Artificial lakes, Venetian canals inside commercial galleries, fountains capable of pumping water as high as a building ... Few cities make a more spectacular use of water.

Anyone would say that it is an abundant resource. However, Las Vegas is surrounded by the Nevada desert, one of the largest in the world.

How is this possible? Behind this paradox, lies successful project management, which allows for turning the driest of deserts into a fertile oasis. Let's see how.

Collaboration with neighbors

The city of Las Vegas collaborates with neighboring regions to obtain water supplies. Until 1991, each municipality sought to exploit the Colorado River and Lake Mead independently.

However, during that year, the Southern Nevada Water Authority was founded. This organization aims to ensure the proper use of water by all populations in the surrounding area. This way, it is guaranteed that water is used adequately and benefits not only some of the population but all.

Internal collaboration: companies and individuals

The larger companies in the city have been incorporated into the initiative of saving water. Perhaps not by conscience or social responsibility, but by an economic question: the cost of a liter of water is greater the more it has been consumed.

Regardless of the cause, major hotels in the city have established a healthy competition to see which performs the most efficient water management. Using advanced water purification systems, the main strip hotels only consume 3% of the city's total water.

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For their part, ordinary citizens also collaborate. Incentive programs exist for the substitution of conventional irrigated gardens for others of native desert flora. The maintenance of these gardens implies a lower expenditure of water and instead this valuable resource can be used for human consumption.

The result is that approximately 90% of the water consumed by the city is purified and returned to Lake Mead.

Mentality change

Of course, all these changes have not occurred overnight: a gradual adaptation has been necessary. To this end, all public and private organizations, from the largest companies to the self-employed, through industries and families, have had to shoulder the burden in a common cause and adapt to the new circumstances of scarcity. Adapting to this new scenario will ensure the survival of your business model ... and life.

Forecast: the ability to anticipate problems

Las Vegas could never have had a population of 2 million inhabitants and an estimated 35 million visitors a year if it had not had enough water stock.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the construction of the Hoover Dam allowed the storage of large quantities of water, which not only ensured the supply, but allowed the water to become a source of electricity.

The construction of the dam before the water needs multiplied, allowed to face this new situation with guarantees and that the city prospered.

Application of new technological solutions

However, the technology is becoming obsolete and the available resources may be insufficient. This situation is also being raised in Las Vegas. Currently, it seems that the Hoover Dam will not suffice in the medium term. As a solution, the city of Las Vegas has sought rights to water from other Nevada basins and the Utah Snake Valley. A new pipeline connection between these regions and the city of Las Vegas will ensure their supply.

What can project management contribute with?

  • Accurate knowledge of available water resources. In the example above, it is necessary to know the exact volumes of water available, the demand curve, the capacity of the distribution networks, before carrying out a transfer or requesting new water inputs from neighboring municipalities...
  • Projection of the future: anticipation of the worst possible scenario. Rainfall is likely to increase in the coming years. Although forecasts for climate change seem to indicate otherwise, it is possible that a year’s rainfall will exceed forecasts. However, this exception is not something that can be counted on. A leader in charge of project management has to be able to always put himself in the worst place, to foresee the worst possible scenario and to prepare a suitable solution for him. That is why the Hoover Dam was built and that is why water transfers are planned before the need is urgent.
  • Agile and efficient technological solutions. The water utilization systems used in hotels, homes and businesses can recycle most of the water consumed and return it to Lake Mead. This is possible thanks to the use of advanced technology. Finding and adopting new technological solutions allows you to make the most of available resources.
  • Negotiation. Without leaders able to establish equilibrium scenarios in which all parties win despite giving in to certain aspects, Las Vegas would have dried up long ago.

Therefore, for this methodology of project management to work and be carried out properly, it is necessary that all involved share a mentality of entrepreneurship and a predisposition for continuous improvement.

This way of acting, either voluntarily or stimulated by the state of Nevada, has led to involve both companies and individuals in taking measures for water control. Teamwork and good coordination, is what has led to the social and economic miracle that is now Las Vegas.

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Although collaboration is an essential principle for a modern and innovative organization, it is worth remembering that it is not recommendable to embrace collaboration at all costs. The definition of a collaborative culture will have to be oriented to different parameters specific to each organization.

Collaboration for PMOs: advantages and disadvantages

If you are convinced that your organization needs to improve project collaboration, you must make sure collaboration is properly oriented and directed towards the goals of the organization.

For example, collaboration is a priority in innovation intensive organizations dedicated to the design of new products and services: the more ideas are gained, the greater the innovative potential. In these cases it may be important to collect inputs from all interested parties and even to determine a iterative procedure, whereby each design phase is subject to an open round of discussions.

However, in organizations with more predictive projects, a culture of open and uncontrolled collaboration can be pernicious. Even destructive:

  • Hierarchical validation procedures are proportionately related to deadline compliance
  • Informal communication relies on people, not processes. That is why large organizations and teams with high turnover suffer especially when they fail to combine collaborative elements with standardized procedures.

1. Project Management

Despite the risks of open collaboration, the risks of not collaborating are also high. A project manager who does not delegate, share information, or accept comments beyond the established channels becomes a bottleneck that can choke the entire organization.

On the contrary, among the collaborative responsibilities of the project manager is the habit of sharing knowledge with all stakeholders: team members and executives, clients, suppliers, or public entities in the case of tenders.To avoid being lost in this web, it is very important from a certain complexity to determine what tools, documents and processes are right for each stage.

2. Project collaboration

​ Another advantage of a collaborative controlled culture is that team members can benefit from cross-pollinization. Again, this is a very important aspect when the project presents unknowns or new problems to solve.

Some practices to make ideas flow:

  • Use open spaces
  • Use equally open chat tools: instead of email, a chat service for channels such as Slack, for example
  • Adopt SaaS tools, so that your computer's hard drives do not become black boxes

3. How to combine closed communication and standardized procedures

Unfortunately, these days it is not enough to be productive and execute a list of tasks within a project. Actually, we have many applications based on a timeless distribution of activities or the check-list approach , which, although they are very valid for certain functions, do not serve for the execution and planning of professional projects. The most difficult in these cases is to get the right balance between collaboration and controlled information.

ITM Platform Teambot is an application for Slack that allows, precisely, to speed collaboration through the messaging chat that has taken a robot to Mars while incorporating the strengths of an ITM Platform capacity planning tool. Where Slack adds the collaborative dimension, ITM Platform adds the control.

In fact, ITM Platform Teambot, created for all team members, is the most convenient way to use ITM Platform:

  • It allows to recall tasks and projects
  • facilitates reporting processes
  • Links seamlessly to ITM Platform

Advantages of ITM Platform Teambot:

  • Teambot is the only project management application in Slack that, besides allowing to recall information, offers the possibility to use agile and predictive methodology in the same integrated portfolio
  • Share knowledge and cooperate with organizations that integrate different hierarchies or open teams
  • Check projects and tasks in seconds
  • Report your progress from Slack and without ever having to log in to ITM Platform

Request a demo of ITM Platform and we will tell you how to establish successful collaborative practices for your projects.

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itm-platform-teambot-example

ITM Platform has just released a brand new app for Slack focused on collaborative work management. With ITM Platform Teambot, ITM Platform users can:

  • Recall their projects and tasks
  • Report their hours
  • Report follow-ups in percentages
  • Add comments to tasks and projects

We really believe ITM Platform Teambot is an interesting case study on how to promote SaaS adoption with smart integrations targeted at improving the experience of our user base.

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Enterprise software is the toughest of choices

One of the most common challenges for CTOs and enterprise technology owners lies in how to select a software vendor. Experience says technically great products do not necessarily perform better, while employees tend to stick to what they know.

I don’t think there’s an easy roadmap for choosing good software, nor even an adequate personality that solidly indicates a good decisor: the insightful CTO that evaluates dozens of options before selecting his technical champion can be exactly as wrong as the SME CEO that chooses a vendor based on his guts and contacts.

The secret is in the users

Very often, when a product doesn’t deliver what it promised the problem tends to lie in management, not in the technology: workers, workflows and technology are disconnected.

This is particularly important for project management solutions, that tend to have an asymmetrical use among different stakeholders: while project managers use the most advanced features, team members tend to be bugged down by boring and allegedly unnecessary reporting procedures that don’t add any value to their work. In that context, any friction will kill you. I can’t tell you a more common failure story in project management governance.

In other words: in a software-centric organization, you can’t escape treating your employees as users. The second step is to address user needs as that of internal customers: calculate software adoption as a major component of your technological ROI, as many experts are already doing:

  • 72% of CTOs consider adoption as the main driver for successful SaaS implementation (Sandhill)
  • 43% of CTOs recognize the threat of “shadow IT” and the use of non-validated software (Forrester)
  • 80% of users abandon enterprise mobile apps after a single use. (Boston technology)

So here’s our own experience for treating users as our major customers.

How to get your employees to use project management reporting tools

As any other SaaS company, at ITM Platform we know that if we rely solely on user’s good will for internal reporting purposes, any friction will disengage them. Neither we nor the company admins we work with want that to happen.

How ITM Platform Teambot solves the problem

  1. Go to where the user is

Instead of forcing the user to log into our system merely to report hours or progress, we have chosen to go where our users already are. In other words, we are choosing to support our standalone product with our own app for Slack, because we believe that it may turn into THE tool for enterprise communications and productivity.

  1. Make life easier

Once ITM Platform Teambot is authenticated, a team member will not need to enter into ITM Platform regularly: he or she will be empowered to execute all reporting actions directly from Slack.

By merely typing “/itmplatform list projects”, anybody can see what projects they have been assigned to on ITM Platform. The action takes abot 4 seconds and no browsing action.

What’s more, if you want to log in to ITM Platform to do more complex actions you can do so by merely clicking on the project or task names: they’re all functional hyperlinks!

  1. Productize user experience

The workaround that we have developed with ITM Platform Teambot has allowed us to productize user experience. In fact, what started as an improvement for our existing customers has become the most powerful project management app for Slack that we know of.

Visit Slack’s app directory to add ITM Platform Teambot now or request a demo to find out more on how to make ITM Platform work for your company!

 

Jaime González-Capitel
Senior Content Strategist
ITM Platform

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Slack logoSlack has its own guidelines on how to make the best use of your team chatrooms for managing your projects, and they’re a great way to maximize your productivity if your teams is already using Slack to coordinate your team communications. We particularly find that having a policy to create project-based channels is a great way to ensure that the right people are always getting the right information on time. And if you have a consistent naming guideline, the search box can become a powerful database of everything that is going on in your company!

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Source?  Of course, Slack themselves. https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/218130338-Slack-for-project-management#apps-for-project-management

In fact, while the case for Slack may seem already redundant for American companies given the platform's soaring popularity and the power of its free version, many companies in different markets still haven’t heard of Slack, so it’s never too late to go over some of its pillars.

1. Familiarity of the design

Something I often hear around me is that people dislike Slack because they haven't invented anything. Well, you know, anybody familiar with the history of technology will debunk the romantic myth of originality: technology creates technology. New technologies, particularly successful ones, are combinations of already existing artifacts.

Feels familiar

  • So yeah, Slack’s repurposing of an IRC interface is not original, but at the same time it’s crazy brilliant because it goes back to the foundations of consumer satisfaction.

    You can think about it like the free food and napping pods at Google’s offices transformed into a digital environment. Chats and texting feel leisurely, and that’s precisely the feeling you want to give your team when you want to motivate them to use a specific tool. Particularly if you have a young workforce, trying out the giphy command can be the best way to guarantee people open their Slack account every single day.
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    2. Cell phone reporting

    Slack stands for “Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge”.  Although it looks like a chat, it is actually designed as a repository of information that you can search at any time.

    Now imagine how powerful this can be for teams that have workers deployed on the field. On one hand, they can send useful information from their cell phones knowing that the app is a validated form of communication; on the other, project managers will spare time on data management and the enforcement of reporting tools.

    3. An app environment for chatbots

    The main one? You guessed it: while Facebook is driven by procrastination, Slack is driven by productivity.

    The integration of third party applications follows its own patterns, starting with chatbots. Although the passion for chatbots has been heavily criticized by some as a passing fad, the truth is that they are a good example of simple products that do small things, but do them good. No team will have use for every app on Slack, but some of them are really powerful.

    Slack doesn’t have a very targeted public. If you work in an office, you can enjoy it. However, these guys have made sure that they meet the needs of any technological firm. In fact, besides giving access to specific apps for developers that go from GitHub and Heroku, there’s a specific feature that allows to share lines of code.

    Create snippet, Slack

    All in all, the main reason why you want to be on Slack is that, whatever your core business is, you will find ways to save time, connect your team, and increase the effectiveness of your internal communications. At the end of the day, that translates into a more solid organization and better project management.

    Did you know that ITM Platform also has it's own integration with Slack? If you want to check it out, click here.

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