agile for product owners made easy | management

concrete user stories

25 Oct 2012

This is basically a 1 day product ownership course compressed into 15 minute animated presentation. There’s obviously more to product ownership than this, so see this is a high level summary.

product management made easy | management

Listen to your customer !~Listen ! Listen ! Listen !

11 Sept 2017

There is probably one part of the product management job we can all agree is the hardest – people. People are unpredictable, have strong opinions and unconscious biases, and many people in your organisation have more power than you, yet are wrong just as often. In this illuminating talk from Mind the Product San Francisco 2017 Janna Bastow, Co-Founder of Mind the Product and Co-Founder and CEO of ProdPad, shares her own stories of dealing with people, and how she handles the toughest part of the job.

modelling a product manager: how to build a roadmap for your product | the case study of wallmart | management & selling techniques

how to tell the story of your ultimate vision to your prospect clients

1 May 2018

Product Management event in San Francisco about how to build a product roadmap.

It all starts with a product roadmap! Your roadmap should tell the story of how you’re going to get to your ultimate vision. Getting priority, alignment, and balancing short term product iterations with long term strategic disruption is all part of the fun. Hudson talked about what the road mapping process looks like, how to balance short term and long term product/business goals and how various initiatives on a road map get prioritized.

Hudson Levy is currently a Senior Product Manager over Walmart’s entire digital pharmacy, health & wellness business. A Mechanical Engineer turned Brand Manager turned Product Manager, he has over 10 years of experience across product management, marketing, and strategy. Hudson holds an MBA from Duke University and a Bachelors of Engineering from Vanderbilt University.

ABOUT US: Product School is the world’s first tech business school. We offer certified Product Management, Coding, Data and Blockchain courses; our instructors are real-world product managers working at top tech companies such as Google, Facebook, Snapchat, Airbnb, LinkedIn, PayPal, and Netflix. Our classes are part-time, designed to fit into your work schedule, and the campuses are located in 14 cities worldwide, including Silicon Valley, New York, Los Angeles and London.

Product leaders from local top tech companies visit Product School campuses each week. Through lectures, panel discussions, and a variety of other forums, the world’s top product managers visit Product School to provide invaluable real-world insights into critical management issues.

Tips & Samples on project management software 2016

13 best free project management software programs 2016: great project management software tools that don’t cost a penny

1. Best free project management software: Trello

Trello utilises a project-management system developed by a former Toyota vice president, Taiichi Ohno. Every task is represented as a card, which allows you to create a visual representation of what is happening with a project. It is surprisingly effective And free if you can live with only 10MB of storage. https://trello.com/

2. Best free project management software: Freedcamp

A more traditional type of project-management tool, Freedcamp is great for scaling up a business. It works perfectly well as a free tool for when you are starting a business, and costs very little to build on, with multiple paid-for bolt ons enabling new features as you go. It offers good admin tools, fleet management, and customer relationship management. Great for collaborating with colleagues and clients. https://freedcamp.com/

3. Best free project management software: Producteev

Producteev is rare in that it offers unlimited users and projects even on the free version. We can see no good reason to pay to upgrade, so if you want a long-term free project-management tool that is easy to use and flexible, look no further.https://www.producteev.com/

4. Best free project management software: GanttProject

Our first open-source project management tool, GanttProject offers all the features you could ever need, but has a reputation for being somewhat complex. You will never need to pay for it, however. And if you want project management software that can flex to your needs it comes recommended. http://www.ganttproject.biz/

5. Best free project management software: Asana

Designed by Facebook founder Dustin Moskovitz, Asana benefits from a social-network-like level of untuition and ease. It is both simple, and effective, and offers a visual style that will help you get things done. Some users complain that it lacks the full feature set of some of the others mentioned here. https://asana.com/

6. Best free project management software: MeisterTask

We are grateful to blog.capterra.com for pointing us in the direction of MeisterTask. Free and full featured, it plays nicely with online storage systems, other project managers and mobile apps. https://www.meistertask.com/

7. Best free project management software: 2-Plan Team

2-Plan offers great features for no cost, but navigating the way the software works can be tricky. In essence, get everyone working using 2-Plan Desktop, and then merge up the projects with 2-Plan Team. You won’t regret it. http://2-plan.com/

8. Best free project management software: Bitrix24

Ideal for small businesses, Bitrix24 remains free forever, so long as you don’t exceed 12 users. Other great small- or home office features include the ability to communicate across multiple locations, and free cloud storage for your projects. https://www.bitrix24.com/

9. Best free project management software: BamBam!

Another tip for which we thank blog.capterra.com, BamBam! is free for up to 10 users, and allows unlimited projects and storage for those 10 users. https://www.dobambam.com/

 

10. Best free project management software: Zoho Projects

Unlimited in terms of users and projects, the free version of Zoho Projects is limited to only 10MB of storage. http://www.zoho.com/projects/

 

11. Best free project management software: Evernote

Available for web, Android, Windows and iOS, Evernote provides integrated apps, task tracking, blog publication and public and private ‘notes’ formatted into a presentation.

Evernote only allows its users to upload 60 MB of data each month, but it is a great supplement to other free project management programmes. https://evernote.com/

12. Best free project management software: Harvest

Harvest provides time tracking, invoicing and report creating capabilities. It has a free service for small businesses that have around four clients/two projects a month.

Harvest is available for web, mobile and there is a plugin for Twitter and Gmail.https://www.getharvest.com/

13. Best free project management software: Redmine

Redmine can support numerous projects and is highly customisable. What’s more, it offers feeds and notification system, issue tracking, time tracking and forums to discuss projects.

It’s not the most attractive user interface but is highly capable at managing large projects.http://www.redmine.org/

 

Interviewing: PM (Project Managers)

An interview with an attendee from a project management seminar.

 

How to interview the project management team. Tips for job interview.

3 types of interviews:

– technical

– behavioural

– reference

*** Pay attention to the Flow of the interview.

-Warm-up:  ask questions about the family, to reduce stress

– Past experiences

– lists of skills & qualifications:   interested and committed to learn ?

These interview tips help you find the right people for your project team. Using these interviewing tips, skills and techniques you’re sure to appoint fantastic people and get the job done.

Are you a good or a bad PM (project manager) ?

Are you collaborative ? a team builder ? resolute ? decisive ? a mentor ?  a leader ? a coach ? sociable ? resourceful ? conscious and aware ? 

Do you communicate effectively ?

Learn what it takes to be a good or bad project manager and watching this short project management training course video.

How to make your projects successful !

Successful Project basic guide

This article provides a practical quick guide to increasing project success in your organisation. It cannot attempt to provide all the answers, but more food for thought for areas that may need addressing. Most organisations run projects and common problems include; missed deadline, delivery of partial scope, going over budget, missing user or client requirements, delivering poor quality or partial benefits. This is a major source of frustration for most organisations.

In some cases the culture is such that it is almost assumed that any project, particularly internal projects as opposed to client work, will be late. There are many reasons for poor project performance and we cannot attempt to address or solve all of these in this single article. However from our experience there are a handful of key drivers we see frequently across all types of organisations. Please bear in mind the terminology used is generic and the suggestions do not apply to all projects but here is our quick guide to increasing project management maturity and therefore project success.

Complexity

Project management is not about creating sophisticated processes. Sophistication leads to complexity. Complexity leads to reduced compliance and people working around these defined processes using their own informal networks…“Bob, can you just OK this project it’s a waste of time to prepare all the documentation for the Portfolio Review Board”. Project management should provide benefits, direct tangible benefits to all concerned. Those running projects should be bought into the project methodology, tools and document templates. Is your project methodology followed or fought?

Selection

Most organisations attempt to undertake more projects than they have capacity, particularly in terms of internal resource. People are expected to do their day job AND participate in projects. It is assumed the organisation can just absorb the extra work required to complete a project. Getting people to work efficiently and effectively is a whole separate topic and maintaining data that compares resource availability to planned work can be very time consuming. We often talk about “the spreadsheet moment” when a new client starts to explain how they are trying to get the arms around resource management. They have created a fantastically colourful spreadsheet listing people and work which becomes an  industry in itself trying to maintain. Microsoft Project Server and the cloud version, Microsoft Project Online are solutions for this but that’s a topic outside of this article.

Fundamentally we need some structure in the selection process. If we all formally agree this is an important project at the start and we agree the required level of resources, it has a much greater chance of success. Ideally corporate strategy (do you have one?) should drive project selection. Which projects will help us achieve our corporate strategy the most? Which projects are required for legal reasons and which projects are “enablers”, i.e. their completion will enable other projects to succeed? Let’s identify this single list of proposed projects (do you have a Project Register?) and compare them.

I have seen some very impressive project selection scoring mechanisms but fundamentally for me, any scoring should just be a guide. An entity…ideally something titled the Portfolio Management Board (PMB) or similar should review proposed projects, their scoring (created independently, ideally by a PMO) and then make a business decision to approve (or not) the project through to the detailed planning phase. This is a key point; we should have clear Stage Gates with appropriate governance that allows projects to move through each Stage Gate. The PMB (as an example) should include line managers who, if they agree to the project, will also agree to commit their resources to the project, bringing some stability for Project Managers.

Planning

Projects are never given enough time to plan. Project Managers themselves tend to jump in and start working on the project without taking time to confirm the scope, resources, timescales, required benefits, risks, stakeholders. The NUMBER ONE reason for project failure is scope creep or lack of scope definition. Nail the scope. Defining detailed scope should be part of the planning phase as this will provide final numbers on resources, budget, and timescales to take back to the PMB at the Implementation Start Stage Gate or similarly defined key decision point.

A common theme with many Project Managers is their poor scheduling skills, i.e. ability to build a decent project plan. This is not about writing a “to do” list. This is about taking the agreed scope of work and building a logically linked coherent schedule that explains the journey of the project. Many Project Managers will build a plan as part of project approval but then cast it aside once the project is underway. This is not good project management. Let’s build a solid plan based on what we know and track actual progress against this plan so we always know where we are compared to where we thought we were going to be…and the resulting impact.

The first step in building a detailed schedule is to build an initial high level plan using sticky notes. 

Progress Cycle

Projects are often run in a fairly chaotic way. We need structure. The Project Manager must establish a progress cycle; a weekly or fortnightly review of progress to date and issue of work for the subsequent week or fortnight. Every task on a project must have an owner and a deadline; otherwise I’m going to assume it’s not going to happen.

The Progress Meeting is therefore a very focused team meeting. It is not a talking shop or an opportunity to engage in discussions with stakeholders, but a meeting that happens like clockwork, typically on a Monday morning or Friday afternoon. The Project Manager should then issue a Project Status Report (or Highlight Report) following that meeting that provides an honest assessment of where we are for key stakeholders.

Changes

Inevitably at some point through the project someone will change their mind. “Can you just add this to your scope?” “Can we make this slightly differently?” The Project Manager might let small changes just slip through. Large changes however need careful management. The problem for most Project Managers is that the person asking for the change is often their line manager or client so it’s difficult to say “no”. In fact, it’s not up to the PM to say “yes” or “no” but to evaluate the proposed change and the consequences.

The phrase I often suggest to Project Managers to say is “let me assess the impact of this PROPOSED change and let you know the consequences”. Yes, we can make this change, but will extend the project by x days and cost y more, do you want to proceed? Let’s make an informed decision about that proposed change rather than just doing it because that’s what the senior manager fancied doing that day.

There should therefore be a clear defined change control process. Any proposed change should be reviewed and approved or rejected by the appropriate level of governance. For example, this small change can be approved by the Project Sponsor. This larger change needs approval by the PMB. 

Benefits

There must be a reason why we are doing this project in the first place. It is hopefully to achieve some benefit. Hopefully the benefit out ways the true cost of doing the project! Have you really considered the amount of internal resource required to complete this project or are you just capturing external (capex) spend? So many organisations do not link the cost of internal resources to projects, these people must be free but apparently they are paid a salary so that can’t be true.

Is the benefits case clearly stated as part of project selection in your organisation? Does the Business Case document hold water? Once the project is underway the Project Manager and Sponsor must regularly refer back to the original business case, are we still on track to gain this benefit? Make sure your live projects are reviewed for benefits and the benefits case is kept in the mind of all team members. This is why we are doing this project after all!

Equally once a project completes who is going to measure benefits going forward? Most projects do not deliver all their benefit day one of project completion so it is important that some entity takes ownership of monitoring benefits for the completing project. Did it deliver as we hoped? Although the Sponsor should continue to own the business case and therefore the benefits tracking (the benefits realisation) it could be useful to delegate this to the PMO.

Risks

Risk management is something that is often not considered at all or just seen as a tick box exercise. There is genuine value in completing decent risk management for any project. A risk is something that might go wrong (as opposed to an issue which is something that has already gone wrong).

Project teams should pro-actively think about risks, how significant they are, and what they can actually do about them, before they happen. Often a Project Manager will ignore risk management and then if a risk does materialise they put it down to “just one of those things”, “not my fault”, and it gives them a reason for being late, over budget, or delivering reduced scope.

We need to be much smarter. Risk management involves mitigation activity and contingency planning, both of which creates more work for the project team in the short term. This is why risk management tends to be very poor, as people have enough to do and really don’t want to create more work for themselves. Of course, the little extra work today could save heaps of work in the future, but people often don’t look that far.

Make sure your projects engage in some practical risk management. There is a tendency for the most enthusiastic to get carried away with risk identification and use their imaginations to suggest all sorts of potential catastrophes. Keep it real and practical.

Project Roles

Is it clear who is actually taking on the role of Project Manager for every project in your organisation? Is is clear who is taking on the role of Sponsor? Do the Team Members know they are part of a project team or are they just being asked to complete a piece of work with no awareness of the wider implications?

List your projects and give them clear ownership. If you have a project that does not have a Project Manager, or worse a project where several people think they might be the Project manager then it’s very likely to go wrong.

The Sponsor, often a senior manager, must also realise that the role of Project Sponsor is different to day to day management. There is a tendency for some Sponsors to almost wash their hands of the project whilst others virtually push the Project Manager out of the way and try and run the project themselves.

Does your organisation have clearly defined role descriptions for Sponsor and Project Manager? Only those that have been through appropriate training should be given these roles. Typically someone is given a project as they are a subject matter expert (SME). They know about this part of the business, this technology, this service, or this client, so they get the project. They might be a great SME but are they going to be a great Project Manager? Unlikely if they have not received good training, methodology guidance and support through the project.

Summary

In this article I’ve highlighted some areas that hopefully provide some food for though. It is not an exhaustive list and we can certainly discuss all these areas in much more detail. To summarise I’ll leave you with some key questions. If you are looking to increase project success then you should have reasonable answers to these questions…

• Do you know how many projects your organisation is attempting to run at this moment?

• Those given the role of Sponsor and Project Manager – have they been given any training in how to perform these roles?

• Does your organisation have a clear process for approving projects?

• Does your organisation have a practical, useful project methodology that can be applied consistency across all projects? Does this methodology flex to suit the scale of each project?

• Do you have a PMO and does it do more than just collate reports?

• Are projects well planned so you know how much resource & budget they will need and this resource & budget is ring fenced for the project?

• Do projects provide honest & timely updates on their status?

• Are risks & issues escalated or swept under the carpet until they blow up?

• Do you know how many resources you need to manage all live projects being undertaken over the next 3 months?

PMO setup

The role and scope of the Project, Programme or Portfolio Office (P3O or PMO) varies considerably from organisation to organisation. Our expertise ensures your PMO delivers the maximum value for your organisation, driven by a fit-for-purpose design with appropriately skilled resource. A commonly used definition of a PMO is

To provide the tools, processes and support necessary to enable our organisation to do the RIGHT PROJECTS and the PROJECTS RIGHT

Setting up a valued PMO is critical to successful project selection, planning, monitoring and benefits realisation. Wellingtone has considerable experience in assisting organisations establish, measure and improve their PMO functionality based on best practice. As each PMO is different, we provide a flexible range of consulting services to suit your exact needs.

Typical PMO setup services include:

• Assist in the initial development and setup of a practical, fit-for-purpose PMO

• Provide maturity assessment and PMO development guidance for existing PMOs

• Provide an independent appraisal of PMO resource requirements, Job Descriptions and benchmark salary data

• Provide an independent appraisal of project governance

 

 

APM project management conference 2015, London, UK. Manon Bradley, Caroline Blackman, Dr Linda Holbeche, Geraldine Barker & Bridget Jackson.

Manon Bradley, Major Projects Association: Myth Busting – APM Project Management Conference 2015

Manon Bradley, development director for Major Projects Association is interviewed after speaking at the APM Project Management Conference 2015 sponsored by 20|20 Business Insight, Myth Busting: Dispelling the myths to improve project delivery success. Event that took place at Kings Place in London on Thursday 19th March 2015.

Caroline Blackman, Laing O’Rourke: Myth Busting – APM Project Management Conference 2015

Caroline Blackman, sustainability director for Laing O’Rourke is interviewed after speaking at the APM Project Management Conference 2015 sponsored by 20|20 Business Insight.

Myth Busting, the event that dispelled the myths to improve project delivery success, took place at Kings Place in London on Thursday 19th March 2015.

Dr Linda Holbeche, Holbeche Partnership: Myth Busting – APM Project Management Conference 2015

Dr Linda Holbeche, co-director of Holbeche Partnership is interviewed after speaking at the APM Project Management Conference 2015 sponsored by 20|20 Business Insight.

Myth Busting, the event that dispelled the myths to improve project delivery success, took place at Kings Place in London on Thursday 19th March 2015.

 Geraldine Barker and Bridget Jackson, NAO: Myth Busting – APM Project Management Conference 2015

Geraldine Barker, director and Bridget Jackson, audit manager at the National Audit Office are interviewed after speaking at the APM Project Management Conference 2015 sponsored by 20|20 Business Insight. 

Myth Busting, the event that dispelled the myths to improve project delivery success, took place at Kings Place in London on Thursday 19th March 2015.