http://www.pmonetwork.net/posts/list/7.page JForum - http://www.jforum.net
[quote]In this installment of Getting the Best Out of Geeks, we spoke with project management guru Dr. Steve Flannes to get the scoop on the ten biggest people-related mistakes that IT project managers can make. As the principal of the consultancy Flannes & Associates, he specializes in managing people through projects and is the author of Essential People Skills for Project Managers.

Many of your valuable geeks are most at home while working on big projects. Because these IT projects can make or break managers, it is critical that you consider how to best utilize the people who carry them out. [/quote]


[i][b]Full Story:[/b][/i] [url]http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/IT-Management/10-PeopleRelated-Project-Mistakes/[/url]

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I really get your point! Project management can be one of the hardest jobs. From my point of view, there are 2 ways people manage projects - the MsProject way and the agile way. Personally for small to mid-sized companies I use <a href="http://www.happytodos.com">this tool</a>. It approaches project management more from a team member side, to maximize work efficiency and motivation in employees. Of course it has full collaboration capabilities and very easy project management. In fact it has 3 main functions: it allows you to receive all incoming communication from within the system and allows you to quickly filter through you work and clip action items from your emails. After you clip it - the email is automatically archived. So you don't keep a long trail of emails, any useful information is converted into action items, and the rest, once you read it and have nothing to do with it - it was FYI to begin with.

The second function is the workarea for the team member, the guy actually doing the work. First off HappyTodos takes of their table the need to report hours. It sure is a dread, and it takes up valuable time. The system tracks any activity on a certain task, including executable and administrative work. Administrative work! How did you report the time you spent of your emails? Hmmm…
The second nice thing about the workarea is that is allows you to plan yourself 3 tasks to complete this day (using a very cool visual task pool). This daily plan is also visible to project managers - which helps with urgent reallocation of resources and flexibility in planning.

The last major section is for the Project manager. It is painfully simple, yet powerful. You get a next 14 days calendar with upcoming milestones, a list of your tasks/todo's grouped by milestone, a real time chart showing what team members work on what tasks today, and what tasks they have planned to work on today. And of course the project's files and notes.

It really is very powerful, and very simple! Just 4 very well thought our screens. Personally I love. If you want to try it out look for the list I posted above.

Thanks again for your article.
Neta
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