from wherever they are, all stakeholders automatically see the up-to-date version. Finally, confusion over file versions is left far behind, along with all those additional clicks to save, attach, and send files. We’re sure your time is worth so much more! “I chose Wrike primarily because of its integration with Google Docs. You can attach a file and collaborate on it with a team no matter where they are. This feature makes Wrike so powerful!” Francesco shares. #5 - Use the flexibility of custom reports Now when you have all tasks, task details, and docs in Wrike, running reports and supervising the progress is simply a piece of cake. To get a complete picture of the project progress, use your advanced filters in the right pane of your workspace. Here you can flexibly combine any criteria to create reports by different time frames, number of assignees, particular projects and much more. Any tiny detail can be easily retrieved. And don’t forget to check on your personal efficiency as well, using the “Tasks completed by me” criteria! “I have to confess I like to push things forward a little bit. And Wrike’s reports are a really big feature for me. They are super-fast, easy to use, and they make me instantly see what has been done so far,” Francesco comments. Want to know Francesco’s insights into how you can improve your team’s performance with the help of Wrike? Tune in to our podcast now: [audio m4a="https://www.wrike.com/blog/content/uploads/2012/05/interview-with-Francesco-Mangone.m4a"][/audio] "Back then, when I just started my business, I was heavily using spreadsheets and Outlook for e-mails and building task templates. What can I say? Of course, there’s nothing that you cannot do with the help of these tools, but Wrike offers an absolutely different prospective … It’s simply an evolution of project management! The technology is here, and it’s time to move on and make the most of it!” — Francesco Mangone With his IT and business consulting experience, Francesco Mangone loves to teach just as much as he loves to learn. He helps small and medium businesses customize their task management systems for different types of organizations and efficiently manage up to 80 projects at once, in groups and individually.
"Failing to plan is planning to fail," - some sources attribute this saying to Winston Churchill, while others refer to Benjamin Franklin, or Alan Lakein, author on time management. Whoever the author really was, his succinct wisdom could help many project managers avoid costly mistakes. It seems that there are many project teams who suffer from inaccurate plans and their consequences. In fact, this challenge ranked as no.3 in the list of the biggest productivity killers, according to our recent survey. In this post, I'll observe some ways to keep your team safe from this threat and make sure your project's timeline is accurate. Note: This is the third post in a series on fighting productivity killers. In case you’ve only plugged into this discussion, don’t miss the two previous productivity battles against interruptions and procrastination. Keeping project plans up-to-date is especially difficult if you’re the sole hub for collecting updates from the team and then communicating the changes to them. The more agile your project management approach is, paired with a volatile outside environment, the more challenging this job is. Trying to slow down the outside world will not be any more helpful than trying to ask the weather to be more predictable. The work isn't much fun if by the time you finish merging the latest updates into the plan and send it out, it's already outdated. One option is to manage your project with outdated plans, which is detrimental to the business and potentially your career. The other option is trying to use current plans but really you are running a hamster wheel marathon of pulling updates non-stop and still getting nowhere. Is there something else? You bet. The moment you chose to read this blog post over a Dilbert cartoon, you knew there has to be an answer, a jiu-jitsu move that embraces the facts as they are, and turns what could be a problem into an advantage. The bigger your team is, the more status updates you have, which makes your job harder. However the larger your team is, the more minds and hands are at your service to keep track of it all. As with many other things in management, the answer is in delegation. Work out a setting where instead of you being the hub and bottleneck of all project updates, pass the role of the hub to a tool, like a collaborative planning software or a board on the wall (well, I don't really recommend writing on physical walls in the era of smartphones and global teams, but I had to give you the choice, right?). So now, with that central hub available to all team members 24x7, if a person has an update, they don't have to pass it through you. Instead, the person can deliver it directly to the hub and others have direct access to this latest info, for when they need it. You still need to keep an eye on work progress, as well as coordinate, lead and teach, but leading and doing everything yourself are very different roles. The former is a critical factor in project success, and the latter is a bottleneck to all and a stress-generating machine to you. Delegating planning to your team members has a powerful effect on the psychological side. If the deadlines weren't imposed by the manager, but the employee set them on his own, he naturally feels more responsibility and more motivation for getting it done on time. Now, as with many other great things in life, it's easier said than done. Collaborative planning not only requires you to change your habits, but also the habits of your team. A team habit that is essential for collaborative planning is the culture of sharing. For more detailed insights into how to build this culture, check out my recent post dedicated to this topic. Also, if you are looking for some tips on how to introduce a new habit to your team, there was a post about that, as well. If you have adopted the centralized hub for planning, but your plans are still outdated, the problem is either with the tool or with its adoption amongst your team. You could use some jiu-jitsu in this area as well - instead of fighting with existing habits, you can sometimes leverage them in a creative way. For example, at Wrike we built convenient email add-ons that let your team update tasks right from Outlook/Mac Mail/Gmail. This uses email to your (and everyone's) benefit and helps with keeping project planning up-to-date. Another example of a creative approach is turning your "project hub" from a passive store for information into an acting agent (now you see why software is better than walls) - it can ping your team when they need to work on something, it can generate reports for you, it can even buzz a mobile phone or send a message when something interesting has changed. That does not just save your time, but it also helps to engage everyone. What are your thoughts? What other productivity enemies did you face in your team and how did you fight them off?