Elementool Blog

[reality TV] The PMs of NYC Ep 3 – How to Prevent Project Chaos

In the third episode of the PMs of NYC I explain how the team can solve the problems they’ve been having with their projects.

Bob is trying to soften Hank to get him accept the proposed solution.

[reality TV] The PMs of NYC Ep 2 – Things Are Heating Up

In this episode of The Real PMs of NYC, Bob talks to the developers about both project and personnel issues, and he gets an earful from angry Hank. Bob and Allison are able to figure out the major problems that Intech’s team has with their projects.

[reality TV] The Project Managers of New York City

In the first episode of the Project Managers of NYC Bob and me will meet the team of InTech, a web development company, and investigate the reasons that cause them to struggle with their projects.

Game Changer Tip – Buffers

Sometimes a small piece of advice can be a game changer.
I’ve experienced this in the past when I received a tip from someone which helped me to take my project to the next level by fixing a business issue that I’ve been struggling with.

I would like to share a game changing tip with you that can help you complete projects on time.

Projects are often late. It is a well known issue that in many cases is accepted as something that we just need to live with.
But it doesn’t have to be like that. Projects can be completed on time if planned correctly.

So the game changer tip I’d like to share with you today is: Buffers.

A buffer is extra time that you add to the project’s schedule to take into account unexpected changes that might cause project delays.
We recommend using global buffers that are added to the schedule at different points, usually before milestone due dates.

Now how do you calculate the amount of time to add for a buffer, you ask? To come up with that figure, you should take the risk factors for each task into consideration. Think about what could go wrong and how much additional time it would take to deal with those potential problems. Once you have estimated a buffer time for each individual task, add them up to get the amount of time needed to create one large buffer at the end of the project.

Elementool can help you complete projects on time using the combination of Elementool’s project management software and our Project Management Formula education program.

I wish you a Happy New Year and hope that next year will be prosperous for you and your family!

And to make your New Year extra special, I would like to offer you the Project Management Formula for free if you sign up and purchase Elementool. This special offer will expire on December 31st, 2013, so you better hurry!

To sign up, please click on the button below.

How to Create Accurate Project Schedule

Hi, I’m Allison and I have a great tip to share with you on how you can improve your project scheduling. We all know how easy it is for projects to get delayed because, more often than not, tasks take longer to complete than initially expected.

Any number of issues could cause this problem, whether it’s bugs, underestimating how long a task will take, someone on the team got sick, or other unexpected delays. The result is that your project is late – and that isn’t good. Fortunately I have a very useful tip for making your project schedules more accurate and preventing your projects from being late: using buffers.

In the world of project scheduling, there are two types of buffers, the individual buffer and the global buffer. The individual buffer is the one you add at the end of each activity in your schedule, whereas the global buffer is the one you add at the very end of your activity chain.

At Elementool, we usually advise against using the individual buffer because people have a habit of just spending more time – even when they don’t need it – working on a task if they know that they have a buffer to give them extra time at the end of it. As Parkinson’s Law states, work tends to expand to fill the space of the time available for its completion. And that would pretty much defeat the purpose of having a buffer in the first place, wouldn’t it?

Global buffers, on the other hand, can be extremely helpful in improving you project schedule. Because it encompasses the entire project, your global buffer will be a much lengthier amount of time added to the end of your project than an individual buffer would be. And by adding this schedule contingency at the global level, you can ensure it won’t be wasted at the activity level. The project manager will need to monitor this global buffer, while making sure that the individual task estimates still remain achievable.

You’ll find that by adding a global buffer, you can significantly improve the overall accuracy of your project schedule, allowing you to complete your project by the expected deadline without a lot of unnecessary last-minute rushing to get everything done in time.

This is just one small tip that can help you create more accurate project schedules.

We explain how to do that in more detail in our book “The Project Management Formula – The 5 Steps to Complete Your Project on Time”, written by Elementool’s Founder & CEO Mr. Yaron Sinai.

The book is a result of years of project management experience and in-depth research. It will explain the different steps of project management and show you the five simple steps for running successful project management process from start to finish.
Get the book for free right now by simply clicking on the button below and I will send it to you by mail.

File Attachment and Form Customization

In this clip I would like to introduce two new updates that we’ve added to the new Issue Form and also talk about an important topic – Backup.

The first update brings some cool new options to the file attachment feature.
When attaching files, you can now see the files you just uploaded before submitting them to the system.
This way you can make sure that you attached the correct files. For example, when attaching a screenshot, you want to make sure you uploaded a screen image and not an embarrassing picture from your last vacation.
If you change your mind about the file, you can easily delete it by clicking on the delete button. All done before updating the issue.

By the way, did you know that you can increase the file attachment size limit from 1MB to 50MB by adding File Sharing to your account?
Adding File Sharing is easy. Simply go to Control Panel (only administrators have access to the control panel).
Click on Edit Accounts.
Go To Manage Account List and add File Sharing Premium to your account.
Click on Update when done.

The second update is in the form’s customization option.
We received feedback from clients asking us to bring back the option to display short fields in three columns in the main section of the form as used to be done on the old issue form.
So we did. Now you can have three columns of short fields right at the center of the form, giving you additional customization flexibility.
You can add fields to this section by simply dragging and dropping them into the field containers.
So easy!

Lastly, I’d like to talk about an important subject – Backup.
As you may know, our privacy policy dictates that when you delete information from your account, it’s being deleted immediately and permanently from the website.
This means that if you trash issues, remove a field from the form, delete users from the account, and so on, these changes are permanent.
Sometimes we receive calls from clients asking us to restore data that they deleted by accident. For example, a few weeks ago a client deleted one of the fields on her issue form and called to ask us to restore the field.
Well, unfortunately we can’t do that because in order for us to protect your privacy, data cannot be restored once deleted.

But there is a solution for this.
Elementool enables you to download a self backup file with all the information from your account. You can download your backup file at any time. And we recommend that you do that at least once a week. This way, if something has been deleted by mistake, it can be restored from the backup file.
To download a backup of your account, please follow these steps:
Click on Control Panel.
Click on Edit Accounts.
Click on Download Database.
Select the account you wish to backup and click on Download.
Elementool will send you a link to the backup file.
There, all done! Now just make sure to do these backups regularly so you don’t lose anything important.

In a few weeks I’ll send you another update about the new search feature that we’ve been working on.

Stay tuned!

A Day in a Project Manager’s Life

Being a project manager is really a pretty tough job. Every day is stressful because there’s a ton of responsibility on your shoulders when you’re in charge. And no matter how good the work is, people always remember that one little thing in the project that didn’t go right. It’s like they don’t even notice the thousand things that DID work perfectly!

Being a project manager is really pretty tough job. Every day is stressful because there’s a ton of responsibility on your shoulders when you’re in charge. And no matter how good the work is, people always remember that one little thing in the project that didn’t go right. It’s like they don’t even notice the 1,000 things that did work perfectly. When you manage a team of people like I do, there are hundreds of tasks that have to be completed for each project. And honestly, it’s impossible to keep track of them all. I’m constantly running around, chasing people down, trying to make sure they’re all working on the right tasks. It’s extremely stressful. I feel like I spend half of my day saying, “What are you working on?” And you wouldn’t believe how many times, when I do ask someone what they’re working on, I find out that they’re putting all their time into a low-priority task which just wastes valuable time and leads to more delays in the project. It’s frustrating. Sometimes I feel like I need to do everything myself, and that’s exactly why I have to make sure I’m checking up on the team all the time. I’d really prefer not to because it’s time consuming for me and aggravating for them, especially since it interrupts their work. I have to admit that sometimes I feel lost. It’s hard to keep track of so many tasks. I have times where I don’t really even know who’s working on what, and that can keep me up at night, especially when we’re close to a deadline. Next to “What are you working on,” the second question I catch myself asking people is, “When will it be done?” I have to run a super tight schedule, and I need to know whether or not the project is actually going according to plan. I’m constantly fielding phone calls and emails from clients wondering when the latest feature that they asked for will be ready. You’ve probably heard this phrase so many times from your clients– “I need an ETA.” So for me to keep them up to date, I always have to be on top of the progress of the project. And if it’s not running on schedule, then I need to have enough time to make changes to the project. There’s no question, project managing is a high stress job. But fortunately, I finally got all that stress to go away when I discovered Elementool’s Priority List feature. It gives me laser-focus control over the projects and my team. I can define a unique priority level to each issue. That way I can make sure that people know exactly what to work on at any moment of the day, so I don’t have to worry anymore that they’re wasting time doing things they’re not supposed to. Sometimes an urgent issue comes in, and that means making changes to the project plan and having people stop what they’re doing to move on to the new task. The Priority List allows me to make those updates in just a few seconds on the team’s work plan. I can also see at any given moment the progress of the tasks that each team member’s working on and the date that they’ll be completed. In fact, you can wake me up in the middle of the night, and I’ll be able to tell you who’s working on what. It’s really brought back the feeling that I’m in control. Now I feel more confident that I can finish my projects on time. When I go home at the end of the day, my mind is free, and I can play with my little girl, and not worry about work. I just love it. Thank you, Elementool. In order for you to get laser-focus control of your projects, all you need to do is click on the signup button below to get a free trial.

As a programmer, I’m constantly juggling a million tasks. Well, not exactly a million, but it really feels like that sometimes. And even while I’m juggling all of the tasks that I have to do, things are often changing during the day when new tasks are created and have to be added.

That means that prioritization is really important for me. But the problem is that I frequently have multiple tasks in the same priority category that need to be dealt with. For instance, there are times when I might have as many as nine or 10 High priority tasks to work on. Often, it seems like everything is the most important thing to do – so I end up with a whole lot of Very Important Things To Do and I don’t know which one to start with! It gets pretty confusing. And when I don’t have anyone to ask for help, sometimes I have to make an educated guess at which one to start with.

That doesn’t always work out so well. The other day, I made the wrong choice and my team leader was angry that I didn’t finish the right tasks. I was upset the whole day. I felt guilty for wasting everyone’s time, but I really was trying to do the right thing. It completely stresses me out and makes me even more nervous each time I have to pick a new task to work on. A lot of the time I just end up multitasking, going back and forth between different items since they all seem important. Unfortunately, the reality is that multitasking is very unproductive and it ends up taking much longer for me to get anything accomplished at all that way.

Fortunately Elementool has become a huge help for me and my team members when we’re dealing with this situation. It has a feature called ‘Priority List’ that makes it simple to sort same-priority level tasks in the ideal order for them to be completed. The Priority List makes it possible to define that order by just assigning a priority level value to each issue. So Priority Value 1 means that the issue should be finished first, Priority Value 2 means that it should be completed second … you get the idea. Each issue has its own unique priority level value, which is set by our team leader, so it’s impossible to have two issues with the same priority level. And that takes the burden off MY shoulders because I don’t have to guess anymore what I should work on.

Now all I have to do is look at the Priority List to see exactly what I need to be working on at any moment of the day.

There’s no more confusion now because I don’t have to do all that guesswork. And my stress has gone WAY down since I know that I’m always doing things according to plan. Overall, it just makes my life much, much easier. Instead of juggling multiple tasks or worrying that I’m not even working on the right task, I can simply focus on the details of the task at hand and concentrate on doing my job well. Even my boyfriend told me that I seem a lot more relaxed when I come back home from work. Now I finally feel like I’m doing the right thing every minute of the day.

Thank you Elementool!