5 Project Planning Mistakes to Avoid (Part 1 of 5)

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Managing a project is complicated and making mistakes that can compromise the progress of all activities is very simple.

One of the most delicate phases from this point of view is the project planning one, errors made in this phase are in fact the most serious and can negatively affect the achievement of the entire project.

The problem is that often you notice that something is wrong when it is too late and there is nothing more that can be done to limit the damage.

In this article we will explain what are the most common project planning mistakes and what strategies you can put in place to avoid them.

Commons management errors are grouped into 5 categories:

  • planning errors
  • errors in priorities management
  • communication errors
  • errors of responsibility
  • errors of organization

Today we will help you identify those in the first group.

Planning a project is generally composed of two main phases. Both of these phases can face different critical issues:

 Project analysis – phases and dependencies

When you start analyzing a new activity and you are about to schedule it, you need to keep in mind these 3 commons mistakes that could compromise the success of your business:

1) The scope of the project is too wide

Issue: Even if the goal of the project is clear, even described in detail with specs and agreed with the client, be focused only on the final goal, especially if the end date is long-term can lead to serious consequences. Managing big projects is very complicated, the variables involved are numerous and focusing on the final target can make you underestimate many small contingencies that make the project grow without control.

Solution: The best way to avoid having a wide scope is to brainstorm with your team until you are able to outline small goals that are easy to manage. This brainstorming is also very helpful to divide your project in phases. Sub-phases do not necessarily have to overlap perfectly with the sub-goals, they will be the guideline, the short-term fundamental steps you have to focus on to keep everything under control.

2) Micro management

Once goals have been identified both in the long term and, even better, in the medium and short term, it will be necessary to break down the project in phases with the help of what you identified above.

Issue: Regardless of the tool used to manage your project diagram, you don’t need to be too ambitious. Pay attention and do not fall into the opposite error of point 1: break your project down into too many activities, whose maintenance can become extremely burdensome.

Solution: When to stop? A phase, in particular if the root project lasts more than 6 months, should not last less than a week. This is not true in general and depends on a case-by-case basis but applies well most of the time. Under this value (activities that last just few hours) you can manage tasks with to-do lists, checklists, flexible than a Gantt chart. Using such tools will help your team work better, without needing your constant assistance, making them more involved.

3) The project does not follow a standard management methodology

Issue: For scheduling and manage your activities it is essential to use a tool that supports you in this work. If you do not use a software or, more generally, a planning methodology, the probability that the project become chaotic increases exponentially. Different projects, managed by different people, could be organized in diametrically opposed ways and can also use a completely different vocabulary that can disorient your resources.

Solution: Rely on a methodology, no matter what, as long as it is shared by your team. Initially it could be hard but over time, making it yours and modifying it to fit better with your needs, it will help you keep the team united under one method and one terminology. Use a software that embraces this methodology, a correct management of phases, of dependencies and schedules will reduce the delays and the misunderstandings drastically.

Analysis of timing and effort

Once diagram and phase dependencies have been created it is necessary to estimate effort and schedule them in time:

4) Too ambitious plans

Issue: A common planning mistake is to be too ambitious following exactly the expected time for the activities. When you face several phases, it is important to evaluate a certain margin of error that saves the project from numerous  adjustments. Relying on the knowledge of your team is essential because they have a detailed knowledge of all the activities and possible risks.

Solution: Learn from your  team and evaluate with them risks of each phase in order to give a realistic estimate. Relay on them not just on your experience.

5) Fail to plan due to customer pressure

Issue: It could happens that you fail to plan a project just because of  customer’s pressure, who often have lots of requests, reduced budgets and no time at all. One of the most common mistakes is to give the customer the feeling that some activities are easy to implement or maybe free, errors made to acquire the project offering a convenient price.

Solution: Even if you want to offer a convenient price, talk about the project for what it is without discount in time of effort, this will help you avoiding misunderstanding with your customer. When you estimate a project, both in effort and in costs, do it without thinking about the agreed end date and the budget set. Once the realistic estimate is completed, match it with what the client expects and try to align the two versions. In this way you will immediately understand if the project is at risk of loss or at risk of delay without unpleasant surprises during its development. A correct assessment of reality and expectations avoids frustrations in the team and communication problems.

Conclusion

If you are a project manager you probably know that the list of mistakes you can make is much longer, but without a doubt these 5 issues are not only very common, but are also 5 of the most risky for achieving your goal.

As you see from the listed points we firmly believe that the use of a project management software, such as Twproject, could facilitate all of your work by avoiding many of the possible errors in planning a project.

A project management software will help you solve each of the 5 problems listed:

  1. You can associate to your project discussions and meetings that highlight all goals to help you in the drafting of the phases
  2. You will have a Gantt Editor that will help you create phases and dependencies and that will allow you to manage to-do list and checklist to avoid micro management
  3. It will help you embrace a methodology and help you to standardize the terminology throughout the team
  4. It will help you take advantage of your team’s knowledge for a realistic project estimate
  5. You will be able to manage plans during quotation phase and development phase, always having clear times and costs

If you want to start now to rely on a project management software to help you avoid all these errors try Twproject.

Start now to recognize these errors and avoid them.

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5 Most Common Mistakes in Managing Projects

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There are no two identical projects, at the same time all projects seem to suffer of similar problems.

Even the best project manager can, in case of important tasks, particularly long-lasting or if subjected to continuous requests for updates, fall into common errors that could lead a task to fail.

These frequent mistakes in managing projects can be avoided if you make a continuous analysis of your way of work and team health.

Commons problems, faced by every manager, can be grouped into 5 different types:

Mistake #1 Wrong Planning

The most common mistake in managing a project and certainly the one with the greatest impact is the wrong planning.

Starting from an in-depth analysis of your own internal processes is crucial. A correct identification of the activities, their duration, the dependencies and the effort that each of them requires will help you to identify a realistic task end date and to avoid critical stages. Tasks that start with a wrong planning, often too optimistic, generally suffer of great delays and frustration for the whole team.

A typical example is to repeat the error of selling a product at a certain cost, maybe to be competitive, despite the fact that it uses more resources than expected, so, without having a clear idea of ??how much it costs to your company. The solution could be to use a Gantt chart tool and templates that you  can refine over time, this will help you improving your analysis, step by step. Ask your resources to describe in details the work done to create a knowledge base on which you will be able to make predictions increasingly consistent with reality.

Find out the most common project planning mistakes and how to avoid them.

Mistake #2 Priority Vs Emergency

As a project manager, you should have always clear the progress of your activitites, which are in late and on which you need to focus on your energy. Instead, your resources often find themselves involved in multiple tasks, with different managers, different habits, which make their organization very complicated.

Clearly highlighting their priorities is essential to ensure that they do not work by emergency, simply supporting the most demanding or pressing project manager. The analysis of priorities must be done with all the managers working with your team. The choice must be made by mutual agreement and respected by all without interference, the list of priorities consulted by the team must be valid and always updated.

 

Mistake #3 Broken Communication

Another common mistake in project management is to underestimate the importance of communication: One of the main causes of delays in projects is the lack of communication. The goal of the project must be clear to the team from the very beginning,  desired end dates, and in general the whole planning.
It is also important to communicate with the working group in a constant and active way: resources must always be aware of how the task is going. You are late? Everything is alright? Tell your team, because they will adjust their to do list according to this information. Schedule weekly meetings and always keep everyone updated even using a dedicated messaging software.
To improve your communication and resource management you could start scheduling weekly meetings where each resource can share with the group the progress of their work: you could choose Monday to share not only what was completed but also to plan the activities of the new week, check the load of the operators and always make sure that your team is not overloaded.

Mistake #4 It’s Your Responsability

The responsibility is certainly on the project manager’s shoulders and for this reason you could often make the mistake of not trusting your collaborators always wanting the last word on every decision. It is actually known that delegating phases and therefore making the team responsible increase productivity significantly, the only precaution to be taken will be to have a solid communication with frequent meetings in order to recognize immediately if a phase is late or on a wrong path. Trust your team, it is the basis for the success of every project.

Mistake #5 Paper Management

We often underestimate how a project management software can help a work group to manage activities. A common mistake in management is to rely on a simple list of excel, maybe not shared, absolutely not usable to increase the productivity of individual resources, an aid that in reality turns out to be ineffective and obsolete. The latest project management software includes advanced features that drastically lighten people’s workload. A tool like Twproject, for example, includes interactive Gantt, prioritizable to-do lists, task chats and customizable dashboards. Features that will help you solve each of the problems listed above.

Probably reading this post you’ve found yourself in one of these descriptions, I hope not in all of them 🙂 however, do not miss the next 5 in-depth post in which we will analyze one by one these errors with practical suggestions to avoid them.

I want to start avoiding errors right now! Let’s try Twproject!

Critical Path in Project Management – How to

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The Critical Path Method (CPM) is an algorithm used to plan a set of project activities, its purpose is to highlight the steps involved in the longest path that determines the project end date.

To use this method, you must build the model by paying attention to:

  1. Define all projects’s phases
  2. Highlight dependencies between phases
  3. Calculate the duration of each phase correctly

The critical path analysis allows you to highlight what activities are “critical” but also those that can be delayed without increasing the project lifespan.

If you have never used this methodology, let’s try to apply it to a simple example: imagine we have to install a shelf in the house.

First, you need to split the project into phases:

  1. Buy the shelf
  2. Buy the fixing bars
  3. Choose the wall and the height
  4. Make the signs on the wall
  5. Do the holes with the drill
  6. Install the fixing bars
  7. Mount the shelf

Once you define each steps, you can try to identify the dependencies: at a first analysis you immediately realize that some activities can not be started until others are completed, for example, you can not do holes with the drill until you make the signs on the wall, also the shelf can not be placed until the fixing bars are fixed. At the same time you see that the choice of the wall, the purchase of the shelf and fixing bars are activities that you can do in parallel. Here is the Gantt of activities with dependencies:

This type of activity can be easily planned using the Gantt diagrams that also shows the critical path calculation in red. The chart shows the sequential activities, they are in orange because suspended waiting for predecessor completion.

All these sequential activities are the fundamental steps that determine the length of your project. The critical path of the projects is the longest sequence of activities.

It is essential to pay close attention to phases on the critical path to manage the timing of your Gantt. For example, if you have a task that lasts 100 days, a 5-day delay on one of the sequential activities will result in a total delay of 5 days for the task.

Another important aspect to consider is the human resources availability, for example, we have said that some phases can be done in parallel such as buying fixing bars, shelf and choosing height in the wall, but these can be done in parallel only if you can count on three different resources available, in case you are alone to complete the project the Gantt changes drastically. Phases become all consecutive.

So, project critical path can be calculated according to tasks dependencies, but to determine task end dates it is necessary to identify the resources at your disposal and the correct duration of each phase. Only after analyzing these two aspects will you be able to handle project times by using a Gantt diagram and see a correct schedule.

From this simple example it is clear that critical path analysis is not trivial, this method is particularly used for complex but predictable activities.

In the real world, in fact,  it is difficult to follow exactly the established plan, moreover,  you can have external new requirements or constraints not considered at an early stage of planning.

In our example, if you did not find the fixing bars in the store and you have to order them online you could introduce a delay that could reflect on the overall project’s duration, even if this phase was not in the critical path.

Conclusion:

To keep track of the progress of your plan, you must:

  1. Update your data frequently.
  2. Carefully monitor the steps on the critical path, but also the ones outside.
  3. Keep the availability of resources under control.

That’s why, relying on a software that manages easy-to-update Gantt diagrams, it’s crucial to quickly add dependencies, as shown in the previous images, but also to include phases duration and calculate the end date automatically. An interactive Gantt diagram will also allows you to quickly re-schedule tasks.

If you rely on a project management software such as Twproject, which includes, in addition to the interactive Gantt with critical path analysis, also a tool to monitor resources, you can easily manage the load to provide the flexibility you need to act promptly on any critical issues and finally have everything under control.

 

Start now planning your projects easily

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Project Management Basics: 4 Reasons to Use Gantt Charts

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What is a Gantt Chart? Why it can be useful to manage your project?

If you have never heard of it, it’s important to know that Gantt diagram is a very versatile tool to visualize and track the timing and progress of a task.

Its representation is very simple: it is a Cartesian diagram, on abscissa you find the time scale from the beginning to the end of the project, while in the ordinate there are all the activities to complete it. The planned time to perform a task is visually represented with a colored bar that runs from the start date to the end date of the task.

Managing projects with Gantt diagrams allows you to see at a glance the set of activities to be performed, which have closer deadlines, which can be done at the same time, and the entire dependencies grid. They are universally used to plan and manage all types of jobs, from complex ones to simple personal ones, thanks to their immediate comprehension.

Below we explain how you can use them to manage your work project.

4 reasons to use Gantt diagrams:

1) Understand your project better

With the creation of the timeline, you and your team will have to highlight and break your project into phases and sub-phases. This brainstorming will help you classify the entire work plan more accurately, highlighting more clearly the deadlines, the dependencies between the various steps, and also which figures will complete the various tasks. This analysis is a key point in project planning and the Gantts will help you visualize it more clearly.

The first step is to create a table within which you can enter phases and sub-phases. For simple projects, you can use a Excel spreadsheet, for the most complex ones, always in the interest of optimizing time and resources, you can use a project management software that allows you to quickly and easily set up various activities. Here there is a small example where we inserted project sub-phases, we also tried to identify each phase duration.

2) Define dependencies and deadlines

As mentioned in the previous paragraph, once the phases and sub-phases are identified with their duration, it will be much easier to set milestones and their dependencies. Once you create these links you will be able to easily understand what impact can have a delayed task to a specific stage. Being aware of this information at the beginning of the project, exposing what is called “critical path” (the sequence of dependent tasks that determine the end date), will allow you to pay more attention during its course. Below we create dependencies between phases identifying the critical path.

3) Delegate

Identifying sub-phases will also help you figuring out which resources are going to accomplish them and so properly distribute your resource work load by improving human resource management. Establishing the timeline will help you manage your project optimally, balancing your entire workload and avoiding overloads that would affect your team’s operational capability.

4)  Check your progress

Project Gantt Diagrams, if created with a specific software, are dynamic and evolve as a result of completing the various activities. Thanks to this, you can constantly monitor job development by identifying progress and delays.

Applying Gantt’s diagrams to your project can therefore bring significant benefits:

  • Improve analysis and planning
  • Reducing errors and risks
  • Better resource management
  • Greater control

These aspects are crucial for every project manager who seeks to manage the work and the team optimally. Gantt’s diagrams are, from this point of view, a powerful and immediately applicable tool.

If you want to deepen your use by simple tests, by decomposing and analyzing your projects you can try Twproject for free, a comprehensive work management tool that includes an interactive tool for creating these diagrams.

Once you’ve downloaded the demo, you can start creating your own charts right away by dividing the job at various stages, assigning them to your employees. Twproject interactive tool will graphically show you the sequence of activities you enter by updating them progressively. You can do all the tests you need and evaluate in depth the benefits this tool can bring to your work!

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3 Useful Tips to Improve Work Time Management

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Have you ever had the feeling that everything in your to-do list has maximum priority? If yes, which method do you use to identify what can be postponed?

Being a project manager, you know that managing project timelines is crucial; with a correct and realistic plan you will be able to work better, and all your team as well, if organized, will give its best.

There are several methods for improving work time management, each one focused on a different aspect of the problem: minimizing interruptions, identifying realistic deadlines, correct project planning, and organizing activities according to their importance. You have to find the method that best reflects your work strategy to maximize productivity.

Here are 3 effective methods that will help you improve your organization:

Define real priorities:

You think to have a high priority to-do list, but sometimes  what is urgent can be confused with what is really important. Thanks to instant messaging systems such as Skype or Slack, working together with the team has become much easier, however, the number of interruptions has grown exponentially, with the result that you often receive urgencies that were not yours. The same e-mail, if used as a to-do list, introduces an incorrect concept of urgency, transmitting a sense of rush away from reality. The last mail always seems the most important.

You need to learn to recognize what is really important, what is urgent and what can be postponed.

The best moment to set and categorize your priorities is in the morning, as soon as you arrive at the office, even before checking your inbox.

To determine if a to do is really important you need to make some considerations about its effort, its due date, and its cost. Properly planning your job will greatly help you improving work time management, when a project has a clear end date and your effort has been established, you will be able to define its importance more easily.

How much is missing at the end of the project? How much time do I need to close this activity? Can I postpone it?

Once the sequence of project activities has been established, you can analyze the urgencies by placing them in the list already created. In general, interruptions are perceived as urgencies and must therefore be minimized. If an urgency, interrupting your concentration on a specific activity, leads to waste resources and reduces your productivity, it must be postponed. It is therefore important to use some strategies to minimize interruptions, for example check mail only in the morning and after lunch or use tools that tell your colleagues that you can not be disturbed.

Ask for help and delegate:

If you cannot complete an activity within the established schedule without delaying the project, it is important to ask for help. Hiring a colleague with a lower workload can save the project from an undesirable delay. In general, whenever possible, it’s always a good idea to involve and delegate your team. In this case, controlling their workload is crucial, not to overburden those who already have a dense to-do list.

A method that works very well is to analyze the list of priorities in a shared meeting so that you can balance tasks across all project resources. This improves the management of the entire team’s work time by maximizing productivity and improving team culture.

Using an agile approach to project management, for example, greatly helps the entire team to work on the time allocation and distribution method. This method requires that the team meets regularly to analyze deadlines on a small and selected activity list. By dividing the entire project into recursive steps it will be easier to keep control.

Stay organized:

To organize your team’s activities, it can be of great help to use a tool that tracks your things to do and lets you set up priorities. Writing a list of activities on a paper is risky: every change requires effort and you can not show it to anyone who works with you in real time.

If you rely on a software to manage your project timings, it will be easier to have a look at what to do and when, for yourself and for your team. For example, by entering a project with milestones, you will receive a notification when approaching, that will allow you to act promptly in case of delays, or by entering assignments to all resources, you can facilitate communication and swap activities, speeding up the process.

Another advantage, planning your activities with an ad hoc tool, is to be able to control your colleagues’ workload by identifying who is less committed, as well as having a history of how much they spent dealing with certain activities for an increasingly precise and realistic organization.

Conclusion:

By following these simple work time management tips you will learn how to manage your processes better:

  1. Create a list of realistic priorities and minimize interruptions / urgencies: learn to identify important things against urgent things/interruptions
  2. Share your tasks with your team by optimizing time:  learn to balance work within your team, count on your colleague and delegate.
  3. Use a project management software to maximize productivity: rely on a tool that can help you checking your ordered to-do list, keeping you focused on what has to be done.

If you want to learn more about how a project management software can help you, download Twproject and begin to improve your organization right away.

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How SCRUM methodology can help you minimizing project risks

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Most of project managers have to face projects whose planning was done incorrectly, not in line with customer expectations, with the bad result of  big delays and budget overflows, and maybe this has happened to you too.
It is true, companies are being renewed, working groups are heterogeneous and distributed, increasingly flexible, and often, this flexibility forces the project managers to review their processes in order to make them more flexible too. Agile methodologies is the perfect response to this need.

In the 1990’s, there was a significant deviation of the projects from planning and, above all, customer requirements, particularly in the software development sector that used the standard waterfall approach.
Now, as then, companies plan and evaluate the project according to the requirements initially established by making only one final product release that could leads to misunderstandings. The project, so managed, often ends late and out of budget.

Agile methods, such as SCRUM, arise from the need to move the project from the planned and contracted part to bring it closer to the client, its needs and satisfaction throughout the entire development process.
A company that decides to use this framework is able to minimize the risks by keeping track of the progress of the project cyclically. By involving the team and the customer throughout the process, it is much easier to stay aligned with planning and stay in times and budget.

What is the SCRUM methodology?

It is the most famous of the agile techniques, it is a framework, a set of procedures, for the iterative management of the development process from a default set of tasks. It is based on the idea of refining, iteration after iteration, the initial idea of the customer, according to what is released from time to time and to his feedback.

At the beginning of the project we defined a task list (backlog), then, cyclically, we select a prioritized subset executable in about 1-2 weeks (sprint), tasks are completed and at the end of the sprint is submitted to the client for the test. Each sprint includes meetings for prioritizing activities, sharing work progress, and a final one for review and analysis. These cycles are repeated until the end of all activities.
The aim of the SCRUM methodology is to have no misunderstanding, so that the customer can work with the team cyclically to guide the product in the right direction without any unpleasant surprises at the end of the project. Thus, there may be not a final release date, the project closes when the activity list is empty and the customer is satisfied.

This framework also facilitates the estimation of the project, in fact it does not require a complete and total estimate, just a cyclical estimate that protects both the customer and the company from incorrect estimates: if the customer has a limited budget will be limited his list of activities, if the customer has infinite budgets, he can refine and add activities until project completion in agreement with the company.

cicli-metodologia-scrum

Why should I use an Agile Methodology?

Although the SCRUM methodology has born in the field of software development, it can be of help to many companies, not only by getting into it but by embracing the general philosophy.

We have recently applied the scrum method to digital marketing finding that also such companies can benefit from this framework, some examples:

1) Define a list of requirements / activities / desires with the customer as detailed as possible: this will help you estimate your project’s effort, make the client aware of any critical issues and protect you from any extra requests.

2) Prioritize the activities and estimate them with your team: this habit can be of great help in carrying out the project, involving the team in estimating, it will be involved and empowered, obtaining from them accurate information that resides only in the knowledge of the technicians. Not only that, the team that prioritizes activities, in fact manages its own workload and becomes more aware of it. Involving the team is the most effective strategy to estimate projects.

3) Organize management in production iterations: whether the customer interacts or the cycles are internal to the company, organizing productions into iterations forces each team to make the point of the situation on regular basis, immediately recognizing any deviations from the expectation avoiding useless delay.

4) Daily meetings for work progress: this activity, often underestimated, is in fact crucial. Updating the team on the progress of their work allows them to share more stressful moments and to help with delays by saving the project from bottlenecks.

The list of benefits that you may have by approaching agile methods are numerous, whether you follow the letter, or just apply the philosophy. The system cyclicity will allow you to improve over time, understanding with your workgroup what works and what does not.

If you decide to use a project management software that supports this technique, organizing  your work better will be even easier, a software like Twproject, can guide you in improving internal processes giving you back control on your projects.

Start now managing your projects with SCRUM

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Scrum With Twproject for SEO & Digital Marketing

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I recently read a very interesting post about how to use Scrum methodology in a SEO & Digital Marketing Team. The post has been written by Marcus Miller (@marcusbowlerhat) and you can read it here:

Using agile project management for SEO & digital marketing

This post gives me the idea to write a new one explaining how to use Twproject with Agile methodologies and, following the Miller’s post, how a SEO & Digital Marketing Team can use it.

Scrum: What is it and why with Twproject?

How it is well explained in the post, the Scrum methodology is a project management approach helping small teams, and in particular software development ones, releasing products in an incremental and iterative development.

This approach defines a flexible and cohesive environment where a team can develop a product as a unit, self-organized, with common goals.

A Scrum team usually consists of several people, with specific roles, that, starting from a project with a well defined list of features (“the backlog”) , works together in short time cycles, on prioritized  sub-sets of features (“sprints”).

Team communication is encouraged with daily scrum meetings and a retrospective meeting at the end of each sprint.

Even if Twproject works fine, both with Waterfall and Agile methodologies, the second approach meets perfectly the idea behind our software.

Encouraging team communication, self organization and a more practical approach to what needs to be done, saving time and energy, are just some of the key ideas of Twproject.

Scrum Roles

Product Owner, Scrum Master and Team member, these are the specific scrum roles that you find already loaded in Twproject, and this will be the only roles required for managing your Scrum project, I refer to the post at the top for roles definition and usage.

You can activate these roles from the Twproject admin page ->  New area creation wizard -> Create an area with SCRUM specific roles.

ScreenShot068

 

Once the scrum area has been activated, in the project section, you will find a new “create scrum” button.

Thanks to this functionality you will create your scrum project in minutes, just selecting your team members, the system will create the project assigning the correct resources with the chosen roles.

Agile tools

Once the project is created and all your team is assigned with the correct role you have to insert the backlog. This can be done easily with Twproject using issues.

An issue in Twproject is a task activity, a to-do, a ticket, a backlog item, something that needs to be done in a specific task.

Twproject backlog issues can be prioritized, ordered, and have customizable status (open, in test, working, closed, is up to you), a time estimation and a due date.

ScreenShot070

 

Managing your backlog with Twproject is very practical thanks to the Kanban tool that lets you visualize your items by priority, by status, assignee and so on. Thanks to the Kanban you can see the status of the work, what is assigned to who, checking with a click all the progress your team is making.

ScreenShot072

Once the backlog is created you can create your first sprint.

The sprint creation includes also the set up of an agenda event for all the team members for the stand up meeting.

At this step you will also select the backlog items that you want to move to the new sprint:

ScreenShot071

Once your sprint is created is time to work. The team members will see in their dashboard all their items with priorities. Team members can communicate with a dedicated forum, working together to get things done.

At the end of the sprint, you can create a new agenda event, starting from the project work group to analyze what has been done, what you can improve, and how to go further.

This procedure will be repeated until you finish all the backlog and your project is closed.

Twproject includes also a set of reports that you can use to control your product developments, one of them is the burn down graph, a specific chart showing how the team is performing.

Conclusion

As Marcus Miller pointed out in his post “No matter how efficient we become, the work still has to be done”: no matter how a software can help you managing the project, you still have to do the job, that’s true, but we really hope that our tool can make your life easier.

I think that one of the best features of the Scrum methodology is that it is meant to be improved on the go, you do not actually need to be a master to start organizing your work, you can refine from sprint to sprint.

Using Twproject you can start immediately and without effort using this methodology and test if it works for your company too.

I suggest you to read the post of Marcus Miller that explains in a very intuitive way how this methodology works and how to introduce it in your team.

Using agile project management for SEO & digital marketing

The post is focused also on how to use this methodology in a SEO and digital marketing company, but, as you can imagine this approach can be used in every fields, try it out and contact us if you have questions!

Try Twproject now for managing your SCRUM projects

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How to Introduce Project Management Software & Succeed

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One of the biggest challenges, a project manager can face in a new team, is to change things for the better and let this changes take effect without the resistance of the team.

One of the most frequent examples is when a project manager decides to introduce a new tool for project management.

This moment of change, even if it is felt like very stressful,  is actually a great opportunity for a company to improve its strategy and organizations.

So,  what if you are that project manager? What if you really want to change things in your company organization with a new project management software?

Fix your expectations:

One of the most important things you need to do, before introducing a new software, is identifying your goals. You have to answer these 2 questions:

  1. Which are the main reasons that bring me to search for a project management tool?
  2. Which are the key features of the tool I chose?

these very simple questions can let you analyze what you are missing in your team now and which are the milestones you want to achieve in the future. Here are some examples:

“I really need to let everyone see what they are working on, stop wasting time with e-mails, pointing out problems and delay. The software I’ve chosen has great dashboards with the list of active assignments by priority.”

“I started searching for a project management software because we really do not know how much our projects cost. We wanted to track time and extract reports with resources costs. We chose the software that lets us manage resource costs easily, together with a time tracking tool”

Once you have your goals in mind be realistic and set some small achievements for your near future. Having realistic expectations is very important, actually it is a key point, if you expect to achieve unrealistic goals  you will immediately face a sense of fail in your team, and this will bring the software to fail.

At the same time, if you do not communicate your expectations, no one will understand how much  helpful will be this change and they will abandon the software.

No one said it was easy….

stereotype metapher leadership or exclusion

stereotype metaphor leadership or exclusion

Team communications, change is for the better..

The other key point about introducing a new software in a company, is to let everyone know, that this will actually help everyone working better, not just the project manager.

This, in some cases, is very difficult.

If you are the project manager of a cohesive team, maybe this will not affect you, but now I’m talking to all those pm, having a big team to manage, maybe a distributed one, with several people working in different ways. So, how to let them feel that changes are for the better?

It is not a software to control who is working and who is not. It seems a bad thing to say, but most of the time, these kind of software are felt like tools to control. They are not and you have to tell them clearly. It doesn’t matter if in the future you will get amazing reports of all worked hours, or if, thanks to the software, you will be able to see who is overloaded. The reason for changing is not to control, or at least it shouldn’t be ;-).

Be your own pm and organize your work better. Once the project manager has created the structure of the task, with dependencies and time frames all the team will be able to check their priorities, organize their to dos and manage their work in autonomy. If you, as pm, are able to let them understand the utility of this new responsibility you will have them on board.

These are just two examples of what you can point out to your team to let them know how helpful can be a project management software, let them know that is a tool for the whole team.

Get the best from the software

Following this easy yet effective strategy to introduce the new software in your company you will get in time amazing results. If your team will use the software, inserting and updating data with no effort, you will get something like:

Inserting estimation and worklog -> team workload and cost tracking

When the software is well introduced you will start inserting projects charts, assigning your resources with estimation and hourly costs. Thanks to this, and having your team inserting worklog you will be able to see your resources workload, control tasks progress and check costs, all data updated in real time.

Managing teams and agenda -> meeting and documents sharing

If you start using a shared agenda, you will be able to share appointments and create meeting easily according to task work-groups. check unavailability and the same connection will be created to easily share documents.

Read more here about managing distributed team agendas.

Using task checklist -> self management and responsibility

When a pm software is introduced, it can give you also the possibility to track to-do lists connected to projects. This is a very useful way for all users to organize, prioritize their work, finally they will stop using notes on the desk and no ideas or messages will be lost.

If you feel that your team needs a more structured way to work, it is probably time to introduce a project management software. Yes, it will be a big change but you can really get results if you follow our strategy. Our software, Twproject, can really give all the results mentioned above, all those features in one software only.

Introduce your team to Twproject.

Give Us a Try!

How to be an Innovative Project Manager (Infographic)

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Despite what people think, being a project manager requires a lot of creativity. A project manager has to be creative managing his resources and their productivity lacks , emotions or peculiar ideas,  be creative in communication with his own bosses, be creative managing large projects with unexpected delays…

So, how to stay creative even when your are managing complex projects? Here there are some suggestions:

Do meditate and don’t stay up all night – this is good suggestion in general. To be more productive and yet creative, studies show that you have to rest at least 6 hours per night. In addition to this, learning to meditate, can teach you the art of patience and to avoid to much stress accumulation.

Do be a sponge and don’t wait for inspiration –  project management methodologies are there to try them out and find the best one fitting your projects.  Agile methodology, waterfall, GTD, these are just few examples of methodologies to experiment. Try to be open minded to new strategy and learn to walk on unknown paths, teams are generally positive to a more structured organization that let them feel more secure and followed. If you are facing problems managing your projects and checking their progress you can use a project management software like Twproject that lets you work in different ways according to your needs.

Do trust yourself and don’t go it alone – even if you are the project manager do not forget about your team opinion. Trust yourself ideas and creativity but ask for their opinion too before going forward with an important decision. If a choice will fall back on your team too, it will be easier if they participated to the final decision. This will reinforce your team culture.

Do pay attention and don’t pass judgement – projects, from start to end are like a big creativity process, that requires your attention constantly. In this sense, you need to pay attention to everything happening in your company, if there is a problem that can impact on your projects too you have to operate immediately even in a creative way.  Never stop analizing your delay and their causes because they may happen again, and a deep study can help you facing them in the future.

Do say “Yes, and…” and don’t say “That never works” – Do push back and don’t argue – here we are talking about team building, because you can’t be an innovative project manager if you do not have an innovative team and a team can perform its best if everyone is free to express his opinion, and you , as projects manager, have to learn to listen to them, even if you do not agree. To have the most innovative team you have to look outside of the box.

“Old pattern only bring to old results”

“New ideas require risk. People need to know it’s safe to express new thinking”

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Source Entrepreneur.

How To Manage Distributed Teams – Sharing is Caring

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These days, companies has to face an ever growing need for dynamic teams, shared groups of people working together through the internet. This need increases hand by hand with the difficulty of managing team dynamics and project updates.

For this reason, using conventional software like Microsoft project, built for managing projects in their best case scenario with clearly identified teams, could not fit the needs.

Many Projects – Lots of Teams

Big companies, and small ones too, with a high number of projects can see their number of teams increase accordingly, and when I say team I mean people that are actually working on the project.  Even if your company has just seven colleagues like ours, and you have one team working on several different projects,  you can face the same problem: a meeting for a project, a meting for another, uncounted e-mails refer to a projects, many refer to another, what a mess!

For this reason we cannot underestimate this trend and we better try to manage it.

Sharing is Caring

Actively work on a project often involves sending  tons of e-mail to keep everyone updated on what is going on, share documents and information about progress and commitment, schedule meeting with customers and colleagues, share the list of to-dos to get the project done.

This continuous flow of information assumes that you have always in mind all those who compose a specific team. How many of you spend more than a minute checking the list of attendees to be sure that everyone has been added? What if someone is forgotten?

Distributed Teams – Somebody Help!

It’s clear now that we need something helping us managing distributed teams. But what if I told you that the solution is at one step distance? Dynamic teams are implicitly defined by your projects. No one knows better, who is involved, than project management software.

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Node by node, different people could be assigned and different information could be shared. Simply looking at the team from the project’s point of view, you will see the work-group changing.

This simple yet effective idea, let you start from the point of view of your project: when you have an information to share you just need to focus on which is the specific project related, your team is already there!

Just open you projects management software, your changing teams are saved there!

If you have not introduced a project management software in your company you can try Twproject that solves this problem with a suite of functionalities that starts exactly by the work group created on a project.

Finally we will have the distributed teams problem solved and nobody will be forgotten.

If you want to read more about how to introduce a project management software and succeed you can read this post:

https://twproject.com/blog/how-a-project-manager-can-introduce-a-significant-change-and-actually-succeed/

We have the tools, we have the culture.

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Software Development Project Template – Free Download

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Even if every company has its own peculiarity, we find, in our experience, that company with same business share also the same internal processes.

This is probably the reason why, often, our customers, ask us for project’s template that they can import and adjust in their own Twproject instance. This helps them starting with Twproject easily, refining processes on the go.

We got then the idea to share all these templates in a series of blog posts where you will find the template file free to download.

Which is the project?

Today we create a typical software development project template. Software, but also a different kind of product. We created this with one of our customers that has lunched its product on kickstarter, of course, we simplify the project, removing all tasks specific for its project.

This project is a great example, in fact, we recognize in it, all the common phases and dependencies of a  software development project. It could work for our software house too. Of course, once imported, you can change it to best fit your company’ production process.

The first step of the project is to analyze competitors and collect ideas and requirements. This steps for example could be different if the software is owned by your company or if it is created for a specific customers, in this second case you will probably skip competitor’s analysis to focus on collecting requirements from your  customer.

Second step is “development”, in this case we are talking about a web application, but it could work for a mobile app too.

Testing phase is not included but you could add if it is done internally instead of by your customer.

Last but not least we have documentation and the marketing Phase, which starts immediately and maybe before the beta launch.

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The structure of the development phase is probably the most variable, for example you could have a series of beta releases instead of one, you could have internal testing and also a customer approval step. This are just some ideas of this project possible changes.

How can I import it?

Download the file below and open your Twproject instance. In the project list page there is a button with two arrows that will open a menu with the import functionality.

 

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How does it work?

In Twproject every project could be a template for creating a new one. The copy function, in fact, is available in every project details page.

The best part, is that you can create really complex projects with a click but, at the same time, you can decide to copy/clone only small part of a single project, and re-use it in the same project or in a brand new one. Its up to you.

Our file is a complex project that you can just import and transform in your own template, adjust names, task duration and you are ready to go.

Ignore start date and task status, because your project will be relocated in time once you copy it.

Great right?

Click to download the template

If you created your own template in Twproject and you want to share it with us you can send them at info@twproject.com!

Our template can be exported in MPX format too, if you want it you can send us an email at  info@twproject.com.

Try Twproject now

 

Does Twproject use Twproject?

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If someone would have asked me the most frequent question I get since I worked here at Twproject, I would answer without hesitation “Does Twproject use Twproject?” This is the most asked question by our customers and then of course “How do we use it?”

If I was a good marketer I should probably say:

“Yes, of course we use it, we have created a fantastic project management tool and we could not be able to find anything better out there!”

But you know that I am always honest with you so my real answer is:

“Yes, of course we use it, the most important rule in developing software is to eat your own dog food, if possible, and we are doing it every day”

Since the very beginning of Twproject development, we have used it internally to simply find the best answers to every day works problem and questions.

Twproject has born and developed to answers our own needs and at the same time the needs of thousands of company like ours.

Using it internally has helped us finding the most interesting ideas and of course tons of bugs 🙂

Now that Twproject is a well grown software we can actually say that use it internally also for managing our projects and here it comes the second most asked question “How do we use it?”

Here at Twproject we have several great people working in the design department, in the accounting one, we have the development team and the marketing one from which I belong.

Each of us use Twproject in a different way, and the great thing is that it works perfectly for all of us.

I have already written how to use Twproject for managing marketing strategies and this is mainly how I use it everyday so I though it could be interesting to find how one of our development guys use it, so I asked Roberto, our Twproject Lead architect.

Roberto manages the Twproject project with Twproject…. it’s our own tongue-twister 🙂

Roberto manages releases creating one task for each one of them, right now his working on Twproject 6.1, wow, I really said that? Twproject 6.1 is about to be released with some great new features so stay tuned!

“At the very beginning managing all features requests, bugs and ideas was really difficult, we were covered by ideas from our customers and from our self, moreover we had a lot of bugs to solve and excited customers that asked us a lot of customization”

Roberto and his team decided to organize all features and developments in different task releases (each of them under the main task called Twproject) creating a real road map of features and ideas for the future. In time, Roberto’s team has created great features like the Gantt editor (also released as javascript Gantt editor component on MIT license) with dependencies and critical path management, the great Twproject to-dos management with prioritization, personal order, gravity management, impact bar and scheduled to-dos notifications.

“Now managing Twproject road map is very easy, following a software product development is very easy with Twproject”

And here are his everyday Twproject tricks:

Collect all ideas, features and bugs in your current release

Use all Twproject classifications to insert your ideas, bugs and features in your current release, use Twproject issues for this kind of things. You can classify issues by tag or type and prioritize them with gravity to define an order of importance. Classifications can be refined during meeting with your team.

Give to the most important things a due date and let Twproject remind you of them

If you have things to do that you want not to forget about, just add a due date, in your Twproject home page you will always see all things requiring your attention.

Subscribe to all important events and cut out meetings

Twproject will notify you of all updates you have been subscribed, finally you will know exactly what your team is up to and you will reduce a lot of time spent in meetings.

Move forward to the next release

When you have closed some interesting features, bugs and you are ready to go out with your release, clone your task and bring to the new one all the open issues you have not closed yet. In Twproject every task can be a template for others! In this way all ideas and open bugs will follow you and you will never lose any of them again.

Record your time closing issues

Developers generally close a lot of issues in one day and every time you will do that Twproject will ask you “how much time did it takes?”, no better moment to record your worklog, no additional effort at the end of your day.

 

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I really hope that this post will be helpful to all of those searching for a project management tool for managing software products.

Follow our blog to read more case of study!

We have the tools, we have the culture.

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Twproject security model: you are on a solid ground

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Twproject security model has been designed and refined in years, and it’s now the most complete and safe model you could have.

Since we added a new permission in the latest release, dedicated to assignment expenses management, we decided to write a new post to explain in details how the Twproject security model works, and what you could expect when you start working with it:

What is a role?

In Twproject a role is a set of permissions, telling to the system what a user can do. We have 2 different kind of roles: a global one, giving you permissions on all entities in the system and one at project level, defining permissions on projects’ connected entities only.

The global role is assigned to a resource when you activate its login.

When, instead, you assign one of your colleagues (“resource”) on a task you have to specify a project role. In this way you will be sure that resources will see only what they are involved in.

For more details about how create and modify roles check our user guide here:

https://twproject.com/support/using-twproject/security/

Pre-loaded roles

When you first start using Twproject, no matter if you are on your  local machine or on our demo, you will have a pre-loaded set of roles and permissions.

This roles have been created and refined in years and fits 90% of cases, so you will probably not need to change them at all.

When you create your first assignment you will find these roles:

Project manager:  Can manage the entire project, for example can change dates, create subtasks, add todos and assign new resources.

Worker: Can insert worklog, manage issues and documents on the project .

Stakeholder and Customer: Can monitor the project without changing anything and add todos.

Choosing one of them, you will define the allowed operations for that resource on that task.

The main permissions involved in managing projects and resources are the following:

Resource read:  Allows to read resources. Used with the “assignment create” and without the “resource manage” permission, it lets you assign from your team only.

Resource manage: It allows to manage the work of all resources, and assign all of them if used with the “assignment create” permission(global role).

Task read: Allows to read tasks.

Task create: Allows to create tasks.

Task write: Allows to write tasks, for example change dates and status.

Assignment create, read, write: It allows you to create, read, and write assignments, the list of assignable resource depends if you have the “resource manage permission” or if you manage a team.

Worklog manage: Allows to manage worklog, approve it, bill it of resources  involved in the project.

Expenses manage: It allows you to manage the expenses of  resources involved in the project

ScreenShot022

Roles have several other permissions for managing costs, documents and much more but they are not the focus of this post. Checking the roles’ page you will see that we have a permission for almost every entity in the system,  making of Twproject the most flexible project management software.

The resource chart – manage your team

Another way to give permissions to a resource in Twproject is creating teams with the responsible person. When a resource is defined as the manager of the team he will be able to check his team allocation, active projects, inserted worklog, resource workload and so on.

This will be possible even if the manager is not assigned on the same task of his team, simply by creating the company structure in the resource section.

Who & What (real life examples)

We have a senior project manager that can assign all resources on his projects and a junior one that should assign only resources from its team

In this case you need two different roles: the senior will have the default permissions(resouce-manage on global role), the junior instead, will not have the “resource manage” permission, in this way he will be able to assign only the resource on his team (he is manager of).

In my company there is single person, not assigned on any task that check worklogs and assignment expenses and mark them as approved for billing, how can I manage this?

In this case you have to give an higher level role (security tab in resource editor) to this resource including the “worklog manage” and the “expense manage” permissions.

We have a pmo managing the workload of all our resources, he is not assigned on any task

Here you will need an higher level role (security tab in resource editor) including the “resource manage permission”, in this case the resource will be able to monitor and change the workload of all resources and their plan.

We want to always assign resources from our own team

Just create your resource chart according to your team structure and then remove from the project manager role the “resource management” permission.

 

Customizations:

As I said analyzing examples above, you may need to customize your roles to let Twproject fits your work habits, this can be easily done from the admin section where there is a dedicated page to roles where you can add and remove permissions.

When you do that always remember the mining of the different permissions as explained above.

Conclusion:

Twproject security model is really refined, it lets you manage permissions both, at company and task level easily, having everything under control. Having such a complex structure will ensure your that your resources will be allowed to see and manage only things they can actually work on.

For more details about Twproject security model check our user guide here:

https://twproject.com/support/using-twproject/security/

 

Try Twproject now

The Most Effective Way to Solve Management Problem

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When a company feels the need of introducing a project management software is probably because a deep change is happening. Time of changing introduce a feeling of uncertainty that often terrifying people. It is instead usually a great opportunity for a company to grow and improve methodologies and results.

When your work is well organized, working is easier and people are happier.
For this reason introducing a software for managing projects could be hard at an early stage but a great success once accepted and used by all the team.

We have been providing bootcamps for 10 years in order to help companies reducing the learning period, ensuring all teams that, having everything organized, will improve the life of all of them.

Twproject bootcamp is the opportunity to sit all around a table and simply discuss about how to work better, there are not so many opportunities for doing that right?

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This is exactly what we do and why we call it internally the company’s therapy 🙂 And we all need it because working better is chance we can’t waste.

When a team is all together a lot of hidden problems come to light and finally discussed and resolved, around Twproject’s bootcamp table every opinion counts and have to be discussed.

Even if every company has its own procedures an habits, problems are always very similar, a lot of resources overloaded that are not able to prove how many open tasks they have, project managers that do not have the right feeling about project progress, teams that are disconnected and use different tools for managing their work….

“Probably we are the most complected company you have ever seen” or

“We have to many interruptions to really have the correct feeling of our work load” or

“Our tasks are too complex to be estimated correctly”

These are just an example of all phrases we heard in our experience, and we can ensure you that they are very often the same. Bad habits are very similar, even in very different companies, but introducing a Project management software is the correct path to face them once and for all. Our bootcamp are the best opportunity to put all your doubts and problems on the table, discuss them and solve them.

Mapping companies’ habits into the software is the easiest part of the meeting, facing problems is the hardest part but also the most interesting and inspiring one. If you think that this change can happen without effort you got wrong, changing bad habits is a hard work to do and for this reason you have to start with a step by step plan. Set your goals, choose how you would like to work, which data you would like to collect, and work together with your team to meet those goals.

  • Fix a meeting with the team promoting this change
  • Discuss your goals, why did you choose to start using a project management software? Which is the immediate problem you want to solve?
  • Extend the meeting to the rest of the team exploring the software and which are the features really helpful for your company
  • Time for facing problems, let’s design some different internal projects, how we can improve the way you work?
  • Map the projects into the software, the happiness of having everything in one place only.

This is of course just an example of our boot camp’s road map, we never know the way it goes, the only thing we know for sure is that no matter how hard the transition is, it’s always worth.

Read more about Twproject bbotcamps.

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One try is worth a million words.

New In Twproject: Conditional Custom Fields

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Twproject is flexible, you know that right? It lets you create your own reports, forms, dashboard and from its very beginning it allows user to add custom fields on all main entities. During the years this great functionality has been improved, adding custom fields on every object, tasks, resources, worklogs, costs, issues. Now we give you even more. Custom fields can be now visible only on objects matching one or more characteristics that you specify while creating the new field. Great, isn’t it?

Now you can say Twproject to show a custom fields only in particular cases, let’s see an example of these conditional custom fields:

Below you see the syntax for adding a new field on the task editor: I’ve added a custom field asking for an external code that refers to my invoice system, I say to Twproject to show this field only on tasks of type “Course”.

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Invoice id, 10, {visibleIf:'"Course".equals(obj.type.description)'}

The first part represent the name, the second the length of the field and the third one the condition.
And here it is:

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This new great feature is available since Twproject 6.0.60015.  Custom Fields can be added on tasks, issues, resources, assignments, worklogs, expenses. budget and costs. For navigating the object’s reference and find how to write your condition you can just read here:

Read Twproject’s Object Reference and find how to write your condition.

Let’s check this new feature.

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6 Qualities Of Great Leaders – Infographic

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In our experience with thousands of great companies, that we’ve met thanks to Twproject, we have analyzed so many teams at work, encountering always the same characteristics defining great leaders with successful and happy collaborators. Being a leader is not an easy job, you have to carefully balance humility, strength and integrity, being always steps ahead and empathetic with your team. This interesting infographic show 6 characteristics on how to be a great leader.

Have a Vision – Communication is a key point being a leader, a vision is not enough, you have to be able to describe it to your team in order to transform it into an executable plan. You need to anticipate problems embracing change. Read the following post if you want to know more about more about improving communication within teams.

Be Modest– being a great leader requires humility, you need to admit mistakes being open to criticism and ready for improvement.

Manage Emotions – Emotions lead a team like a leader, and for this reason you have to be able to manage them, in particularly yours, in order to always positively effect others.

Be Honest – Be always sincere to build lasting trust in your team.

Appreciate the journey – Show commitment to your team and stand by your ideas.The key to making things work, is hard work

Help Others – Helping your team growing will help your projects too, acting with generosity always affect positively your people.

We found this infographic really helpful, summarizing all main qualities you need to attain for being a great leader, read below for the full list of tips.

If you want to manage your projects efficiently and improve your team communication you can try Twproject, the best project management software that helps thousands of companies getting things done everyday!

 

Infographic courtesy of: Eliv8group

We have the tools, we have the culture.

Give Twproject a try!

Plan Your To-Dos with Twproject

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Organizing work to-dos is probably the hardest part of self organization, we read every day so many articles about haw to stay organized managing time productively and creating effective to-do lists. Here at Twproject we face the same problem as you do, because we are developers, marketers, designers exactly like you. When we started redesigning Twproject 6 we sit around a table thinking about how to really solve this every day problem, how to really help people organizing their to-dos?

For this purpose we introduced 2 very effective tools, the to-do planner and the Kanban tool, but today I want to focus just on the first one: Twproject To-Do planner:

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Let’s see what you can do with this amazing tool: first of all, at the top of the page you have a filter that gives you all the power to find and refine the list of selected to-dos. This is up to you, you can decide to organize your to-dos task by task, or all together, you may just want to see the most urgent ones, or the open ones, as I said, it depends on you. Twproject filters are really flexible and all filters can be saved and reused.

Your filtered to-dos will appear on the grid on the left, or in the box of the day in case you have already planned them for a specific day.

Now what you have to do is simply drag them to the day you want to schedule it.

Having your to-dos-planned will help you also keeping track of them, the impact bar will show you if you have expired to-dos, something that you should have done and that is still open.

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This tool is helpful even more considering that you can then prioritize all the to-dos you have for a day.

The Twproject to-do planner is even more powerful because it can be used in a shared environment, so you can add more users to the list moving to-dos from one resource to another. This is very useful if you work in a smart team that shares thinks to be done.

Create your work list according to your tasks, plan your to-dos with Twproject planner staying always organized, prioritize them day by day, add comments, screenshots and get things done!

Convinced right? So just give Twproject a try!

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How Marketing Agencies Use Twproject

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We have always defined Twproject as a flexible project management software and the reason why we do so is that there is not a sector where Twproject is not useful. Our project management software is used by thousands of companies all around the world meeting expectations of great project managers and their teams in almost any fields. Twproject project management software has a very intuitive interface that enables an efficient communication in the team, and a great set of features answering needs of all companies leaders.

Today we want to focus on how marketing agencies use Twproject, which are key features for these teams and why.

Project/Campaign

Twproject can be easily used for managing marketing campaign; every project you create has a start and an end date identifying your campaign period, milestones can be set at the beginning or during the marketing initiative according to goals you want to achieve. With Twproject you can set your goals and meet them. Every project can be structured in tasks as per your campaign strategy, tasks can be closed, paused according to your needs; checking progress in real time is the key to make your campaigns work.

Campaign strategies, ideas and resources

Once your project structure is created you are ready for brainstorming with your team about things to do, tools to use, social media to engage and Twproject is ready to help you. Every project has a discussion section where all team members can discuss, propose, approve ideas, encouraging creative thinking.

Twproject allows you to link every project to a to-do list. You can add here everything you need to remember, everything you need to do, and in the same place you can store useful links, images, videos, every resource helpful for your marketing campaign. Everything can be commented by the team, collaboration has never been so easy.

You can always stay in touch with your colleagues, arrange meetings with Twproject shared agendas and staying up to date with campaign progress.

Startup Stock Photos

Campaign report and achievement

Every information about your progress is stored and easily readable so that you can analyze your achievement and improve your future campaings. Twproject project/campaign can be cloned, so for the next campaign you just need to duplicate it and you are ready to go! Twproject includes complete reports for adjusting and changing future strategies.

And last but not least you can record all your time spent on every specific project, so that you will always be able to track your campaign costs.

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The never ending Twproject “war” with Microsoft Project

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Through our customers and contacts we frequently get reminded about Microsoft Project© enduring existence.

Twproject was in fact first born as the limitation of Microsoft Project (it was 1999 🙂 ) were unsolvable by using the Microsoft Project API available at the time. And the two project management solutions are born to differ in their core philosophy – and they do. Web applications became possible at the time and Twproject development started, around 2002, and Twproject got developed as wed based and around the idea of making information gathering as easy as possible.

Why care about Microsoft Project then? The team that develops Twproject and the set of its customers are often large, even enterprise companies, and we have the experience and sensitivity to typical corporate problems of software and IT integration. In these contexts we are still frequently asked how Twproject and Microsoft Project compare as solutions for corporate customers, e.g.

I actually downloaded it and I am trying it on my localhost. I would love to hear though what advantages Twproject has over Microsoft Project Server. We are in the process of trying to decide. If you have a comparison white sheet I would be grateful.
Some information follows.

Twproject is web based (since 2001)

Twproject around 2002

Being web based then and today meant ubiquity, adaptiveness, flexibility, inclusiveness. This in our opinion is what Microsoft Project always lacked.

Microsoft almost made it (in 2014!) making a web version of Microsoft Project the reference one. Still if you check their user interface it tries to emulate desktop software, using an iconic language alien to the web.

Twproject is cost effective

Let’s consider costs:
is available for $58 per user, per month

Microsoft marketing in the referenced videos stress the simplicity of the price model, probably as an effort to distract from prices. Well Microsoft’s model is actually quite complex, price ranges from $33 to $58 (per user / month!) – and if you want to use the desktop client, prepare to pay $1556 for each client!

That is way more expensive than Twproject, which gives you a full user for less than $5 per month!

twproject-prices

Twproject is not Gantt centered 🙂

gantt-new

jQuery GanttIt is a bit funny to write this, because we released a free, open source amazingly popular JavaScript web based Gantt component :D, which is also part now of Twproject.

Twproject has a Gantt-like editor where we tried to get the advantages of the Gantt user interface model without adopting the unrealistic

(planned time = project effort)

equation which constitutes the core of the Gantt model.

Twproject focuses on real work done

While in the current version planning is fully supported, still the core of Twproject is collecting information about real work done.
So it collects multiple projects, allows temporary dis-alignment of dates and statuses, collects issues, to-dos, worklogs, does all it can to encourage users to insert information in the simplest, fastest possible way. Planning is supported, but Twproject works with and without planned work.

Twproject integrates with different IT structures

it-integration

Microsoft Project depends for everything on Share Point©, so including its collaborative aspects. it is strongly integrated with Microsoft Exchange©.

So you have to get the whole Microsoft package, like it or not, to adopt Microsoft Project. Meh.

Twproject instead is functionally and technologically widely compatible with different solutions and is built to be non-intrusive.
This is true for both the installed and the online version of Twproject.

For example, the installed version runs stand alone in Tomcat (a Java web server), and can run anywhere, supporting easy integration with say LDAP, single-sign on and directory services.

The on-line version comes as a dedicated server instance that comes with its own mail server for a dedicated notification email.

Twproject works fine without Microsoft Exchange©, simple connection with an SMTP and POP3 service gives you full e-mail integration.

Twproject has an “open” approach (even if is not open source, sources are available for our customers). It runs on every operating system and can use any database. It is available both on cloud on or customer premises. It is web based and you can use it with every “modern” browser. Twproject is a wise choice from the IT manager perspective because of its open data and infrastructure features, as IT infrastructure changes over time.

Twproject developers are people, easily reachable on-line

Twproject is built by a small, solid and very efficient company. Its developers are ready to give support on the solution; moreover complete sources are available for free for all customers. Twproject is structured to support customization, custom extensions, reports, wizards, complete custom forms, and export and import with other data sources.

We deployed and maintain many customized parts for our over 3000 customers, all compatible with Twproject main release and hence compatible with updates.

Conclusion

After 15 years, the divergence of the two products is still considerable. In the meantime, the road of the web as a platform for applications has become the main path for collaborative software. And the diversity and richness of IT environments has increased. So we believe there are ever more good reasons to pick a safe, compatible solution as Twproject instead of the closed Microsoft Project universe.

References

http://windowsitpro.com/office-365/microsoft-announces-project-lite-cloud-based-productivity-team-members

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/technet/en-us/office/media/video/video.html?cid=pstc&from=sharepermalink&VideoID=ebe00785-db66-44d6-8ed3-86eafa63c7e4

Twproject is not affiliated in any form with Microsoft. Microsoft Project, Microsoft Exchange Share Point may be Registered Trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.

 

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