#loadspringmobile

From the Outside In

The human resources trend, encouraged by cloud and mobile computing, is increasingly towards independent workers and project-oriented contracts. Their expectations are that a company’s infrastructure will in fact be an extra structure, where they can hook up remotely and work together in a virtual team outside the constraints of the traditional corporate nine-to-five framework. Cloud talent sourcing is also on the rise. Team members will come, go, come back again and so on, with teams configuring and reconfiguring like so many skyscapes.

Project Management Must Adapt

Project management in an organization needs to take account of this constant change. A project management system must be more than just functional. It must allow you to adjust capacity in real time, not in days or even in hours. It should be flexible enough to be resized according to requirements. It must give users access according to their level of authorization, wherever they connect from. And it still has to give the organization a complete, transparent view of its entire project portfolio as well as drill-down detail on any particular project.

The Cloud – a Match and a Challenge

Requirements for elasticity, scalability and control fit naturally with the potential of cloud applications. But workers who live in the cloud also need performance, reliability and security when they connect to execute their project management duties on your behalf. Mobility and the cloud bring new challenges that did not exist when applications were hosted by enterprises themselves for employees physically on your site. Now connections must be rugged and optimized for uncertain network conditions and security has to be simple yet effective for people you may never even meet.

A Platform for Productivity

The good news is that when you have the project management system in place in the cloud to do this, then you’re set to make the most of the increases in productivity and efficiency that worker mobility can bring. Latency is reduced between decisions and action. Team members wherever they are can be informed immediately of news and changes. Resources are managed in real time and project events logged as they happen. Mobile team members can work effectively and efficiently wherever they are, while your organization remains in control of its projects, objectives and deadlines. That also gives you more time to plan ahead for new projects – and perhaps take a moment to admire a few natural cumulus clouds as they pass by.

People are not machines, and employment engagement is a clear example of the difference between them. A machine is either on or off, but for employees engagement can run the whole gamut of ‘totally onboard’ to ‘barely there’. The stakes for organizations concerning employee engagement are high. Companies whose employee engagement is in the top 25 percent have been estimated to make more than twice the revenue of companies where engagement is in the bottom 25 percent. Also, there is four times as much chance that the less engaged employees quit compared to the more engaged employees.

Bottom Line Impacts

But the problem doesn’t stop with a less engaged employee leaving. If the organization wants to replace the employee, it will need to spend time and effort to find the new person, while dealing with possible internal disruption, reduction of knowledge and lower morale. Figures of six months to repair the damage and a third of the departing employee’s salary to locate and bring onboard a replacement are all too common. Keeping employees engaged is more profitable and less expensive, especially when they include your best people.

What’s Your Theory?

How to reinforce engagement is a question that has kept HR departments busy for years. Maslow’s and Hertzberg’s theories are perennial favorites. Their ideas also carry over into new business contexts such as mobile working and cloud business process environments. Both of these recent developments extend employer-employee relationships beyond the traditional workplace, with the possibility of accentuating both the positive and the negative. Good cloud tools in particular can help boost positive engagement.

Mixing Social and Professional in the Cloud

More employees are now expecting and claiming the right to change the way they work – if not completely outside the organization, then at least in parallel with it.  With BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), they use the same computing device for both their social and their professional lives. It is the organization of the information inside that device that demarcates one mode of use from the other, although social interaction is increasingly blending with professional activity. As consumers they expect to be able to access information they need instantly, independently of time and location. This expectation is now spilling over to the workplace.

Any Time, Any Place

Cloud work tools that support this new work paradigm are the ones most likely to find favor.  At the lower level, facilitation of mobile connections to resources such as project management applications is a first step. Single sign-on for secure access to all authorized PM applications is the next. Increasing the sociability of project management work with social media style tools is yet another way to deepen positive engagement, allowing companies to retain employees longer.

Don’t Just Retain – Attract Too

There’s further potential advantage to be had as well. A web presence with the cloud portal described above can demonstrate how an enterprise has embraced the new model of working. Cloud-based talent will then naturally gravitate towards that enterprise. Instead of scrambling to replace employees who leave, a business will be able to retain them and then expand at its own pace, hiring in more of the best via the cloud.

People are not machines, and employment engagement is a clear example of the difference between them. A machine is either on or off, but for employees engagement can run the whole gamut of ‘totally onboard’ to ‘barely there’. The stakes for organizations concerning employee engagement are high. Companies whose employee engagement is in the top 25 percent have been estimated to make more than twice the revenue of companies where engagement is in the bottom 25 percent. Also, there is four times as much chance that the less engaged employees quit compared to the more engaged employees.

Bottom Line Impacts

But the problem doesn’t stop with a less engaged employee leaving. If the organization wants to replace the employee, it will need to spend time and effort to find the new person, while dealing with possible internal disruption, reduction of knowledge and lower morale. Figures of six months to repair the damage and a third of the departing employee’s salary to locate and bring onboard a replacement are all too common. Keeping employees engaged is more profitable and less expensive, especially when they include your best people.

What’s Your Theory?

How to reinforce engagement is a question that has kept HR departments busy for years. Maslow’s and Hertzberg’s theories are perennial favorites. Their ideas also carry over into new business contexts such as mobile working and cloud business process environments. Both of these recent developments extend employer-employee relationships beyond the traditional workplace, with the possibility of accentuating both the positive and the negative. Good cloud tools in particular can help boost positive engagement.

Mixing Social and Professional in the Cloud

More employees are now expecting and claiming the right to change the way they work – if not completely outside the organization, then at least in parallel with it.  With BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), they use the same computing device for both their social and their professional lives. It is the organization of the information inside that device that demarcates one mode of use from the other, although social interaction is increasingly blending with professional activity. As consumers they expect to be able to access information they need instantly, independently of time and location. This expectation is now spilling over to the workplace.

Any Time, Any Place

Cloud work tools that support this new work paradigm are the ones most likely to find favor.  At the lower level, facilitation of mobile connections to resources such as project management applications is a first step. Single sign-on for secure access to all authorized PM applications is the next. Increasing the sociability of project management work with social media style tools is yet another way to deepen positive engagement, allowing companies to retain employees longer.

Don’t Just Retain – Attract Too

There’s further potential advantage to be had as well. A web presence with the cloud portal described above can demonstrate how an enterprise has embraced the new model of working. Cloud-based talent will then naturally gravitate towards that enterprise. Instead of scrambling to replace employees who leave, a business will be able to retain them and then expand at its own pace, hiring in more of the best via the cloud.

Contact LoadSpring today to find out how we can help with tools like our cloud portal SpringBoard 7.0 and mobile tool LoadSpringMobile. Call 978.685.9715 or send us an email [email protected].

As reported by Project Management Institute’s 2013 Pulse of the Profession, an organization’s ability to meet project timelines, budgets and especially goals, significantly impacts its ability to thrive—and even survive. As organizations address the urgent need to improve project success rates, they are faced with a complex and risky environment that necessitates them to do more with less in an unfavorable economic climate. The same research report also says that $135 million is at risk for every $1 billion spent on a project.

In spite of this risk, organizations are not sure how to effectively manage projects and then to explain the business benefits of strategic initiatives to stakeholders.  The third global PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) survey on the current state of project management reveals that, according to executives, effective communication is associated with a 17 percent increase in finishing projects within budget. Of equal (if not more) importance is tracking time, cost and production units.

Tracking is empowering

Tracking helps to calculate earned value and it is also used for comparative analysis. For example, comparing planned units versus actual units or budgeted costs to actual costs gives project managers insight into the current state of projects.  It gives them a clear picture of whether their respective projects are performing as per expectations. If this comparison can become a vital part of a project, project managers are empowered to track and take corrective actions well in advance.  This will ensure that projects do not go off track or stray out of the acceptable variance limits. 

Why conformance is important

Conformance with the plan is not simply a project management requirement. It is the vital backbone of a project to ensure that budgets, timelines and costs do not overshoot limits bringing down Return on Investment (ROI) levels. Without comparison, there is no basis against which to determine if a project has gone off track and small problems then have the potential to snow ball into  large issues that could require greater time and expense to correct down the road.

Why track?

Project managers will wonder how time consuming this tracking activity will be and whether there is the need for this extra activity on an ongoing basis.  The answer is simple.  Advance knowledge helps project managers make modifications in estimation techniques to achieve greater accuracy in the planning stage itself. This will help bring down increased workload or rework during the execution phase. Thus, the very success of a project lies in efficient project management, and tracking is core to this function.

The importance of data capture

Data capture in an accurate manner is required for tracking to be of any use.  The best project managers believe in capturing data on a daily basis using a tracking application.  This will ensure that misapplication of time and resources is avoided. To ensure that the solution performs accurately, a certain amount of training is required for all those personnel who will be entering data.  

It is also important to plan the level of detail a project manager wants to drill down to.  Whether tracking time or expenses, to which level of granularity one wishes to track is important and this decision needs to be made before the actual data entry phase begins.

A good tracking solution gives the organization the power to control the level of detail in tracking and depending on adherence to data entry, the solution can be a powerful tracking tool to keep projects on track at all times.  LoadSpringMobile, Primavera Progress Reporter, and other tracking solutions hosted through LoadSpring’s SpringBoard Portal are good examples.

Sometimes, tracking at granular levels can be overwhelming, especially if an organization is in a growth phase. There are many fires to be put out and there may not be too much time for data entry and capture. For such organizations, high level tracking may suffice and as the organization matures, it can control the level of detail in tracking. 

The power of the tracking application lies in its ability to empower project managers to decide how they want to use it.

On paper, software implementations can have a lot to offer. Take the example of project management software that promises to ease the planning and tracking of complex projects, optimize and balance the allocation of resources, and facilitate alternative plans. The good news is that these promises can all come true! The condition of course is that the implementation of the software respects various principles and avoids certain problems.

But not every software implementation is crowned with success – either immediately or even eventually. What then are the top reasons and pitfalls why they fail and how to avoid them? Here’s our take on a category by category, blow by blow basis.

1. Lack of Management Buy-in

While it’s just conceivable that a major software implementation can benefit an enterprise even if management support is absent, you’re likely to feel like you’re swimming in molasses: very tough, very tiring and it takes years to get anywhere. Management needs to be involved from the outset to ensure that the project is aligned so it contributes significantly to overall business objectives, to participate in the identification of business champions, and to hold the right people accountable for implementation success.

2. End-users Absent from the Implementation

While management needs to be there to nail the business benefit, the people actually using the software (and therefore triggering the afore-mentioned business benefit) are likely to be a different group. Keeping them out of the project until the system is installed and then suddenly presenting them with the log-in screen is a horribly effective way of building up resistance and resentment from the very people the software should be helping. Involving users from the beginning and having discussions of user needs, considering their comments and fostering the perception among these end-users that this is also their project, is far more constructive.

3. Underestimating or Mis-estimating Implementation Time

There is an unhealthily wide choice of ways to do this, ranging from the direct miscalculation or omission, to planning backwards from a drop-dead completion date, through to suddenly tripling the number of IT engineers to try to make implementation go faster. Any of these approaches will typically end in tears, or worse. A common variation on this theme is to cheat on testing (as in skipping it) when it becomes apparent that the original software implementation schedule cannot be met – this is a short term hack that can do long term damage.

4. Skimping on Technical Competence

A word of advice – don’t. If the technical competence you need to get the software working well is not available in-house, then talk to an external provider (for example, LoadSpring for P6 project management). A good provider will help you accomplish your software implementation cost-effectively, and even assist you in transferring competence and know-how to your organization.

5. No Change Management Process

Plan for it, prepare for it and get all the key people involved, because if you don’t you’re going to get into trouble. The bottom line is that change is bound to happen. What you need is a good process for dealing with it.  The crucial thing is to know beforehand how to handle such situations so as to minimize negative impact on the software implementation.

In your mind, you know what it looks like. Perhaps you even have a strategic goal to get there. But when it comes to the reality of deploying and implementing your project management solu

tion in the cloud, finding your way is more easily said than done. What you need is a guide, a mentor who can accompany you and work with you to define the pathway to the cloud that suits your particular organizational needs.

Leverage the Experience of Experts

When expeditions traveling through the Himalayas want to be sure of getting securely and quickly to their destination, they use the services of the Sherpas – the route-finding experts who know all the possibilities and all the solutions.  Sherpas represent a body of experience and knowhow that is unique, and that has saved many travelers from detours, dead ends and downright danger.

Just Tell Us Where Your Business Needs to Go

LoadSpring offers you the same safe passage to project management in the cloud when you choose our expert Sherpas.  You decide where you want to go and how the project management solution needs to meet your particular enterprise needs. Then we work with you to define, deploy and implement that solution accordingly, getting you there securely, quickly and easily.

How Fast Would You Like to Get There?

The result? A personalized solution that not only fits the way you do business, but that can be deployed rapidly, securely and with full support. Implementation times can be as short as a few weeks. And when you use your tailored LoadSpring project management solution in the cloud, you’ll find that it’s built for both speed and simplicity.

LoadSpring Cloud Portal and Mobile Access

The secret is in our SpringBoard 7.0 cloud portal that opens the door to you for immediate access to the latest project management applications and services. And because the cloud is meant for sharing with trusted partners and people in your company, our LoadSpringMobile application extends the power of your customized project management to mobile devices as well. Now everybody on the team gets access to software, information and ideas from any computer, anywhere there is a connection to the net.

Get to Your Next Destination Too. And the Next One. And the Next One…

As our project management Sherpas work with you in the context of our QuickStart or QuickBuild services for example, you’ll be able to see how the project management cloudscape lies; and where the opportunities are to evolve and enhance your solution for the future too.

You’ve identified your strategic business requirements and understand how Oracle Primavera P6 meets those requirements. Now you can accelerate your implementation process with our QuickBuild offering by getting your team up and running with effective training, guidance, mentoring and support as you begin to utilize your new tool.

Results-Oriented and Affordable

QuickBuild is an extension of our QuickStart service, which provides additional mentoring and training support, together with incorporation of the lessons learned from the pilot phase. We focus on core functionality of the tool and deliver effective remote service and support to you around that core functionality. Because you already know why you want to use P6, we can concentrate on how you can use it to achieve your objectives, and provide you that results-oriented service for a simple low-cost price.

Four Clear Phases

The four phases covered in QuickBuild are Configure, Deploy, Define, and Adopt.

Configure. In this phase, we help you to accelerate the implementation of P6 in terms of configuration, data migration, application administration, creating reports and dashboards.

Deploy. In this second phase of QuickBuild, your end users are brought up to speed in their new environment with cutting edge training.  As they begin to operate in their new environment, we are with them every step of the way with remote mentoring and support to ensure questions are answered and roadblocks overcome.

Define. As you use your new tool, the power and possibilities of P6 EPPM will become clear. With QuickBuild, we support you with further discovery and configuration efforts using remote workshops guided by LoadSpring P6 EPPM specialists who are there to ensure configuration and implementation of P6 in accordance with your strategic business needs.

Adopt. After revising your configuration based on lessons learned, we are there to assist with the roll out to the remainder of your organization and integration of P6 into your existing business processes.

Mentoring to Keep Project Management Software Needs and Solutions Aligned

The link between your strategic business needs and your deployment of P6 has to continue after the QuickBuild program finishes. Otherwise, your project management mechanisms will drift further and further away from your project management needs. It’s for that reason that the QuickBuild approach makes remote mentoring your team such an important part of the whole process. Yes, there’s training, support, workshops and more, but it’s the mentoring that helps you to build long term success as well as immediate results.