AceProject V4.7
- New Project Portfolio – AceProject has a new Portfolio tab, which shows all assigned projects together. Gantt charts, Calendars, and reports can now be produced regardless of project, without requiring access to the Admin tab. The “Administration-Limited Mode” access right was renamed to Portfolio.
- User Workload report improvements – The User Workload report now highlights over-allocated days when time assigned exceeds what is configured as a typical workday for the user. A default value for the typical workday can be entered at the account level, and adjusted on a user-by-user basis.
- Custom SMTP Server – Administrators can now configure their own email server to send email notifications. This will help fix email notification delivery issues for many users.
- Mandatory Task dependencies – Dependencies can now be mandatory or not, allowing a task to be started while its predecessor is not completed.
- This adds flexibility, especially when unplanned changes occur in a project. AceProject now also proposes start and end dates […]
- This adds flexibility, especially when unplanned changes occur in a project. AceProject now also proposes start and end dates […]
AceProject 4.7 to be released tomorrow night!
Yes, it’s finally ready! AceProject server will be upgraded tomorrow night to version 4.7.
Here are the release notes.
Congratulations to the team for such good work, and I hope you like the new version!
Virtual is good, but you can’t replace face-to-face
We’ve been working on a project with a client for the last 6 months. The challenge of the project was not so much the technical aspect of the work, but understanding the needs of the client. We were working via email and phone conference calls with the client.
The problem was that it was difficult to get a clear decision from the client. Especially with email, the delay between the questionn and the answer made communications difficult. When we were on the phone, we were also missing an important part of communications: non-verbal.
We were stalled.
We decided to invite the client to our offices. With all of us sitting at the same table, we were able to reach an agreement as to what needed to be done and how we were going to do it. It was easy to reach the agreement because we were able to communicate more efficiently. Being face to face gives us all the information that someone transmits: the verbal AND the non-verbal.
Virtual meetings are not as rich
It’s easy to give the wrong […]
Guest post: life beyond the PMP exam
What happens once you’ve passed the PMP exam? Keeping up with 60 Pofesionnal Development Units (PDUs) every 3 years can seem like a daunting task.
I’ve written a post about just that on Josh Nankievel’s blog, pmtsudent.
Enjoy!
Take the risk of trusting your team
From the part of the person who gives it, trust is hard. It requires a leap of faith. It requires that we believe the person we trust is worth it.
From the part of the person who receives it, trust is energizing. It means that someone was willing to take that leap of faith for us. It means we are worth it. Trust also carries responsibility: if we want to keep that trust, we must prove the giver right. This means delivering on that trust.
Project management requires a high level of trust
- The project manager must trust the team to do quality work on time and on budget.
- The project team must trust the project manager to lead them efficiently and help them meet their deadlines.
- The stakeholders must trust the project manager to understand their needs.
- The project sponsors must trust the project manager to control the project and prevent cost and schedule overruns.
In a nutshell, the project team must trust each other. That includes the project manager, the team, the stakeholder and the sponsors. For most of us, […]
Can leadership be learned?
Leadership is much more than a skill. While we may learn to tailor how we communicate with others to influence them to follow us, can we really learn a personality trait?
What is leadership?
Leadership can be seen in two ways:
- As the “process of social
influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others
in the accomplishment of a common task”. - As “creating a way for
people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen.”
While learning to influence others is a skill that can be learned, it feels a lot like manipulation to me. Leaders that use manipulation consciously to get people to do what they want seem dishonest to me.
I think true leaders hold a deep belief in their cause or goal, a belief that is infectious. They don’t need to convince or manipulate others to follow them in their projects. People want to follow them. That’s natural leadership.
While leadeship skills may be learned, natural leadership cannot
Natural leadership is a personality trait. It requires personal conviction, self-confidence and extroversion. Think about the natural […]
eBook Review: Getting Started in Project Management
Since blogs are online, I thought it would be fitting to begin reviewing eBooks. This time, I’ll tell you about “Getting Started in Project Management” by Josh Nankivel.
Josh is the founder of pmStudent.com, a website dedicated to those learning the skill of project management – a skill we may never be finished learning! pmSutdent is set apart from all the other learning-oriented sites for project managements, who are usually focused on PMP certification, and little else beyond that. With pmStudent, the focus is on learning, and getting certified is a subject secondary to that.
Josh wrote “Getting Started in Project Management” to help others getting started with project management, basically to provide a resource he would have liked to have when he got started in 2004.
The book is divided in two parts. In the first half, Josh tells his own journey into project management, from his last lay off in 2004, until he was asked to lead a major project in the aerospace business. This was an interesting read, especially where he writes […]
Sharing the burden of project updates with your team: why collaborative project management tools are a time-saver and team-builder.
There are two schools of thought with project management tools: project management OR collaboration.
Why should project teams have two tools, one for project management and one for collaboration? Shouldn’t both these uses be united in one tool?
Project management is not about secrecy, quite the contrary. It’s about sharing information with everyone who needs it. Project management is about getting your team to work together to achieve results.
When using a collaborative project management system, you not only share information on the project with the team, your stakeholders and even your clients, you also get to share the burden to updating project information with your team. Instead of the project manager being the only one updating task statuses and entering time sheet data, it’s everyone in the team who does. The project manager simply double-checks and approves the updates.
Not only does it save tremendous amounts of time, it also empowers the team. It gives the team members responsibility towards the project, beyond their assigned work.
The human factor: Your Most Valued Resource
We think a lot about schedules and costs and quality when planning a
project, but do we spend enough time thinking about our project team?
When's the last time you thought about you team's happiness?
I worte an article for Project Management Tipoff's May editiion, about the importance of human resources in your project.
The fisherman’s take on project management
I went fishing last weekend. It was a beautiful (yet a little cold) weekend in the woods. We were on a good lake for fishing: our quota was 15 catches per person. That’s a lot of fish!
We were thinking: if the outfitter allows 15 catches per person, there’s got to be a lot of fish in this lake. And there was. As we arrived the Friday night, we could see the bass jump at flies on the surface of the lake. We were stoked for a good day of bass fishing on Saturday!
Well, it was not a good day of fishing. We caught a total of 10 fish between the three of us. This was underwhelming.
Here’s why we didn’t get the fish we were hoping for
- The fish was jumping at the flies, but we were bait-fishing. Wrong technique. Wrong approach. If the fish is going for flying insects, it won’t respond to bait just floating there, will it?
- The mayflies were swarming the lake. Mayflies look like mosquitoes, but they only live a […]
