It’s been a busy time around here. Aside from a may product release at HMS as we launched TimeControl 7.3, I’ve had some other activities underway. This week I was delighted to be able to do a talk with the ProjectSummit*Business Analyst World conference in Orlando. I do some volunteer time with the advisory board of the PW*BA conference. I’ve been associated to ProjectWorld since the very first conference ever in Toronto over 20 years…
“Can your system help us? We have two distinct groups.” This is a remarkably common request here at HMS. In our case we’re talking about how to take care of timesheet collection for multiple groups using our TimeControl timesheet system but the request is common to many project management environments. This comes up whenever we have multiple groups trying to use the same project control environment. From one perspective, there are many benefits to grouping…
There are a number of articles and some soon-to-publish in the works for EPMGuidance but I thought I’d share some writing that has appeared elsewhere. Last month Canada’s largest national newspaper the Globe and Mail asked me to contribute a piece to their Leadership Lab. The article discusses how a niche business like my own HMS Software has been able to be so successful at having clients many times our size. Since we started in…
As followers of the blog know, I do some volunteer work with the ProjectWorld*Business Analyst World Orlando Advisory Board. I’ve been involved with Project World since its creation 21 years ago and have been privileged to speak at many of the conferences. I will be speaking again at the Orlando Summit which will be from April 16-18, 2018. If you are interested in attending the conference, early registration discounts are available until February 10 at: https://www.pmbaconferences.com/orlando/registration.html?utm_source=PMBA_ORL&utm_medium=Pop_up&utm_campaign=PSBAORL18-10. I look forward to meeting some…
You’ll find here the index of the webinar series OnLine or OnPremise which discusses the key elements of choosing between purchasing software for an on-premise installation vs. subscribing to software in the cloud. Each webinar is only 5-6 minutes long. You can watch the webinars in sequence if you prefer but they do not need to be seen in any particular order: Webinar OnLine or OnPremise #1 – Overview Webinar OnLine or OnPremise #2 –…
In today’s Agile-oriented software world, it’s all too tempting to skip the important steps of defining the work completely. There is no doubt that there is a meeting of minds between the client and the developers to end up with a product that fulfills the client’s desires and is of high quality and rapid arrival but once we get into the actual management of the project, there are differences in perspectives that are not obvious.…
In my brief flirtation with Psychology in my first year of university, I learned more than I’d ever want to know about rats in a maze. My distaste for the exercise would come back to haunt me last year when my stepson needed a dwarf hamster for his science project. Wendy is now a part of the family. You can see Wendy and our home-made maze on the right. You’ve no doubt seen the images…
I get this request on a semi-regular basis and given the work I’ve done with Microsoft, Oracle and other technical partners over the years, I’ve been involved in a number of early-release software programs. So, let’s talk about what people mean when they talk about Beta Test Programs. The first thing to know is that the perspectives of what the vendor is hoping for and wants are often different than what the users want. First…
I have an expression that my staff and clients have heard me use often. It’s a favorite of mine. “If you are a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.” It’s a paraphrase I know and as I was writing this article, I thought it behooved me to look up the source. It wasn’t much of a surprise that the author was someone who I read a lot of a long time ago, Abraham Maslow. …
I admit it. I’m a black-hat thinker. I think I always have been but many years ago, my first partner gave me a copy of Edward de Bono’s “Six Thinking Hats”. The book is tiny but the impact was profound. De Bono was interested in how people think and in how people could train themselves to think more creatively; more laterally. There’s no one hat that’s perfect of the six, each has its own attraction…