The IPM Blog

I found an article this morning about how social media is evolving in organisations to become more than just a marketing tool. Social media is now becoming a part of many departments in big organisations from HR right through to project management. And even smaller companies are jumping on board. So that got me thinking, what are some of the ways you could use social media to manage your projects?

The important thing to remember about social media is it is not confined to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Blogs, wikis, online pinboards and team websites all fall under the social media umbrella. Organisations are even creating their own in house social media platforms, or adopting software with integrated social media tools to help incorporate this growing trend into their everyday operations.

So how can social media help you manage your projects? Here are four ways:

1. Communication
As Gen Y and Gen Z’s enter the workforce, we are beginning to not only see a trend of multi-generational project teams, but also less reliance on email. As the article I mentioned above shows, many of the younger people entering the workforce don’t like email and prefer a more team oriented communication. As such, some companies such as IBM are adopting Facebook and Twitter style communication platforms, where team members can share project information quickly and collaboratively. In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, you can find and follow other users in the What’s New section, which gives you a chat-like feature to share comments and insights with team members about projects. This reduces a huge amount of internal email communication in favour of succinct responses.

2. Collaboration
Similarly to helping with communication, products like SharePoint that can be integrated with your project management software allow for the creation of team wikis and websites, where all team members can contribute and store appropriate project information for other team members to access and edit. This really fosters a collaborative approach to managing your project, no matter how far spread your project team members are around the world. The project also ultimately benefits, with ideas and solutions continually evolving as team members contribute their expertise.

3. Keeping up to date with contacts
Another tool that can be integrated with some project management software products such as IPM is the Outlook Social Connector. The Outlook Social Connector enables you to look at your Outlook contacts’ activity in social networks such as Linkedin, Facebook, Windows Live Messenger, Viadeo and Xing. This way, you can stay up to date with contacts as the project progresses, build up your network for the future and keep up to date with new projects that may be coming up.

4. Keeping track of lessons learned
This way of using social media has been mentioned on the PMI Voices on Project Management blog as a way of keeping track of lessons learned and project review. Using some of the tools above, internal social media pages can be set up to capture comments for lessons learned. As Bernadine Douglas says, this allows you to reach stakeholders in their habitat, which could result in more candid and useful comments for future projects.

Whilst it has traditionally been viewed as a consumer product or a marketing tool, social media can also have very effective applications in other areas, in particular project management. Can you think of any other way social media can help manage your projects? Feel free to post a comment below.

On a project, documents can be approved, changed, updated and reapproved all the time, often being sent back and forth between multiple people working on a Job. It’s no wonder then that it’s easy to lose track of where a document is at, and who is holding up its progress.

That’s why we’ve added a cool and exciting new feature to all the project documents in IPM. It’s called routing, or otherwise referred to as ‘ball in court’. Now every document in our project management software has a grid where you can add details of each of the people responsible for the document, and at what stage of the process they are responsible for it.

Then, through the power of Microsoft Dynamics workflows, you can set up a whole range of processes that automatically update the routing as the document moves from one stage to the other. This way you can see who’s court the ball is in at any given time – and more importantly, who is holding the process up.

But we’ve not only included the routing feature on the individual document forms – there is also an overall routing view where you can see all the outstanding balls in court for your project. And with the customisability of Microsoft CRM, you can change the view to see whatever you like, including outstanding balls in court, balls in court for one particular user or balls in court for a single spec. section or trade. What’s more, CRM’s conditional formatting also lets you highlight the list in whichever way works for you – we’ve found it works really well to highlight all the overdue balls in court in bold red, so you can see at a glance what needs actioning quickly. You can also choose to view the routing information as part of a dashboard that appears when you first log in.

As you can see from the options above, the combinations of how you can use this new functionality are endless; it’s all down to how you want to customise the workflows, the view, the conditional formatting and your dashboard. You can tweak it so that it best suits the way you manage your projects, and it means you will always know who’s court the ball is in on all your projects.

For more information on this new feature, or to see a demo of it in action, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Today marks the 80th anniversary of the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia. If there is one remarkable feat in construction, ‘The Coathanger’ as Aussies affectionately call it, would have to be right up there.

As the largest steel arch bridge in the world, it took 1 400 workers, 53 000 tonnes of steel, two creeper cranes, four maintenance cranes, 18 000m3 of granite blocks, 6 million hand driven rivets and eight years to complete.

One of the interesting features of the bridge was the building of two separate arches and joining them in the middle. Leading up to the completion, there as much apprehension from locals who didn’t believe the two sides would match up. But thankfully they did.

When I think about the Sydney Harbour Bridge today, not only does the sheer size of the project impress me, but also the fact it was built without any of the technology we so heavily rely on today. There was no CAD to assist the architects, no BIM, and more importantly, no project management software to manage the thousands of workers and subcontractors involved. The contractors were from England, there were two steel fabrication workshops set up on Sydney’s north shore, and a temporary Australian, Scottish and Italian settlement at Moruya (300km away) to quarry granite. And not a single email or mobile phone call was sent or made to communicate between everyone.

Today, we are so fortunate to have so much useful technology at our fingertips to make managing our projects easier. So as we celebrate the construction of one of Australia’s most iconic landmarks, we also have to celebrate the skill, ingenuity and project management skills of the people who pulled off such an amazing project without any of the technology we have today.

Managing projects can often be a very demanding task, one that requires skill, dedication and a very cool head. But there are also a few tips and tricks you can implement to ensure your projects run smoothly.

1. Plan for everything
One of the best things I’ve heard when it comes to project management is that failing to plan is planning to fail. Bringing your projects in on time and on budget needs a great deal of planning, even before the very first foundations are laid. What’s more, you have to keep planning as you go along to ensure you always stay one step ahead. You need to continually monitor the schedule to anticipate which tasks need to be done next and what effect any notices of delay from subcontractors will have. It is also imperative to keep a comprehensive and updated issue and risk register so nothing catches you off guard. In other words, hope for the best but plan for the worst.

2. Keep track of communication
There’s nothing worse than having to trawl through six months worth of emails or project documents to answer an RFI, or misplacing a vital piece of communication in the event of a dispute or claim. That’s why good project managers keep track of all their project communication, no matter how small. It helps to have a central database that everyone on the project team has access to and can store all project documents and can keep a history of any edits or changes made to a document. Automatic email filing can also help, and IPM’s facility can file all incoming and outgoing emails against a transaction, rather than against the job.

3. Introduce a little automation
While sometimes computers and IT may feel frustrating, you have to admit technology really has made our lives a lot easier, particularly when it comes to project management. When done right, automation can be a project manager’s best friend; completing certain tasks so you don’t have to worry about them and ensuring all the right data is in all the right places. Using project management software is one of the best ways to bring automation to managing your projects. IPM’s project management software has features like customisable workflows you can use to convert change requests into change orders or subcontract change orders, automatically file your emails, automatically generate email reminders for meetings and track and store the information for RFIs and RFQs as it is emailed back and forth.

4. Keep all your team members on the same page
Managing a project is not just about juggling the schedule, subcontracts and budget, but also about managing the people you are working with. Many different people contribute to a project and in order to be able to manage everyone and ensure they all know what their job is, it’s important that everyone has access to the same, up-to-date information. You can make sure of this by using a central database that team member can access from anywhere, both online and offline. This means there are not multiple spreadsheets being emailed around and creating confusion as to which is the most up to date. Another simple way to keep everyone on the same page is to have standardised project reports across your whole organisation, meaning people are all familiar with the report design and know exactly where the content they are looking for is located in the report.

Are there any other fail safe ways you use to manage your projects? Have your say in the comments below :)

With 2011 drawing to a close and 2012 on our doorstep, many predictions and trends for the new year are beginning to emerge in the media and on the Internet. From consumer trends, to economic trends, everyone has something to contribute about what they think 2012 will bring. IT is no different of course, with Gartner releasing its Top 10 IT trends for 2012 last month.

And as IT continues to evolve and push new boundaries, the list is definitely exciting. From cloud computing to developments in social media and collaboration tools for business, IT in 2012 will consolidate and build on trends from 2011 and push us further forward by changing the way we work.

One such company already embracing the trends in collaboration and file sharing is tech firm Atos, which has eliminated all internal employee email communication, instead opting for online collaboration tools. The positive response from employees and the fact Atos has managed to cut down on email spam shows a more collaborative framework in our working life is not only a trend that will stick, but also one that could bring big improvements to the way we communicate and operate in teams at work.

Of course, IPM users will not be left behind in 2012 either. IPM’s compatibility with Microsoft’s collaboration tool Sharepoint means users can create websites to share content, manage documents and publish reports online. IPM’s Microsoft Dynamics CRM framework also means users can take advantage of the developments in social media tools and social CRM that Microsoft has been making this year and will continue to move forward with in 2012.

So even though social media and online collaboration started out as consumer oriented applications, all reports suggest 2012 will be the year this kind of technology will start to impact on the way we conduct business and how we communicate in our offices and project teams. And at IPM, we can’t wait to see what the year will bring.

What about you? Are there any trends for IT in 2012 you are particularly excited about? Feel free to leave a comment below.

One of the things that can really unravel a project is a lack of communication between the people working on a particular job. Jobs can have literally hundreds of people working on them from project managers, the project team, architects, right down to all the various subcontractors and their own employees. Ensuring smooth communication between all these people can seem like a massive task, but it doesn’t have to be.

In order to ensure the project runs smoothly, it’s important to ensure the communication procedure is set right from the start. Nothing infuriates project teams more than being given the answer to an RFI days after it came in, working off old plans that have since been updated two or three times and not having the most up to date version of the schedule. Through these simple breakdowns in communication, time and money are wasted and staff confidence can slowly be eroded.

But there are also so many advances in technology these days that can assist project teams in maintaining open and effective channels of communication. For a start, software with a central database, where all employees log into the same system and can see the most up to date project documents is an incredibly valuable asset for a project team. Project team members then have no reason to not have the most up to date information.

But what about subcontractors who may not necessarily have access to the software? Well, there are also ways to ensure the good communication can extend to subcontractors and also right through to site level. Workflows can be set up to automatically send emails to alert relevant subcontractors that an updated plan has been added to the database, or a change has been made to the schedule. This way everyone stays in the loop and can work efficiently with the most up to date information.

If you would like a free demo of IPM, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

When most people hear the term social media, they immediately think of teenagers using applications like Twitter and Facebook to let their friends know how cool the party on the weekend was, or who is in a relationship with who.

But although this may have been how social media started out, it is becoming so much more than that, and something that has become ingrained in both our personal and professional lives. Erik Qualman’s Social Media Revolution 2011 shows just what a huge impact social media is having on us, and that it really is something to sit up and take notice of.

As technology tends to do, social media has evolved as we have found more and more ways to utilise this tool. Social media is not just about Facebook and Twitter anymore, as there are many other tools out there that are helping people communicate and collaborate more effectively. So instead of thinking of social media as a trivial way for teenagers to pass time, we need to start seeing it as groups of people communicating and collaborating with each other and contributing content to further develop ideas.

If we think of social media in these terms, it has huge impacts for project management, as communication is one of the most integral parts of the project management process. The nature of project management itself is also changing, becoming more about team collaboration and idea sharing rather than a top down command-and-control approach. With a team collaboration approach, just think of the benefits a social media mindset could have on a project team.

At IPM Global we already have some of the principles of social media in our software. Web based project management systems such as IPM mean everyone in the team can log in and check the progress of the project each day, and contribute to status updates, timelines and task lists. Being built on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM framework means IPM users have access to all the features of Microsoft Outlook integration, including the Outlook Social Connector. The Outlook Social Connector enables users to click on individual Outlook contacts to see their activity in social networks such as Linkedin, Facebook, Windows Live Messenger, Viadeo and Xing. Users can also send contact requests to connect on these social media sites, all without leaving the IPM environment.

 IPM is also able to integrate with collaboration tools such as Microsoft Sharepoint, which allows for the creation of team wikis, workflows and team websites. One of our clients, Murphy Pipe and Civil even plans to implement an organisation wide collaboration tool through IPM using this kind of integration in order for their teams to better communicate and collaborate.

As IPM is a fluid and constantly evolving platform, it can easily adapt to new trends and advancements in both technology and project management practices. Being able to adapt to the changes in the way social media is now perceived means we can keep our clients at the forefront of the exciting new development that is social project management.

What are your thoughts? Have you found any good social media applications to use in managing your projects?

I came across an article on the PMI’s Voices on Project Management site last week and it really struck a chord. In the post, Lynda Bourne highlights the importance of document layout in order to communicate your message effectively.

With the advent of smart phones, email and twitter, much of our communication has become instantaneous, short bursts of information. As this information is often only a few sentences, we give little thought to the layout, instead punching out a few lines here and there whenever a thought crosses our minds.

But with project documents that often contain complex information, intricate fine points and important details, getting the layout right is crucial to make sure the information isn’t lost or confusing for the reader. Clean lines, simple fonts and white space around logos make complex documents easier to read and project a very professional image to your stakeholders as well.

To make the process easier, many project management software applications, such as IPM, have built in report facilities that can generate a report with the same layout each and every time you need the information. This means you only need to worry about the information you put into the report, and the software will take care of all the fiddly layout bits to make sure your reports are clean, simple and easy to read.

What’s more, with everyone in your organisation using the same report template, you are all on the same page, and project a professional, united image to external stakeholders. IPM also allows you to customise parts of the report templates to suit your organisational requirements.

So although our communication has become very short and quick, in project management it still is important to pay attention to the smaller details of your communication with others, such as report layouts. If you would like to know anything more about IPM’s report facilities, please don’t hesitate to contact us or leave a message below.

There has been lots of talk in the blogosphere lately about Microsoft’s recent $8.5b acquisition of the VoIP service Skype, with many people speculating over what use the software giant will put its new technology to. With gamers gunning for enhancements to the Xbox experience, Windows Phone 7 users hoping for better calling experiences and business users hoping for a corporate application, there is no end to the possibilities for this popular technology used by millions around the world.

In an article for Forbes, Gene Marks has speculated that despite its hefty price tag, Skype could be Microsoft’s best acquisition ever. The secret is applying the technology to its CRM offering, Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

As Marks points out, CRM already has the ability to track the communications between a company and anyone else who communicates with that company, but Skype could be used to enhance these communications to include online video conferencing, call tracking and the ability to make VoIP calls, all from within the CRM environment and without the need for third party add ons. Microsoft Dynamics CRM prides itself on seamless integration with other Microsoft products, such as Outlook and ERP systems, and should the Skype technology be applied to the CRM product, this seamless integration would naturally extend to Skype’s facilities as well.

And not only would CRM users benefit from this technology, but users of ISV add ons such as IPM Global’s project management software would also. Being able to currently tap into all the features of Microsoft Dynamics CRM means project managers and other IPM users would be able to access any Skype features that become integrated with CRM. The benefits of this type of technology for a project management team could be huge, from online video conferencing for project meetings, to tracking all the calls made to and from clients, suppliers and subcontractors.

Not only that, the call costs of project management firms could be greatly reduced by managing all phone communication through CRM, which is something CRM users have been hankering after for years. With this kind of technology, communication between project managers and their teams could become so much more efficient, all encompassing and simple, and project team members would be more accountable for their communication with phone call tracking and logging.

This is of course all speculation at this stage as no one is quite sure yet exactly what Microsoft’s plans for Skype are. But given the $8.5b price tag, it is highly likely that Microsoft will want to take advantage of as many situations as possible to integrate the technology with its current offerings. And that means that for project managers using the IPM/Microsoft Dynamics CRM combination the future does indeed look bright.

Please contact us if you’ve like to jump on board CRM and IPM now and possibly take advantage of the Skype technology on your project in the future.