Tips and Tricks - page 4
One thing that differentiates solo entrepreneurships from their bigger business counterparts is the simplicity of the approval process – if there, indeed, is a process involved. Because the business is all yours, no partners, board of directors or investors to consider, approval generally means your stamp of approval and the ball is ready to roll.
“I want to work with workflow tasks from Microsoft Outlook. Is it possible?”
Andrey Yanchenko, Head of Sales Engineering at NetCracker.
Spearheading a project isn’t a walk in the park. You would be responsible for its planning, execution and completion, as well as the aggregation of separate tasks by teams and individuals into a cohesive whole. Grace under pressure is always an essential, but below are seven other key ingredients to lead a project to success:
This being the case, it is fair to say that managing multiple projects across different teams, all at once, is exponentially trickier. But it can be done and has been done. We list five things on how to manage effectively multiple projects simultaneously.
Implementing tools and software rollouts to improve business and IT processes is a risky move, both financially and organizationally. Such implementations, when not considered with diligence and meticulous care, frequently end up providing the opposite of what management initially expects.
Case in point is the recent IT implementation problem that caused Philippine fast food chain juggernaut Jollibee, McDonalds’ top competitor and with thriving branches in the USA and other countries, to halt operations in 72 stores in Metro Manila. This botched IT upgrade, a supposed 0.5-billion peso (around $11.37 million) project, resulted to lost sales of 6% for just the seven days of August, which, in Jollibee’s 2013 revenue terms, is equal to roughly 92 million pesos.
When managing a project, it is normally expected that all processes and activities essential to the completion of a project are completed on time and within budget. It is, more often than not, the “on time” and “on budget” parts that identify success in project management.
The Project Management Institute (PMI) defines project management as “the application of knowledge, skills and techniques to execute projects effectively and efficiently.” To ensure this success and aptly consider yourself an effective project manager, should you manage and execute every little detail of the project management plan yourself?
(more…)People learn three ways – visual, auditory and kinesthetic. But by far, according to a Forbes article, “the most important part of our brains taking in new stimuli is visual.” Here’s one example that clearly illustrates this point: Between an infographic and a large block of text, the former is far easier to digest. This is also one of the reasons behind the use of visual tools in project management software, e.g., the project management Gantt chart.
As an enterprise expands in scope, workload increases. Automation of repetitive work becomes mandatory, as a consequence. Because of the scalability and cost-effectiveness of cloud-based software solutions, among other things, to improve the efficacy of a company’s workflow, cloud implementation is one of the first considered options.
Prepping for a boxing match is no walk in the park. A lot is dependent on the game plan. And if the plan isn’t carefully thought out, barring a lucky punch come show time, a defeat isn’t too far behind.
Project management success is largely dependent on the individual and collective contributions of the people comprising a company. If staff workload is not properly managed and allocated, the dominoes start falling – some team members juggle their time between projects, all the while trying to keep a work-life balance, others don’t meet deadlines because they’re not equipped with the right set of skills or competencies to get the job done, changing priorities up workforce frustration a notch further, and the list goes on and on.