SOCIAL: PM software (free) recomms?
Brian Rice
brice at bigloops.com
Tue May 22 10:50:21 PDT 2012
Full disclosure: I didn't design that project-design methodology. It's just what I was trained to do. This company in San Mateo called IPS offers a 2-day onsite class that teaches the basics of project management. They've been around for a while… I first took their course in 1998 or so! I had the good fortune to do it again in 2005.
If anybody's building out a team of project managers, or trying to infect a team with project-management-think, this training would be a good arrow to have in your quiver. Check 'em out. http://www.ipslearning.com/
Brian
On May 21, 2012, at 9:35 PM, Ellisa Feinstein wrote:
> Wow...that's quite the brainstorm/PM session you designed there. Fortunately something that I don't have to do right now (my project is very well-defined) but something to use for future non-defined projects.
>
> From: Brian Rice <brice at bigloops.com>
> To: Ellisa Feinstein <ellisafeinstein at yahoo.com>
> Cc: Mike Kosim <mike.kosim at mac.com>; Social Social <social at deeptrouble.com>
> Sent: Monday, May 21, 2012 5:59 PM
> Subject: Re: SOCIAL: PM software (free) recomms?
>
> <soapbox>
>
> In my humble opinion, the choice of project-management software is not nearly as important as the project-management methodology. Project-management tools are great for MANAGING projects, but they are terrible for designing and scoping projects. The best tool for the latter task is… the sticky note. I am serious. Here is my project-management approach:
>
> 1. Get everybody who will be contributing (work, requirements, or expectations) into a room.
> 2. Give each person a stack of sticky notes.
> 3. Everybody brainstorms all the tasks they can think of and puts them on the whiteboard. One task per sticky. Should be total chaos.
> 4. Everybody winnows the tasks, consolidating duplicates and roughly organizing them into general phases.
> 5. People with an interest in each phase identify dependencies (especially, finish-to-start dependencies). These get marked on the whiteboard with an arrow between stickies.
> 6. People who will be doing the work write rough estimates of effort and duration on each sticky.
> 7. A walkthrough review occurs (in which everybody can SEE the long pole).
> 8. People take lots of cellphone camera pictures of the whiteboard.
> 9. Pizza and beer are consumed.
>
> NOW, at last, one is ready to type stuff into a project-management tool and track the tasks' completion.
>
> It is commonplace to bash Microsoft Project, but frankly the people I know who most hate it are those who tried to do their project design in it. However, designing a project in any software tool* risks the one worst thing that can happen to any project: lack of buy-in. Getting everybody into a room as I suggest above gets the human beings on board with the project from the get-go. "Yes, we are gonna finish this by September 8, because I helped write that plan."
>
> *Any software tool, that is, that's less interactive than sticky notes and a whiteboard.
>
> </sorry for the rant>
>
> Brian
>
> On May 21, 2012, at 2:16 PM, Ellisa Feinstein wrote:
>
>> Thanks, Mike. And this is the problem - so many choices! Hard to tell which ones are good.
>>
>>
>> From: Mike Kosim <mike.kosim at mac.com>
>> To: Ellisa Feinstein <ellisafeinstein at yahoo.com>
>> Cc: Social Social <social at deeptrouble.com>
>> Sent: Monday, May 21, 2012 12:58 PM
>> Subject: Re: SOCIAL: PM software (free) recomms?
>>
>> I just saw this page with a bunch of them -- looks like there's an immense choice of free/ donation based project management software.
>> http://mastersinprojectmanagement.org/top-25-open-source-project-management-apps.html
>>
>> Let me know what you end up going with. I'd like to use one myself.
>> mike
>>
>>
>>
>> On May 21, 2012, at 12:48 PM, Ellisa Feinstein <ellisafeinstein at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi - Does anyone have recommendations for free project management software or online app?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Ellisa
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>>
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>
>
>
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