AceProject Archives - Page 4 of 17

Two Reasons for Setting Users to “Can’t Login”

In AceProject, users may be given two statuses: "Can Login" and "Can't Login". The default option is "Can Login", which means that the user CAN access the application. On the other hand, "Can't Login" means that the user CANNOT access the application. In other words, the user is blocked. There are a two main reasons why an administrator may want this:

Block employees who no longer work for the organization

Usually, when someone leaves the company or gets fired, their access to the corporate intranet and other internal systems gets revoked. If they don't belong in the organization anymore, they don't belong in the internal systems either. That's usual procedure.

If you need to keep an history of the user's activity in the account, you can't delete their profile as AceProject will ask you to delete all the user's data altogether. In this case, setting the user as "Can't Login" is ideal as they still exist in the account but can't access it.

Create non-human users (i.e. material resources)

We've seen clients who created user profiles for material such as […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-11-12T16:44:00-05:002009-11-12|

The walls in our projects

Todays is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. For almost 40 years, a wall divided Germans and on this day twenty years ago, the wall was taken down and the reunification of Germany was initiated.

During reunification, there was much difference how people on both sides of the wall had changed since 1961, when the wall was put up. When people loose contact and live in their own separated worlds, they tend to evolve apart.

A parallel can be made for the silo effect we often see in bigger companies. People are regrouped along their department: research and development, administration, management, marketing, sales, etc. While we would expect people to work together to achieve a common goal, in bigger teams, sub-teams form and have a tendency to work independently. After some time has passed, the whole project teams reunites and the project manager is confronted to two team whose idea of the project may not be compatible.

These social walls – where hermetic teams are created and function independently from the rest of the […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-11-09T17:52:00-05:002009-11-09|

In honor of International Project Management Day: Sponsor Buy-in

Today is International Project Management Day. I bet there will be quite a few posts on project management as a profession and a methodology.

I would like to talk about something that is to often forgotten in projects: the importance of the sponsor in the project.

No project without the sponsor

If no one wants the product or end results of the project, there will be no project. The sponsor is not only the initiator of the project, she is the reason for the project to exist. The sponsor is not just the flag-waver in the race to deliver the project on time and under budget. The sponsor must be involved with the project at many levels:

At project kick-off. It's a communication issue that is too often glossed over: the project team should understand who is initiating the project, and why it's being done. This should be learned from the project sponsor directly. The project manager saying "the sponsor told me" just doesn't have the same value, or the same credibility for that matter.
For all major changes to the […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-11-05T18:53:00-05:002009-11-05|

Project Management is a craft

Jorge Domingez asked the question: is project management science or art?

I agree with Jorge that project management cannot be reduced to only art or only science. Rather, I see project management as a craft .

Wikipedia defines craft as "a skill, especially involving practical arts. It may refer to a trade or particular art."

Project management is about skills

Project management is being able to put people together, to organize work and to motivate the team to achieve the objective. While some are from the art world and some from the science side, these are all skills.

Project management is about the practical world

Project management is about achieving a defined goal. Projects are not theoretical endeavors.

Project managers are craftsmen and wormen

Project managers must bring together skills from different, almost opposite worlds (art and science) and work with their team to deliver something tangible at the end of the project.

What do you think?

Do you see project management as a craft?

By Daniel Raymond|2009-11-03T12:53:00-05:002009-11-03|

An Underestimated Collaboration Tool in AceProject – The Discussion Forum

Nowadays, we hear more about wikis, blogs and tweets than forums. Actually, forums are not as "Web 2.0" as these collaboration tools. Nevertheless, discussion forums are incredibly useful in a project management application, from a collaboration standpoint.

Everybody's talking about Twitter and how cool it is to post 140-character messages. I definitely agree with that. However, let's not forget that a forum enables you to post both short and long messages. With Twitter, if you have a lot to say, you'll have to post several short messages, which is not always convenient and interesting to read. A forum still remains the best of both worlds.

In AceProject, there's a comment thread at the task level and a discussion forum at the project level. Both empower involved users to share ideas, knowledge, tips or any other useful information. The discussion forum is more powerful however. In addition to general discussion, it permits creating topics. Messages are then posted in a specific topic and replies to these messages can be posted thereafter. Hence, collaboration capabilities using this feature abound. […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-10-28T13:36:00-04:002009-10-28|

Managing expectations

I love our product, AceProject. I have unwavering faith in the system as it is now, and its potential in the future. When the whole gang here sit down to have lunch, I really like to dream up the future's AceProject together. To share our vision of what AceProject could be in five years.

And it's all good.

Because the team and I know what can really be done, and how much of our dreaming is just dreams. When we sit on the next version planning meeting, things get more practical: what CAN we do? True, we could recode the entire system, but that would mean no new features for our users for a long time. That would make our users unhappy.

We need to balance both the expectations of people who use AceProject everyday, and the expectations of the visionaries we have on the team. Our clients expect us to release new features at least twice a year. Our dreamers on the team (and I am one of them) expect AceProject to […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-10-27T19:43:00-04:002009-10-27|

The new quiet revolution?

Webcom in Montreal today was a very stimulating conference. While the last one, in May, was all about being open (APIs, OpenID, etc), this one seems to be all about 2.0. The revolution in marketing, medias, products and doing business in the modern world.

In the spirit of the conference, I decided to use Google Wave to document the conferences I was going to attend during the day. A few participants joined me in my documentation of the wave. I’ve had a Google Wave account (and the envy of more than a few of my peers) for a few weeks now, but I hadn’t had a chance to really use it.

With Webcom, everyone was taking notes and sharing their impressions of Webcom. While I was more inclined to summarize what was being said, others we adding context and reference links. The result is a rather complete document of the talks. It was more than a wiki (no coding required) and it was more than simple collaboration (everyone is in the same document and […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-10-22T22:54:00-04:002009-10-22|

Live Google Wave at Webcom today

Today I am at Webcom 2009 in Montreal. I've decided to use Google Wave to take notes from the presenters. So far it's going really well! I'll tell you more about my experience later this week.

By Daniel Raymond|2009-10-22T14:29:00-04:002009-10-22|

Have you ever tried to nail jello to the wall?

How about fitting a square peg in a round hole? Or attracting bees with vinegar?

With these examples, it's obvious that the wrong approach is used. It could be the wrong tool, the wrong strategy or just the wrong idea.

Why do we keep doing it then?

We like our tools. Even if they don't work. We like them because we're used to them and we've learned to work around their shortcomings. Even when our tools have big problems, we tolerate them because at least we know what the problems are.

Alas, it comes a time where we must move on from our old, clunky, comfortable tools to shiny new ones.

Understand it's time for a change

Before we can start looking for a new tool, we should make the case against the old one.

Focus on the pain points of the tool. Get a list of the tool's shortcomings, and explain them in a way that sounds as neutral as possible.
Stay away from blaming the people using the tool. We must remember that people like familiarity and making them feel […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-10-20T17:21:00-04:002009-10-20|

Something to think about: the project’s impact on our planet

Can our project management style affect the environment? Most of us would say yes, as long as we're working on a type of project that is physical in nature. For example, if we're building a bridge or a building, it's obvious that the project has an environmental impact. It's also obvious that the building style and practices chosen will have an impact.

But we don't think about the environmental impact of office work. Beyond telecommuting to reduce our carbon footprint, here are three areas where we can affect climate change in our project management practices.

The paper-free office is not a dream. As project managers, we have an impact on how we produce our status reports and other documentation to support the project. We have a choice on the media we use to distribute this information. Let's keep this in mind when we have a choice between printing and emailing a PDF file!
Kick-off and team building activities with the planet in mind. Even if it's only choosing reusable glasses and mugs, our project team's carbon footprint […]

By Daniel Raymond|2009-10-15T19:57:00-04:002009-10-15|