Hi, it’s Allison here again. We all know what it’s like to get caught in the procrastination trap. There’s a job that has to be done, but you’re afraid it’s going to be difficult and time consuming, so you put it off till the last minute. Sometimes you’re tired or not feeling motivated to do anything at all.
Other times you’re overwhelmed by small tasks that keep popping up and getting in your way. Or maybe you come into work in the morning and you have no clue what to do that day. You end up spending half the day at the office without getting anything done because you lack a plan. It’s understandable, we’ve all been there, and we’ve all found ourselves procrastinating as a result. The most frustrating thing is that the longer we procrastinate, the more our tasks and worries pile up. Next thing you know, the day is gone, little has been accomplished – and still the work waits. Procrastinating can slow business, upset the boss, create delays, and wreak havoc on your schedule.
Well you know what? It doesn’t have to be like that. I’m going to show you a smart, simple system that can help you eliminate procrastination permanently. With this easy method, you can sharpen your focus, increase your motivation, and get your work done when you need to get it done.
The secret is to start scheduling meetings with yourself. Your daily schedule should always be fully booked. Every morning, spend about 15 minutes determining the day’s schedule. Think of all the tasks that you want to accomplish that day and schedule them in your calendar as if you have a meeting with yourself.
So, for example, you may write in your planner that from 9am to 10, you are working on a presentation. From 10 to 11, you’ll be returning phone calls. 11 to 12, you’re writing code. 12-1, schedule your lunch. And so on. Sounds pretty simple, right? Well it is! If I can do it, so can you.
Now for your anti-procrastination plan to be successful, you need to follow a few guidelines.
1. Don’t schedule more than 6 activities each day. There’s no sense in over-extending yourself or else you’ll get overwhelmed and then the procrastination problem will be back.
2. Give yourself some free time between activities to catch up on emails, finish activities that require more time, and other small assorted tasks.
3. Always schedule the difficult and high priority activities first. This is really important because you want to get the tough jobs out of the way as soon as you can.
4. When you work on an activity, stay focused on the task. Don’t stop to read emails, check Facebook, or anything else. These are things that can wait until you’re done.
5. Take a 10-minute break every hour. Knowing that you will soon have a bit of time to relax and do whatever you want will make it easier for you to concentrate on the scheduled task.
So, there you have it. Follow this system and you will discover that you can quickly and easily kick procrastination out of your life forever. If you want to learn more, I go into detail on this subject in Elementool’s new Project Management Formula program, so I suggest you check it out!
There are big things happening here at Elementool, and the latest is that we are going agile. Agile planning is a flexible approach to project management that gives you the freedom to make adjustments to your plan when needed.
By dividing projects into smaller iterations, or mini-projects, you are better able to monitor progress and to make important course corrections that will allow you to achieve your objectives while also completing the project close to schedule.
Using the agile approach is going to transform the way you run projects, and we are going to make it even easier for you.We will be releasing several amazing new features in the near future to help you run agile projects using Elementool.
With Elementool, you will be able to setup iterations and define the tasks and issues that should be included in each iteration. This innovative feature will allow you to better plan your team’s work on the project.
Our brand new Scheduling system will enable you to plan your project schedule and carefully track the development progress. As a result,your team will be able to make certain that everything is going according to plan,eliminating costly and time-consuming project delays.
Some of these tracking features include a backlog that you will be able to display right on your Welcome page, allowing you to see the status of each task so that you can easilyfollow the progress of your project.
The Burndown chartis another cool feature that we’re developing. It will enable eachteam member to see how their work is progressing so that they always know whether or not they’re keeping to the schedule plan.
One of the most significant features is the integration between the tools, which is a major benefit since it saves you the need to use API to integrate between different solution providers. This gives your team valuable extra time to spend working on your projects instead of worrying about tool integration. And it costs significantly less to pay for just one system rather than using several different vendors.
If you are new to Agile planning and don’t yet know what terms like Iteration,Burndown, and Backlog mean, don’t worry, because you are going to learn them—and many others—very soon with our exciting new Project Management Formula program, where we’ll teach you the special 5-step formula that will enable you to fully take charge of your projects.
Agile project planningis the wave of the future, and Elementool will be here to help you every step of the way. Stay tuned!
In the next few weeks, we’re going to be making some design enhancements here at Elementool.com. But don’t worry, these changes will not have any affect on the way that you utilize our site.
During the redesign process, the application functionality will remain completely the same throughout the website, so you can continue using it without interruption. Here’s a sneak peek at the changes we have in store for Elementool.com.
Hi, I’m Allison, and I’d like to introduce you to a feature known as Field Dependencies. This is a very helpful feature that allows you to quickly locate and select relevant information when filling in a form.
What the dependencies feature actually does is it enables the creation of relationships between fields in such a way that a dependant field’s value list is determined based on a value selected from the source list.
For instance, let’s say that you have two fields on a form: State and City. The State field lists all 50 states in the U.S., and the City field lists the 10 largest cities in each of those states. Currently, without using Dependencies, the State field list shows all 50 states and the City field displays a long list of 500 cities in those states. So if a user wants to choose their city from that list, they need to scan through all 500 to find the one they want.
However, by using the Dependencies feature, the process becomes much easier. It allows the person to first select their state in the State field. At that point, the Dependencies rule automatically filters the city list so that the City field only displays the 10 cities from the selected state. This means that the user can simply select the appropriate city from the list of 10 rather than poring through a long list of 500.
As you can see, the Field Dependencies feature makes filling out and submitting forms much easier and far less time-consuming.
Hi, it’s Allison again. When most people think of three little letters that might save your life, SOS comes to mind. But for me, S-R-S is the ultimate lifesaver when it comes to project management. SRS stands for Software Requirements Specification, which is a document that fully describes the expected behavior of a software system.
Functional requirements are documented in an SRS, as are non-functional requirements such as performance goals and descriptions of quality attributes.
The SRS states the functions and capabilities that a software system needs to provide, as well as the constraints that it must respect. The SRS provides the basis for all subsequent project planning, design, coding, and testing. Virtually everyone involved in the project rely on the SRS. The development team, maintenance staff, testers, technical writers, support people, and the marketing department, This is why this document is so important.
There are many significant benefits to having a SRS document. For starters, the SRS improves communication between your team members by saving and displaying the product feature description in one central location that everybody can easily access. It also prevents confusion within your team by maintaining an up-to-date definition list of all the features included in the project. This way you ensure that everyone develops the same set of features, avoiding a situation in which there are several different versions of product documents out there. And because all that information is available in one document, the SRS makes it easy for new employees to quickly learn the details of the project.
Another benefit that comes from the development of the SRS document is that it ultimately saves you the effort and cost of late-stage re-design and re-testing. That is because putting the SRS together requires all stakeholders to agree on the requirements at the beginning of the project.
Given that estimating costs and developing a project schedule can be a challenge for any project manager, the SRS document provides a great deal of help in that area as well by acting as a basis for creating such estimates.
Other benefits of utilizing an SRS document include its ability to provide a basis for enhancement of the product at a later time. The SRS can also provide a baseline when it comes time to develop plans for validation and verification.
Furthermore, the Software Requirements Specification functions as a contract between the client and your company. Once the SRS is complete, you can simply send it to your clients, and it will act as an agreement of what should be developed.
Now I initially planned to give you a template of an SRS document that you can use to create your own. But then I thought, why do that, when you can just use Elementool’s Requirements Management to automatically create SRS documents, in seconds, right from your feature requirements list? Simply:
Go to the ‘View Requirements’ page.
Click on the Print Requirements button.
On the right side, select the features you wish to include in the SRS document.
Move them to the left side.
Click on the Print Document button.
And, voila, I have an SRS document ready in less than 10 seconds.
Hi, it’s Allison again. In this clip, I’m going to teach you an easy and simple way to estimate tasks that you can use right away. Estimating how long it will take to accomplish a task can be surprisingly difficult.
An endless variety of factors and variables can affect the outcome, making an apparently complicated task much simpler than initially expected, or turning a seemingly easy task into a nightmare. But however difficult it may be, estimation is a necessary part of your work. You need good, accurate estimates of task durations in order to build a project schedule and ensure that you deliver your product on time. Coming up with a good estimate is a common challenge that many people struggle with, so, I’m going to teach a simple estimation formula called PERT. Also known as the Program Evaluation and Review Technique, PERT isn’t just a cute name – it’s a vital tool for estimating task duration.
The formula goes like this: Multiply the most likely amount of time that it will take to finish the task by 4 (this is the time that makes most sense, taking into account that you’ll encounter a few obstacles on the way). Then add your ‘best case scenario’ time (this is the fastest that you can complete the task if you have everything that you need, and everything goes according to plan). Now add your ‘worst case scenario’ time (this is the longest time that it will take you to fix the task in case things go wrong). Sum it all up and then divide by 6. The resulting figure is your ultimate estimate for the duration of the task.
Now let me give you an example of PERT in action. Let’s say I want to walk down to the corner market to buy a quart of milk. From my experience, I think this task will most likely take 15 minutes. 10 minutes of walking time, 1 minute to get the item, and 4 minutes to wait in line. So 15 is my Most Likely number. If there is no line, and I walk fast, then I think it will take a total of 8 minutes, so that’s my Best Case number. Now for my Worst Case number I have to consider what might go wrong. And a lot might go wrong. The sidewalk could be crowded, I might nearly get run over by a taxi crossing the street and have to stop to catch my breath, and, worst of all, the line could be three times as long as usual because everyone is stocking up on snacks for the big game tonight. I figure that puts my Worst Case number at 28 minutes.
Now I take the formula: [best case + (4 X Most likely) + worst case] / 6. I plug those numbers in: [8 + (4 x 15) + 28] / 6
And then I get out my calculator. Or, if I’m feeling up to it, I just do the math in my head. My result is 16, and that’s my estimate for the duration of this particular task.
PERT is effective because, even though it gives much more weight to your most likely estimate, it also takes the best and worst case possibilities into account. You will find that it truly makes the difficult job of estimating much easier.
I’m Allison and I’m going to teach you Scrum Agile Development in three simple steps.
This is a special video I created just for Elementool’s clients and the people on our mailing list.
So if you’re watching this, you are one of the special lucky people who, within a few minutes, will have a system that will help you to improve your development performance immediately.
In many cases when you develop a software project, you know how it starts but you cannot predict what will happen after a few weeks of development. As a result, it becomes difficult to keep track of the project progress. If you’ve ever felt that things get out of control, you know what I mean.
Delays cause the project to cost more, because you need to pay for additional development time. They also cause your clients to get upset and this is something we want to prevent.
Scrum enables you to keep everything visible. It allows the team to know exactly what’s going on and make adjustments to the project to keep it moving forward.
With Scrum you build pieces of the software. The client can experience each part and determine what to do next. This way you have control over the progress of the project and the power to prevent delays.
Let’s get started:
Step # 1 – Create a Backlog
The project backlog is a list of all the features that clients would like to have as part of the complete product. It includes the client’s dreams and wishes. But it doesn’t mean that everything will be developed, as we’ll see later. The Backlog is created by the Product Owner. The Product Owner represents the interest of the people who ordered the product – the clients.
Step #2 – Estimate and Prioritize
After completing the Backlog list the Product Owner estimates how long it would take to develop each item on the list. There are different ways to estimate and I’ll explain them in another clip. Next comes prioritization. The goal is to focus on what brings value to the business. The Product Owner sorts the backlog items by priority, from the most important at the top to the least important at the bottom, picks the features that should be included in the release and creates the Release Backlog.
Step # 3 – Sprint
Here is when most of the work is being done. Sprints are development units between 3 to 30 days. A project usually includes several sprints.
At the beginning of each sprint the team will have a Sprint Planning meeting. In this meeting the Product Owner and the team get together to decide what will be done in the new sprint. They select items of the highest priority from the Release Backlog. The Product Owner describes to the team what is desired and the team decides how much of what is desired they can complete in this sprint.
The Sprint Planning meeting has two parts:
The first part is spent with the Product Owner to decide which features to develop.
In the second part of the meeting the team plans out the sprint. The selected tasks are placed in the sprint backlog and assigned to the team members.
Everyday the team meets for a short 15 minute meeting called “Daily Scrum”. In this meeting each team member answers three questions:
• What have you done on this project since the last daily scrum meeting?
• What do you plan on doing on this project between now and the next scrum meeting?
• What stands in your way to meet your commitments to this sprint and this project?
The purpose of Daily Scrum is to synchronize the work of all team members and address any issues that might delay the work progress.
In every sprint the team must complete the work that was defined for this sprint. Bugs that are related to the features on the Sprint Backlog should also be fixed as part of the sprint.
At the end of each sprint, a Sprint Review meeting is held. In this meeting the team presents what was developed during the sprint to the Product owner and other Stakeholders. This meeting helps to decide what the team should do next. The clients can see the project progress and submit feedback. It prevents the risk of developing features that the client didn’t ask for. Also, in case of a delay in the development process, the sprint will not be completed on time and that will indicate to everyone that there is a problem and something needs to be done.
Repeat step 3 until all features on the Release Backlog are developed and the product is ready to be released.
That’s it. So easy. As you can see, Scrum is a simple and effective way to have control over your development process and make sure things go according to plan.
I created a flowchart for you of the three steps. You can download it using the link below.
The workflow feature will make your life a lot easier. The great thing about it is that it allows you to define workflows so that field values are automatically updated based on the changes made in one or more fields.
You can define processes to prevent team members from forgetting to update certain field values – or updating the wrong values. This feature saves you a ton of time because users don’t need to manually update a long list of fields anymore. The fields are updated automatically based on the value of selected ones. For example: Let’s say that every time an issue is fixed, I would like to automatically track the fix date, the name of the person who fixed it and assign it back to QA. I can do that by defining a rule using Workflow. To use Workflow you should follow these easy steps: Go to Control Panel, click on Edit Issue Form and then on Edit Workflow. Click on ‘Add New Rule’ to create a new Workflow rule or on the Edit button of an existing rule to edit it. In Step 1 we are going define the workflow conditions. For example: when status = fixed and Priority = High. In Step 2 you define the fields that are going to be updated once the rule has been met. In this example, I would like to change the fixed date to today and assign it to a tester.
In Step 3 I’m going to give the rule a name and save it. Now the rule is added to the list. When I’ll go and update an issue, the system will automatically update the fields based on the rule definition.
We are going to share with you another hidden secret related to the rules of the game. But I’m not sure you can handle it.
Can you handle it? OK come closer because I don’t want anyone to hear.
The secret is: “The bench”.
This clip is about risk management. Risks are those things that usually have low changes of happening. But if they occur, their results might be bad for us.
The primary objective is to insure that the client and their investment is protected as best as possible
Risk management is an activity that:
1. Looks for problems that could occur.
2. Evaluates how big these problems are.
3. And the best way to manage them via risk response plans.
Risk management a process that you do usually before the project starts. It is a very important stage that is being neglected often because it is being considered as a waste of time. People just want to start working on the project right away. In our “game rule” model risk management is like the basketball bench. There are 5 players on the court and about 10 on the bench. Now let’s think about it for a minute. You need only 5 players to play the game, but the teams go through all the effort and spend so many resources to keep another 10 players sitting on the bench.
The coach keeps more players on the bench than on the court to deal with anticipated risks of players getting tired or fouled. And the unanticipated risks of players getting injured or losing their mojo.
There are a lot of reasons why people might resist the risk management process:
1. People don’t always understand the importance of this process and would consider it a waste of resources.
2. People think that risk management is a pessimistic activity, but the project manager should act as a good coach and present it as a positive thing to reach project objectives.
3. The team feels that they can fight the fire when we get there, which is often not the case.
The 4 Steps of risk management process are:
1. Develop the risk management plan.
2. Identify the risks that might occur.
3. Assess the risks in the project.
4. Response to risks in when they happen.
You also should keep monitor and manage the project risk throughout the project development to ensure that the risk management and response plan are working properly.
We are going to teach step by step how to build your bench and manage risks. We have developed a simple system that you can implement right way. In fact, this new system is so powerful that you will call us and ask us not to sell it to anyone else.
Project management has a few core problems that happen to almost everyone in the market. Projects are delayed, exceed budget, and in many cased the projects don’t come out as designed.
68% of projects either fail or are seriously challenged
Everybody knows about it. We’re not telling you anything new here. But have you ever stopped and thought why this is happening?
With over 10 years of experience in the project management industry, and based on extensive research we discovered the secrets to solving these problems.
One of the main secrets to successful projects is knowing the rules of the game.
Think about it as a basketball game. You might have a team of very talented athletes who can pass the ball, dribble and shoot hoops. But if they don’t know the rules and how to play as a team, the changes of winning are not so good.
Their game looks like a game of kids in the school yard. There is a lot of activity, but there is no strategy or planning behind it.
Now imagine these same kids playing against a professional. The score will be something like: 137:2.
Project management is the same as basketball. The secret of product management success is to teach project management principles to all the people who are involved in the process: including developers, testers, management, and even your clients. We call them stakeholders.
We created a series of clips about different project management topics. These clips will teach you and your team all you need to know about project management to allow you to run your projects like a professional basketball team. This program will give you an enormous advantage over your competition. In fact, after you finish it, you will call us and ask us not to sell it to anyone because you want to be the only person with this knowledge.
We all run projects as part of our daily life activities. Let’s say a fun dinner party is a project. This project includes several tasks and people and can be run using common management concepts.
Project stakeholders – the stakeholders are people who are involved or benefit from the project. In this example, the stakeholders will be everyone invited to the party, and the organizers: Bob and myself.
Project scope – the work that needs to be done to deliver a complete project. The scope of our dinner is inviting the guests, cleaning the house, buying grocery, cooking, serving the food to the table, entertaining our guests and cleaning after they leave.
Project objectives – these are benefits that the person that initiated the project expects to achieve from it. The main objective of the dinner party is to spend a nice time with our friends over dinner. The secondary objectives are to have them enjoy the food and leave the house after they’ve been well fed and no one is hungry.
After we defined the concepts of the dinner project let’s move to the other parts that in the development.
First stage this is the project plan we call it Requirements Management – in this stage we define the features that needs to be completed. It is different from project scope because this phase goes into much greater details and defines each feature and component of the project.
We will define the house cleaning activity before the guests arrive. What needs to be cleaned, should we move furniture to make more space? etc. we will define what we are going to cook. The grocery list that we need to buy. The sitting order. The dishes we are going to serve. What we should talk about during dinner. Subjects we should not mention because we don’t want to upset specific friends. What we should do after dinner. Who cleans after the guests leave and more.
Requirements management is an important phase in the project management process. But many companies neglect it and in many cases fully ignore it. Image how many problems we can have in a simple dinner if we don’t define our requirements. Now compare that to complicated projects that involve many people, and a long list of features. There is endless amount of problems you can get into if you don’t complete the requirements phase properly.
After we’ve completed our project plan or requirements lets do some risk management. Risk management is the process of identifying all the things that might go wrong and defining how we are going to handle them in case they occur. This is also something that many companies neglect because at the early stage of the project people are eager to get right to work and risk management seems like a waste of time. But as the project progresses and risks start to become real, the project starts delaying the team members are busy putting out fire instead of developing the project.
The risks that are involved in preparing the dinner are: the grocery store might out of stock of some of the ingredients. For example, the store doesn’t have lemons and you make lemon chicken. Or there is a parade on our street that will make your guests late. These are just two examples. In case of the lemons risk, we might want to go to the store the day before. We should also check the city parade schedule to make sure the streets will remain open.
Scheduling – scheduling is the process of estimating how long each activity will take and assign that activity a date and time as part of the project overall schedule to make sure everything is completed on time.
We estimate the house cleaning will take 4 hours. Cooking 5 hours. Cleaning after cooking another hour. Grocery shopping 2 hours. Dinner itself will take 3 hours. Cleaning after the guest leave 2 hours.
We list the tasks in the project plan according to the order of their occurrence. Some tasks can be done at the same time as other tasks, and some can only start after prior tasks are completed. For example:
Let’s say we decided that we are going to clean the house, buy grocery, cook, host dinner and then clean after the guest leave.
Allison can clean the house while Bob it out shopping for grocery. When they are both done, they can start cooking.
They can also decide to first do the cooking and when finished cleaning the house.
But the cooking task is dependant on having all the grocery. So they have to finish shopping before cooking. This is called “schedule dependency”. We will go into more details on how to define project schedule and manage dependency in our project management formula program.
Now that we finished with scheduling, it is time to go to work. Tasks are assigned to the team members and each one is responsible to complete them as best as possible. They should also report on the progress of the task to the project manager, so she’ll be able to keep track on the project progress.
The Dinner party was a real success. Now that you’ve learned how to run a dinner party, you can discover all the secrets of successful project management. These are simple and easy methods and you can start using them right away. You have the basic concepts, and it will easy for you to learn the rest of the formula. For more details logon to our website at: project management formula.com
