Aug 29, 2009

Free Project Management Tools


Image from Microsoft Office Clipart

As project managers, we have used or currently using popular project management tools such as Microsoft Project and Visio and MindManager. But, what if your current company has limited licenses for these applications due to budget constraints or you recently joined a startup with no budget yet for these applications.

The answer to this problem are open-source project management tools. There are already a plethora of these tools but the ones I listed below are those that I used and found to be near or even challenges the features and performance of its commercial counterparts.

Project Scheduling and Management: Open Workbench

Diagramming: Dia

Mind Mapping: FreeMind



10 Project Management Trends in 2009


Image from Microsoft Office Clipart

Rudolf Melik, the CEO and founder of Tenrox and the author of The Rise of the Project Workforce: Managing People and Projects in a Flat World, wrote in his blog what he deemed to be the 10 potential project management trends in 2009.

I have listed below these trends and provided some of my thoughts as well.

10. The increasing correlation between project management and operational excellence

This is true. Senior executives are now highly visible in all aspects of project management to ensure that activities stay in synch with business strategies and ensure ROI.

9. The CFO and the project manager friendship

8. The rise of the Project Workforce

7. Dispersed customers, projects and teams kill politics

This I am skeptical. I reckon that this trend points to bad politics but there is no need to "throw the baby with the bathwater" so to speak. There is still a need for good politics most especially if you are dealing with global teams. For example, due to the distance, the project manager needs to ensure that the right resources are assigned to the team, costs are diligently tracked and the right stakeholders support and promote the project. All these will be difficult to achieve if the project manager is not an adept "politician."

6. Finding the right talent gets a lot easier

I agree. Due to advances in communication and collaboration technologies, we can now tap great talents available in any country. The whole world is now the resource pool! The project manager is no longer constrained by the limits of the resources available in his/her locale.

5. Emphasis shifts from project management to workforce management

4. Uncertainty is the new normal

I think a better word for uncertainty is ambiguity. With this in mind, two critical skills come in mind that will play a huge role for the success of members of the workforce. These are adaptability and sense of urgency. Adaptability to ensure that we flow with and not against change. Sense of urgency to quickly implement an activity or solution to immediately test its veracity.

3. The rapidly increasing service web

2. Enterprise software technology cross-pollination gains momentum

1. Leadership matters

In the light of all the recent management scandals and fiascos, having the right leader has become the cornerstone of the success of a project (micro) or the organization (macro).

Click the links below to view the articles.

Ten Predictions for Project Management Trends in 2009 Part 1

Ten Predictions for Project Management Trends in 2009 Part 2

Ten Predictions for Project Management Trends in 2009 Part 3



Aug 28, 2009

Time Management Tools for Busy Managers Part 2: Xobni for Outlook

According to research, by 2009, 41% of our time will be spent on managing e-mails. As a result, it makes sense that reducing the amount of time of managing our e-mail inboxes will already be a huge help for us to attend to other priorities.

This is where Xobni, a free(!) Outlook plugin, shines like a bright light amidst the daily deluge of emails. I have listed below some of the main features of Xobni which I find quite useful based on my experiences.

1. Email Analytics

  • This shows by ranks, graphs and statistics how you and your contacts use e-mail.
  • This is my favorite feature since for example, I can graphically see what time during the day my contact usually replies to my emails. This helps me know what is the best time to send an email to a contact and when to expect a reply.
2. Fast e-mail search

  • I am very fastidious in organizing my e-mails into specific folders. This helps me constantly achieve my target of retrieving an e-mail that I am searching in less than 2 minutes.
  • With Xobni, I can do away with my 2 minutes search criteria. I can search my e-mails in almost real-time speed. It is that fast! It begins showing the appropriate e-mail as I type the keyword/s. By the way, my PST file is more than 4GB in file size thus you can imagine the power of Xobni in searching e-mails.
3. Web Services Integration

  • Xobni allows you to integrate your Outlook to social networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook and web services such as Yahoo Mail and Skype.

You can learn more about Xobni by viewing the 3 demos below. You can download Xobni here. For updates, you can check out Xobni's blog.

Demo 1



Demo 2



Even Bill Gates demoed Xobni





Aug 27, 2009

Time Management Tools for Busy Managers Part 1



One of my primary goals this year is to manage my time more efficiently in order to be more productive. I currently handle several projects, too many to count since I am too busy LOL.

Kidding aside, I wear two hats right now. The first hat is that of an operations manager, ensuring that my team is meeting the day-to-day SLAs and metrics for the various tasks assigned to us. The second hat is that of a strategist working through business development opportunities in order to further expand the empire so to speak.

Now, I want to excel and be at my best in both professional hats. Not only that, I also want to excel in my personal life as well, in both my family and personal endeavors. A tall order don't you think? I think so too but I believe that it is a good problem that can be cracked, with the right tool/s and mindset of course. As a result, I would like to share in these series the best practices I have learned so far with the hope that it could also help you as well in your own search for time management nirvana.

This is about the 6 time management tools from Julie Morgenstern. This is an excellent article written by Andre Kibbe of Tools for Thought where he summarized these 6 time management tools.

I have listed below these 6 tools to pick your interest as well.

1. Self-Assessment

- "What's keeping me from getting to them?"

2. Estimating how long a task will take

3. The 4 D's (Delete, Delay, Delegate, Diminish)

- I use these to manage my e-mail inbox. What a great help!

4. Develop a big-picture view

5. Time maps

- "It is a template of how we generally allocate our time during each day of a normal week."

6. Planner

- This is the "landscape" that holds everything you intend to do and when you intend to do it.

Click here to get the details about these 6 tools.



Twitter Tools


Image from Geek and Poke

I mentioned in my last post that I am using TweetDeck as my primary Twitter client. Now, I would like to share the other Twitter tools that I frequently use.

URL Shortener and Tracker

tr.im has recently become my favorite URL shortener. I used TinyURL and is.gd before but my main concern was how to track the links I shared if they were being viewed. This is where tr.im shines because it tracks the number of visits to the trimmed URL and the visitor's location. I previously used Tweetburner but I find tr.im's interface more usable and friendly.

Twitter Statistics

I track my Twitter usage statistics through the following tools:

Twitter Grader: You can get here your overall "Twitter Grade" as well as learn the top 50 Filipino Twitterers.

Twitalyzer: This is the tool if you would like to know your relative influence, signal-to-noise ratio, generosity, velocity and clout to name a few.

Mr. Tweet: This tool acts as your personal networking agent by recommending relevant users to follow and improving your Twitter usage through relevant statistics.

Twitter Mobile

I own a Nokia e61i and I installed Twibble Mobile in it to track tweets when I am not in front of my PC. In my opinion, this is the best twitter client so far for S60-based phones.

If you want more tools, here are some links to illuminate your path towards Twitter nirvana.

7 Truly Useful Twitter Tools You Might Not Know About

Sanity check: 10 tools that will make you a Twitter power user

Twitter: Top 20 tools

And here are 4 insightful tips on how to use and not to use Twitter.

Ten Twitter Tips That’ll Take You To The Top

Be Careful What You Post

Branding Yourself with a Twitter Background

Finding the Right “Brand Voice” on Twitter



Aug 26, 2009

Twitter and TweetDeck

I started my Twitter account about 8 months when curiosity struck me based on the news and reviews I read about the service.  Within the first 2 months, I "lurked" my way through Twitter and found several great information about project management that I would not easily find in my normal blog searching process. Wow! I thought this could be a great source of information leads for my blogs.

On the third month, it suddenly dawned on me that I could evolve my Twitter usage from just a real-time "encyclopedia" to something more useful and relevant. With the new and profound sense of purpose, I started cranking the wheels so to speak and implemented my plans of using this great service more effectively.

Now, at this juncture of reaching more than a thousand contacts that I follow, I asked myself, how can I manage efficiently the sheer volume of real-time "Tweets" that I am getting from these contacts? I am bewildered to see some Twitter folks with 10,000+ following and followers and again asked myself how are they managing their's?

The answers to these questions lay on 2 great videos (which I embedded below) from Jesse Newhart where he shared his lessons learned on how to follow 15,000+ contacts in Twitter and on how to turn Twitter followers into friends. Great tips indeed! Another wonderful thing here is I have been using TweetDeck for 4 months now and it is only after watching Jesse's videos that I realized its full potential.







Project Status Report Template



One of the critical skills of an effective project manager is about over-communication of project events. In line with this, providing project status reports to the stakeholders is critical to ensure that they will not be surprised of any events during the course of the project.

Techrepublic's project management expert Tom Mochal created a project status report template for this critical task in project management. The template covers in a straightforward manner the following areas:
  • Project description
  • Overall status
  • An explanation of any items that were flagged as potential problems
  • Planned accomplishments for the next reporting period




Microsoft Excel Project Plan Template



I have been using this template for several years now. I use it if I need to quickly create and submit a project plan. I also use it for small-to-medium sized projects that do not need a full-scale Microsoft Project plan.

This project plan is very easy to manage and accessible to everybody especially those who do not have Microsoft Project. You can download the template from Techrepublic.



Aug 25, 2009

All The Books in The 100 Best Business Books of All Time


Image from 800ceoread

I found this list from the book's official site. Reviewing the list, I currently own 12% of the books. It is not much but it is a good start. Time to go the bookstore and start expanding library. Eventually, I will share my own list of books that I find to be the best based on my experiences.
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You (Improving your life, your person and your strengths.)
Flow by Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi
Getting Things Done by David Allen
The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker
How to Be a Star at Work by Robert E. Kelley
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive by Harvey B. Mackay
The Power of Intuition by Gary Klein
What Should I Do with My Life? by Po Bronson
Oh, the Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss/Theodore Geisel
Chasing Daylight by Eugene O'Kelly

Leadership (Inspiration. Challenge. Courage. Change.)
On Becoming a Leader by Warren Bennis
The Leadership Moment by Michael Useem
The Leadership Challenge by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner
Leadership Is an Art by Max De Pree
The Radical Leap by Steve Farber
Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will by Tichy and Sherman
Leading Change by John P. Kotter
Questions of Character by Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr.
The Story Factor by Annette Simmons
Never Give In! Speeches by Winston Churchill

Strategy (Eight organizational blueprints from which to draft your own.)
In Search of Excellence by Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr.
Good to Great by Jim Collins
The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen
Only the Paranoid Survive by Andrew S. Grove
Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? by Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.
Discovering the Soul of Service by Leonard Berry
Execution by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan
Competing for the Future by Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad

Sales and Marketing (Approaches and pitfalls in the ongoing process of creating customers.)
Influence by Robert B. Cialdini, PhD
Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout
A New Brand World by Scott Bedbury with Stephen Fenichell
Selling the Invisible by Harry Beckwith
Zag by Marty Neumeier
Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore
Secrets of Closing the Sale by Zig Ziglar
How to Become a Rainmaker by Jeffrey J. Fox
Why We Buy by Paco Underhill
The Experience Economyby B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore
Purple Cow by Seth Godin
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

Rules and Scorekeeping (The all-important numbers behind the game.)
Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan
Financial Intelligence by Karen Berman and Joe Knight
The Balanced Scorecard by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton

Management (Guiding and directing the people around you.)
The Essential Drucker by Peter Drucker
Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming
Toyota Production System by Taiichi Ohno
Reengineering the Corporation by Michael Hammer and James Champy
The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox
The Great Game of Businessby Jack Stack with Bo Burlingham
First, Break all the Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman
Now, Discover Your Strengths by Buckingham and Clifton
The Knowing-Doing Gap by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
Six Thinking Hats by Edward De Bono

Biographies (Seven lives. Unlimited lessons.)
Titan by Ron Chernow
My Years with General Motors by Alfred P. Sloan, Jr.
The HP Way by David Packard
Personal History by Katharine Graham
Moments of Truth by Jan Carlzon
Sam Walton: Made in America by Sam Walton with John Huey
Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson

Entrepreneurship (Seven guides to the passion and practicality necessary for any new venture.)
The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki
The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber
The Republic of Tea ** by Mel Ziegler, Patricia Ziegler, and Bill Rosenzweig
The Partnership Charter by David Gage
Growing a Business by Paul Hawken
Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson
The Monk and the Riddle Randy Komisar with Kent Lineback

Narratives (Six industry tales of both fortune and failure.)
McDonald’s: Behind the Arches by John F. Love
American Steel ** by Richard Preston
The Force by David Dorsey
The Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind
When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein
Moneyball by Michael Lewis

Innovation & Creativity (Insight into the process of developing new ideas.)
Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon MacKenzie
The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley with Jonathan Littman
Jump Start Your Business Brain by Doug Hall
A Whack on the Side of the Head by Roger Von Oech
The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp
The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander

Big Ideas (The future of business books lies here.)
The Age of Unreason by Charles Handy
Out of Control by Kevin Kelly
The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida
Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
Driven by Paul R. Lawrence and Nitin Nohria
To Engineer is Human by Henry Petroski
The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Takeaways (What everyone is looking for.)
The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins
Up the Organization by Robert Townsend
Beyond the Core by Chris Zook
Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer
What the CEO Wants You to Know by Ram Charan
The Team Handbook by Peter Scholtes, Brian Joiner, and Barbara Streibel
A Business and Its Belief by Thomas J. Watson, Jr.
Lucky or Smart?by Bo Peabody
The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas L. Friedman
Thinkertoys by Michael Michalko
More Than You Know by Michael J. Mauboussin

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** To buy The Republic of Tea, visit their site.
** American Steel is presently out-of-print. Your best bet is to head to your local library. 




Certified Bookworm

I had been on a blogging hiatus for the past 3 months since I had the privilege of being a part of a project team involved in defining and creating a global services solution. The project had very tight schedules, numerous deliverables and I need to be outside the country several times for more than a week. Now that the critical phase of the project has been completed, I can go back to my regular blogging schedules. 

I love books. I can stay in a bookstore the whole day wondering through the shelves and perusing all the books that interest me. I cannot help but be amazed sometimes because all these knowledge, experiences, lessons learned, best practices are right there, immediately available, and the only thing you have to do is open a book. Likewise, I find reading books as the most cost-effective, bang-for-the-buck way of not stagnating in your current job and further expanding your career horizons. How good is that!

As part of my weekly routine, I visit Powerbooks to browse its latest collections just in case the books from Amazon are already available locally. I also frequently visit Booksale, a local used books store. Through this store, I was able to find gems such as Code Complete by Steve McConnell, Managing by Harold Geneen and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig to name a few.

Image from 800ceoread

The latest business book to graze my radar is The 100 Best Business Books of All Time by Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten. I learned about this book through Slacker Manager who gave it an excellent review. Quoting him, listed below are the 5 reasons why you need to buy the book.
  1. It has reviews of 100 books so you know which books you should add to your library (or you can feel smart knowing which of the best books are already in your library).
  2. It’s only $25.95 (or Php 1,795 from Powerbooks), which means you’re investing less than $.26 per book review.
  3. It’s got a wonderful leadership section, so you’ll be able to talk to your manager a little bit more about what her/his favorite book is.
  4. It’s got a management section, so you can be a better manager.
  5. It’s easy to understand even if you haven’t read any other business/management books.