SOCIAL: PM software (free) recomms?

Tue May 22 11:36:32 PDT 2012

speaking of sticky notes, a friend of mine recently designed this application which allows you to take the sticky note process below online.
www.crowdbrite.com
I think it's pretty cool!

Karen

________________________________
 From: Brian Rice <brice at bigloops.com>
To: Ellisa Feinstein <ellisafeinstein at yahoo.com> 
Cc: Social Social <social at deeptrouble.com> 
Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2012 10:50 AM
Subject: Re: SOCIAL: PM software (free) recomms?

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.
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>________________________________
> 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?
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><soapbox>
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>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:
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>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.
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>NOW, at last, one is ready to type stuff into a project-management tool and track the tasks' completion.
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>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."
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>*Any software tool, that is, that's less interactive than sticky notes and a whiteboard.
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></sorry for the rant>
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>Brian
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>On May 21, 2012, at 2:16 PM, Ellisa Feinstein wrote:
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>Thanks, Mike.  And this is the problem - so many choices! Hard to tell which ones are good. 
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>>________________________________
>> 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?
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>>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
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>>Let me know what you end up going with.  I'd like to use one myself.
>>mike
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>>On May 21, 2012, at 12:48 PM, Ellisa Feinstein <ellisafeinstein at yahoo.com> wrote:
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>>Hi - Does anyone have recommendations for free project management software or online app?
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>>>Thanks,
>>>Ellisa
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>>
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