OnTime is a defect, feature and project management system primarily designed for software development shops, designed to become the hub for all information related to your projects.. Out of the box it works in Agile / Scrum environments, and is feature rich, including integrated wikis, work logs, customer portals and a helpdesk, as well as task and other incident tracking.

OnTime isn’t simple; it’s complex, and full of options and features. But while there is a lot to it, the interface is clean and logical. A successful deployment of OnTime will require some thought and a good amount of planning. The exercise might even encourage you to document and develop some best practices, and potentially identify holes or weaknesses in your workflow. But that thoughtfulness will pay off in reduced noise and improved efficiency from your team.

The system is very modular — only the items you are using need to be activated or set up. It acknowledges that each feature or setting has the potential to add noise or overhead and leaves it to you to find that balance for your environment. If you want a basic stripped-down environment it can do that, but when your needs and requirements grow it is capable of growing to support you. Plus, absolutely everything is customizable so it can be adapted to just about any workflow or process.

One of the things I found most impressive during my demo and evaluation is how the user roles work. The permissions and roles aren’t just present for the sake of security — they also are integral to keeping the noise level down. In conjunction with routing rules and workflow definitions, items move through the system logically and only present themselves to people when they are actionable. The system hides what the users don’t need to see until they need to see it, and lets people focus on only what they need.

While focusing on the granularity is great, there are also a tremendous number of reports and great visibility into the overall project. Track time, resources, project status — all aspects of your project can be sliced and diced to view your data and status.

OnTime is one of those products that I really would like to use for my business, if only my business was a better fit for it. I love the way it handles incoming emails and generates support tickets. The integrated project wiki would allow me to compile the business knowledgebase I’ve been contemplating. The task management options are amazingly detailed and flexible. I’m also a big fan of process and workflow automation as a means to bring efficiency to a business and OnTime seems to excel at defining and enforcing effective process.

While a free single user Professional license is available, the cost and time investment to implement the hosted solution with the bells and whistles I would want for my business would be cost prohibitive and my circumstances don’t warrant the extra overhead. For even small development shops though, particularly those focusing on creative deliverables, OnTime is a thoughtful, powerful and flexible solution.

Multiple version levels of OnTime are available to match your requirements, from the Express version for small teams up to an Enterprise version for maximum flexibility. You can also choose between a locally hosted or a managed hosted environment.

I had some trouble setting up the SQL database on my local machine, so for my evaluation I’ve been working on a hosted database using a locally installed Windows desktop client. A web client is also available but I find myself more frequently working through the desktop version.

OnTime is complex and so won’t be the right fit for everyone, but its thoughtful design makes it easier to put together just the right set of options and features needed to accommodate your workflow and your particular requirements.

How do you feel about using more complex software, like OnTime, as opposed to stripped-down, simpler apps?

Here are some tips if you are seeking to build a web worker friendly PMO to manage geographically dispersed employees, contractors and partners:

Democratize Project Management Data. The democratization of project data has been an ongoing theme in some of my recent project management posts; it becomes more  important as project teams leave the confines of the cubicle farm. PMOs need to become more polished communicators of project status data (including schedules, risks, and client requirements) and target audiences at every level of the project from the “worker bee” all the way up to the executive stakeholder. The challenge is that the information has to be understandable by everyone —  meaning that views of project data cannot always be shared just by using a Gantt chart.

Move Communications Outside the Email Inbox. 2010 should prove to be a pivotal year for online collaboration tools like Google Wave and enterprise-class social media tools like Yammer and Present.ly (which we’ve covered previously). While email is a traditional and often-used form of project communication it does no good as a repository for project documents. Even if you can’t get your team to embrace online collaboration tools, you at least need to take the small step of ensuring that your project documents are online in a centrally-accessible place.

Implement New Project Management Tools. Microsoft Project and spreadsheets are traditional project management tools but more suited to project teams roosted in the same cubicle farm. The web is the future for project management tools – LiquidPlanner, Zoho Projects, and Basecamp are all examples of web-based tools that are easy to use and help to foster collaboration.

Rethink Meetings. I’ll spare the usual attacks on meetings as being detrimental to productivity, and fast forward to suggesting that meetings will have to change in priority, format and technology. PMOs need to look at conference calls, web conferencing, and online chat  for real-time meetings, plus the tools to archive those meetings for later reference.

For PMOs entering a new era of web working, the old staples need to give way to new tools, processes and working styles to ensure the success of the team and timely project delivery. Remember corporate culture, not technology, drives online collaboration and the PMO is in a position to ensure geographically-dispersed project teams have the framework, leadership and tools they need.

What are your tips for building a web worker friendly PMO? Share them below.

Artwork by Stock.xchng user: Ulrik

In this post, I’m going to explore some project management apps for the Mac that fit that vision because they offer intuitive user interfaces and flexible views over project data.

OmniPlan

OmniPlan from OmniGroup — one of the brightest minds in Mac productivity applications — includes an intuitive user interface with customizable views.

Task management in OmniPlan takes an outline approach, which is good for users who aren’t full-time project managers. From the outline view, you can track the costs associated with your tasks (resource cost, task cost and total); view task constraints and dependencies; and create milestones that represent completion points in your project.

I came to OmniPlan for my own project management needs because I was looking for a reasonably lightweight project management application and was already using OmniFocus, OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner Pro. One worry I did have was that I work with clients standardized on Microsoft Project, but OmniPlan can import and export MS Project files, and looking at my projects I saw most schedules were saved as PDF before they were distributed to the project team anyway, which took my worry off the table.

OmniPlan costs $149.95 for a single license (a free trial is available).

SharedPlan Pro

SharedPlan Pro from SharedPlan offers a project sketching tool (with network diagramming) and an online project editor with additional views, including Gantt chart and resource views. It also includes some more complex project management features including reports, analysis tools and management tools, offering flexibility as to how you can slice, dice and otherwise present project data.

You can easily overlook version management of project schedules, but Shared Plan includes version management features enabling you to compare previous project versions and check historical information.

SharedPlan Pro is available for Mac, Windows and Linux and costs $99.95/user (free trial available). A free iPhone application is also available.

Merlin2

Merlin2 is another strong Mac project management offering that includes several views of project data, including Activities, a comprehensive Gantt chart, Netplan, Resources and Utilization.

The Merlin2 Library is a source for project-specific information. You can drag and drop information from the library to any of your active projects. Out of the box, the library contains a range of documents and activities for general projects. You also have the option to customize the library to meet your respective project needs.

Merlin2 costs $210, with a free trial available. There is also an iPhone application available.

Which Mac-based project management application do you use?

I’ve been on my fair share of remote writing projects, including technical writing, contributing to books and writing for publications. Working on such projects and hearing from clients and colleagues about successful (and less so) remote writing projects, I’ve come to see that actions of both the writer and the client can influence the outcomes.

Here are my five keys to successful remote writing projects gleaned from my technical writing career:

Good documentation. I couldn’t agree more with Thursday’s recent post about the need for telecommuters to have good documentation. Managing a remote writing project can be a challenging task, so project artifacts like statements of work (SOWs) and status reports can be a helpful audit tool for both the writer and the client. You should also consider documentation for remote writing projects to include style guides, templates and source material for the writing assignment(s).

Remote access. Many of my remote writing projects require access to the technology systems I am contracted to document, so remote access is critical to the success of much or my work. Even if you aren’t a technical writer, a remote login can be useful to gain easy  access to project files, internal mailing lists, collaboration tools, and the like. You should also not just look to just the client to provide remote access and tools for the project. Because as you are bringing in outside expertise some clients may also look for you to bring new ideas like Google Wave to the table. As a remote writer, you should also plan for some redundancy for times when your home office Internet connection goes down, or you have other communications issues.

Technological self-sufficiency. In talking with colleagues and clients, the need for remote writers to be technologically self-sufficient has been a recurring theme. A writer’s technological self-sufficiency needs to extend to being able to diagnose technical problems and being able to communicate these potential issues in a proactive, clear and concise manner.

Mutually agreed upon publishing formats. Agreeing on publishing formats up front may seem like a common-sense move, but with the proliferation of MS Office alternatives, it is important that everybody on the team can open and manipulate the documents with a minimum of issues.

Managed document review cycle. Getting editorial and technical reviews of a your work completed can sometimes be a struggle, thanks to conflicting reviewer priorities and no writer on-site, standing at the reviewer’s door when the review is late. So it is best to implement a managed review cycle of documents you are writing, including accountability for yourself, accountability on the client/team side, review guidelines, and a schedule.

Do you work as a remote writer? Share your tips and advice below for successful remote writing projects.

Artwork by stock.xchng user: dmpop.

Projects is one of the most full-featured, yet still affordable, PM solutions I’ve seen on Apple’s mobile platform. That said, if you’re looking for something that replaces Microsoft Project, you’re looking in the wrong place. Projects is more like an advanced task manager with some PM app characteristics and tools. It’s a supplement, rather than an all-in-one solution.

A Quick App That Needs to Be Quicker

The idea behind Projects is that you can do some basic PM on the go. As such, I think it’s really key that the app be tailored towards pick-up-and-go usability, but as it currently stands, that isn’t really the case. Your default view upon entering the app, for instance, is a list of all your current ongoing projects. That’s handy, but it took me a minute to figure out that I had to hit the “Edit” button to create a new project to begin with. A quick add button is something many iPhone to-do apps have, and it perfectly suits the platform and the concept behind Projects. Hopefully it’ll be forthcoming in a future update.

You also can’t swipe to delete any projects, which could arguably be a data loss prevention feature, but actually feels like another missed opportunity. Likewise, neither project phases nor groups can be quickly added or deleted, but tasks, which are two levels down, can be. I’d advise the developers to just make the adding/deleting features universal.

Better Fit For Different Types of Projects

I do like the options you’re given when you’re creating a project, even if I’d like it to be easier to get there in the first place. Projects lets you create either Group- or Phase-based projects, which, depending on the type of work you’re doing, can provide a great advantage. Being able to choose between an organizational model and a more linear progress-based tracking model is a definite advantage Projects has that you won’t find in a lot of the more simple to-do apps.

Creating tasks for projects also provides a decent amount of flexibility. You can add notes, set a flag (which unfortunately is only a star-based rating system at this point) and set dates and duration. You can also assign it a status, choosing between “To Do,” “Waiting,” “WIP,” and “Complete,” which should cover all the bases for most people. I also really like the date interface, which allows you to pick dates from a calendar and makes everything a lot easier than it would be with manual input.

Gantt Charts and More

Perhaps the most notable feature Projects brings to the table is to be able to look at all your tasks for your various projects in Gantt chart format. While they’re a standard feature of project management apps, I’ve yet to see Gantt charts so well implemented on the iPhone. Viewed in landscape mode, the charts are even more legible and helpful in providing a quick overview of where you stand with regards to your various deadlines. Tasks are also color-coded according to their status, making your at-a-glance takeaway even more informative.

Finally, you can export your projects, which is really helpful if you want to use them on a desktop platform as well. You can export your data as text or as an MPX file, which can be read by Microsoft Project. Unfortunately, there’s currently no way to sync or import data, which is a major limitation of the app, but at least data on the phone doesn’t have to stay there.

For $6.99, you really have to judge whether or not what amounts to a standalone PM app is necessary for your iPhone. Keep in mind, though, that Projects is a very handy to-do application as well, so the cost isn’t terribly unreasonable, even if you’re only using it for personal projects and day-to-day activities.

Would a standalone mobile PM app be useful for you?

Liaise stakes its niche in the crowded project management field between personal information managers such as Gist and Threadsy, and full-blown group project management tools like Microsoft Project, Basecamp and their many competitors. Liaise claims that its users do not need to make changes in work habits in order to benefit from the software, since users can participate in, and manage, projects and tasks directly from Outlook.

The system automatically captures action items and issues (called “KeyPoints”) as users type emails to others, and organizes them by person, initiative, date and priority. A summary of these action items are available on demand, and they are also integrated into Outlook calendars.

As Liaise enters public beta, it is offering several new enhancements, most notably the ability to sync between users in various locations via the cloud. Cloud storage allows organizations using Liaise to sync project status, due dates, priority and other information with suppliers and customers. For security reasons, only pointers to project data are stored in the cloud, not the data itself.

The updated version of Liaise also gives users more control over whether, and how much, project data is displayed in emails to specific email recipients, even those who aren’t using Liaise or Outlook. One can also choose to have project data display immediately as one types an email, or have it show up after a message has been composed. Other enhancements include the ability to receive an emailed daily summary of project progress and items due.

The Liaise service is free during the beta period, but is planned to be priced at between $4.95 and $9.95 per month per user when the final version is released.

If you’ve tried Liaise, let us know how it worked for you in the comments.

When I’ve run up against clients and project stakeholders who didn’t understand (or want to understand) a Gantt chart, I take a consultative approach and work with them to see how they want to receive project scheduling and related status information. I believe that as a remote worker, any project scheduling and status data I communicate back to my employer or client has to stand on its own, without the need for further explanation by me.

In this post I am going to round up some alternatives to Gantt charts that I’ve used to communicate project scheduling and related information.

Mind Maps for Project Management I originally started using mind maps to brainstorm article ideas, but now also use them as a project management tool. When a former client voiced disdain for Gantt charts, I suggested using mind maps to communicate project scheduling and status data. The selling point I used was showing how mind maps can graphically represent project status information on one page. The client saw the mind map as easier to to read than a Gantt chart that they would have to scroll through to decipher the project scheduling information they were after.

MindJet shows how a mind mapping tool can be used for project management, and its online template gallery includes some mind map templates for project management including project planning, project scope and risk assessment.

Web-based Project Management Tools

The real innovation in project management tools is taking place on the web, not the desktop. While this new generation of project management tools doesn’t always rely on the Gantt chart, they have the advantage of making project schedule and status available in ways that your team members and stakeholders can easily understand without needing a project management certification. For example, Zoho Projects (reviewed for WWD by Doriano) includes a number of management views that don’t require an intimacy with the nuances and mysteries of the Gantt chart. Recently, Zoho launched a Task Details and Overdue Milestones View that make it easy for any project team member to see what project milestones are overdue. Alternative Views in Project Management Applications

If mind maps and web-based project management tools are out of reach to your project team for whatever reason then it is important to know the alternative view options available in your project management tools. Microsoft Project and OmniGroup OmniPlan both have alternative views, including calendar- and task-based views. These views are available within a few clicks and can be effective if Gantt charts aren’t working for you.

What alternatives to Gantt charts are you using to capture and communicate project scheduling and status? Share your tips below.

Artwork by stock.xchng user: jnatiuk.

If you’re moving to a web-based project management tool from MS Project, which one of the many available do you choose? Here are some considerations to take into account:

• Microsoft Project compatibility. The first thing is to ensure that you choose a web tool that is compatible with Microsoft Project so that you can use your existing project data.
• Multiple views into project data. In my experience, the Gantt chart can seem intimidating to some team members. As such, I recommend looking for a web-based project management tool that has a wide selection of views into project status (like calendar-, task- and timeline-based views), besides the venerable Gantt chart.
• Flexible subscriptions. One of the limitations of Microsoft Project can be the expense of the licenses. Many web-based project management tools like LiquidPlanner and Zoho Projects work on a subscription model, which offer a level of flexibility you just can’t find with traditional desktop software licensing. Project teams can scale up and scale down their subscription as members join and leave the team. If you rely on contractors and freelancers, you can set them up with a subscription and close it out when their project work is complete.
• Social media component. With social media becoming a growing element of project team communications, it should be an integral feature in web-based project management tools. I recommend looking for a web-based tool that has social media components to augment team communication about project status and scheduling matters. Developing an internal dialog about project scheduling and status is one of the best ways to keep the project on track.
• Online document storage and collaboration. Today’s projects generate a lot of project artifacts and documents. While it can be easy to let your project team stash documents in their email inboxes and local hard drives, choosing a web-based project management tool with its own document storage and collaboration features means that project artifacts can be accessed easily and won’t get lost.
• Mobile client/accessibility. Considering a web-based project management tool that has mobile accessibility or even its own mobile client means you and your team can stay in touch with the project at all times.

What are your requirements for a web-based project management tool?

While speaking with the CEO of SugarSync, I quickly realized that my post about running a virtual team was missing a critical component: backup. As I listened to the company’s presentation of its product, my mind began working overtime. SugarSync isn’t just about backing up files securely in the cloud. It can also be used for secure file sharing, collaboration and file syncing with cross-platform and mobile device access and compatibility.

How could SugarSync fit into my ever-expanding vision of efficient management of a virtual team? Looking at the diagram below, SugarSync could augment some functionality and replace others as follows:

1. Add secure backups for critical files. While our team does save important files to our 5pm project management tool, finding them can be a bit challenging. Using a project management tool for backup is also a bit shortsighted.
2. Replace Google Docs as a document collaboration tool. A major drawback of Google Docs is its hiccups when trying to open new Microsoft Word or Excel files, and other limitations that make true document collaboration impossible. Google Docs lets you collaborate on content, but SugarSync lets you collaborate on the actual documents without having to email them back and forth.
3. Replace Dropbox as a large file-sharing archive. You can share password protected folders via SugarSync, without having to use a special app on your desktop.

I’m a little wary of the price of SugarSync for my company. Even though it is geared toward small business, and you can start at about $30 per month for three users and 100 Gigs of space, each additional user is $10 per month extra, which adds up quickly. Since we’d be replacing two free solutions (Google Docs and Dropbox) with a paid solution, this really cuts into our apps budget. Still, my company’s team is going to try SugarSync over the next month using the free 30-day trial. I’ll report back on how it is working for us.

How are you collaborating, sharing and backing up your critical files? Are you using multiple applications or an all-in-one solution?

“97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know,” edited by Barbee Davis, pulls together useful project management tips and insights from working project managers without the dry academic style found in many project management books, making it a great instructional read for web workers seeking to hone their PM skills.

The format of the book includes 97 tips; here are some takeaways the book has for web workers:

• “Use a Wiki” reinforces the need to centralize access to project information. While this is pretty standard for many web workers, there are employers and clients who still need reinforcement on this point. This tip provides two solid pages of wiki advice and tips that should even be digestable and and understandable to even a non-technical decision maker.
• “We Have Met the Enemy…and He Is Us” should ring true to readers who have been on projects fraught with too many meetings, multicultural/multilingual project teams, conflicting work styles, and methodologies. The advice to keep an open mind in these situations is simple yet speaks volumes as to how a web worker can survive and even thrive in these situations.
• “Aggressively Promote Communication in Distributed Projects” boils down the reality of  communications challenges that may present themselves in geographically dispersed project teams including time overlap management, communications strategy and logistics.
• “Every Project Manager is a Contract Administrator,” while directed at working project managers also provides useful advice to web workers for mitigating such contractual issues like undocumented changes and the need to control changes within the specifications of the contract.
• “9.7 Reasons I Hate Your Website” made me chuckle but reminded me of how some companies don’t understand the differences between software development and web development.

These are just a few of the standout tips in the book. While it is directed more towards a software development audience, I recommend it to any web worker who wants to be more conversant in project management and its challenges.

The book is available directly from O’Reilly Media or from Amazon.com.

Share your favorite project management tips below.

How do you know if a project has failed? Although you can have specific quantifiers such as revenue or number of users, the simple way is to ask yourself this: “Did it meet any of its objectives?” If the answer is no, then that means you’ve got a failed project in your hands. Some of these projects can remain buried and forgotten, but there are others that you can’t stop thinking about even years down the road.

What do you do if there’s an old failed project that you want to bring back to life? Why Try Again?

The first thing I do when I try to resurrect an old project, whether it’s mine or a client’s, is to evaluate why it should be done. The reason is sometimes simple. It could be that when the project started, the people working on it weren’t mature or skilled enough to give it the proper follow-through. Now that they know better, they think it’s time to try again.

This was the case with one of my new clients. When he started his blog, he bought into get-rich-quick schemes and short-term tips on how to boost traffic. As his blog’s advertising income diminished and he saw few returning visitors, he called the project a failure. After looking into his mistakes, he’s determined to try again. It’s the classic case of being passionate about a project but not knowing enough to execute it well.

There may be many reasons to revive a failed project, but there’s one you should avoid. Don’t bring it back to life just because you have nothing better to do. I have to admit that sometimes this is the justification I have, and every time I use it all I get is a new way to fail at an old project. “Well, I need something new to work on…” is not going to cut it if you want to rework an old mistake and turn it into something great.

Evaluate Your Past Efforts

The first things we need to look at are our mistakes. In “The Dip“, Seth Godin lists 7 different reasons why one might fail. This includes the lack of time, money, or enthusiasm. Other reasons include picking the wrong thing to try, getting scared, not being serious enough, or focusing too much on the short term. In the failed projects I’ve evaluated, I can see that all of them failed because of at least one of these reasons.

Many of my failed projects, and even some of my clients’ failed projects, were also the result of a lack of definition. Here are some of its common symptoms:

• Saying “Our target audience is everybody.”
• Adding all the possible features and widgets into the project, even when they are unnecessary.

Apart from looking at these past mistakes, we also need to celebrate our successes. In the midst of all the chaos, what worked for you? What went well before the project failed? By looking back at both our successes and our mistakes, we can be better prepared for our next attempt to make it work.

Starting Over

If you’ve realized that resurrecting your failed project is the best thing to do, there are some things you need to keep in mind:

• Remember to quantify. “What’s measured improves,” as Peter Drucker once wrote. If you can, quantify the hours, cost, and other resources used up by your project. Other necessary statistics such as sales, users, and bug reports should also be recorded. By keeping a close eye on the numbers, we can predict most incoming challenges and plan for them accordingly.
• Things to avoid. Instead of just writing a lengthy to-do list, why not factor in your previous mistakes and remind yourself what you shouldn’t do? It’s easy to fall back on bad habits, especially if new processes take longer to pay off.
• Keep it simple. Whether you’re relaunching an old product, service, community, or blog, start with the simplest version you can possibly think of. This allows your project to remain flexible when there are a lot of unpredictable and volatile factors that may affect your success.

The truth is that it takes a lot of planning, effort and passion to bring an old project back to life. If done right, the attempt is usually worth it.

Have you ever tried to revive a failed project such as a blog, online community or an app? What was your experience like?

Image by eduardtrag from sxc.hu

The only problem was, by taking on the new projects, I was effectively doubling my workload, and I was barely keeping up with what was already on my plate. Something had to give.

For several hours, I tried to force a square peg into a round hole. I tried changing my perspective, thinking of it in different ways, rearranging my schedule over and over — all to no avail. It just wasn’t going to fit. I finally had to accept a few simple truths.

I Must Accept My Limitations I had to be honest about my resources and availability over the coming months, as well as my commitment level to each current and prospective project. The truth was, I wasn’t completely committed to some of my current projects, and although I could be very motivated about some of the prospective ones, I knew that my resources and time constraints wouldn’t accommodate them. Plus, some of the projects would be best pursued after some of the others were well on their way to completion, if not 100 percent complete. That was the reality. Even though there were many things I wanted to do, I needed to accept what I could do, at least for the time being.

Seneca probably said it best: “Loads that are too heavy for the bearer are bound to overwhelm him.” I can continue to add to my schedule, to-do list, and obligations, but eventually, I will hit a wall. I’ll run out of time, energy and motivation, and resources, and on top of all that, the quality of my work and attention will decrease. I have to be very selective with my attention, if I hope for any of my efforts to count for something.

I Must Prioritize, and Realize When I’m Not Seeing the Forest for the Trees

There are many times when I’m pulled in too many directions, and the only way to keep it all in perspective and get my bearings is to stop and remember why I do it. When I can reconnect with that, all the other influences fall away — money, prestige, sparkly things that eventually lose their appeal, and whatever else clouds my vision. I’m able to find clarity and see the forest again, and decisions become a lot easier to make.

I Must Stay the Course

There will be many times when boredom, restlessness, failure and distractions challenge my ability to keep a grip on one thing that really matters to my success — “sticktoitiveness.” “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” That’s a quote from Thomas Edison who said that he himself failed 10,000 times before succeeding. It’s hard to stay committed for the time it takes to see a business to success. Just ask Chris Brogan, Seth Godin or Darren Rowse. Standing by a vision takes a lot of patience; seeing it through takes even more persistence.

The bottom line is, things will never be perfect, and I can’t do everything at once, but I can start somewhere. I can pick the top few projects that are realistically achievable at this stage in the game, those few projects that help me with my “big why.” Once I select those few, I have to stick with them, in spite of all the things that will pull for my attention. If I do, other doors will open up down the line, and I can take on some of the projects I put on the back burner in times past. Until then, I have to remember a wise quote by Twyla Tharp: “Better an imperfect dome in Florence than cathedrals in the clouds.”

How do you stay on the course toward success, especially considering how challenging it can be to fit all the priorities into a day and fight back the seemingly endless supply of distractions?

Image from Flickr by nestor galina

One helpful tip was her organizational system: a box.

“Everyone has his or her own organizational system. Mine is a box. I start every [project] with a box. I write the project name on the box, and as [it] progresses, I fill it up with every item that went into the making of the [project].” This resonated with me since I like to think of all of my work in terms of projects, and at any given point, I usually have several of them going on. I’ve modified the idea a bit for my purposes.

The box concept provides a way to become better organized so that capturing, processing, and actually taking action on information becomes seamless.

Step 1: Capturing Information

The first step in any organizational system has to be capturing information. I’ve tried almost every possibility, but the one that works best for me is simple pen and paper. I like to use a small binder (the kind that holds 8 1/2″ by 5 1/2″ pages) as my capture device.

Step 2: Purging and Organizing

Once I accumulate twenty pages or so (usually a couple of times per week), I purge my notes and put everything online into my favorite organizational tool Backpack.

• Article/Podcast Ideas. I use Backpack’s writeboard feature to file beginnings of article/podcast ideas. I put one idea per writeboard and title each writeboard by topic or idea. Then I write out any initial thoughts about the article or podcast within the writeboard. Once I’m ready to flesh out the idea further, it goes into a Zoho Writer document.
• Other Notes and To-Dos. Other notes and to-dos generally go into one of my Backpack “boxes” (see image below).

Within Backpack, my box pages are all tagged as “Boxes” and then removed from my sidebar so that I can just click on the “Boxes” tag and see all of them at once (plus, this keeps my sidebar clean).

I currently have eight boxes, and they’re based on my open projects. All other ideas go into my “Someday/Maybe” page. My open projects at this point are kind of context-based and fall into one of the three moving parts (or income buckets) for my business — coaching for solo entrepreneurs, web site design, and writing. I sub-divide the writing boxes so that I keep them separated by medium (blog, newsletter, podcast, writing gigs, etc.).

Within each “box” (or Backpack page), I have notes and to-dos related to each project. I generally create separate to-do lists for each sub-project within those boxes. In my radio page/box, for instance, I have each episode broken down into a separate to-do list, and I can then drag and drop the episodes so that I know which one is up next.

Step 3: Taking Action

Of course, all the organizing in the world won’t help, if I never take action on the information collected, so I use a couple of other tools to help me with this step.

• My Calendar. I have to take action on each of the boxes at some point each week, so I have time blocks to accommodate them within my Google Calendar (see image to right). When I get to a time block, I set an alarm for the time allotted, open the corresponding “box,” and get to work. I stop when the alarm goes off and move on to the next thing on my calendar. I’ve been leaving my calendar open all the time so that I check in frequently, which helps me stay on task.
• Gmail Folders. I also use Gmail folders (also known as labels) to organize action-related information (see image below).

For instance, I have an “Interviews” label, and when I line up a guest to be interviewed for an article or podcast, I mark that conversation with the “Interviews” label and archive it. Then I can go to my “Interviews” folder each day to prepare for upcoming interviews (without clogging up my Inbox). As I conduct interviews, I remove the labels and, thus, the conversations from that folder. I’ve been using red exclamation points to mark those that I must take action on before the interview, but I’ve started sending out standard guest packets, so I really take action on all interviews now and will eventually stop using stars within the folder.

Step 4: Polish and Refine

Naturally, it’s not completely flawless. It still needs some polishing, but it’s definitely working better than my previous organizational system. For now, I’m just trying to faithfully stick to the system, knowing that, in turn, it will faithfully keep me on track. As I see areas that can be improved upon, I know I’ll modify them, but so far, it’s working pretty well.

How do you “box” your information? What systems, tools, and techniques help you stay organized and productive?

Box image from Flickr by John-Morgan

It’s good to see a web app vendor taking a step in this direction and making its tool more suitable for “serious” PM work. Most project management web apps don’t have decent Gantt charting; it’s one of the reasons why I still prefer Microsoft Project for planning, and why many project management professionals say that most PM web apps are not really project management tools at all.

If you’d like to try Easy Projects.NET Interactive Gantt charts, a 15-day free trial is available.

Have you tried Easy Projects.NET? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

I haven’t used Bento since it was first released, so a lot is new to me. For the purposes of this review, I won’t be detailing what’s changed so much as what strikes me as most useful about the program from a web working angle, since I imagine many of you will be new to the software as well.

The Basics

By default, Bento looks somewhat unassuming. It lists databases that already exist on your computer, whether you were thinking of them as such or not. That includes your Address Book contacts, your iCal events and tasks and your iPhoto library. It also lists a category called “Projects,” which starts out with dummy content for demo purposes. So, out of the box (pardon the pun), Bento is a convenient, all-in-one storage spot for all of your existing work and play-related Mac data that looks great to boot. But it can be more than that, too.

You’ll notice that in addition to the nicely-designed interface, the entry screens associated with items in your databases provide more customizability than their counterparts in the apps themselves. Address book entries, for example, can be browsed in an Excel-like list view, or in a grid-style view that’s reminiscent of one of the ways of browsing your albums in iTunes. Each entry has all the data that your Address Book card includes, but you can customize them further, adding photos, objects, text fields, or many other things.

Bento for CRM

That comes in handy when you want to use Bento as a CRM application. You can include details like known family members, business partners, and associates, all through your own custom fields. Add a preferred meeting place, best time of day to contact, corporate gifting schedule, or whatever else you may need to keep track off. Attach meeting notes or agenda files to keep a record of your interaction with said customer. It truly can be as powerful as you need it to be.

Bento for PM

As project management software, Bento is equally versatile. You can attach the same sort of custom fields to your projects here, and tie them to your address book and other collections for easy, single location access. If you need to open iCal or another app to check or change something directly, Bento can do that for you, too.

Keeping track of complex, multi-staged projects can be difficult, but Bento has a Smart Collections feature which should allow you to navigate even the most treacherous of prolonged endeavors. Set filters to catch all entries under a specific budget, for example, or by end or start date, or by the PM assigned to the task in question. It’s a great way to make sure nothing falls through the cracks without having to manually comb through every entry.

Bento for Everything

There’s countless uses of Bento for those working from home, so I won’t go into much more detail here, but it does feature handy, pre-made templates for time-tracking, inventory management, expense monitoring and issue tracking. It might take a little more setting up than tools designed specifically for those purposes, since it is made to be a jack-of-all-trades, rather than a master of one, but that also means it could become an end-t0-end solution for all of your business needs if you put in the time and effort to make it so.

Bento 3 is available as a free trial from Filemaker. The full version will run you $49.99 U.S. for a single user license, or $99.99 for a five-user family copy. Those who already own previous versions of Bento (either 1 or 2) are eligible for a $20 rebate. The way I see it, $50 is not a very high asking price for something that could easily do the job of three or four other programs, but try it out first to see if it fits your working style.

What programs do you currently use to manage your work-related databases on Mac or PC? Do you think pleasing aesthetics affect your database-related work one way or another?