How to Manage Late And Not Ready Deliveries
Do you manage late and unfinished projects this way?
Make sure you deliver your projects on time, within budget and as expected and your customer will be a happy and loyal customer.
MOOS Project Viewer 2.9 Integrates With Dropbox Platform
The team behind MOOS Project Viewer just released version 2.9. This version comes with a new feature: integration with Dropbox. Users can now also open Microsoft Project files that are stored on a Dropbox account and not just local files from their computers.
The biggest advantage of using a cloud storage service is that the files can be accessed at any moment in time and from any location. Further more the files can also be shared within the company, or even more can be shared with the project stakeholders.
When a project manager creates a project plan that needs to be distributed to the team managers or even to the entire team the best solution is to use a fast and easy to access system. In this case the generated project file gets stored within the company account on Dropbox and each member that needs to have access to that file can open it directly with MOOS Project Viewer. This is a cost effective solution if the team members only need to see the project details and do not need to make changes to it. (more…)
RationalPlan 4.3 – Project Management Software On Premise Or In The Cloud
RationalPlan Project Management Software version 4.3 is ready for the public. Current version offers easier printing capabilities, more reports, better integrations with Microsoft Project and last but not least automatic email notifications within the Server system.
RationalPlan is a project management solution that puts the accent on productivity, ease of use and fast learning. It was created to serve many types of users starting from novice project managers, users that need an environment to handle multiple projects and up to companies that need a distributed solution with concurrent access. For the latter case RationalPlan Server can be used as an on-premise solution or in the cloud aka SAAS offering.
The On Premise solution requires the customer to download, install and manage upgrades on his own hardware. The price for the system is a one time payment that will vary depending on the number and type of users. Running it in the Cloud has the advantage of not bothering with all the above maintenance problems. There are several tiers available depending on the users needs: Beginner, Master and Production. This type of solution is offered as a monthly payment.
Important changes for this version:
- More reports: added resource costs distribution report, added resource work distribution report
- Easier printing capabilities
- Better MS Project files loading
- Automatic email notifications on Server
Project Management, Resource Leveling And Pregnancy
The other days I read a funny project management joke: It takes one woman nine months to have a baby. It cannot be done in one month by nine women.
Managing projects is not an easy job. It takes some experience and knowledge if you want to do it well. There are many things to be taken into consideration during the entire process of managing a project but the important thing is to get the job done well, on time and within budget.
A critical factor is the time constraint. Sometimes you are forced to do a work faster and here enter into the stage the so called resource leveling mechanisms. Anyone understands that more people do a work faster than fewer… The same principle is used to finish a task sooner. Hire more personnel and problem solved!
But wait…what if that task just can not be done faster? Well… you can not build the roof for a house until the walls are not finished. And you can not raise the walls until foundation is not ready. But foundation must dry first to be solid and this can not be done faster no matter how many resources you are planning to use.
What all these mean? Simple: make sure you are doing a good, realistic project plan before signing a contract and starting the work. Some tasks just can not be done faster…
RationalPlan Project Management Software 4.2 – Increased Productivity And Ubuntu Adoption
Project management software provider RationalPlan just released their latest version 4.2. Current version offers increased productivity for managers by reducing the time needed to handle resource allocations. At the same time the company decided it is the right moment to expand on Ubuntu market. Hence the application now offers native integration with Ubuntu operating system.
RationalPlan is a fast growing project management solution that recently received the third place at the Project Management Election organized by Capterra. It was created to serve many types of users starting from novice project managers, users that need an environment to handle multiple projects and up to companies that need a server solution with concurrent access.
Important changes added to this version:
- Timesheet view displays only the resources working in the current project
- in Leveling panel the resources are displayed according to applied task filters
- added a percentage work load chart for resources
- Ubuntu operating system integration
- added the notion of special working days for tasks
- added a new report for task cost distribution
- improved printing
- added the notion of responsible user
- improved Mac OS X integration
The Monkey Manager
One day a man enters a pet shop. And while looking for a pet for his son he notices a young monkey for sale at $10.000. Intrigued by the price he asks the seller:
– Why do you have such a big price for this monkey?
– Well… He knows how to work with a Windows computer, he can work with office documents and writes HTML.
A little bit further another monkey with a $15.000 price.
– And what can this monkey do for this amount of money?
– He can work on Linux, knows how to do programming in Java and code in PHP.
In the end the man also finds a monkey valued at $20.000:
– Incredible! Can you tell me now what can this monkey do? That is a lot of money…
– Hmm… I do not know exactly what he does but the other two monkeys call him “Project Manager“.
Black Friday Discounts For RationalPlan Project Management Software
The developers from RationalPlan will offer special discounts to their users on Black Friday. So on November 23 the discount will be 40% for all the products. Customers are invited to keep an eye on RationalPlan website as the offer is limited to 400 licenses.
Updates will be posted on RationalPlan’s social media networks. “Users are invited to follow us on our Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn pages for the latest news regarding our Black Friday promotion”, says Gabriel Toader, CEO at Stand By Soft. From time to time the status of the promotion will be updated so users will have an idea on how many licenses are still available.
Users can get RationalPlan for all major operating systems including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
RationalPlan is a project planning software suited to many types of users starting from novice or accidental project managers and up to companies that need a server solution with concurrent access. (more…)
Third Place For RationalPlan At 2012 Project Management Election
The project management provider RationalPlan obtained the third place at Capterra’s Project Management Election 2012. RationalPlan has been nominated as being one of the 55 contending project management software providers. These 55 nominees were chosen from a few hundreds of software solutions.
Providers were split into two:
- The Traditionalists – those who identified a Traditional/Phased-Approach as the methodology that best fits their software
- The Contemporaries – those who identified Agile or another methodology as the best fit (as well as those who indicated their solution is tailored to multiple methodologies)
The election started on October 9th and had four rounds, each round for a duration of one week. The candidate pool was narrowed down at the end of each one-week voting “round” based on which candidates had the most votes. Project managers could vote their preferred project management solution just once every day during the entire campaign.
After the first round we were classified as one of the first 10 players from The Traditionalists category so we were validated to enter the next round. The election continued with Round 2 where only the first 3 products from each category went to next round. Round 2 ended on October 22 when RationalPlan was chose as one of the six best project management software providers. Many were and few remained. After Round 3 which ended on October 29 only the best project management product from each category went to final round. RationalPlan was classified on third place.
“We received a great support and a lot of votes from our users that allowed us to obtain this place. The community was very active on social media like Twitter, Google Plus and especially on RationalPlan Facebook page. We thank all those that voted RationalPlan as their preferred project management software”, says Gabriel Toader, CEO at Stand By Soft. (more…)
Project Management Terms – Baseline
A baseline is a reference that is being used as a base for future measurement. In Project Management, the term baseline refers to an accepted and approved project plan. A project baseline is a must for a project manager to monitor and evaluate the success of a project. Without it there is no possibility to compare the current status of the project with the initial estimated one.
Once the project plan gets approved the manager should save it as a baseline plan. For a project there can be saved multiple baselines depending on the project size and how often the project plan changes. Ideally, once the project baseline is created it should not be changed anymore. However, it is sometimes inevitable to adjust it due to a new requirement that implies a major change to scope or cost. Also in rare cases the project was not well scheduled in the initial phase. In these cases the best solution is to keep the initial baseline and to save the adjusted schedule as a new baseline. This way there will be several interim baselines that can be used to remember the potentially bad project management or the team members that did not deliver as promised.
Types of project baselines
Since a project baseline includes many data from a project it is difficult to manage it as a whole and usually it is broken into several parts. This makes the complexity of baseline management easier to deal with. Project baselines generally include:
- Scope baseline – the technical, physical and functional requirements for deliverable products
- Schedule baseline – the project schedule and all of the elements supporting the schedule
- Cost/Budget baseline – an approved budget usually in a time distribution format used to estimate, monitor, and control overall cost performance on the project
- Quality/Risk baseline – the set of known possible changes (uncertainties) that could impact the performance of the project (more…)
Top 6 for RationalPlan in the Race for the 2012 Project Management Election
Another week is gone and RationalPlan continues the competition for Capterra’s Project Management Election 2012 as one of the six best project management software providers.
Many were and few remained. In the previous round we were classified as one of the first 3 players from The Traditionalists category so we were validated to enter the third round. Thank you all for your support and votes! We hope that you will continue to vote us daily.
Now the election continues with Round 3 where only the best project management product from each category will go to final round. Round 3 ends on October 29 so give us a helping hand and vote RationalPlan as your preferred project management software. Voting is easy and fast and does not require anything from you except two mouse clicks: one for selecting RationalPlan in the The Traditionalists red column and the second one at the bottom of the page to Submit your vote:
Thank you and do not forget to vote RationalPlan for the Project Management Election 2012 every day!