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What is the best online forum site about project management? It must cover PM-related news, articles, case studies and discussion boards.
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How fast things change? I just heard about Cornelius Fichtner's new project: Project Managment Opinions. It has a section on resources. Already this newly launched site looks like a good meta site.
Previously on Stackoverflow....
I don't think there one site for what you want. The resources i use are:
Podcasts:
PM Podcast - very good. The latest episode on the PMI virtual communities will point you to further resources on SIGs in PMI and how they are changing.
PM Lessons Learned - messy site, but worth subscribing and listening to the most recent episodes (very good ones on risk and softskills)
Sites:
GanttHead - very busy site... i've never used anything from the site but there are a lot of links and forums i think.
Groups:
PMI - a great resource if you are a member. Also has PM news on it's homepage for everyone. Some of the work in SIGs sounds very interesting.
Your local PMI chapter - OK so this is my local chapter. Worthwhile investigating your own. I've had a very small involvement with mine and found them very approachable and useful.
In the earlier days, Joel's site had more of a project management lean.
Browse the archive here.
http://www.manager-tools.com
Someone pointed me to a podcast there once.. might be worth a look. Never been there too long.. got a more programmer bent of mind.
The Project Management Institute (pmi.org) may be a great place if you're looking for recognized, professional project management.
I would pimp my own - but I won't. I highly recommend checking out Ed Yourdon and Caper Jones sites:
http://www.yourdon.com/
http://www.spr.com/
Outside of that there's pmi.org, but they're mostly on the look out for selling pmp certification. There's also Agile Alliance
http://agilealliance.com/
Overall...not much good out there for PM's
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I am managing a software project that is hot for the company in terms of it being one of the things that is their bread & butter and it is going well. I have another manager at the company interfering with my project and people. How does one get this interference to go away. One thought that he is not creative enough to create work, I mean there is a lot he can do in other aspects of the business that would make a huge impact. The other piece of this is tasking a person that for a lack of a better way to describe it doesn't actually produce or actually make anything. How does one handle or manage people that don't produce anything I guess is the question.
Would anyone have resource suggestions such as:
- Books
- Paid Training
- Others
Maybe this is not a topic for this forum. :) If so, suggestions for other forums would be greatly appreciated.
It happens a lot this kind of interference in the project. Your authority as a project manager depends upon the managerial structure in your company.
Some companies works only as functional teams and the project manager has little power and authority facing the different interests among the stakeholders. The PM is hierarchically under a functional area and reports to a functional manager instead of a program or portfolio manager.
On the other extreme side there is a project organizational structure, the project manager has control and authority on the project as well as on the teams.
The midst of these two structures is the matrix organization structure. In this case the project manager divides the responsibility to a functional manager.
I believe that your first step is to understand the power structure in your company works and how your hole is related to it. The next step is to assure exactly the role of the other manager who interferes in your management activities. Does he a client? Does he the sponsor? Or does he only a partner?
The stakeholder management is a daily activity in the PM job too. It is common to see this kind of interference from the stakeholders but always remember that the project manager is you.
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Please recommend a scrum/agile project management tool. First, it should be able to be installed or deployed on my local computer. Additionally, it should be free, no need for complete unlimited usage, just that it can support 5 users and some scrum project functions, such as "kanban".
I found some answers of other questions like mine. Some of the tools which have been recommended are too old, so please recommend newer tools for me. And if it has a nice look that would be better, something like scrumwise or targetprocess.
Must haves:
local applications
free
kanban
I would suggest using Eylean board as it is the most visual scrum board compared to the competitors. And according to scrum you need to have a visible and transparent process inside your team. Also this software allows mixing other methodologies as well.
It is free of charge for personal use.
Given that you're wanting a local application, I'm assuming that your team is all located in the same place.
If so, I'd advise against using tools. As the agile manifesto says: "We value Individuals and Interactions over processes and tools". I'd urge you to consider co-locating your team(s), improving communication, using cards, physical boards and information radiators.
Hope that helps.
Try Yodiz, you can have up to 3 free users and it's one of the most intuitive with amazing UX. Every month they add more features to their platform. A few of the important features they have are following.
Collaboration Tools (Chat, Discussion, in-line comments)
Board, they have slick boards to manage your user stories and tasks.
User story management is as easy as it gets. Awesome backlog with priority and filtering
features.
Import/Export data to or from Jira, Pivotal and many other systems.
Three (3) free users with full features.
Report, they have detailed reporting, that makes progress and time tracking so easy.
Over all it's great tool. It's worth to give it a try.
http://www.simple-kanban.com
This seems like it meets your requirements. There are other possibilities if you will accept a hosted solution rather than a local install.
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i am normally developing either alone or with 2-3 other people. i handle almost all aspects of the business and development but as of current i am becoming overwhelmed with my client base. I need some system to help me out
What i am looking for is something that i can:
Use to manage my client contacts
Per client, manage the goals of the project im working/building on
Per client, per project, manage the bugs
Per client, per project manage support/helpdesk stuff... and then
turn those into bugs
Automate the communication of tickets and monitor email for support
stuff.
I am down to hear ANY ideas/options you have no matter how radical. :)
thank you!
We have bought the Source Code licence to JitBit Helpdesk, my colleague is in the process of adding some extra fields to support our work-flow, I have been working Visual Studio and AnkhSVN integration so that we can see bugs from VS2008/VS2010.
The user interface is functional, it can be styled to our likings, the code is a bit haphazard but the database is simple enough.
I've been using Assembla -- No complaints, and it covers just about everything -- and it's free to try.
We use HEAT from FrontRange solutions for most of the things you've mentioned. They also offer other solutions, such as CRM, etc. Nicely customizable, easy to interface to, nice self-service modules, excellent monitoring tools and auto-escalations... (and no I don't work for them. I've just been very happy with them over the last 10 years.)
Have a look at Gemini & SimplyFi
Take a look at Checkvist - it may work for you for clients/goals/plans/priorities. It is general purpose outliner and task manager.
For tickets/bugs you probably need a real issue tracker, like YouTrack.
Disclaimer: I'm affiliated with both of them.
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I've recently begun working with a new software development firm. One of the things I would like to do is introduce a software management tool to collectively group the project development efforts within a single source.
I've traditionally used OnTime and my initial reaction was to introduce it within the new company as well. However, the pricing is a little too high for the Professional version at this point.
Can anyone offer any real alternatives which offer both Feature / Defect / Project management with easy reporting and dashboards? Basically I'm looking for an OnTime alternative which has been proven through use.
Thanks,
Brian
There are tons of options here. Trac (free), Mingle (pay), FogBugz (free to try and other select uses), Rallyet al.
It depends on which set of features you value most and how your development process works. I personally enjoy FogBugz, have used Mingle professionally, and like Trac on the hobby stuff where I've used it. I've also used TeamTrack, but I wasn't a fan. Rally is award-winning, but it was never the best fit for my thought process.
Here's Wikipedia's list of project-management software.
We really like fixx, it provides pretty much everything we need, and everyone picks it up really quickly.
I tried trac for a while, but found multi-project support to be a bit of a hack. Bugzilla had usability issues and took ages to set-up. Basecamp is also really nice, but we wanted something that was hosted our end, rather than in "the cloud".
edit: and I did use OnTime at my last place of employment (the winforms version) - it was nasty to use, everyone found the learning curve rather steep, and at no point did the cost feel justified.
OnTime is too complex and the learning curve is really steep. I suggest redmine. it beats ontime hands down and simple to setup and use.
Well the fact you have to have a paid license for each user of OnTime, versus Redmine which is unlimited users for free.
10-user License $3,995 $3,595/yr
Each Add'l User $499 $449/yr
Man that is a little costly if you ask me.
Are you sure the Express version of OnTime isn't suitable for your needs?
It's currently US$5 for 5 users.
We're using FogBugz for a project, it's pretty cool. You can register for at free trial to see if it fits your needs.
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For an in house software project, what type of system I could use to centralize all the online team members discussion?
For our software development effort, currently our questions and answers are all scattered over emails.
Its hard to track ideas, questions, and answers etc.
What do you guys use? How do you manage such a situation?
Could a wiki be used for some thing like this? And if so, how could I get started? I have not done this before.
Our discussions could have sensitive information for the company as well so how could I address security?
In terms of technology, I would definitely go for a wiki (and Twiki is certainly not a bad choice). If it's installed on your company's intranet then there is no issue in terms of security.
One thing to keep in mind about a wiki is that it requires some work to keep it maintained; it's easy (and sometimes tempting) for everyone in the team to constantly just add pages without taking any linking of pages or structure into account. The moral here: a wiki is a very helpful tool for helping in communication, but it doesn't come for free.
However, depending on the kinds of communication/discussion that you're talking about: definitely watch out that online communication isn't replacing face-to-face communication. Depending on the interpersonal skills of the members of the team, it can some times be too easy for some people to shift to e-mail/wiki/forum use instead of verbal communication. Even having daily stand-up meetings (a la SCRUM) can be very useful in ensuring that everyone knows what is going on in the team instead of relying on electronic communication.
I'd suggest redmine
It has a forum and wiki per project, as you seem to need, and a lot more features very usefull when dealing with a project that requires several members to participate. And its opensource!
The only "issue" is that it was written using Ruby on Rails.
I would say Twiki, its an open source enterprise wiki.
Needs sometime to get used to it, but once you are, you will find opening new pages and topics very easy and quick.
One of the advantages IMO is its hosted on your own server
TWiki® - the Open Source Enterprise Wiki and Web 2.0 Application Platform
My own distributed team has experienced a similar problem, and we've solved it in the following way.
Day-to-day we run a continuous group chat (Campfire is an option). Announcements, questions, and answers can happen in chat, and it's recorded. You can search past transcripts as needed. This is simple and lightweight.
We also use a wiki for more permanent content. Sometimes material that starts in chat migrates to the wiki. The advantage of a structured wiki is that it makes it easier to onboard new team members and maintain specific content like team norms (like Subversion's HACKING doc).
The benefit is that we keep fast and lightweight chat for transient questions and so on, but we still have the wiki to hold content once it's deemed important.