Automation Centre

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Welcome to the official blog for Automation Centre, the developer of award-winning business software solutions including TrackerSuite.Net (for the Web), Tracker Suite (for Lotus Notes) and TrackerOffice (for Microsoft Outlook/Exchange).

Who Are You Trying to Please?

Article provided by guest blogger, Brad Egeland.

I know we have to please the senior management of our company – unless we’re working as independent contractors or consultants. They pay our paychecks, keep us assigned to projects, and well, make sure we can feed our families. But as our projects go – as project managers, who are we trying to please? Whose happiness are we concerned about? When push comes to shove, who do we pay our allegiance to?

For me, it’s customer first

As a project manager, I always consider my customer to be the number one reason I’m carrying out a project. It’s their money that is funding the project and I know that their satisfaction is one of the big determiners of project success... something that I am tasked with and something I try very hard to succeed at. I’m trying to help get them to the solution that they are looking for – the one they really need in order for the end result of the engagement to be determined a success. If they aren’t happy, then I’m not happy... and I’d like to think that would make my senior management unhappy as well. I’ve often been frustrated at the roadblocks that management has put up in front of me – rather than knock down – along the way to project success. And on at least two occasions the path that management has directed me to take on a project has led to utter disaster. I’m not saying my path would have yielded success, but the likelihood of success was definitely higher.

So for me personally, I am usually more concerned with pleasing my customer. I like to think that if I can do that, the rest will just be taken care of, though I realize that’s a bit of a simplistic thought approach. In fact, this thinking is probably what makes me a better consultant than employee in the long run. In a perfect world you have management, a PMO Director, and an executive staff that is involved and helps build paths to project successes. But in more than half of the PMOs and project situations I’ve been involved in as a W2 employee that has not always been the case. This may sound like a subjective statement on my part – or just sour grapes – but in the instances where I felt that senior management was not working with me in the customer’s best interest the PMOs in those organizations were eventually dismantled or the PMO director was replaced bringing about major change in the long run. I don’t think that’s all coincidence.

In general, be careful.

I do understand the obvious….I certainly know that in the long run if you do not work to please your management or if you continually butt heads with them on critical issues, your tenure with the organization could be short. We must be careful when disagreeing with our senior leadership and not behave in a rogue manner. Bring issues to their attention and have serious discussions if you don’t agree with certain decisions, processes or policies. Just going rogue isn’t going to win you points with anyone in your organization – unless you are able to completely prove that your way was the best way. But if you’re too disobedient of your senior management’s directions and wishes, you may be removed from the project or the organization before you have a chance to prove that you were right…so be careful.

Call for feedback.

What about our readers? When you are deeply entrenched in a project – where does your allegiance lie? Are you fighting for your project customer’s needs or strictly following the guidance of your PMO director or other leadership? Have you had a major instance where there was a line drawn and you either crossed it or you didn’t? Please share your thoughts and experiences on this.

Assemble Your Project "A Team"

The success of a project lies largely in the hands of the team executing it, so why not make sure those hands are exceptionally capable? Taking an “A Team” approach to building your project teams can not only help ensure the success of your current initiatives, but can also help cultivate and mature resources within your organization for recruitment into future endeavors.

Unfortunately, all too often organizations take the approach of simply throwing resources at a project as it suits the work schedule. When a new initiative arises, consider the following steps.

1. Develop a clear understanding of the project goals and objectives. Considering the initiative in terms of its overall objective, rather than as a collection of tasks, can provide insights into the background and skills of resources that could contribute to its success.
2. Review past initiatives that are similar to the current project, and the resources that were attached to them. If these resources are available, they should definitely be part of your final selection pool.
3. From the Work Breakdown Structure, identify technical specialties needed to complete the work within the initiative.
4. From your resource pool, start tallying available resources that have the necessary skills or background required for the tasks within the project.
5. Now it’s time to separate the A Team from the B Squad. Dive deeper within the pool of available, technically-able resources you’ve assembled. Identify those with a history of excellent performance and solid teamwork skills. These are the must-have resources for your project – your A Team.

However, don’t entirely write off the B Squad. Part of the success of any project isn’t just the initiative itself, but also the improvement and honing of resources assigned to it. Projects, particularly tough projects, are how B Squad members can be promoted to the A Team.

In this case, you may want to include some B Squad members, under the direct supervision of high-performing resources. By providing a source of oversight and leadership, these resources can be cultivated for improved performance, and helping the organization to develop a healthy resource portfolio, as well as a productive project portfolio.

Keeping the Project Exciting

Article provided by guest blogger, Brad Egeland.

I can’t believe that I’m really saying this, but it’s true that risks breeds excitement. Some would say risk also causes heart attacks and high blood pressure. But monotonous project engagements can be risky as well even if no real risks come up… simply because everyone has been lulled to sleep and things can start to fall through the cracks.

Edginess is good – at least from time to time. Risk is challenging. Risk is energizing. Fighting risk keeps a team cohesive. It definitely can work to keep everyone on the project team engaged. And it can keep you from losing a key project resource that you might otherwise have to give up if you’re project is moving along smoothly. By now I realize you probably think I’m crazy, but keep reading on…

There really isn’t such a thing as an easy project

I’m sure everyone wishes their projects were all ‘easy’ and without incident. At least as the project kicks off right out of the gate they’re probably saying some sort of little prayer that nothing goes wrong. But we all know that any project of any size that matters is going to experience issues – often at least one significant setback. No huge, visible, challenging project is ever going to be easy and perfectly, swimmingly successful. Ever. If someone tells you their big project is running smoothly and perfectly then they are lying – or worse – they’re unaware. When you tie together a group of opinionated, highly skilled individuals who also have other responsibilities than the ones you give them and you add a customer with high expectations and large expenditures and you sprinkle in an enterprise-wide solution with somewhat vague requirements - because requirements always have some degree of vagueness to them - there’s no way it’s going to go perfectly or smoothly.

Enjoy the Challenges

I think we can all agree that your big project isn’t going to run from start to finish without experiencing some issues – without some of the identified risks becoming realities. Of course, be sure to focus a decent amount of effort on identifying and managing those issues and risks during planning and on an ongoing basis. Make the entire project team own them…both the delivery side and the customer side. Ownership breeds caring, engagement, and cohesion. And focus. In turn, that all breeds productivity, increased responsibility and definitely accountability. And all of those are very good things.

We all can agree that work seems more satisfying and goes faster when there is some degree of non-monotonous activities going on? Having a few fires to fight will definitely keep you on your toes. The same goes for the project. Don’t get me wrong, if I have several projects I’m leading at once, I’d prefer to not have multiple fires to fight on each project at the same time. I wouldn’t even mind if a few of those projects are easy ones. But having fires around – and unmitigated risks can become huge fires – then things can never get boring. Let me clarify…I’m not saying one should let those risks and issues become big fires. But the challenge of identifying, assigning, managing and mitigating those risks and issues breeds creativity and brings a team together like nothing else. You don’t have to actually face the adversity…but knowing it’s out there if you don’t work together and do something about it brings a team together on a common goal and can make for a very enjoyable…and successful project.

Summary

The best medicine is to stay five steps ahead of project risks. Do the upfront planning necessary to identify potential risks to your project and document the mitigation and avoidance strategies in as much detail as possible for each of those identified risks. But do it as a team…and if the risks come up, fight them as a team. It can really bring a project team together that was otherwise going through the motions as the project is smoothly and subtly lulling them to sleep.

To the Internet and Beyond

Earlier this week, Google CEO Eric Schmidt made waves with his announcement that the entire world would be online by 2020. Considering that the Internet user base grew about 400% between 2002 and 2012, his prediction isn't necessarily unrealistic.

The origin of the Internet can be traced back to the 1960s, to ARPANET (Advanced Research Project Agency Network), the world’s first operational packet switching network and the first to implement TCP/IP (the protocol used for computers to communicate with each other). The first message carried on ARPANET was “login”. It was sent from UCLA to the Stanford Research Institute on October 29, 1969. However, a system error caused only the first two letters, “lo”, to be transmitted, making it the first ever Internet crash as well.

In 1991, the first website was published, Info.cern.ch, which ran on a NeXT computer at CERN. The site focused on the developing World Wide Web project, how pages could be built and how to find information on the Web. For nostalgia buffs, a copy of the original site (circa 1992) is available.

By 1995, all restrictions on the use of the Internet for commercial traffic were gone, paving the way for the Internet we know today. Of course, when the Internet first emerged, the public was a little confused about what it was for. Fortunately, there were videos like this to help out.

The Internet has come a long way since then, in the last ten years alone it's grown by over 550 million Web pages, not to mention connection speeds. Did you ever have to use a 300 baud modem? You have our sympathies.

The Automation Centre website circa 1997 (in an Internet Explorer 3 browser, no less) versus today.
A larger version is available.

What's Next?

The Internet is possibly the most disruptive technology to emerge since the printing press in 1450, and a successor of equal or greater impact is likely long in coming. But with the rapid growth of wireless infrastructure, mobile devices, applications and personalization, the relationship of the Internet and its users is changing.

The original experience was one of the user rooted at the terminal, hunting for information. Today, information is served to the user, at their convenience, through applications that deliver content based on the user's preferences, behavior and even their social relationships.

This experience will continue to change, as technology becomes more flexible and applications grow more intelligent. It's hard to imagine how the Internet could become much more adept at serving users the content they want, short of developing some sort of pro-active sentience, but how likely is that?

Building a Better Project Status Report

Successful project execution requires the generation and proper distribution of quality project status reports. These reports don't simply serve to provide sponsors and stakeholders an update on the progress and costs of their initiatives, they also help project managers and their teams focus on their efforts, results and performance.

Email version of a status report in TrackerSuite.Net

However, too many organizations rely on haphazard or informal status reporting processes, using Excel spreadsheets or Word template documents. A proper status report should cover several key areas, beyond a general overview.

• The overall health of the project, as measured against key metrics. While the metrics may vary from organization to organization, there are four primary items that should be included:
• Scope: Have the project objectives changed?
• Budget: Is the initiative still within its planned budget, or is it on a path to exceed it? (Details on the project budget should also be included in the status report - see below. The budget metric itself is simply a flag to indicate problems.)
• Resources: Does the project have the resources necessary for its success?
• Schedule: Will the initiative be delivered on time?
• The progress towards specific project milestones.
• The current issues and risks facing the project, and what's being done to mitigate them, and who is leading those efforts.
• The status of tasks within the project.
• Most important of all, the project budget. Optimally, this would include the "baseline" budget, what was initially planned, the current budget, actual costs and the variance.

Of course, a comprehensive project status report with actionable intelligence is useless if it's delivered late. An informal means of status reporting can also wreck havoc on timely submission rates. Part of addressing this issue requires instilling a sense of responsibility in the corporate culture, encouraging employees to submit their reports, whether its project status reports or timesheets, on time. Scheduled reminders for status report due dates can also help establish these habits.

The final element of an effective status reporting process is distribution, making sure that timely business intelligence is delivered to the eyes that need it. Sponsors, stakeholders, managers and the team should all be on this list. In this case, an online status reporting system is far superior to a paper-based one- the user submitting the status report only has to send a link or an email with the status report embedded.

Focusing on these three elements: details, timeliness and distribution, in implementing a project status reporting system, will help your organization manage its project portfolio more effectively and with improved results.

The Importance of Project Communication

Communication issues can lead to some pretty ugly situations, just ask New Jersey. A little miscommunication about tax requirements cost them a not-so-little $200 million dollars in revenue back in 2010.

Miscommunication can lead to pretty epic project failures as well, and it’s not at all surprising considering that 60 – 80% of IT project failures can be laid at the feet of miscommunication, depending on whether you’re talking to Gartner or Forrester Research.

Sometimes it’s not miscommunication that kills projects, it’s the lack of it. A 2010 study made the following grim discovery:

“What we learned was alarming. The research suggests that the culprit in 85% of project failures is silence. The study showed that there is a definable set of project communication problems that are far more common than most senior leaders realize. An estimated 90% of project managers routinely encounter one or more of five critical problems in the course of a project, but the killer is the silence that follows. Initiatives are derailed when people are unwilling or unable to have conversations about the problems they see.”

"For IT Projects, Silence Can Be Deadly”, ComputerWorld

So, whether it’s a miscommunication, or lack thereof, what can your organization do to prevent the same errors from popping up?

Put Everyone on the Same Page

Make sure everyone involved in the project understands how the project aligns with the organization’s goals, its importance, scope and expected schedule. One of the strengths of our project request engine is that key project sponsors and stakeholders can see the project goals, scope, budget and Work Breakdown structure, providing everyone an identical, clear picture of what the initiative is for, what the costs are, and what work will be required.

Require Consistent Communication.

Regular, detailed status reporting helps ensure the success of a project- make sure project leaders understand that these reports are required, and to be delivered on schedule. Project status reports should be delivered to project stakeholders, sponsors, and organizational decision makers – even team members. If the project is off track, everyone needs to know so that everyone can do what needs doing, and put it back on the rails. Our product, Project Tracker.Net, sends automated email reminders for status report due dates that put the recipients one click away from their responsibility.

Don’t Kill the Messenger

The most pervasive and crippling habit for project teams is the under-reporting of problems facing the initiative. The temptation to stick one’s head in the sand and hope for the best, rather than be the bearer of bad news, is very strong. To counter this, establish an environment of accountability, and recognize those who step up to point out potential issues.

But reporting is only half the battle. Establish a system for managing issues:

• Profile the issue.
• Develop a plan for mitigating the issue, and assign resources to it.
• Monitor the status of the issue as it is resolved.

Taking these three steps: establishing a common understanding, enforcing consistent communication and creating an environment for open discussion, will ensure the success of projects within your portfolio.

Spring Cleaning for Business

Welcome to spring (well, for the Northern hemisphere, anyway), and more importantly, spring cleaning. Time to break out your broom. A few organizations have already gotten started.

• Panasonic is considering bowing out of the plasma television market.
• Last week was supposed to be THE last week for Windows Live Messenger, but the March 15th expiration date Microsoft provided was only for a "test cell" - the remaining 99% of the user base will start migrating over to Skype on April 8th.
• Google announced it would end its Google Reader service in July, to the wailing and gnashing teeth of its loyal user base, although the pain will be much more acute in countries practicing internet censorship.

Painful as they may be for some users, product discontinuations like these are pragmatic decisions by organizations. Panasonic didn’t need to see the writing on the wall – it was already on their balance sheet, which reported revenue from plasma sets dropped 42% from the previous year. For Google and Microsoft, their decisions were based on declining product user bases (Messenger had lost two-thirds of its users since 2010), coupled with the entirely logical concept of focusing resources on a smaller product catalog for improved quality.

If your organization is considering a spring cleaning of its own, to consolidate all its different software applications for projects, time reporting, purchasing and resource management, well, we have a recommendation…

What Color is Your Project?

For those of you getting ready to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day this weekend, read our Bizco comic to see how Bizco breaks out the green. While Automation Centre can't offer you a magic shamrock to keep the lights on your projects green rather than red, we can provide you the following three tips to mitigate common causes of project failures.

Tip 1: Plan, Plan, PLAN

Projects that lack concrete planning and requirements often fall astray. Careful planning of the Work Breakdown Structure, making sure task associations and dependencies are accounted for. The project plan should be reviewed and approved by team leadership, including sponsors and stakeholders - everybody needs to be on the same page.

Tip 2: Put the Right People in the Right Place at the Right Time.

Effective resource allocation can be time consuming, but the payoff is worth it - proper resource allocation has a profound effect on project durations. Of course, if you're using one of the resource availability views in TrackerSuite.Net, your job is a lot easier. Just search and filter for the particular resources and skill sets you need for your projects their projects, review their current workloads and make your allocations.

Tip 3. Keep an Eye on Trouble.

Unfortunately, sometimes while risks to a project are known, they aren't documented or planned for, leading to disaster if they come to fruition. As part of your planning process, take the time to profile risks in detail, assign resources to them, and keep an eye on their status.

An Organization's #1 Investment

An organizations #1 investment is its people, their relationships and their ability to work together effectively towards the success of the organization. That perspective gets lost sometimes, particularly in tight economies like the one the United States is in now. Organizations look to trim costs, and employees increasingly feel the threat of having their jobs outsourced, or being replaced by foreign workers on visas, although a study published last week determined that foreign IT workers utilizing H-1B visas weren’t necessarily more talented or smarter than the average American IT worker (not including this guy). A counter argument could be made that the foreign workers, mindful of their status, might be more focused and diligent in their work than their domestic kin.

But considering the tepid recovery and fiscal cliff that Congress so blithely jumped over last week, whose mind couldn't be on their job right now? The US Labor Department released its February jobs report today, disclosing that unemployment dropped to 7.7%. Although it's good to hear the rate moving down, it's been over four years since it's been that low. Businesses still have their pick of potential workers, and strong hands at the bargaining tables.

But turnover has its price too, including lost productivity, replacement training and recruiting costs. A recent study by the Center for American Progress discovered that the average cost of replacing a mid-range employee (earning less than $50K per year), came to 20 percent of that person’s annual salary. As the pay scale rose, the situation grew dramatically worse. The cost of losing an executive could cost an organization up to 213 percent of the employee's salary. If you replaced a skilled project manager earning $90K a year with a less experienced PM for $50K a year, it could take your organization over 4 years to recoup the costs of the transition.

So what’s the best course of action for organizations that want to retain quality employees, but can’t necessarily offer higher wages to ensure their loyalty?

Provide a work experience that pays for itself.

• Recognize Achievements: This is probably the easiest and most effective means to keep people motivated. For employees who value their own work and contributions to the organization, recognition of their effort and performance can go a long way.
• Good Communication: Managers and supervisors should be clear with employee about their expectations, the employee’s position and progress within the company, and provide straightforward, constructive feedback about their performance.
• Allocate, Allocate, Allocate: Make sure your employees are being utilized fully, but not overloaded. Spikes in activity are normal, healthy even, but a sustained campaign grinds down employee morale, and with that performance and work quality.
• Encourage Development: Training seminars and educational seminars aren’t free, but they both reward employees and benefit the organization through improved performance. Make sure to record the skills and education credits earned in the employee files.

Are You a Spreadsheet Commando?

Read "The Spreadsheet Commando" Bizco comic

While the paperless office may finally be here, you wouldn’t know it by looking at the trees. Paper demand hasn’t slackened, a 2012 study by The Economist found that usage had actually increased by 50% over the last 30 years. The report determined that “the average American uses the paper equivalent of almost six 40-foot (12-metre) trees a year.”

But for many organizations, paper’s time has come. The advantages of paperless systems are clear. The University of California, Berkeley, utilized several different time reporting and payroll systems across the units in its sprawling campus, then they replaced it all with a single, simple Web timesheet system. The appeal of Web based applications is calling to HR departments as well - a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management found "Expanded use of the web for delivery and utilization of HR applications on a service basis”. Considering how much easier it is to manage and search an online employee database as opposed to cabinets of employee folders, particularly for larger organizations, the move isn't at all surprising.

What are a few other things that could benefit from going paperless?

• Gantt Charts: Gantt charts are excellent reports for tracking the progress of work on a project, but with an interactive Gantt chart , you can not only review progress but also make schedule adjustments and resource updates on the fly.
• Status Reports: How much easier would projects be if all the status reports were in a central, online location where project team members, managers, sponsors and stakeholders could review them whenever they needed? Better yet, instead of going into a project meeting with copies of the latest status report for discussion, a TrackerSuite.Net user can convert a status report into a multi-slide PowerPoint presentation with the click of a button. 
• Purchase Requests: Procurement is a vital cycle in any organization, but how often does it get delayed due to misfiled or lost purchase requests, not to mention purchase requests dropped in the inbox of absent approvers. Using TrackerSuite.Net, users can submit purchase requests that are automatically delivered to designated approvers (or proxy approvers) on submission.
• Expense Reports: On a business trip? What if you didn’t have to wait to get in the office to file your expense report? Using TrackerSuite.Net, you can even attach scans or photos of your receipts and attach them to a Web based expense report form, which is automatically routed through the approval process on submission.