This year political correctness seems to be everywhere. In the US it’s a presidential election cycle so perhaps some level of political correctness goes with the territory. But political correctness isn’t just a political phenomenon. In the private sector, in public sector organizations, in volunteer or charitable work the insidiousness of being “PC” can wreak havoc. Project Managers are faced with this every day and are under pressure either to make sure their project reports…
I’ve been wrapping up our renewals of two of our key technical alliances at HMS Software this week and it has me take pause to think about the different aspects of how these partnership works. I’ve been most recently working on our Microsoft and Oracle relationships. We’ve had a technical partnership with Microsoft since 1995 so we’re at 21 years on that relationship. With Oracle we’ve done 19 years as we started our formal relationship…
“Hey man, that’s old school,” said the person at the next table over from me at Starbucks. I looked up to see who he was talking to. To my surprise, he was looking right at me. The young man looked like he was studying for college. There were text books and an iPad in front of him. “Old school, man,” the young man, repeated pointing at my hand. I was holding a fountain pen and…
We’ve just published a new free webinar based on seminars that have been given many times in different venues around North America. Panning for Gold by Data Mining your Project Tracking data is approximately 60 minutes long and covers how to data mine enteprise project and enterprise timesheet data to improve efficiency. The webinar includes real life examples from some of our HMS Software clients in how they were able to data mine their project timesheet…
No, I’m not talking about the new vine on your deck trellis. I’m talking about scope creep. It’s every project manager’s nightmare. The project starts off at a manageable modest size and in the blink of an eye, it’s a beheamouth of unmanageable porportions. In one of HMS Software’s first ever mandates back when we were just getting started, we had a client who asked us to configure their project management system with multiple baselines. This…
Great news. You will be managing a large project that transcends international boundaries, multiple time zones and multiple sub-contractors. As a result you’re having to think about how to deal with multiple currencies. This can be a project accounting nightmare if it is not thought out in advance. Mulitple currencies can be a blind spot for project managers who have only worked in one country with one type of money and never had to deal with…
At one time using a computer system required training. Not everyone will remember what older mainframe/terminal systems were like but user-hostile doesn’t completely convey the response. Here’s an example of how to add a frequent flyer number to your itinerary, from the old character-based Sabre airline booking system from American Airlines (and others): Using the abbreviated entry, add the FQTV (code for a frequent flyer number) number NW 759964796 to the PNR for the second…
We get calls at our office reasonably often that start like this: “We need a project management system,” the caller asks. “What kind of project management system do you need?” we reply. “You know,” the caller says somewhat frustrated at our questions, “the kind of system that manages projects.” There are, of course many different kinds of project management systems. Given that we spend so much of our life at HMS in the enterprise timesheet…
I’m in the software publishing business. I should be all about selling you the tools. It’s not about the result you want, it should be about the result I want… but that’s never been the way I’ve gone about business. So this article is about the result, not the tool. I came across an interesting expression recently. A software salesperson was talking about delivering the entire solution to his client. “We don’t sell drills.…
Over the years I have received a number of questions from project managers expressing the challenge of sharing bad news with their management. “No matter what the potential benefits might be,” one said, “I’ll be fired if I share news that bad.” No matter what your work environment, it seems that some people are better at sharing bad news than others and for project managers, being able to share both good tidings and bad is part of the…