I believe that Project Management is the most underestimated and undervalued role in business today, overruns are estimated to cost the UK billions each year, not just in the public sector and that’s not to mention the projects that don’t even make the first hurdle because they simply don’t know where to start. However I’m not here to prattle on about the importance of project management, you’ve heard it before, you know it’s important, critical in fact… but why would anyone want to do it? And surely I’m exaggerating when I say I’m absolutely fascinated by it…?

Actually no I’m not, and here’s why;

The Challenge – When over 70% of projects run over budget* what a challenge to scope, plan and see a project through to so its successful delivery on time and within budget! Even more so when you learn that it’s impossible to achieve without building in allowances for variation in scope, implementing cost contingency and adopting a communication strategy throughout its lifecycle.

The Diversity – No two projects are ever the same, by its very definition a project is a one-off endeavour to deliver an end product and its success will depend heavily on the business, people and technologies involved. Liken it to cooking a meal for guests, you can use the same ingredients but their freshness may vary, timings and measure slightly off, helping hands chop to different shapes and sizes, you may just be in the mood for a bit more spice that day and most importantly of all you can almost always guarantee someone will turn up a vegetarian!

The People – You can read every book, know every methodology, use every tool but I have yet to see a successful project run by someone who doesn’t work well with people. There are no tips or tricks that I know of to guarantee that you’re going to get the best out of your team when things get tough and no magic formulas to placate the sponsor when compromises have to be made. If anything, keep calm, keep in control, take full responsibility and treat every stakeholder with utmost respect for the role they are playing. Something to note is that even the most mundane project will have an element of excitement, if you can nurture it and share it around a bit, it can be a powerful influence on the success of the project – a bit of internal project marketing if you will.

The Systems – Never use a system just for the sake of it but always look for better tools to help you manage your projects. Einstein once said, “everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” There are thousands of tools available for project planning, tracking, reporting, information management and communication, explore them and you’ll come across some gems which will make the entire project easier to manage but be careful not to take your eye, or anyone else’s off the ball. A favourite tool of mine is Microsoft SharePoint for coordinating and sharing information and tracking progress, meetings and decisions that are made throughout the project lifecycle. It’s simple to use and it presents a professional image right at the early stages when you as a project manager are yet unproven.

I realise that I haven’t delved into the depths of project methodology such as PRINCE2 or Theory of Constraints (TOC) but I knew an article on Project Management was going to be rather dry and the last thing I wanted to do was bore myself to death too. I do hope that I have at least expressed my enthusiasm for this topic and maybe even talked some sense along the way. There is a lot more behind project management than this humble introduction which I’d like to share in the future, things I’ve experienced and read and advice I’ve been given but much, much more I have yet still to learn. Thanks for reading.

*Standish Group (2004) on IT projects in the US

One thing that can sometimes cause confusion is Microsoft’s re-branding efforts – what IS the difference between WSS, SharePoint Portal Server and MOSS??? WSS is the core building block of the technology and is included free on Windows 2003 and 2008 servers, it allows you to create sites and do the basic “SharePoint” stuff. SharePoint Portal Server (2003) is the old name for the full bells and whistles system which is now called Microsoft Office SharePoint Server.

Ok then, now onto the point of this post, MOSS 2007 can greatly improve organisational effectiveness, to such a degree that it matters to everyone who runs a business. As with most, if not all software, there is the caveat of the requirement for proper deployment and training, but that is another post all together.

I have just made quite a bold statement, which I am sure other people would love to debate so please feel free to comment at the bottom of the post. I will do my best to explain the core reasons that make SharePoint completely indispensable for SpiderGroup and our clients.

The first thing that I will cite is the ability to access vital company information anywhere you can get an internet connection, which in itself is not that remarkable seeing the current usage of the internet. I guess at this point I should let you into my own personal loathing of VPN’s (Virtual Private Networks), all of our support people here at SpiderGroup know not to answer any question I pose to them as “log on to the VPN”, with that in mind the network file store has never been a great solution for allowing everyone to access vital company documents. What’s more with a network file store there is the inherent problem with people overwriting important files and the hassle trying to work out which is the most recent version of a document. One of the core strengths of SharePoint is its document management features, fully integrated into the Office Suite (probably the main reason they re-branded it to MOSS). It provides you with a much better way of working, saving hours of wasted time and prevents heartbreak when you realise someone has overwritten the proposal you spent all last night working on.

Whilst we are on the subject of documents, I guess it is worth pointing out that 99% of businesses I know run on Excel. Yes they will have an accounting package that they use for their general ledger and do their invoicing from, but the real nitty gritty of planning, budgeting and management reporting is done in Excel, whether you like it or not Excel has a fundamental part to play in modern business. With that said, one of the “killer” features of MOSS is something called Excel Services, which is a way of presenting real-time excel information through a web page without the need to have Excel running. This might not seem particularly noteworthy, but it actually provides a critical bridge between operational documents and live reporting dashboards.

Meeting workspaces are an area worth mentioning, if like us you having repeating weekly or monthly meetings, you can create a meeting site that has a list of all the dates of the meeting allowing you to easily navigate forward and backward to see what was done in the last meeting. This is really useful as it is a single place for reports, minutes and actions and easily allows people that are joining the meeting over the phone or video conference to see the same information as everyone else.

Due to the way that security is handled and coupled with the system being web based, it is relatively simple to create special sections for your clients, supplier and partners. We use this extensively with our clients, allowing us to collaborate and share vital information whilst we are working on a project with them. What kind of added value do you think your clients will perceive in your service if you are able to provide a simple, attractive repository of all information related to your work together. When a client says, where is that document that you were talking about? You can direct them to the relevant section of their portal. One killer feature added in to this is alerting, with a couple of clicks you can make sure that when any content is added or updated that you receive an email informing you that there has been a change. This is particularly useful if you have lots of areas that are important to you.

The last key benefit that I will highlight in this post is that SharePoint should be considered to be your Official Company Knowledge Repository. The system should be setup so that all policies, procedures, templates, contracts … in fact anything that is important for the company to function. This then allows any member of staff to find the knowledge they require to properly perform the companies business, the way to best think about this is, if the office we are in burnt down could we continue to do business. If the correct knowledge is stored in SharePoint, then once people have somewhere to sit, a computer and a phone (at home?) then your business will continue.

There is so much more to this technology that i don’t have time to go into now – such as personal sites, custom databases, intelligent forms and workflow management and of course the live reporting dashboards that get managers so excited. There will be more about these to come in my next few posts but hope you enjoyed the intro to one of the most visionary products from Microsoft.

Firstly it is still in Beta testing mode – this means you have no service level agreement with Google. They can take the whole system down without warning, meaning guess what…..none of your staff can work! They also state in the terms and conditions when you signup that they cannot guarantee the safety of your data and are free to use your data for marketing purposes if they please. Brilliant!

Once you are in, you’re locked in - People for years have complained that they are locked into Microsoft’s software stack. Well if you start using Google Apps you’re now in a similar situation! Any smart company should put in place a plan for the future. What if you come to realise you didn’t want to host your application on the Google App Engine anymore? Good luck, almost everything you are given access to is proprietary — that means all your data is locked into a format that isn’t like a traditional relational database. This could turn into a disaster for your business if you rely on a custom built app.

It’s free right? Errr…. - Well, ok so for a small business the attraction of a free suite of office applications and a way to stay your documents and collaborate with clients/colleagues can be very tempting. However what happens when something goes wrong? Do you think Google has a call centre full of support staff to help? Well the answer is NO. You can pay more for additional support but this was supposed to be free right? Check out this genuine response to a support request;

Hello,

Thanks for taking the time to send us your message. This is an
auto-response with admin support resources. You won’t receive a response
from a member of our team.

To learn more about Google Apps, please visit the Help Center at
http://www.google.com/support/a, or by clicking ‘Help’ in your control
panel.

Many administrators are also finding quick and accurate information from
the Google Apps Help Discussion at http://groups.google.com/group/hosted.

Sincerely,

The Google Team

Thanks for that oh wonderful Google. Choosing a ‘Cloud’ IT provider like www.spidergroup.com means you have dedicated support staff waiting to fix any problem you might encounter. You get a defined service level agreement and the knowledge that you are as important as the next client, and will never be ignored!

Some of Google’s problems already;

http://www.macworld.com/article/57017/2007/03/googleapps.html

http://www.pcworld.com/article/130187/google_apps_gmail_faces_downtime_problems.html