Project management software refer to all applications that were designed to facilitate project delivery and make it more efficient.
Here are some interesting facts about the type of teams using PM software, how companies choose PM software, the most used features and what improvements will lead to satisfaction with PM software.
Enjoy the Infographic brought to you by Wrike project management web based software
By Linky van der Merwe
Prior articles in the Agile Project Manager series:
There are a number of considerations to take into account before you decide on the best education in order to transition to agile.
Do some research to find out which qualifications are in demand. Also look at what the job market has to offer.
Some certifications have pre-requisites for taking exams to obtain the certification, for example, the fact that you need a number of project management hours experience.
There are costs involved for studying and taking the exam, consider what will your budget allow, or will your employer be willing to pay for this education?
You also need to consider what interests you? Where are you now on your career journey and what will be stimulating and fulfilling in the long run?
Another important factor that people might forget, is the perceptions of your peer group. Some people have preferences for one type of training/certification above another. Take the time and talk to colleagues and friends in the industry to find out what they think and recommend.
All the above considerations will inform your choice of which education to pursue and whether you want to take an exam to become certified or not.
In my experience, I have found that certification carries weight with employers and recruiters, because it gives an indication of knowledge and proven experience, as well as a willingness and commitment to invest in self-development, subsequently adding more value in the workplace.
Should you decide on any of the following certifications, remember that the companies offering the certifications, also have training that will prepare you for each type of certification. This is a summarized view of the popular, well-known certifications today, but not necessarily all inclusive.
In the previous article: “Role of the Agile Project Manager” we covered:
This article will focus on what is required to make a successful transition to Agile project management.
An Axelos survey among project managers in 2017, found:
The project manager of the future will be valued above all for creativity, flexibility, agility and emotional intelligence.
Axelos
When adopting an agile approach, organizations will need to re-evaluate their reward systems to encourage agile practices, where collective goals supersede individual accomplishments. Most performance evaluation criteria is still focussed on the individual as well as on the more traditional criteria for project delivery, namely time, cost, scope, stakeholder feedback and benefit realisation. In agile it should be more about the performance of the team, value and benefit delivery as well as customer satisfaction.
Project managers are accustomed to being at the center of coordination for a project. During execution and as part of the controlling processes of a project life cycle, you would be monitoring and tracking progress through status meetings, minutes and status reporting to represent the project’s status to the rest of the organization.
Now, there is a shift from being the center to serving the team and management. In typical high-change projects, there’s more complexity than one person can manage. Instead, cross-functional teams coordinate their own work and collaborate with business representatives like the product owner and subject matter experts (SME) of the organisation.
Project managers are now servant leaders which changes the emphasis:
Adaptive approaches use short cycles to undertake work, review the results, and adapt as necessary. This means that Agile is fast paced, disciplined and demanding, encouraging improved team performance due to the inspect and adapt approach. These cycles provide rapid feedback on the approaches and suitability of deliverables, and generally manifest as iterative scheduling and on-demand, pull-based scheduling.
This will require project managers to unlearn some behaviours, to develop a different mindset and developing some new technical skills such as running a retrospective or ‘orchestrating’ work where in the past it was ‘managed’.
Taking guidance from the Agile Practice Guide (2017) Project managers need to work on growing skillsets beyond their area of expertise. Some valuable attributes include:
Rather focus on building a collaborative decision-making environment and ensuring the team has the ability to respond to changes.
Remember that an adaptive environment requires adaptive planning. Planning for agile projects look different to what project managers are proficient with on traditional projects. The different levels of agile planning are clearly explained in the image above.
In their book: Adaptive Project Planning, the authors, Christopher and Louise Worsley, found that one of the most distinctive characteristic of high performing project managers is their ability to use their experience and know-how to adapt the planning approach to meet the specific challenges of the project they were managing.
Develop characteristics of Servant Leadership. This is not the answer to it all, but when leaders develop their servant leadership or facilitative skills, they are more likely to become agile. Read: “Servant Leadership in the Agile context” for more information.
Servant leaders can help their teams collaborate to deliver value faster. They facilitate the team’s success by:
Part of the transitioning process is to keep learning, because the demand for competent resources and certified practitioners will keep growing globally. If you want to be a complete Agile Project Manager, your learning should include:
There are many training opportunities available. What you choose, will depend on your circumstances, your project management experience and your new role in the agile context.
In the next article, we will explore some of the Agile Certifications available, as well as the considerations before you make a selection.
By Linky van der Merwe
If you are a seasoned project management professional like me (20 years) who is transitioning into agile, you will find that this article aims to give answers when you’re trying to make sense of what it means to be an Agile Project Manager (PM).
We know that Agile is not a new concept. In 2001 it was made official through the publication of the Agile Manifesto although it had been around before then. It is just my experience lately that project managers, especially experienced ones, as well as new Project Management Professionals (PMP’s) are expected to understand Agile better and to know how to operate efficiently within an Agile context.
That is why representing organisations, like the Project Management Institute (PMI), have included information on agile practices, alongside traditional approaches in the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) Guide– Sixth Edition, and partnered with Agile Alliance® to create the new Agile Practice Guide. The guide provides tools, situational guidelines and an understanding of the various agile approaches available to enable better results and is useful for more traditional project managers to adapt to a more agile approach.
Before talking about the Agile PM role specifically, I think it’s worthwhile to have a brief look at the trends that I believe, are impacting the project management profession currently. This is not meant to be a complete list, but rather a focus on those trends that make the transition, to become Agile project managers, necessary.
In the past few years we have seen an increasing complexity on projects which requires project managers to have the ability to simply interpret and explain complex business processes to project teams and stakeholders alike.
There seems to be a shift where project thinking is integrated into all parts of the work processes.
Development of design thinking as a new type of creative approach. This would be applicable for tasks like definition of requirements, solutions to atypical problems and so on.
Due to globalization, more and more companies have distributed work teams due to the increase in the number of international teams in modern business. Often, a specialised stream of work, is outsourced to a vendor company who may supply resources from India and it will be a cheaper solution than to find internal resources with capacity or local resources whose specialized skills come at a higher cost.
We see an accelerated shift from Waterfall to Agile Project Management in larger organizations as the only way to deliver on benefits in increasingly dynamic and complex environments in order to learn and adapt quickly.
There is a move for PM’s to be more all-rounders, requiring them to be flexible, strategic, focus on the dependencies within the project. At the same time there is more pressure from stakeholders for PM’s to be more creative to meet strategic objectives.
The development of emotional intelligence as an important soft skill has become essential as part of the day to day through the project life cycle. Read what it really means here.
There is a huge push to move projects to cloud-based systems which are accessible from any-where.
We live in a world with expectations for enhanced reporting and data. Project stakeholders, like management, want views, templates and saved filters for easy access. Management and team members also want real-time information to stay informed and to help make decisions on a day-to-day basis.
Merehead
PMI Pulse of the Profession 2017
Invensis Learning – excerpts from group of experts
Clickup.com
On projects with evolving requirements, high risk, or significant uncertainty, the scope is often not understood at the beginning of the project or it evolves during the project.
Agile methods deliberately spend less time trying to define and agree on scope in the early stage of the project and spend more time establishing the process for its ongoing discovery and refinement. With emerging requirements there is often a gap between the real business requirements and the business requirements that were originally stated. Therefore, agile methods purposefully build and review prototypes and release versions in order to refine the requirements. As a result, scope is defined and redefined throughout the project. In agile approaches, the requirements constitute the backlog.
The main difference between traditional and agile approaches with regards to the triple constraints, is best illustrated with the image below. On traditional projects the scope is normally fixed at the beginning of the project with either the resources/cost or time being more flexible or negotiable. On agile projects the resources (teams) and time (time-boxed iterations) are normally fixed, with the scope being flexible based on delivering the most valuable products first.
This is why we see in trustworthy sources, like the PMI Pulse of the Profession 2017 Report, that there are several principles and methods to be considered for an Agile approach. They include:
With a view of the current trends impacting the Project Management profession as well as the Agile considerations, where does it leave professional Project Managers?
Here, I’d like to quote Alistair Cockburn, a signatory of the Agile Manifesto 2001, when he was asked at a conference in 2015 whether organisations should get rid of project managers and replace them with scrum masters, his response was,
“If organisations think that agile is a way of getting rid of project managers, they’re wrong. We need good people more than ever.”
Alistair Cockburn
Although the quote is 4 years old, it still rings true.
In agile it’s about working together more effectively to deliver value more quickly to the customer. The Manifesto called on organisations to “Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.”
According to Collin D Ellis, a leadership and culture expert, organisations need to act as if people are the most important. He states:
“do this by regularly displaying behaviours such as empathy, respect, trust, courage, generosity and honesty. It means keeping promises and making sure people are recognised for their efforts. It’s about having a working environment that is diverse and inclusive by design and where people know that they are empowered as soon as they walk through the door to be able to act without fear”.
Collin D Ellis
In the image below, you will see a framework for Agile (mostly Scrum) as it may typically look like in an enterprise environment.
It constitutes of three circles. The inner circle represents one (or more) Scrum teams with the cross functional dedicated team members fulfilling the three main roles, a Product Owner, a Scrum Master and the Development team who may consist of a Business Analyst, Developer(s) and Tester.
The second circle represents roles with people who are not necessarily dedicated to one team only, but who could support multiple scrum teams. They represent Architects (solution -, platform -, business -), Business Owner and Subject Matter Experts (SME), Release Manager, Project support (administrator), Project Manager and Agile Coach (optional).
The third circle will consist of a Business Sponsor and members of the Steering Committee, the Project Office (PMO), Change Management, Training, Enterprise Architecture and Program Management.
As you can see, the Agile Project Manager is part of the second and third circle and acts as the connection between the two. Where the Scrum Master is inward looking and responsible to support the team and to help remove impediments, the project manager is outward looking, more like a coordinator often overseeing multiple scrum teams on a project with duties including allocating and tracking budget, communicating with external stakeholders, contractors and vendors, maintaining a risk register and helping to manage interdependencies with other projects and teams.
According to the PMI PMBOK and Agile Practice Guide (2017), the role of the project manager in an agile project is somewhat of an unknown, because many agile frameworks and approaches do not address the role of the project manager.
Some agile practitioners think the role of a PM is not needed, due to self-organizing teams taking on the former responsibilities of the project manager. However, pragmatic agile practitioners and organizations realize that PM’s can add significant value in many situations.
The key difference is that their roles and responsibilities look somewhat different. The traditional role of a project manager as planner, organizer, and controller disappears, and the role of a facilitator or coach who effectively manages the collaborative efforts of team members without stifling their creativity takes its place (Highsmith, 2003). The focus is on people, rather than on process.
All project managers will not automatically move into the Scrum Master role, or alternatively into the Product Owner role. An Agile project manager must still monitor that corporate policies and project governance is followed. Mike Cohn (Mountain Goat Software, 2019) explains it well when he says that Scrum Master’s authority extends only to the process. The Scrum Master is an expert on the process, and on using it to get a team to perform to its highest level. But, a Scrum Master does not have many of the traditional responsibilities – scope, cost, personnel, risk management – that a project manager does. Duties, such as task assignment and daily project decisions revert back to the team. Responsibility for scope and schedule tradeoff goes to the product owner. Quality management becomes a responsibility shared among the team, a product owner and Scrum Master.
You will need a different mindset, considering the agile principles and values. There are new tools and techniques to understand and apply on agile projects for example Adaptive Planning techniques.
The next thing to change is to let go of a command and control approach and being the centre of coordination. You will need to move into the Servant Leadership space in order to focus on people rather than process.
Read my article on Servant Leadership here.
On a team level, the agile project manager can play a consultative role to put in place the appropriate people, process, and tools, to improve team efficiency and effectiveness. In addition you can be coaching members of the team as needed to optimise the project team’s performance.
Do encourage the distribution of your responsibility to the team: to those who have the knowledge to get work done. The team will be accountable as a whole for what needs to be delivered. For this to work well, you need to build a collaborative decision-making environment as a facilitator and a coach to empower the team to make decisions and to be high-performing.
The agile project manager works with the customer to layout a common set of understandings from which emergence, adaptation and collaboration can occur. The agile project manager lays out a vision and then nurtures the project team to do the best possible to achieve the plan, as per Mike Cohn.
Another important responsibility on complex Agile projects will remain the management of project intra- as well as interdependencies, with other projects. To do this well, stakeholder engagement is still essential.
Read more about adaptive planning skills in this article: “Are you on a time-critical project?“
Let me know in the comments what your views are on the topic of Agile project management.
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Recently, I had to start a new project with an estimated timeline of 12 months. With many of the project team members being contractors who are new to the company, the most important thing to do, after having an approved budget, is to plan for a proper kickoff workshop.
It serves an important purpose for many reasons. Some are:
Below you will find an Infographic with 10 steps for a successful kickoff. If you take the time to plan and prepare well for the project kickoff, you will have a great start with excited and motivated team members.
Infographic brought to you by Wrike virtual project manager
By Ashley Lipman
If your Business is running multiple Agile projects and you are seriously in need to scale, you would have heard of the Scaled Agile Framework also known as SAFe. Read more as an introduction to this framework and how you can use it to your advantage.
While most business users have heard the term Scaled Agile Framework, many of you are not familiar with what it actually means. This framework is a combination of both lean and Agile principles designed to make collaboration and centralized decision-making easier. Some examples of the principles would be cross-functional teams, continuous code integration and systems thinking among others.
One of the biggest benefits that comes with using SAFe is the various configuration options it offers. The three basic levels used in SAFe are:
When using SAFe, companies are able to view the “big picture” of a particular project. This level of visualization is only possible when mapping out the roles of your team and assigning them particular responsibilities. Luckily, the Agile principles SAFe is based on, can be scaled to fit the needs of large corporations. Most businesses find that the centralized decision making promoted by this framework helps to speed the progression of a project up without mistakes being made in the process.
The main benefit that comes with adopting SAFe is the efficiency it can bring to the software development process. Using this framework not only benefits the developers in the trenches writing code and developing new programs, but it is also helpful for software leaders.
Often times, these leaders are tasked with answering high-level strategy questions. Getting the answers to these questions is easy when everyone is on the same page and decision-making is centralised. Most large corporations have found that SAFe’s big picture view helps them to coordinate strategies even on large scale projects that are complex in nature.
Another advantage of using SAFe is that it helps business owners stay aligned with shareholders goals and wishes. In some instances, the bottom-up approach of Agile can lead to developers and testers losing sight of the big picture. With the top-down approach of SAFe, you can keep everyone moving towards a common goal with ease.
One more major benefit is the Inspect and Adapt principles which support a systematic view of outcomes and will lead to continuous improvement.
The first thing you need to do before starting to use this framework is to put the right tools in place.
For instance, if you use Microsoft IIS to host your websites, investing in software that acts as a strong Monitor for IIS performance is a must. Putting the right tools in the hands of your developers will make the transition to SAFe and the software development process as a whole more successful.
As mentioned before, SAFe uses a “big picture” model to keep all of your team members on the same page. This is why creating a detailed roadmap for the project at hand is so important.
Furthermore, Lean-Agile leadership is required that will help management to lead the transformation rather than follow it.
Another challenge is to dedicate enough time for innovation and planning, else you will incur technical debt, more overtime will be required and teams will fall victim to the ‘tyranny of the urgent’.
As with any other project management methodology or framework, the SAFe adoption process will take time and effort. Instead of getting impatient and making mistakes, you need to take your time to implement it slowly. Consulting with professional Agile Practitioners who have experience with Scaled Agile Frameworks can be very beneficial and is recommended.
Whether you work in a corporate organisation’s marketing department or in an Agency providing services to clients, you will know that successful content marketing projects are complex and involve the whole business.
It requires a good content marketing strategy and then a plan to create, publish and share your content in an authentic way.
This Infographic, with compliments from Wrike, will give you the 10 areas that need to be addressed as essential elements of your content engine.
By Linky van der Merwe
Interview with Anika Nell, CEO of Stripform Packaging (Pty) Ltd, manufacturers of flexible, customized ziplock bags since 1975. The interview is exploring a remarkable new product, the development project of a truly biodegradable plastic.
Tell us about your Research and Development around biodegradable plastic?
Stripform Packaging has been manufacturing plastic packaging for more than 30 years. Due to the negative impact on the environment, I wanted to ensure that at least some of the products we produce, would be more environmentally friendly.
South Africa has relied on recycling for many years as the option for a better future. Although all products produced by Stripform Packaging are 100% recyclable, we all know that plastic is extremely durable, very slow to degrade and has a long staying power, in some cases longer than a human’s life-span! Recycling is certainly an important way of ensuring less pollution, but it is only part of the solution and it is time to explore other options.
Through my research it became clear that South Africa is not up to speed with environmental progress made on plastic. Internationally two main types of biodegradable plastics are possible.
The first, oxo-biodegradable plastic, is made of petrochemicals and requires a catalyst to break down the polymer chains through oxo-biodegradation. The second, bioplastics, are plant based and break down through hydo-biodegradation.
Since my experience and knowledge is from petrochemical plastic, I wanted to ensure that the plastic products we produce would biodegrade in a relatively short period of time, would be non-toxic and affordable. Therefore, I opted to perform my R&D on oxo-biodegradable plastic.
You say that your existing products are 100% recyclable; how many times can a ziplock bag be recycled before it becomes too old or unuseable?
Since the standard plastic bags that we produce are made of virgin material, it can be recycled as many times as it ends back into the recycling stream. The problem is that we are not dedicated to recycling and re-using. The bags that we produce are made from Polyethylene which is the most recycled plastic in South Africa. but these only amount to about 42% of all Polyethylene manufactured. I am concerned about the 58% that lands up somewhere else….
How long does biodegradable plastic take to break down completely? Will this continue to happen at refuse dumps?
Oxo-biodegradable plastic breaks down through nature itself. UV light and heat starts the degradation. The polymer is made up of strong carbon bonds that are being broken by the catalyst that was added to the polymer mix during manufacturing. The carbon atoms then bind to oxygen to form biodegradable material.
Biodegradation depends on the material’s thickness, temperature, moisture and oxygen content as well as other environmental factors. This process will take between 15 – 24 months for the oxo-biodegradable products. If these products end up on the refuse dumps, they will continue to biodegrade until oxygen is no longer available.
Top of mind when I developed the biodegradable plastic, was the pollution I saw daily on my way to work. It is fantastic to know that these new plastic products could biodegrade within a very short time and that it is possible that the plastic bags that Stripform manufactures can biodegrade and “disappear” after the end up in the field.
What are some of the challenges you had with the research and prototype development?
Research and Development is exciting, but costly and time consuming. I am a business owner and the chemist developing the biodegradable plastic at work. It was tough taking on the additional responsibility while still keeping my focus on the core business. It was a real balancing act to manage the company while developing a new product of this kind.
The costs of the tests to ensure that the plastic will indeed biodegrade and not only break up in million pieces of plastic were high, but in the end worth every cent.
Another hindrance was finding other scientists to bounce off new ideas. Although the internet is a great source of information, it cannot replace brain storming with other scientists.
Are you already manufacturing biodegradable plastic?
Yes, Stripform Packaging started to manufacture for a growing list of clients already. The biodegradable ziplock bags are safe to use for any item from sandwiches, cheese, hardware items and agricultural products to dispensing of medicine.
Did your company treat it as a project, in order for it to become part of the standard products that you offer?
Yes, Stripform Packaging considered the project as a solution to plastic pollution and as part of the standard range of products that we offer. With time we will expand to include other biodegradable products.
Is there market interest to manufacture a biodegradable plastic?
The world is in desperate need to find solutions to climate change and global warming. Although South Africa is behind in terms of oxo biodegradable plastic, bioplastics and recycling, it is widely used in America, UK and at least 10 countries have legislated to make oxo biodegradable plastic mandatory. It is impossible to export to these countries a wide range of plastics or goods wrapped in plastic unless the plastic is oxo biodegradable. In April 2019 the SA government published the requirements for markings and identification of degradable plastics. It is the first step in acknowledging the entry of this technology into the South African market.
You are operating in the Pharmaceutical industry, how do you see this spreading to other industries which are heavily reliant on packaging?
I believe that South Africa should consider various options to tackle climate change and plastic pollution. We have wonderful organizations to assist with recycling, but it is time to open the door to new ideas and technology. All industries using plastic packaging should explore options that are sustainable and will contribute to the solution. I am not a believer of one size fits all. Every solution offers positive and negative aspects. With a holistic approach South Africa can reduce plastic pollution drastically.
Oxo-biodegradable plastic may not be the perfect solution to all plastic pollution, but the benefits of this technology is widely accepted internationally. Together with recycling, plant based plastics, biodegradable and several other innovations a cleaner planet is possible.
Do you think your break-through formulae will be adopted by other big packaging manufacturers?
Yes, I think that South Africa will embrace new ideas to slow down the pace at which we pollute this earth. Whether it is Stripform’s development or another creative solution, the time is right to implement alternatives.
The topic of biodegradable plastics is highly controversial and intensely debated. The more we debate these solutions, the more options will become available and the closer we are to a sustainable environment.
Internationally a wide variety of biodegradable products are already available. These include cups, plates, coatings of paper items, etc. Unfortunately plastic is not plastic is not plastic. Every application such as the container in which your take away sandwich is packed differs from the wrapping around your bread rolls or from the plastic of your shopper bag. Creative solutions for each of these items must be found.
Will recyclable plastic eventually be replaced by biodegradable plastic?
I am not sure if it is necessary to choose between the two. There is a place for both. Some biodegradable plastic can also be included in the recycling stream. It all depends on the level of sophistication of recycling and composting facilities available.
Are there alternative biodegradable products?
In fact there are several biodegradable plastic options available. These plastics derive from plants, petrochemicals and combinations thereof. For example: biodegradable thermo plastic also known as PLA; synthetic polymers such as PCL and combination of starch and PCL known as Mater-Bi and many, many more are known. New products and combinations of raw materials for specific applications are launched continuously to replace long lasting plastic products.
What can we look forward to for our and our children’s future in terms of green technology and sustainability?
Once you start reading about the exciting development of green technology and replacement of packing material as we know it, you realize that the entire world woke up to the fact that we are destroying our planet by continuous consumption and waste. Researches are actively pursuing different solutions and I am encouraged with the progress made.
For many years scientists worked on perfecting the best plastic packing to keep food fresh and to increase the shelf life. Marketing ensures that all products on shelf were packed in primary, secondary and tertiary packaging to enhance shelf appearance.
It is time to go back to basics and take cognizance of the cost of our actions. The impact of global warming and climate change has changed perceptions and research toward a greener future is happening NOW.
Initially it will be more costly to change to green technology such as biodegradable plastic. As technology improves and more solutions are found internationally, it will become affordable and more accessible.
I see a world where very little will end up in landfills. Products will either biodegrade, be reused or recycled. The alternative is too hard to bear.
About Anika Nell: Contact her on LinkedIn
As a wife, mother of twins and a doctor in Chemistry who is running as the CEO of Stripform Packaging, manufactures plastic ziplock bags for the pharmaceutical industry, Anika is resourceful, creative and passionate about what she believes in. With a background in the Wine and Cosmetic industries, she is now making in-roads in the Plastic manufacturing with her break-through Biodegradable plastic products and knowing that she’s making a positive contribution to society.
By Darko Atanasov
If you manage your construction & engineering projects with Oracle® Primavera P6, you may want to know about a software that goes hand in hand with P6, and how you can benefit by utilizing the features this simple to use viewer provides.
I’m writing about ScheduleReader™, which is a .xer viewer in its nature, able to perform a wide variety of project scheduling functions, beneficial for your team and organization.
ScheduleReader™ enables users to view Oracle® Primavera P6 Schedules in .xer or xls. format.
Project stakeholders like project managers, contractors, and subcontractors can take advantage of the software and gain greater visibility over the project progress by utilizing the following views:
The benefits of using ScheduleReader™ are huge for project teams of any size. I’ll highlight some of the most important:
ScheduleReader™ as .xer file reader provides an interactive overview of the project with personalized view. Moreover, users can use custom and auto filters with flexibility when viewing a file as well as navigate through predecessors and successors with complete overview.
With .xer reader, you can also work with custom layouts imported from .plf files, and take advantage of visual baselines comparison on the activity updates from previous .xer file versions.
Nowadays, as a consequence of the global economic crisis and slow recovery from it, companies are trying to tighten up their spending and budgets on costly software technologies and services.
Moreover, if we consider a project where most of the people work on their assignments, while only project managers, executives, and coordinators make changes on the schedule, then a lightweight application to display project views could dramatically reduce costs for software licensing.
ОOne of the most eminent attributes of ScheduleReader™ is its speed. Anyone having issues with importing large .xer files knows how important is the speed. It takes minutes, and some managers even reported hours to open a large .xer files in P6.
But that’s not the case with ScheduleReader™, as it will open .xer files in a matter of seconds.
The Progress Update functionality at ScheduleReader™ allows team members to propose assignment progress and activity status in their respective views. The Project Scheduler then decides whether to accept or reject the updates proposed by the team members.
Baselines functionality allows comparison of up to four updated versions of a project schedule. Users can view precise graphical presentation of what has been changed from the original schedule in the Gantt preview.
It’s an easy visual comparison utility, helping you to keep track on the project progress.
Searching within the project data is also a feature to be highlighted and useful when you need to find a specific item from the current view.
With ScheduleReader™, users can also filter project data that meets certain criteria, such as milestones, completed activities, in progress or critical activities. User can pick between User Defined and Default Filters to be applied to the current view.
Groups can help users to arrange the activities’ order according the current needs. Users can create Custom Groups which is saved in a layout, meaning that groups, together with the layouts, are saved on application level.
User can open any project file and through the layout, ScheduleReader™ will apply the group.
In ScheduleReader™, users can choose between the option to use a predefined report or create a custom report. The set of predefined graphical reports will allow even less experienced users to create a graphical report and dashboards, to present the current status of the project in front of management.
Moreover, advanced users can create complex graphical reports with ScheduleReader™. This kind of graphical report can compare different project categories into a one page dashboard, which will contain key performance indicators (KPI) and key data points, which will give users a tool to monitor the health and status of a specific process.
ScheduleReader™is available in 2 versions, ScheduleReader™Standard and PRO.
ScheduleReader™PRO version comes with built-in Reports and Dashboard, a feature which allows users to create custom graphical reports, import/export the generated custom report and later share it with all project stakeholders.
Thanks to this powerful reader for Oracle® Primavera P6 files, you have an affordable, user friendly, and comprehensive addition to Primavera P6. If you want a tool that you can use to view .xer files, you’re very well advised to get ScheduleReader™.
About Seavus: Seavus is an international software development and consultancy company that enables organizations to achieve superior business performance by implementing high-quality, enterprise-ready software products, services and solutions.
By Linky van der Merwe
The practice of Servant Leadership is not new, but it is embraced and adopted again with fervor, especially in the context of more organizations following an agile way of working.
To refresh memory, I want to reiterate the Servant Leadership definition as per Wikipedia:
“Servant leadership is both a leadership philosophy and a set of leadership practices. Rather than exercising power at the top (traditional), the servant leader shares power, puts the needs of others first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible”.
Servant leadership was coined by Robert K. Greenleaf in “The Servant as Leader” that was published in 1970. His definition states:
“Servant leadership is a philosophy and set of practices that enriches the lives of individuals, builds better organizations and ultimately creates a more just and caring world.”
The most important elements of servant leadership are:
Servant Leadership is also known from a religious tradition where in the Bible Jesus is known as the ultimate example of a Servant Leader. In a business context, it can represent a decentralized structure that focuses on employee empowerment and encourages innovation.
Servant leadership is covered quite extensively in the Agile Practice Guide (PMI 2016). It’s because, once having practiced it, servant leaders can usually see how well servant leadership integrates into the agile mindset and values. When leaders develop their servant leadership or facilitative skills, they are more likely to become agile. As a result, servant leaders can help their teams collaborate to deliver value faster. Successful agile teams also embrace the growth mindset, where people believe they can learn new skills. When the team and the servant leaders believe they can all learn, everyone becomes more capable.
With this clarity of what servant leadership is, what are the responsibilities of Leaders in Agile organisations and what characteristics of servant leadership will enable project leaders to become more agile?
Here are examples of the responsibilities a servant leader may have:
According to the Agile Practice Guide (PMI 2016) the following characteristics of servant leadership enable project leaders to become more agile and facilitate the team’s success:
Project managers acting as servant leaders will move from “managing coordination” to “facilitating collaboration.” Facilitators encourage the team’s participation, understanding, and shared responsibility for the team’s output. Facilitators help the team create acceptable solutions.
Servant leaders promote collaboration and conversation within the team and between teams. For example, a servant leader helps to expose and communicate bottlenecks inside and between teams. Then the teams resolve those bottlenecks.
Additionally, a facilitator encourages collaboration through interactive meetings, informal dialog, and knowledge sharing. Servant leaders do this by becoming impartial bridge-builders and coaches.
Honouring the first value of the Agile Manifesto: ‘individuals and interactions over processes and tools’, a servant leader can help to remove organisational impediments. On a practical level you can look at processes that are lengthy, causing bottlenecks and impeding a team’s or organization’s agility. It could be a process established by change control boards, or audits where you can partner and work with others to challenge them to review their processes to support agile teams and leaders. For example, what good is it for the team to deliver working product every 2 weeks only to have the product fall into a queue or process that could take 4 or more weeks to release due to lengthy release processes.
Servant leaders work to fulfil the needs of the teams, projects, and organization. Servant leaders may work with facilities for a team space, work with management to enable the team to focus on one project at a time, or work with the product owner to develop stories with the team. Some servant leaders work with auditors to refine the processes needed in regulatory environments, and some servant leaders work with the finance department to transition the organization to incremental budgeting.
The servant leader focuses on paving the way for the team to do its best work. The servant leader influences projects and encourages the organization to think differently.Because servant leaders understand agile and practice a specific approach to agile, they can assist in fulfilling the team’s needs.
Agile project managers need to shift from being the centre to serving the team and the management. In an agile environment, project managers are servant leaders, changing their emphasis to coaching people who want help, fostering greater collaboration on the team, and aligning stakeholder needs.
As a servant leader, project managers encourage the distribution of responsibility to the team: to those people who have the knowledge to get work done. Therefore, control of the detailed product planning and delivery is delegated to the team.
Ultimately, the project manager’s focus is on building a collaborative decision-making environment and ensuring the team has the ability to respond to changes.
What is Servant Leadership? Project Leadership at its best
Leadership Styles – Servant Leadership
Leadership Styles: The Vision of a Servant Leader
Leadership Styles – Is Servant Leadership the Answer?
Leadership Style – Servant Leadership and Communication
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Many project managers land in the project management profession due to being technical specialists with great success in their field of expertise. However, they are not always fully prepared for the important skills, knowledge and competencies that are critical for success.
Often there is a high expectation to succeed, especially if they come from a background of subject matter expertise or a general management. This begs the question: Is project management for everyone?
Their career path does not typically begin with the goal of becoming a project manager, but rather evolves over time as experience builds. There is little to no clarity on the typical career options that project managers have in many organisations. When employees progress into project management positions, they are left to their own devices with perhaps only their line managers providing guidance and support.
According to a report published by Sage (2015), ’Is project management still an accidental profession? A Study of Career Trajectory‘, the study found there is no single project management career path. Rather, the project management role seems to emerge from employee experiences in different roles within the company over a period of years. The more knowledge and experience gained, the more likely it appears the employee will be assigned an integrative role such as project management that touches all functional groups.
Below is an Infographic from Wrike based on a Work Management Practice Survey. It was found that many people are expected to do project management at work, even though less than half had “Project Manager” in their title or description. To make it worse, it found that only a third of companies use standard project management approaches. Too much time is spend in meetings and much stress is caused by the use of various tools and platforms to track progress and to do reports, coupled with unrealistic project goals and not being able to find important information.
Without an organisational culture supporting programme management, a strong training program, strategic staffing and team autonomy, it will continue to be very difficult for project managers to succeed in their roles. This will lead to a profession in dire need for mature, professional project managers, to lose potentially good candidates who could have helped to deliver successful projects and programmes.
Infographic brought to you by Wrike
by Dr Eben van Blerk
Which qualities do we need to be successful in life? Above average cognitive intelligence (IQ) and academic achievement are traditional measures of success in life. In fact, companies often focus on technical skills during recruitment and project staffing and ignore the human aspects. IQ, technical skills, academic qualifications and certifications alone however are not enough for success anymore. We are measured against a new yardstick. How we behave, get along with others and work together as a team, have become critical for success.
Much has been written about Emotional Intelligence (EI) the past two decades since the publication of Daniel Goleman’s 1995 book by that title. Research linking EI to performance at work has proliferated. Emotional competence is linked to performance in a variety of jobs, organisations and cultures [1].
The world of work is emotional. Most of us have experienced moments in our lives where we are caught up in daily challenges which distracts us from achieving our goals. Our energy is often drained by peak hour traffic, a difficult client or colleague in a project meeting. We start the day with best intentions but soon we find ourselves in the opposite direction we had in mind. Our emotions have surpassed all sense of reality, leaving us in denial and regretful about our behaviour.
The behaviour of others can influence our emotions and our emotions can influence our performance. Emotions can either help us to achieve our goals or contribute to us not being successful at all. Increasing research evidence suggests that learning to become more aware of our emotions and becoming better at managing our emotions can have a significant positive influence on how effective we are at getting things done. [2,1,4]. Research has shown that EI exceeds IQ when it comes to success. EI has become one of the biggest predictors of success at home, at the office and life in general. [3].
Understanding the concept of emotion will add more clarity. An emotion is a physical reaction or change in our body based on what we experience in our environment, e.g. something we see, hear or think. An emotion is a trigger for our body to act. The basic emotions are anger, sadness, fear, enjoyment, love, surprise, disgust and shame. Each emotion is accompanied by a biological signature. With anger heart rate increase, fear leads to sweaty hands and enlarged pupils, surprise causes the eyebrows to lift and with shame, blood often rushes to the face.
Emotions are often referred to as matters of the heart. The human brain however is central to our emotional and rational life specifically two of its components, the limbic (emotional) brain and the rational brain. The limbic brain records everything that happens in our lives. It serves as our emotional memory and controls all emotional related matters and biological signals such as tears of sadness. It is the centre of our fight or flight responses and stores a repertoire of possible reactions when triggered. As we grow older, with life experience this repertoire of responses, is extended. Our response to each emotion is also influenced by our experiences, upbringing and culture. The limbic brain is key to our survival as humans. Our rational brain on the other hand is responsible for problem-solving and decision making.
When faced with danger, the rational brain will start the problem solving process evaluating all relevant factors to devise a plan of action. While this is happening, the emotional brain will consult its repertoire of stored responses and send out the necessary fight or flight instructions to the body. The emotional brain reacts much faster than the rational brain and in effect hijacks the rational brain and simply takes over. Before we can rationally think what to do, our emotional brain decided and our body reacted. This is often where afterwards we struggle to understand why we acted in a particular way since “…this is not me, I am not like that…”.
EI in essence is the ability to manage the above emotional hijacking that happens in our brain. In layman’s terms it translates to acting appropriately in any given situation. From an academic perspective, EI is a “set of skills relevant to how we perceive, understand, reason with and manage our own and others’ feelings” [5].
If we recognise and understand what we are feeling and why, we can intelligently manage our emotions and use it to our advantage in decision making. Without this ability, our emotions can often be a source of great misery in our lives. The good news therefor is that EI can be improved, if we have the desire to do so. Self-awareness can help us to understand how our emotions influence our behaviour. This insight can assist in rewiring our limbic brain to ensure that our behaviour is more in line with our intentions and values.
This is the first instalment in a series on emotional intelligence. Further articles will unpack the business case for EI, how EI is measured as well as the difference between EI and IQ. Each of the emotional competencies that combine to make up emotional intelligence will be discussed in further detail. South African research on the role of emotional intelligence in project management will also be shared.
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About the Author:
Eben van Blerk is a Manager and Senior Business Analyst with more than 25 years’ corporate experience in information systems. Eben holds a Doctor of Technology degree in the role of emotional intelligence in information systems work. He has a keen interest in the role of emotional intelligence in performance at work and a passion for assisting individuals, through coaching and mentoring, to become more emotionally intelligent. In addition to presenting industry talks and facilitating emotional intelligence workshops, Eben has co-authored articles and book chapters on leadership and emotional intelligence in local and international publications.