Project handover: how to manage it

Project handover can be very simple or extremely complicated. It all depends on the organization of the Project Manager.

Projects can be short and can last up a few days or can be complex projects with a lifecycle that can even reach several years.

It is precisely for the duration of some projects that some project managers may find themselves in the situation of having to “handover” a project to a new project manager.

A retirement, a new job challenge for the outgoing project manager and other situations can be the reason that leads to the handover.

The most important thing is that those who take over is in the best conditions to continue the work.

Obviously, project handover requires much more than the transfer of office keys and software access information.

Hence, there are six steps below that can help to successfully complete a project handover:

1. Setting handover objectives

Outgoing and incoming project managers should hold a meeting and set goals that must be met during the transition.

This allows both parties to review and evaluate the status of the project in relation to the project’s basic planning, timing and budget.

Project team members should also, for obvious reasons, be involved in this meeting.

2. Keeping the customer up to date

Project team members, the workers and the customer must understand how the existing project manager intends to make the handover to the successor.

In some cases, the project manager could explain why knowledge transfer is underway and what could change in the future.

Clarity is always a winning element.

3. Having short daily meetings

During the transition between the existing project manager and the new one, all team members should meet each other to evaluate and review the status of responsibilities and activities.

It is an extremely important phase because it allows the incoming PM to evaluate the state of things and the capabilities of the individual elements of the Team.

4. Showing project benefits and utility for the upcoming project manager

Some projects revolve around the development or use of resources or products.

When specific products are involved, the project manager in charge should help the new project manager to understand how this product or service works.

The outgoing project manager should also show and motivate the new PM the benefits of the project and its strategic importance for the company.

5. Meeting the stakeholders

The existing project manager and the new one should meet project stakeholders together.

This will allow interested parties to ask questions, expose any doubts and discuss. This is what usually happens in a Kick off Meeting.

6. Being available to ask support

Sometimes, incoming project manager may not be sure of some project’s aspects.

For example, the new project manager could not understand the organization management processes.

When this happens, the incoming project manager must be available to (follow the good practice to) ask support from the existing project manager, the project team, and top management.

This will allow both project managers to work together to achieve common handover targets.

Checklists are always very useful for summarizing actions and timeline of events that otherwise would be complicated to explain.

Here are two checklists that can further support project handover between project managers.

Outgoing project manager should:

Obtain and deliver the project status – if one exists – or collect the project start-up documentation (for this reason it is important to always keep it in order);
Collect the documents involved in the initial offer, make sure to clearly indicate what the signed copy is (important to understand the expectations);
Collect all change requests (amount, description and times for each instance);
Write down the roles client-side (who is the sponsor, who will check the quality of the final results, etc.);
List all important contacts for the project, writing the frequency of communication with each contact and which topics to discuss;
Present the new project manager to the client;
Present the new project manager to the team;
Suggest the next steps to the new project manager.

Here, instead, there is a checklist of practical things to be managed during the handover:

List the people who are working on the project, or who have worked on it, along with their skills, competences and roles;
Give information on the work environment (password, keys, key card, …)
Give information on technical or practical dependencies, for example: if the X system should fail, this could cause project A to fail; the Z project depends on the Y service, etc.
Explain how long handover will take;
Notifying customers and stakeholders with much frequency of contact, that they may be less reactive during the transfer;
Explain to company leaders what you are concretely “transfer” to the new project manager;
Keep track of project delivery time.

In all these steps it is easy to understand how document management plays an essential role.

To support this transition phase, we have provided in TWproject a simple and flexible document management system.

In opposition to the complex management of documents that could be found in other software, document management is deliberately essential in TWproject.

With some powerful and simple techniques you can meet most business needs, for example reliability and usability.

Testing Twproject you will discover an intelligent system to manage and archive project documents and always have them at your fingertips.

One last observation must be made: each project manager has his own style.

For this reason, the incoming project manager does not necessarily have to follow everything that his predecessor has done, even imitating his working style.

Some people, especially younger managers, will probably feel obliged to do so, but our advice is to follow their own style and personality, without forcing themselves.

“ He who loses his individuality loses all.”

MAHATMA GANDHI

Have you ever found yourself in the middle of a project handover process?

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The kick off meeting: how to set up a project start meeting and get the best results

A project lifecycle often involves many meetings with different purposes.

One of these meetings is the so-called kick off meeting or preliminary project meeting.

This meeting is an important communication tool between project manager, team and stakeholders.

If organized and properly executed, a preliminary meeting can help the project manager in order to handle the project more easily and with fewer obstacles.

CONTENT INDEX

What is a kick off-meeting?
When does a kick off-meeting take place?
What is the purpose of a kick off meeting?
How to perform a successful kick off meeting?
Kick off meeting benefits

What is a kick off-meeting?

More precisely, a preliminary meeting is one of the first meetings held among project stakeholders at the time of launching a new project.

This meeting can include all project stakeholders, up to the highest levels, such as project sponsors, management and project managers, as well as team members.

The target of this meeting is to offer the project manager the opportunity to define the common goal and create an agreement.

When does a kick off-meeting take place?

If the project is small, the kick-off meeting usually takes place after the start-up process with all team members. In fact, the same team is involved in planning and execution of the project.

Furthermore, if some team members don’t know each other, this could be their first meeting together.

In small projects usually only one preliminary project meeting takes place.

If the project is a big project, however, the kick-off meeting takes place when the project planning is completed and the project is about to start.

In a multi-phase project, preliminary meetings can be scheduled at the beginning of each phase.

If the project is complex and distributed over a large geographical area, the meeting will be a virtual kick-off meeting in which all participants can communicate each other in an online call or video call.

What is the purpose of a kick off meeting?

A project team can be made up of new team members, so it is important to have one session to allow team members to meet each other.

This meeting also helps to improve the feeling of trust and promotes discussion and mutual agreement between team members.

Then, the meeting helps all team members to become aware of the objectives of the project, of the hypotheses, of the constraints, of the deliverables.

The challenges, methods, procedures, plans, work environment and roles of each stakeholder, etc. are also taken into consideration.

A successful kick off meeting can be a boost for the future of the project.

How to perform a successful kick off meeting?

If the project is large and complex, you can have internal and external meetings.

Internal kick off meetings are scheduled between team members and the project manager to better understand the project, aligning each other.

In an external kick off meeting, all the stakeholders comes into play and the customer is taken in consideration also.

Then, they will discuss about the project, the objectives, the context and the responsibility of each team member.

It is also important to discuss about the communication and reporting system within the team and with project stakeholders.

Generally, the meeting is closed with a question and answer session in ordert o help the team in the problem solving.

Once the internal kick off meeting is finished, the next step will be schedule an external kick off meeting with the customer.

This will be the opportunity to fully understand the customer and his expectations, clarifying any doubts and to explain how the project manager is going to handle planning and execution of the project, etc.

Following are some steps to follow to achieve an effective kick off meeting.

1) Schedule the meeting

The project manager decides the topics to be discussed during the meeting.

For example, it may include a session about the team presentation, the introduction of the project and the objectives, milestones, constraints, etc.

The PM must send the invitation to all the participants in advance to allow them to prepare for the meeting.

2) Lead the meeting

The project manager, as project coordinator, leads and directs the meeting as previously scheduled.

It is important for the PM to set and communicate the expectations and requirements to the participants.

The team will have to know exactly how many days it will have to work, the roles within it, the practical issues, for example how to request holidays, how to communicate with the project manager, etc.

Explaining the communication and reporting system is important as well.

Clarifying in which format the reports are needed and how often meetings or communications will be essential.

It should be never forget, the explanation on business needs and why the project is important for the customer and for the company.

Each project presents risks and, even these, together with possible solutions, must be exposed during the meeting.

3) Close the meeting

As said before, at the end of the meeting it is appropriate to hold a question and answer session.

Here the participants can ask all the questions and receive – hopefully – all the answers.

The meeting generally closes with thanks to the project manager.

Furthermore, the PM will leave an open communication channel, emphasizing his availability to be contacted for any further questions or clarifications.

Once the meeting is over, it will be necessary to prepare a summary meeting summary and send it to all the participants and interested stakeholders who could not be present.

Kick off meeting benefits

Following a short list of the benefits you get from a preliminary meeting:

It helps team members to know each other;
Defines the roles and the authority of the project;
It helps team members to understand project goals;
It helps team stakeholders to understand milestones, risks, project requirements and constraints of the project;
It helps the project manager to get support, consensus and trust from all stakeholders;
It allows to all participants to ask questions clarifying their doubts.

A preliminary meeting is the key to completing the project.

An important tool to make all team members meet each other and to motivate them to reach the target.

This is also the moment when the project manager can show his leadership qualities for the first time and start building a relationship of trust with the team and the stakeholders.

For all these reasons a project manager must adequately prepare the kick off meeting and must consider it an important step towards the future success of the project.

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Project Stakeholders

Who are the stakeholders? When we read the title, this is the first question that comes to mind.

If we take the definition of the PMBok, a stakeholder is an individual, a group or an organization that can influence or can be influenced (or perceive itself being influenced) by a decision, activity or result of a project.

Shortly, a stakeholder is a person, a group of people, or an organization that has an interest in the project or is influenced – directly or indirectly – by its result.

CONTENT INDEX

Interests and necessities
Type of Stakeholder
The register of Stakeholders
The contents of the stakeholder register

This can include, for example, project team members, project sponsors, members of the organization, and people outside the organization.

But let’s try to analyze all the aspects that can be of interest of the subjects directly or indirectly involved in a project and the evaluations and actions that inevitably are in the hands of the Project Manager.

Project stakeholders: interests and necessities

In a certain manner, a stakeholder has an interest in the outcome of the project.

It is therefore essential to identify all the stakeholders in a project, and it would be trivial to say the reasons.

The identification of the stakeholders must be done from the beginning of the planning phase in order to create a strategy to manage them.

This will help in managing the project with minimal obstruction from them. The sooner the stakeholers are identified, the sooner we can start to communicate and to involve them in project decisions.

In this way, they will feel a connection to the project. They will be able to understand the benefits and they will support the project manager everytime he needs it.

The project is successful, if all the stakeholders are happy and satisfied with the result.

It may happen that even if the project is complete and all the deliverables have been accepted by the client, the project is not successfully completed because some stakeholders are not completely satisfied.

Therefore, in order to successfully complete a project, it is very important that a project manager can keep all stakeholders satisfied.

Normally, if the project is simple, the list of project stakeholders is probably small.

However, if the project is more complex and perhaps spread across a large geographic area, it is possible that the number of stakeholders is huge.

In a big project, in fact, project stakeholders can also be communities or the general public.

The important thing is to keep in mind that the stakeholders are not all the same.

Every stakeholder has different needs and expectations.

So, each stakeholder must be treated according to its needs and expectations.

Not doing it can compromise the success of the project.

For this reason, knowing all the stakeholders, their needs, expectations and requirements will increase the chances of success of the project.

If we forget or disregard an important stakeholder, this could lead to difficulties in the later phases of the project.

The Project could suffer: delays, cost overruns and, in the most serious cases, the closure of the project itself.

Type of Stakeholder

Project stakeholders can be divided into two categories:

Internal stakeholders;
External stakeholders.

Internal stakeholders are directly within the organization. For example:

A sponsor;
An internal client (if the project arose because of an internal need of the organization);
A project team;
A project manager;
A portfolio manager;
A manager of another department of the organization (for example, trade manager, administrative manager, ecc.).

On the other hand, external stakeholders are external to the organization. For example:

An external client (the “standard” type of clients);
An end user of the project result;
A supplier;
A subcontractor;
The government;
Local communities;
Media.

Moreover, stakeholders can be positive and negative.

A positive stakeholder sees the positive side of the project and benefits from its success.

These help the project management team to complete the project successfully.

On the other hand, a negative stakeholder sees the negative result of the project and can be negatively influenced by the project or its outcome.

This type of stakeholder is less inclined to help.

Perhaps we will appear boring, but it is fundamental to understand the importance of identifying the project stakeholders in the early pahses of the project.

It is also necessary to note down the details, requirements, expectations, power and influence on the project in the stakeholder register.

Some of these stakeholders will have a minimal interest or just a relative influence on the project.

However, the project manager must also take care of them.

Indeed, you can never know when secondary stakeholders can become the dominant stakeholders and if the dominant stakeholders become less influential.

The register of Stakeholders

After having identified all the stakeholders, their information will be recorded in a so-called stakeholder register.

This register is a project management document that will contain all the aforementioned information.

In this document all the people, groups and organizations that have any kind of interest or involvement in the project will be identified.

Here we can find the names, titles, roles, interests, requirements, expectations, type of influence, etc. of each one of them.

The stakeholder register will be created as soon as the project statute is signed.

Doing this in the first stage of the project will help complete the project with minimal effort.

Once the register is created and all the stakeholders are listed, a strategy to manage them will be easily drafted.

The contents of the Stakeholder register

Usually, the stakeholder register contains three types of information about each stakeholder:

Identification;
Evaluation;
Classification.

In some cases, the register can also contain the stakeholder management strategy.

In the first section, we will have the following information:

Name;
Title;
Contact information;
Role in the project / organization.

In the second section about the evaluation of the stakeholders, we will have:

Stakeholders requirements;
Communication necessities;
Communication frequency;
Expectations;
Influence on the project;
Interests and power.

The last section will classify the stakeholders on the basis of various criteria.

They can be divided according to their power and interest in the project, whether high, medium or low.

It is also possible to assign other attributes to the stakeholders, for example, if a stakeholder is internal, external, positive, a supporter, a resistor or a neutral stakeholder.

After completing the evaluation, it is possible to edit the stakeholder management strategy.

This strategy will help to interact with each one of them based on individual needs, influence and interest in the project.

The stakeholder register must be kept up to date throughout the project life cycle.

While the project goes on, it will be possible to identify new stakeholders or it can happen that other stakeholders should no longer be considered. The register should be therefore contain these changes.

Moreover, during the project life cycle, the interest or power of one or more stakeholders could change. This must also be duly noted in the register.

As it appears clear, the identification of stakeholders is a continuous process. This is why the stakeholder register must be considered an “open” document during the entire life cycle of the project.

Because this registry contains names, e-mails, classifications, and management strategies, it may not be shown to everyone.

It is therefore necessary to keep this document in a safe place with limit access.

Every project manager must therefore remember to always take the project stakeholders into consideration.

In fact, a deficiency in this sense could have serious and negative repercussions on the whole project.

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How to make a project budget

How can I create a budget for a project if I have no historical basis on which to orient myself?

When starting a project, it is difficult to know how much it will cost.

If we are dealing with a repetitive project, we will probably have a history on which to base ourselves.

In this case it may be easier to draw up a project budget, but different is the case when it comes to a new project.

Project managers are required to account for their budget estimates.

Given the great uncertainty that usually prevails in the initial phase of a project, this can be one of the major challenges of a project manager.

The ability to create an accurate budget is an essential skill for a project manager.

It can be a daunting task, especially for new project managers; however, once the first budget is created, you will have a first reference system.

From then on, it will be easier to manage this aspect for future projects.

CONTENT INDEX

The approaches to drafting a budget
The top-down approach
The bottom-up approach
The different types of cost in creating the budget
The management reserve
Ineligible costs
Manage budget changes

The approaches to drafting a budget

There are two main approaches that can be adopted when drawing up a budget:

Top-down approach: decide how much the project will cost in total and divide the amount between the various phases of work;
Bottom-up approach: calculate the individual work steps, starting from the lowest level, then adding sum up their cost and estimate the total cost of the project.

Both approaches, like all things, have their advantages and disadvantages.

Let’s try to evaluate them together.

How to make a project budget: The top-down approach

The top-down approach, literally from top to bottom, is more than simply a guess of the total amount on which to base the whole project.

In fact, it is necessary to explain how the work will be carried out and structured within the amount of budget allocated for each phase of the project.

One should ask oneself if the balance sheet seems realistic on the basis of the experience of past projects, if there are any.

The advantage of the top-down budgeting approach is that it focuses on achieving the project within the allocated budget and leads to efficiency and reduction of costly practices.

A disadvantage is that it presupposes that the person who creates the budget has sufficient knowledge and skills to make a reasonable cost estimate.

If this is not the case, a conflict may occur when a team member is assigned an unrealistic and insufficient budget to complete his work phase.
In fact, there is the risk that deliberately low budgets are created with the – false – belief that this will encourage cost savings and waste elimination.

How to make a project budget: the bottom-up approach

In the second approach, bottom-up, literally from bottom to top, the project budget is built starting from the individual work stages, from the lowest level, and adding them up until reaching the total cost of the project.

The team is often involved in identifying the tasks and activities needed to complete the project and to estimate the various costs.

The advantage of the bottom-up budgeting approach is its accuracy, assuming that we have not forgotten any activity, and consequently its cost.

It is good for team morale because the project manager involves the team in budgeting.

For this reason, this approach is sometimes called participatory budget.

A disadvantage of the bottom-up approach is the difficulty of obtaining a complete list of activities and tasks necessary to complete the project, especially if it is something new, or if we are dealing with a young and / or inexperienced team.

In fact, the risk in starting new projects or in the involvement of junior resources, may be that of not contemplating entire phases of activity and process.

This inevitably leads to totally unleashing not only the costs, but also the time required to complete the project.

The different types of cost in creating the budget

In creating the budget the Project Manager must take into account different factors and above all the different types of costs.

There are basically two types of costs that affect project managers when they create a budget:

Direct costs
And indirect costs.

The former are uniquely attributed to the project and can be easily definied, such as: the cost of personnel, equipment, travel, consultants, ecc.

Indirect costs, on the other hand, are related to expense items loaded simultaneously on more than one project. Only part of their total cost is charged to a single project.

For example: telephone bills, office rent, company insurance, office equipment, etc.

How to calculate these costs?

For example, if the project will take 6 weeks and the internet bill is € 50 per month, the total cost of the project will be € 75.

To get an idea of the other costs, you can take a look at the previous year.

It will be necessary to see what has been spent on the whole and then divide it by 52 (the number of weeks in the year) to obtain an average weekly cost.

This can be valid for an indirect cost such as that of the equipment.

How to make a project budget: the management reserve

A management reserve or contingency reserve is usually added to projects and usually corresponds to a percentage of the total cost and time of the project.

This fund is used when events related to unexpected costs occur during the project.

The management reserve should be adjusted according to the level of risk identified for the project.

Clearly, the more risky the project is, the greater the management reserve will have to be, and viceversa.

A routine project, already carried out several times, will have a lower management reserve than a totally new project.

The budget will therefore be made up of direct costs, indirect costs and the amount that serves as a management reserve.

How to make a project budget: ineligible costs

There are also costs that are generally not eligible in a project and therefore can not be included in the budget.

In general we can identify them in the following:

Non-accountable costs, such as voluntary work;
Capital investment costs;
Financial charges;
Passive interests;
Losses caused by the currency exchange, among other things not quantifiable given the volatility;
VAT in the case it is a recoverable cost;
Costs covered by EU funding or by another type of state funding;
Sanctions.

Manage budget changes

Projects rarely go according to plan in every detail.

It is therefore necessary that the project manager is able to identify when costs vary from budget and manage these changes.

A project manager must regularly compare the amount of money spent with the amount provided and report this information to the managers, the company president and the stakeholders.

It is therefore necessary to establish a method on how these progress will be measured and reported.

A widely used method for medium and high complexity projects is the earned value method.

This is a method of periodic comparison of the estimated costs – budget value – with the actual costs during the project – actual value.

The earned value method can provide information not only with regard to cost variances, but also with regard to time deviations, ie if the project is on time or not.

A simple way to evaluate the progress of the project is to take two values:

Direct cost percentages pertaining to an activity;
Sum of already worked hours on the activity and the forecast of the hours until the end of the project.

The progress of the activity will therefore result from the product between these two indicators. If it less than 1, it means that we are facing a project delay.

At the end of a project, it will be necessary to evaluate if a budget deviation has taken place and what were the reasons that caused it.

Regardless of the approach a project manager chooses to make the budget, it is essential to take the time to monitor it throughout the whole project.

In fact, for project management, cost monitoring is a strategic aspect.

For this reason in Twproject, we have developed the functionalities able to insert and manage both the costs generated by the work (direct costs) and the additional costs (indirect costs), reserving, of course, such access only to the Project Managers.

The importance of monitoring and managing a budget is crucial! Here is a small example of the support that TWproject can give you.

In this example (an integral part of the previous screen) your forecast margin (calculated from budget and planned costs) is 850.

This is the first estimate you’ve made, and it’s probably very close to what you told your client.

Then, in a second phase, you have refined your estimate: the second line represents how it is going in relation to what is planned.

The last line is the “real” situation, you have a budget of 2500, and you have spent 1285. Great! There is a margin of 1215, better than expected!

Which is the best tool for making a project budget?

Therefore, building, customizing and monitoring the budget are fundamental aspects for a winning project!

Budget management is of the main tasks of the project manager, who also has many other activities to carry out during the project life cycle.

The support of a project management software can prove to be a very effective choice, not so much to eliminate the risk of cost overruns, but to help keep them under control.

A tool like Twproject is developed to meet the supervisory needs of the Project Manager and of those in the company who deal with cost management.

If you want to start testing the features of our software today, to create an accurate project budget, try the demo version: it’s free and complete with all the useful and necessary features.

What are the biggest difficulties you have experienced while creating a budget?

What strategy did you use?

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7 tips on how to manage winning projects

The success of any project depends on the ability of a project manager to have a specific methodical approach to each project.

The approach must be in line with the needs of the client and with the strengths of his team.

In order to manage a winning project, it is essential to create an effective working structure that is not a task that anyone is able to do.

Of course, most project managers know that workflow management, like any other tool that contributes to project management success, is important, but how to do it properly is often not so obvious.

Any project manager knows that the best project management tips and tricks come with time, with experience, but also with the advice of more experienced project managers.

Therefore, today we want to give you 7 valuable tips for managing winning projects.

CONTENT INDEX

Plan the day using time management techniques
Include stakeholders in important decisions
Communicate regularly with the team
Anticipate the possible deadlock situations of the project
Know your limits as a project manager
Stay focused on the details
Be updated on the latest project management trends

How to manage winning projects: Plan the day using time management techniques

For a project manager, time management skills are essential because we are dealing with a series of activities that often require rapid response times.

Planning the day will therefore be essential to maintain the overall organization and increase productivity.

For the planning of the activities there are appropriate project management software that can be a valuable help and that allows to keep track of the work done.

If you are not very tech savvy, even a simple to-do list, ordered by priority, can be a good organizational tool.

The most important and priority tasks will therefore be placed at the top of the list, while the less important ones at the bottom. Another idea is also to use different colors depending on the urgency of the activity.

Having a visual plan of daily activities helps to have a general picture. It helps to be aware of how to manage time for each specific task and for each individual resource.

As a visual tool we can only recommend the use of Gantt charts.

How to manage winning projects: Include stakeholders in important decisions

Despite having many responsibilities regarding the project, the project manager must never forget customers and stakeholders.

Good communication in a project is essential to keep the parties informed about the progression of the project and the need for program changes.

Some customers may have different expectations when it comes to communication, so already in the planning phase of a project, it is important to establish the frequency and the communication system to be used, which can be e-mails, phone calls, meetings, etc.

Establishing communication expectations in advance helps alleviate the uncertainty of stakeholders on the frequency and on the arrival of communications.

In addition, it can also help the project manager set the limits for when he is free to talk about the project and when he can consider himself too busy to have a conversation – unless it is an emergency.

How to manage winning projects: Communicate regularly with the team

Daily communication with the team helps to control misunderstandings and unclear needs.

Keeping your team informed at every stage of the project is essential for successful project management.

Good communication skills are a cornerstone of project management.

In other words, clear and frequent communication positively influences the way in which team members see their project manager as a leader, helps to control product quality and project duration, as well as foster risk management.

Furthermore, a study published by Procedia Technology found that some methods of communication are more effective than others.

The researchers found that communication works best in the following order, from the most to the least effective:

Electronic communication (with the right tools);
Written communication;
Verbal communication;
Visual communication;
Non-verbal communication.

How to manage winning projects: Anticipate the possible deadlock situations of the project

Even the best plans can go wrong. Even with a high level of planning and attention to detail, the project could still encounter some difficulties.

Paying attention to complaints from stakeholders or colleagues and other warning signs, such as a deadline or a cost overrun, is crucial.

Preventing a crisis will allow the project to continue without too many hitches, saving a lot of time and maintaining a cohesion among team, stakeholders and the project manager.

Unfortunately, not all complications can be avoided. Crisis management capabilities are essential to tackle the unexpected.

Project managers must be flexible and pragmatic, improvise and make precise decisions when needed.

How to manage winning projects: Know your limits as a project manager

Many projects are destined to fail from the beginning due to unrealistic expectations (you can see how can

Managing project expectations.

Establishing impossible deadlines or assigning too much work to team members will undoubtedly lead to untidy jobs and often to failure to meet deadlines.

Errors and delays in the work can direct the project towards failure, necessitating adjustment and “patching” work, extension of the calendar and going to undermine the trust of the stakeholders and of the team itself.

Taking the time to get to know the team you work with, will help you understand each person’s strengths and weaknesses and then assign the right tasks.

Delegating tasks to the right person is very important, because success depends on how team members can and are able to perform their tasks.

How to manage winning projects: Stay focused on the details

A common problem encountered by project managers is that project goals are not in line with business objectives.

A good project manager will define a strategic plan for the project that will bring the company back to success.

It’s too easy to get lost in minor details and forget what the goal is, so a well planned project goal is essential to success.

Having a fixed deadline and budget will help maintain a project structure, marked by milestones and a written list of requirements.

How to manage winning projects: Be updated on the latest project management trends

Upskilling is very useful, if not essential, for project management.

Unfortunately, with the high workload and stress of full-time work, it can be difficult to find the time to attend training or refresher courses.

On the other hand, there are many project management courses that are conducted online and most companies will be happy to reimburse their cost.

Professional development should never stop. The workforce is constantly changing, adding new tools and project management roles that did not exist until a few years ago.

To conclude, a project manager must be an expert in leadership, communication and organizational skills.

With the high workload and stress, it is essential to have the necessary skills to reach every goal.

Remaining responsible and aware of all aspects of the project will lead to success.

What are your suggestions for managing winning projects?

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5 Most Common Mistakes in Managing Projects

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!

How to Improve Resource Management and Get The Best From Your Team

We know that, you are a project manager and you really need to close your tasks on time and on budget. Recently, increasing company’s culture has become important as well so now, to those two goals you have to add a third one: work with an happy and productive team.

Work in a relaxed environment without any pressure, with shared methodologies and goals, has a positive impact on the entire company, you have experienced that for sure; although this concept is probably clear to everyone, it is not as easy to apply, often projects are overdue, people are overloaded, and the team is divided.

How can you recover your team culture, achieve your goals without delay and, finally improve your resource management?

Share your goals but also doubts:

Being a project manager you have to focus on sharing and communicating to improve your staff management. One of the main causes of delays in taskworks is the lack of communication. The goal of the project must be clear to everyone from the very beginning, desired end dates, and in general the whole planning.

To improve resource management, it is essential that, in case of doubt, team can discuss together, prompting problems that would otherwise remain hidden until the end. The choices taken should not fall from above as unquestionable, but be proposed and discussed together. Likewise, if someone is in late, they must notify the group immediately, in this way, if the delay has an impact on the work of others, it can be managed immediately.

Increasing communication in your work group will not be easy, you will have to start dedicating more time to your team and for this reason you will need to learn how to organize meeting efficiently, initially you might feel like taking away work’s’ time, but it is not like that!

Start in the morning, get together with your colleagues and make a quick point of the situation: are we on time? Is someone in late and why? Can I help you? Once a month, make a more in-depth meeting, check that the project is getting according to initial requests and that everyone is happy and not overloaded. If a problem occurs, act immediately and do not leave your resources alone. To manage your staff, you often have to take responsibility for others’ mistakes, learn to tackle problems constructively without looking for scapegoats that can divide the team.

Delegate to improve resource productivity

To be a good leader you must instill confidence and trust to encourage your resources to become autonomous. Recent studies show that a resource, if she becomes more responsible for a project (or sub-phase), becomes more focused and increases her productivity, for this reason, it is therefore necessary, to improve your staff management to start a process of delegation and empowerment which must start from you.

To facilitate this process, you can use a system that allows you to properly manage and plan your work and, at the same time, split projects into phases that you can delegate to individual resources or subgroups. For example, a project management software such as Twproject can help you identify these phases, monitor their real-time performance, and monitor the workload of your collaborators. Twproject, thanks to an interactive Gantt editor, allows you to (1) create your tasks structure within minutes, (2) assign your colleagues on their respective stages, and (3) check the load in real time:

5 tips to improve resource management:

So, to improve your resource management, you need a strategy:

Share with the group your goals and the project planning but also delays or difficulties and act immediately where possible: in this way, you will always be aligned and will not regret unexpected delays and bottle necks.
Schedule regular meetings to make a point on project progress, closely follow your team: thanks to a tight communication you will always be up-to-date on what’s going on, about the mood of your collaborators over the tasks.
Delegate the work that resources can do autonomously and keep them involved: in this way, you will be able to focus more on the management work and their, being responsible for their stage will be more focused.
Always check their load and balance as much as possible: try not to overwork the team too much, face the deadlines smoothly will allow them to work better.
Use a project management software like Twproject to improve resource management, control the work assigned to your resources, their work-load, and track activities progress. This will give you a valid helper to reduce your load and will allow you to have an always up-to-date picture.

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3 Useful Tips to Improve Work Time Management

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:

Create a list of realistic priorities and minimize interruptions / urgencies: learn to identify important things against urgent things/interruptions
Share your tasks with your team by optimizing time: learn to balance work within your team, count on your colleague and delegate.
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

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.

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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The Most Effective Strategy to Estimate Projects

Estimate projects correctly is a difficult task that every project manager has to face. It doesn’t matter if you estimate in order to evaluate resource work load (time/effort estimation) or just to create customers’ offer (cost estimation), the problem is just the same.

How can I predict exceptions, delay, bottle necks and create an estimate that is as close to reality as possible?

The answer is quite simple, you can, if you count on your team.

Identify the problem:

Estimate projects is difficult, in particular when you came to big ones that last months, maybe years. In these specific cases estimation could be just a guess. An incorrect estimation can generate several problems, for your team and your company in general:

Underestimated projects: this is what happens the most, particularly when project managers have direct contact with customers, if you want read more about why underestimation is so common you should read this article.[av_hr class=’invisible’ height=’15’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-thin’ custom_width=’15px’ custom_border_color=” custom_margin_top=’15px’ custom_margin_bottom=’15px’ icon_select=’yes’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ av_uid=’av-8mxc4q’]Robert works for a small company where he is a project manager and also the commercial director. He knows that his team is doing its best but he doesn’t want to lose any new customers opportunity. For this reason he underestimates his projects, trying to convince the team that every new customer can make the difference for a small company like theirs. Doing this, the quality of the product decreases, the team is overloaded and the project manager completely loses the correct perception of the project cost. Robert knows that his company will suffer of high turn over.

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Overestimated projects: Project managers more connected with the team tend instead to a pessimistic estimation of the project.[av_hr class=’invisible’ height=’15’ shadow=’no-shadow’ position=’center’ custom_border=’av-border-thin’ custom_width=’15px’ custom_border_color=” custom_margin_top=’15px’ custom_margin_bottom=’15px’ icon_select=’yes’ custom_icon_color=” icon=’ue808′ font=’entypo-fontello’ av_uid=’av-mc3sa’]John is a project manager and lead architect of a young software house. Every time a new projects begin he speaks to his team to make the correct estimation of tasks. Being near to his colleagues he knows how many problem they face and he prefers to overestimate his projects. Resources look over planned and the commercial department can lose opportunities for this lack of communication. At the end of the year John knows that his team could have released more products with a correct estimation.

Being a project manager with estimating problem you have probably found yourself in one of the two described above, maybe with different circumstances but probably with the same outcome.

Of course a correct project estimation can fix all these problems, correct scheduling, resources’ workload. So, how can we improve it?
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Find the solution:

Being a project manager, maybe a senior one, your management skills are probably very refined, you know the effort for managing a team conflict, you probably know how to calculate the revenue of your task, but what about developing that specific product requirements? The project manager is able to identify all the phases of the project structure, but who better knows how does it take to accomplish a specific phase than the resource working on it?

The key for a correct project estimation is in your team knowledge.

Nicole is a project manager at ACME spa. She works with a smart and diversified team. Every time she is assigned to a new project and she has to estimate it she organizes a meeting with her team to develop the Gantt of the projects. Nicole sets the milestones if she has some and tries to define the end date of the project. She identifies the best resources for the work and then she asks them a refined schedule and estimation of their small portion of work. No one knows better than Giulia how effort it takes to make a perfect email layout. Nicole asks also to her colleague which problems she encounters the most and with which delay. Nicole asks to her team members to become everyone the project manager of his own specific tasks.

The knowledge of the team is very precise and very close to every specific matter, they know most of the possible exceptions, every possible delay, every bottle neck on their specific phase. To have a complete and precise estimation you have to go deeper with your team and analyze with them all the phases, let them estimate their phases like they would be the project managers, delegate. This approach will help you improve your resource management in general.

Also, if you work on projects that can repeat in time you could ask your team to specify every step of the work with its effort.

This to-do lists could be used as a template in time, to avoid loosing time estimating the same things again and again.

Save your team knowledge is the key to estimate projects correctly. It is what you can use to make comparison and learn in time estimating even better.

Conclusion

Using this strategy you could be able to have a better idea of the effort of the project and every possible exception that can occur.

Identify your project phases and your goal end date
Identify your milestones and discuss them with your team
Select the best resources for each phase and delegate the task to them
Let the team write down every step of their phase to estimate it.
Use the knowledge from the team on every phases to estimate the entire project from bottom up

Using this strategy with a project management software that can help you creating a Gantt chart, assigning your resources, checking their workload could really make the difference, estimate projects will become easier.

If you want to learn more about how to introduce a project management software in you company you can read our article.

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Twproject as CRM: In Practice

It happens that Twproject customers ask us if they can insert in the resource list just the users that have an active login in. Twproject, actually, can be used to insert also all your contacts and customers. This is a great feature that let you use the system like a CRM.

All resources inserted without login, in fact, are not counted in the license count, so you can have many.

What if we see it in practice?

The first contact:

Say that you are at one of your yearly trade fairs and, after some hours, you meet John James from ACME SPA, he is smart and you talk to him for a while about your company services, he is very interested. You talk about his boss Mary Stuart, and also about the last NBA Match Boston – Cleveland, he roots for Boston Celtics. At the end of the conversation he gives you his business card.

Well, if you are using Twproject project management software, it’s time to save all these information, and you can do that very easily. For example I would simply take my IPad and create a new resource. I would create a new lead for John James from ACME SPA, I would record that his boss is Mary Stuart and all the other information written in his business card. I would also save in the notes that John roots for Boston Celtics…we never know.

Follow the lead

Now that your lead is inserted, you can search for the project you use to save pre-sales information and insert a new activity for the conversation you had, just to remember everything you said.

At the moment what you have is just a lead, so there is no need to create a specific task for this activity, it could be just a phone call. The best way to manage this situation is to create a new pre-sales activity (a new issue in Twproject), a reminder, to call John after a week and talk about what your company can do for him.

After a week the system will remind you about your call, thanks to the link you can check all resource’s detail and may start the conversation with the Boston Celtics. If your conversation is profitable you can finally create a dedicated pre-sales task for ACME, for registering in details your first contact, maybe a demo, your offer and the final contract.

A new Pre-Sales Project

Now that your lead has become a real pre-sale project you can insert it in Twproject to check its progress.

Thanks to Twproject all pre-sales activity can be monitored, managed and saved like all the other projects:

Contacts and projects together
Agents assigned on pre-sales activity
Pre-sales progress monitored
Pre-sales budget and expenses management
Pre-sales effort registered for future report and considerations

All this because, with Twproject, you can have both a CRM software and a Project Management software, together.

[av_promobox button=’yes’ label=’Try it now’ link=’manually,https://twproject.com/on-your-server/’ link_target=” color=’custom’ custom_bg=’#ffffff’ custom_font=’#75a800′ size=’large’ icon_select=’no’ icon=’ue800′ font=’entypo-fontello’ box_color=’custom’ box_custom_font=’#ffffff’ box_custom_bg=’#75a800′ box_custom_border=’#ffffff’ av_uid=’av-2sxj99′]

CRM software and a Project Management software, together.

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How to be an Innovative Project Manager (Infographic)

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”

Source Entrepreneur.

Does Twproject use Twproject?

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.

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!

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Twproject security model: you are on a solid ground

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

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/

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We need to talk: collaboration trends and mistakes to avoid

Companies becoming “liquid”, teams spread over thousands kilometers: workspace has changed, it is wider and faster. This is the reason why you need the right collaboration tools to… make the work work!

Collaboration tools: what is happening right now

It has already happened and it is happening.

Despite being a big, medium or small company, the concepts of colleague, team, meeting are now different.

And, despite being a big, medium or small company, one of the most important trend – and need – is about being everyone on the same page, at the same time.

And, believe it or not, this trend has something ancient within.

Ockham’s razor in today collaboration

William of Ockham was a Middle Ages (c. 1287–1347) Franciscan monk, a philosopher and theologian.

He is still famous for his Ockham’s razor, a principle which reads:

Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.

The original use of the principle was in theology, but it is a heuristic technique as well, and it definitely is a principle which should be applied to your collaboration environment.

To have your whole team on the same page, at the same time you need a cloud and a real time communication tool. The cloud allows you to have the whole team working almost literally in the same (yet virtual) place.

A real time communication tool is what you need to break space and time barriers between the team members: it is the way to have everyone knowing everything is needed when it is needed.

So far so good, isn’t it? And everything seems so easy and smooth. But you still have to avoid the dark side of cloud and real time communication: the lack of management of the workflow and communication flow.

This is the reason why cloud and communication tools need a project management tool: a “meta level” of organization, another – wider – virtual place which ties the tools together. And what do you need from your project management tool? To track changes: you need to trace everything that has been done and still needs to be made. A great project management tool has to show you the path to follow helping you getting your projects done.

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6 Qualities Of Great Leaders – Infographic

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!