MyProjectTracker – The Blog

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.

We need to re-focus. (more…)

“A profit margin on my project? – sure I got paid, isn’t that all that matters.” — End quote.

I’ve heard this four times in as many days and it is the theme tune of many small and not-so-small enterprises who are grateful for having cash flow. Big, big mistake. I call it Profit Margin Shame (PMS – what did you think I was talking about?)

When people (outside of big business) are asked about profit margins the reaction can be one of embarassment on the part of the business person. It is considered to be politically incorrect to even recognise the possibility that your company is making a profit and by inference a margin on every sale that you make.

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.. it looks so nasty doesn’t it!

Ah, but add a bit of sweetness (honey if you’re healthy, or golden syrup and cream if you’re not!) and suddenly it’s not so bad.  You are getting healthy, nutritious food that can only do you good.

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MyProjectTracker is now open for business!!

This is a big day for us that has been MyProjectTracker for what in the industry is called “Open Beta”. In simple terms this just means you can start using MyProjectTracker for FREE. This final phase is to ensure there are no “funnies”. We will launch commercially over the coming months with some special deals for those of you who sign up now.

MyProjectTracker will help your business deliver projects more effectively. We encourage collaborative communication between your team and your customer. But just as importantly, we help you to manage and track your project costs.

We believe that accurate and real-time reporting is key to any business. With MyProjectTracker, we will let you know how the budget is doing, how the timelines are looking and whether you have any problems that you need to worry about for every project on our simple dashboard.

All of your projects and data will remain safe and sound once we GO-LIVE, so don’t worry about having to make changes. We’ll look after all of this.

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I thought it would be good to share the origins of the MyProjectTracker product with you. I have read many tales of start-up and journey and some have helped to educate me a little! Hopefully this little piece of prose will do the same for you and if not, well I hope you enjoy the read anyway!

So here’s the story!

In days gone by, a really frustrated professional services delivery manager was continually asking the question of his team “So how are we doing guys?”

You know, the basics of how much have we spent, where are we against budget, are we going to be on time with this bit of work? Easy enough questions but…

This was met with the muttered curses of already over-stretched project managers and their teams and a considerable amount of paper shuffling and keyboard clicking. If the delivery manager was lucky, he got an answer on the same day, but if he needed exact details on budget and activities it would take a-lot longer!

Sigh! And then he’d notice a reduction in project activity from the PM sometime on a Wednesday afternoon /Thursday morning.

“Why?” he’d ask.

“‘Cause I’ve started working on the management report for Friday for you” was the reply, and not without a degree of barely contained frustration.

Not the fault of the project manager, who could say at a theoretical level straightaway how things were going, but the fault of the systems in place to “help” answer these questions.

Madness, thought the delivery manager. How much time was being lost doing reports that were looked at once a week for maybe 5 mins per project? Hours and hours is the answer.  He did the sums once and it was very scary. 8 project managers * 6 hours (48 hours/week or 6 man days!).

How much more focus could have been given to projects and customers if reporting had been easier?

There has to be a better way thought the delivery manager. However, nothing ever changed and eventually the service delivery manager went off to do other things. But the little bee in the bonnet never really went away about trying to sort out the frustrations felt.

So then the delivery manager asked (a.k.a. doing market research) some people in business  what they found difficult in project delivery and they looked at him as if he had two heads.

“Sorry!” said the delivery manager, “I mean when you are doing stuff for your customers like an architectural drawing or building a house or planning an event or.. can you easily answer the question of “How am I doing?””

Some said “yes “and showed the manager the emails, word documents and spreadsheets involved and others were more honest and said that they could get an answer but it wouldn’t be easy.

Not everyone of course had this problem. The guys doing one thing at a time were ok, but those whose businesses were working on more than one thing at a time had a problem even when they were just one man shows.

Ah, so the problem existed outside of the IT world as well. Well then, something definitely had to be done thought the delivery manager.

So he had a chat with a guy who had worked with him in the past and a month later the initial concepts for MyProjectTracker.com were conceived. Thankfully, the guy also had some contacts in a rather excellent web application development company who took on the concept, understood exactly what was being looked for from the off-set and built the vision – along with putting in some cool stuff that hadn’t even been thought about.

Between all, they created something that any business can use to get an answer to that simplest of questions without any fuss or bother!

“How are my projects doing?”

Hopefully you and your business will find this too!

Hi all,

Beta day, and for those signed up, a look into the new approach to business project management!

It’s taken some really hard work and not a small amount of drive and passion on behalf of the team to get to this point and this story will be told in future posts.

So what’s the plan for now?

We have had a huge number of requests to be part of the Beta process, which is great, and we would like to say a big thankyou for signing up.

We are going to introduce people over the next couple of weeks so don’t panic if you’ve signed up and not received the code just yet. Once we are happy with the way things are going, then we plan on opening up in earnest for a wider audience.

So what does beta mean?

It means different things to different people, but to us it means the following;

“Validating that the product holds true in the real world.”

Our market research says yes, but it’s always good to get this re-enforced!

For the beta testers it means you get to use our product for free until we feel ready to start charging for it – at which point you can stay on board with a chance to win a rather nice “to be announced” perk for your business for being a beta tester. The only thing we ask in return is that you provide some feedback (good or bad) via the feedback link at the bottom of each product page.

What about the product during beta?

From a project management and business management perspective, all of the key functions are in place. We have excluded some minor functions for the moment, but these will not limit the beta testers ability to use the product to help their business projects along.

You may see some aesthetic changes as we receive feedback and continue to include things that we want to see ourselves in the product.

In the interim, we hope you benefit from the product and like what you see!

And if I’m not signed up yet?

No problem. If you are not signed up for our Beta, but would like to be, just let us know by sending us a note to info@myprojecttracker.com and we will add you to the list. The more, the merrier in our view.