Productivity - ITM Platform | Projects Programs Portfolio

When we think about Project Management Office, a project management software is pretty much a necessity. However, there are many other solutions that can make the life of a project manager easier in several facets from productivity to communication. In our last article on apps for PMOs we introduced the first 7 software applications, today we continue the list by presenting you with another 6 tools that will make your work easier and faster. Thank us later ?

1. Airtable

Combine Excel, Pinterest, Trello and a database management system and you have Airtable. No jokes. Airtable is an extremely powerful solution that enables you to visualize the same data in various ways: table, Kanban, blocks (Pinterest style), calendar and forms. It’s so versatile that it can be used for almost any activity that requires a database.

Pros

Airtable is powerful and flexible. It allows you to manage in a single location the data you probably would have separated into different areas. For example, you can use it for demand management in conjunction with ITM Platform. You can create an internal form for project proposals from employees, a table view for project managers to manage the proposals, and a blocks view accessible to the whole organization to inform of the selected projects. Airtable is also customizable with “blocks”, a premium feature that allows users to add new functionalities to tables.

Cons

While great for managing, Airtable is quite poor on the communication side. While there’s the possibility to comment on each line of the table, that’s the extent of its communication capabilities given that there’s no chat feature .

2.Visio

If you have ever needed to design a flowchart or a diagram you are probably going to love this one. Microsoft Visio is a diagramming and vector graphics application that is used to design charts swiftly and easily.

Pros

Apart from being easy to use, Visio is part of the Microsoft Office family of solutions, which means that it is perfectly integrated with other common solutions like Word or Excel. It also allows users to design 3D map diagrams and to pull information from external sources that can update automatically.

Cons

The main issue of Visio is its compatibility as it only works on Windows. Furthermore, it doesn’t allow for real-time collaboration, without mentioning the hefty price tag (considering that it is unlikely a software you’ll use every day).

3. PMO Value Ring

The PMO Value Ring is the perfect software to use in conjunction with a project management software. The software is designed by PMOs for PMOs and is aimed at providing a consistent framework to manage the PMO across different stages of its life cycle.

An example of a complete cycle in PMO Value Ring:

Pros

The tool forces the user to be consistent in the definition of the PMO and all its elements, such as Functions, Roles, Stakeholders etc. All the data can be accessed in a consolidated dashboard view that scores several different aspects like ROI or maturity.

Cons

The downside of the PMO Value Ring is that it is not integrated with any other solution, which means that all the data should be inputted manually. Furthermore, the software enhances and facilitates the management of the PMO but it is separated from the actual project management activity of the office.

4. ClicData

ClicData is a very powerful data visualization and BI software. It allows users to create and share dashboards that are automatically updated from the data source.

Pros

Clicdata is integrated with almost anything, at least with all the main apps used for business. This is great as it allows to create dashboards that can then be shared with, for example, a director or CxO, that needs to have access to live data. Another strength of ClicData is that it permits cross-evaluation of data or automatic database merge.

Cons

The interface is drag and drop but this does not mean that it is easy to use: the logic behind the interface is not always the most intuitive and the user needs to have a clear understanding of the structure of the data imported, which is not always bvious when importing data directly from a third-party source. Also, more complex dashboards require some time to set up so ensure to allocate enough time when implementing ClicData.

5. Sharepoint

I’m sure many of you are already familiar with SharePoint. For those who don’t know it’s a web-based collaborative platform that is primarily sold as a document management and storage system. But the product is highly flexible and usage varies substantially between organizations. Sharepoint is commonplace in larger organizations where the document management is complex and encompasses several departments.

Pros

The main advantage of SharePoint is in its document management capabilities: given its configuration capability you can create several Site Collections, limit their access, from one single, clean interface.

Cons

The main cons of SharePoint are tied to its main strength: as a consequence of being highly configurable Sharepoint is quite complex to manage in its full capability, meaning that you’ll often need to dedicate human resources or hire a consultant.

6. Risk assessment matrix

Good planning is essential, so that project managers and the respond to the emergence of risks. ITM Platform’s Risk Assessment Matrix evaluates risks depending on their impact and probability, allowing to visualize the level of risk exposure. Thanks to that information, you can prioritize risk management and reduce exposure!

Pros

This matrix allows you to register, quantify and share risks and you can share them collaboratively as well.

Cons

The tool can only be accessed online and only covers the risk management part of a Project manager work routine. However, if you need a more integrated application you can try ITM Platform, where the risk management functionality is integrated with a whole set of their features… What do you think of these 6 tools? Are there any that you’d like to see covered that are not in this list? Let us know

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What is the only application that all professionals in the world use?

Exactly. It is the email. For years professionals around the world complained about how uncomfortable it can be if it is used as a documentation repository and even claimed that emails are "dead". Even so, it is very clear that mail is still unrivaled in the day to day of any office.

Of course, at ITM Platform we do not want to help your inboxes become messy garbage dumps.

No more unwanted notifications

The problem with email in B2B environments is not so much the channel, but the frequency. Usually, most applications send notifications automatically and, unless they are very well designed, their volume increases rapidly and end up being ignored.

With Teambot the opposite occurs: it is an ally of our users because it only sends a notification when it is requested.

The functioning is very simple:

I write an email to Teambot
I include my request for information on the message subject
Teambot reads mu subject and my email address
Teambot sends me an email with the requested information

This whole process can last less than 6 seconds. And you do not even need to log into ITM Platform. This is the reason why all our customers are adding Teambot to their list of regular contacts.

Semantic searches from the subject

The truly elegant thing about Teambot is that it offers precise and complex information from an absolutely minimalist user interface. We have decided to follow one of the best design maxims: less is more.

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In order to provide users with the highest advantages, we have transformed the email into a search engine... applied to all ITM Platform projects and tasks.

The search engine uses only the metadata fields. Specifically, two fields:

The addressee, who is always teambot@itmplatform.io
The subject, where the user indicated the information they are looking for.

Benefits of Teambot

As a Team Member, you can organize your day without logging into ITM Platform

By simply sending an email to Teambot with the subject “today”, you will receive all the tasks to which you are assigned and all the projects in which you participate.

From there, you can request more details with a simple click.

As a project manager, you can swiftly check the status of critical tasks

Do you have doubts about the status of a task? Ask Teambot and you will find out immediately.

As a PMO administrator, you can quickly check the status of any project

With the access privileges of a Full Access license, PMO managers can use Teambot to gather the most important information about the status of a project. In order to do this, they just have to send an email to Teambot with the name of the project (or a part of it) in the mail subject. If there is more than one option, Teambot will send a clarification email.

With Teambot you can work offline

From now on, users who are in geographical environments with connectivity problems can continue working while they are offline, obtaining the detailed information they need. With Teambot, the email server will send and receive emails even in locations with very low connectivity; and once the information is received, it will be available anywhere in offline mode.

With Teambot you can respond to your boss with precision

Another useful feature is the simplicity of reporting information to anyone, just forward the information offered by Teambot.

How to give Teambot instructions for email

Teambot reads the email subject to find out what you need. The first command you can try with Teambot could be “help”; Teambot will send you instructions on the type of commands available and the answer you will get:

Task lists for a given day: list tasks
Complete lists of tasks: list all tasks
Complete lists of projects: list all projects
Task details: name of the task
Project details: name of the project

Beyond the basic instructions, we wanted Teambot to be able to listen to our users and understand what they want to know. So, for example, if you send Teambot an email with the subject “corporate plan”, it will return a list of tasks and projects whose name resembles the subject.

In the next phases, we hope that Teambot will continue learning new rules of behavior and will become even more useful and helpful, offering proactive reminders when, for example, the delivery date of a critical task approaches; or allowing to report hours and progress by email.

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Although working by objectives is the best way for managing staff, organizations’ management requires an organizational level which is only provided by projects.

Management by objectives has set us free from a working culture in which it was more important to be present at our workstation rather than doing a valuable and quality job. But, nowadays, we can say that it is about going to a better place.

OK: I admit that saying that management by objectives is a cadaver could be an exaggeration, but also is saying that we all have been set free of perfect attendance

In fact, just as we all have friends in whose jobs it is more important to be than to work, objectives are a key element to motivate employees and escape from the routine. Let’s not dismiss them yet.

Nevertheless, let’s analyze why they are no longer enough for those who run an organization.

Discover how to manage your organization by projects with ITM’s White Paper

Management by objectives, for what?

Let’s put the example of Alice Smith, the web designer of an e-commerce company

When Alice improves a 25% the views of the star product section on the web, she is meeting one of the goals defined along with her boss. This means beneficial and foreseeable consequences.

When meeting objectives, Alice gets her coordinator and firm's recognition: she has accomplished a beneficial objective for star product sales and thus, benefited the whole business. She has become a recognized professional who has been rewarded for her job.

Consequently, Alice has the well-done job satisfaction and the incentive to keep working by objectives meaning that, when managing her time in the future, she will take decisions oriented to maximize results that will maintain or improve her status and will keep on contributing to general good results.

For their part, the Company’s managers are satisfied as they can delegate hard work and focus on managing which are the goals the company must achieve.

Why management by objectives is not enough

After some years, it is easy to see that management by objectives, despite its advantages of motivation and personal time management, it does not always help taking the right decisions at the right moment. Sometimes, it is not even enough to deliver the expected work.

When each worker works by their own objectives, which is the risk of no one taking care of the efforts coordination between the different initiatives that are being carried out?

Too high

On the following year, Alice did not manage to get her objectives because the TI department was too busy creating a new purchasing management system to support her on the web changes.

What is missing? Employees’ efforts must be coordinated between each other so that no one see himself blocked due to the need of cooperating with colleague who is too busy with another issue.

How can that coordinated cooperation be achieved? Managing internal work by projects, especially the most fragile one.

What is project-based management?

At project-based management, each project is connected to the objectives and business benefits willing to be achieved. Employees work on a coordinated way to obtain the project’s output: cooperation is programmed.

At the same time, the project’s output is an objective of the company or a necessary factor to achieve it. Without that project, the same factor wouldn’t be carried out and would block the work.

When there is a complex objective and it needs many different factors to happen, many projects grouped on the same program can be created. Program’s director will have to coordinate the projects to support each other, favouring synergies and avoiding a project pending work to block another project.

Let’s give an example

Let’s imagine that the company Alice is working for wants to create a new line of domestic products thought for single women between ages 35 and 50.

The goal is to put on the market 10 products of this new range and obtaining 1 million revenues in two years

The new range requires the work of all departments: product design, web, TI, marketing and commercial. Furthermore, all managers are very interested because their final year bonus are linked to initiatives. Particularly, the finance, sales and operational directors know it is about something important.

Instead of assigning objectives by department and by every employee, different projects grouped on the same program are created. The operational director is placed on the top of these projects as they have experience on projects management.

Many of these projects have transverse teams: people from marketing and systems and product design departments are working together. On the other hand, there is a single sales, web and systems project in order to have everything ready to start selling as soon as the products are ready.

With this kind of structure, program director:

Counts on the information about the ongoing process of the project
Can cancel projects that are not essential for the development of the new line
Allocates more human and financial resources to urgent or central projects
Is able to report the advancements on the project to the company’s senior management, anticipating possible problems and foreseeing results.

Why project-based management and management by objectives are compatible

No company in which a management by objectives style has been adopted has to leave the management structure to start running projects.

Management by objectives and project-based management are compatible and interdependent.

Let’s have a look to what ITM Platform’s white paper recommends

“The combination is straightforward: it is enough to link both project and tam to the objectives. This mechanism informs team members about the importance of the project, which is not only in the delivery, but in the external goal.

Keep on reading here:

The Project Success Definition is Broken

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The current competitive context is always more crowded and tougher: there is a boom of very innovative start-ups which are a real headache regarding all kind of markets and which make new technologies a source of competitive advantages: this phenomenon is part of what we call “digital transformation”.

In these markets, companies need to be more flexible to adapt quickly to changes – unless they want to face a competitive advantages loss with potentially terrible effects for all the organization.

For this reason, many companies turn to project management, the only strategy which guarantees enough flexibility and coordination in order to turn the business model into a competition machine.

Discover how to manage your organization by projects with ITM Platform’s White Paper:

What is project management?

Project management is a combination of practices that translate the company’s strategy into specific activities (or, more precisely, into projects), linked with the pursued business objectives and benefits.

Projects are not a tool for developing services anymore, they have become the value creation system for the company

In project management, the output of each project is a company’s goal or a necessary factor to achieve it.

Project-based Organization Management (PBOM) is made up of four pieces:

Project portfolio agile management
Project management office with strategic functions
An extension of the planning of the projects to their consequences and benefits.
Talent able to combine technical skills with business vision

If you want to know more about these points, I recommend you read the white paper: Project-based Organizational Management

Which is project management role within digital transformation?

A company’s digital transformation can easily become a messy and disorganised process, a response to business or operational problems without any leadership or any results. In order to face this risk, there is the need of a control mechanism that allows to manage the change.

A company can benefit from PBOM in several ways when it comes to digital transformation projects:

Aligning business units, departments and information management, avoiding integration difficulties between platforms and applications who are in more advanced stages.
Making technological solutions to be more solid as they are chosen considering not only temporary trends, but current necessities and, mainly, the future ones.
Managing as projects all the necessary means in order to guarantee the integration so that the process is not blocked in certain stages. Special attention must be paid to data processing, including the cleaning of information and its enrichment.

Real examples

It is easy to find examples of companies or whole industries which are redirecting their selves under a competitor with disruptive traits pressure.

Thinking, for example, about the emergence of AirBnB in the tourist market, it is easy to imagine the kind of transformation that many traditional agents must have carried out in order to keep on attracting clients.

Sometimes it is necessary to rethink the entire business model: from sales channels to price strategies, brand identity and technological structure. The only way to do it in an organized way is by managing projects.

This article belongs to a series on the Project-based Organizational Management. You can continue reading here:

10 pieces of advice when presenting to your CEO

Keep on reading here:

White Paper: Project-based Organizational Management (PBOM)

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One of the most important things for a project manager is presenting their results to the board of directors: who have the power to decide the future of the enterprise.

In addition, high level management already have a preconception of projects: that they are a real headache. The technical and methodological considerations, are a completely different language to the board of directors.

For that reason, when you have to present your project results, the most important aspect is trying to talk in the appropriate language for the audience. You should try to talk to them with a business perspective, which will be of mots interest to them.

This advice has numerous applications. In our White Paper about Project-Based Management (PBM) you will find a complete model on how use PBM to collaborate with the General Management of your organization.

Advice on how to present a project

1. You should connect with the general vision of the organization

You can not present the project as something that it is idsconnected; you should present it as an important piece which will create long-term value. In some cases, for example, in an ERP implementation project, these connections are obvious: after the implementation, all the organization’s operations start being connected.

In other cases the connection is more subtle. But it exists. Even if we are talking about a construction project, the motivation for doing the project is more economical, there are so many aspects that can be highlighted positively. You may have gotten your company into the catalogue of approved suppliers of a public entity, or that the project has served as an advertising platform.

You should remember that your audience has assisted in the delivery of many projects. You should focus on what makes it different. Why executing this project could be more worthwhile than other proposals which have never been implemented? This is what you have to communicate through the presentation of the results.

To that end, it can help you to put yourself in the position of the person who manages all your enterprise projects. Would you prefer someone who explains it in a quick presentation? You should try to present solid and memorable information. In addition, you should demonstrate that you know perfectly the reasons that made you start this project and what the risks were. The idea is that you should comfort and confirm their decision: all trust that they put on your leadership and your project has been well placed.

2. You should communicate the entire project benefit – not only the financial benefit

If you only reduce the result of a project to the benefits you have achieved, you are establishing an extremely easy comparison point. Your presentation can be destroyed by itself. One example could be if one of the presenters says that your project income is lower that they have expected or that other projects have obtained higher rates of return.

It is more interesting if you present this data with other goals that the project has achieved. Some examples can be a possibly technological development which can be extended beyond the project, an international expansion, increased customer loyalty or the consolidation of this project as a model for future projects.

3. You should present your project as a source of knowledge

Executives know that one of the biggest problems with projects is that they have a similarity with Las Vegas: what happens in the project stays in the project.

You should explain that your project is a source of common knowledge, not a watertight compartment.

Into the bargain, each time that new lessons learned are brought to light, and that they can be used for future projects, they are designing future savings. If you have an enough of a solid case, you can even estimate the savings.

If your organization is open to innovation or simply that your audience likes new ideas, this section is especially interesting for your presentation. You should extract the elements of the project where you have obtained innovative or improved ideas. This way, you will be able to present this presentation as an embryo of an innovative product.

Finally, you should strive for identifying what project elements can be added to the business model. Perhaps it is a new way of negotiating with providers or a design characteristic of user design that has had an especially good application.

But the message of the presentation is not everything. If you want your managers give their full attention, you should adhere to these following pieces of advice about how present all this information.

Advice for presentation style

1. Find out the need to know information for your audience

Your presentation can be interesting, well designed, and even fun. But, if you are not providing your managers the type of data that they are expecting, it is probable that you will lose their attention, they will stop listening to you or even interrupt you with questions to find out what is more important to them.

2. You should prepare several versions of your presentation

Finding a balance between what you need to tell and what your audience wants to hear isn't so easy. It is sure that you have a couple of different ideas about how to do this.

Even with all the precautions, it is possible that some of your listeners will interrupt you because they are not interested in what you are explaining. In the case of you being given critical comments of the approach of your presentation, the best option is having a second presentation with a total different approach that will help you to regain control of the situation.

3. You should not abuse PowerPoint

If you are using PowerPoint, you should try not to make it seem like it. It is a fact that many orators have overused services such as PowerPoint, and so a lot of people in business are getting tired of listening to presentations in which the speaker only repeats infinite lists of information without any apparent structure.

You should use the presentation as a visual support, not as a textual one. This is where the secret lies. You should try to highlight the most important data and graphics, use real photos of the project for illustrating your key points and try not to overuse difficult diagrams to explain. When we talk about communication, less visual information produces a memorable impact.

In addition, if you provide too much information, your audience will choose what information they prefer in order to reconstruct their own version, which may differ from yours.

4. You should find out the learning style of your audience

Although the visual information is assimilated without too much effort, each person has their own way of learning. You should adapt your message to this aspect too.

For example, if your CEO considers that it is important to have written information, you can prepare a project paper on a single page and give it as support material while you are doing your presentation.

5. You should practice until you reach a fluent style

Practice is the mother of excellence. You should not improvise any detail, but make sure that it does not appear as a scripted presentation. The idea is that you should speak naturally about a subject matter. You should revise the most important project data and the logical connections that you want to highlight.

6. You should highlight the most important message after ending your presentation

Usually, the most interesting situations from a communicative point of view are the interaction that happens when you have finished your presentation. How does the audience react? How many questions did you receive? Which type of questions were they? Were they in a hurry to leave? At this moment, the listening situation changes and the audience is more available to incorporate all the information that you communicate to them. You should not allow your comments to be improvised: you should try to highlight the most important message for you with a quick comment: “Thank you for your attention, and let me reiterate that…” This comment must be limited to a few seconds.

7. Review how the presentation went

Immediately analyze how the presentation went. Did it go the way you expected it to? Have you achieved your aims of the presentation? Have the aspects, that you had prepared, peaked the interest of your management or where there any surprises? You should incorporate this experience into your presentation toolkit in order to learn and improve for the next time you have to present.