MyProjectTracker – The Blog

Scope creep is simply when changes are allowed to the  original project scope that are not controlled in any shape or form and lead to project failure. It’s a great term. Creep is exactly what it is – the silent killer that takes you totally unawares and is the undoing of your customer project.

It applies to any of size of project in any business that delivers services to a customer. Whether it’s a single person consultancy or a larger consulting organisation, scope creep affects each without exception.

How do I know if my business projects suffer from scope creep? Well, in a nutshell, you will find yourself delivering a scope that is different than intended.
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Outsourcing is often seen as the arena of large business. The outsourcing deals that we all hear about usually relate to companies outsourcing their IT functions or other similar deals. They talk of multi-million euro deals between large corporate players like IBM. However, the decision to out-source or recruit applies equally in smaller enterprises.

Out-sourcing in its simplest terms is choosing a partner to whom you will give full responsibility with regards to the specific function to perform. This can sound like a frightening prospect to the smaller organisation who may feel that their ideas may be “copied” or that they will lose control of their organisation.

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Charlie the hamster arrived in our house a few months ago. He was installed in his cage with all of the necessary supports in the form of his bedding, food, sawdust, water supply, feeding bowl, ladder and running wheel.  Once installed, he immediately set to work in organising his own little world and was not interested in what was going on outside of his cage – except when he’s taken out for some loving care.

Hufflepuff the cat was most interesting in the arrival of Charlie. From day one, she could be found trying to get into the room where Charlie was kept. When she did get in, she could be found with head bent – and you could tell she was plotting.

Charlie, being a bit thick, decided it was ok to come and visit the cat at the side of the cage. They sniffed each other a few times over a number of days. Each day, Charlie would become more confident, the cat simply walking away when she got bored.

Last week Charlie was found completely still and hardly breathing at the top of his cage. He had started to go cold and was obviously in shock. His nose was scratched and fluff was ruffled. Not surprisingly, there was not sign of the cat! Charlie was lifted gently and put back in his bedding where thankfully he fully recovered with some tlc.
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In the old world order those who had the knowledge had the power. This applied to everything from when you were at school, to the guy in work who had certain “nuggets” that he would use for advantage through to the machinations of the power-brokers on the world stage.

What did these people do? They kept the knowledge to themselves and until needed for self-promotion and/or to influence key decisions in their favour – at least in the business/commercial world.

With the prevalence of social media and the increasing use of it as a driving force in business, knowledge and learning can easily be found. Sure, some of it is noise, but once you get past the noise , there is lots of knowledge being shared.

But if all this information is out in the world wide web for consumption, has this simply diluted knowledge based expertise to the point where people feel they don’t need to pay for that expertise?

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Warning - contains some strong language and lacks political incorrectness (maybe put on some headphones!).

I believe that this little piece of humour aptly describes an affliction that some project managers and senior managers have and where they see their priorities.

There is often conflict between senior managers and project managers over what their boundaries are during the course of a project delivery. Both need to understand that the end-game is to get the project brought to a successful conclusion to the benefit of the projects customer and for the best result in their business.
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Project management is about delivering your work in such a way that it delivers to the three turquoise boxes above to deliver to the one in the middle, the person who really matters in all this – your customer.

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Collaborative project management is a term that has derived from the ability to manage and share communications and information relating to a project delivery on-line. As a term, it has become a fashionable concept as the business world has moved to the internet to run itself and as teams become more dispersed.

But is collaboration sufficient to effectively ensure a successful and profitable project for your business?

The premise here is that the project manager is capable of course, the tools are simply that – tools, not project management.

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We were contacted one afternoon by Des from Contrast to make the decision on the payment solution for MyProjectTracker. Payment Server Provider or Payment Bureau.

Myself and Barney sat down one afternoon to trash out the pro’s and con’s of using a Payment Server Provider (RealEx) or a Payment Bureau (PayPal). To be honest, Barney favoured PayPal and I favoured RealEx.

A well formulated guide that helped us make sense of the online payment choices was www.webpayments.ie. This should really be the first port of call for anyone creating a website that will be required to take payments.

Here is a summary based on our discussion that day and our discussion of this topic with others who have setup website that require payment:

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Project managers are consumed with processes and complex tools to help their projects along. Project management is described as an art form and a huge industry has grown out of this whole space.

Our project managers are producing report upon report, continually seeking to learn the “latest trend” in project management thinking and talking in a language often lost on the customers with whom they are dealing.

They are acting like this because, in my view, the whole system has completely lost focus on what being a project manager is all about.

Sure, process is good (when it delivers benefit and is not a hindrance) and the latest thinking can indeed bring those benefits. Tools are prevalent and offer varying levels of capability and function but cannot cover weakness in the area of communication. Process and tools are a means to the end, not the end itself.

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The other day, Eoin popped up a short blog on a rather funky payment app from Square. He thinks it’s rather cool as a small business owner! As a side effect, what was interesting to us was the relatively large increase in unique hits on that day.  He put iPhone into his title and voila – readership was assured.

I’ve been a bit bold here using the same tactics but it is for a valid reason as I find it poses an interesting challenge.

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