And it turns out that my struggle to get this part of my business right has been based on a bad definition. (Or probably, more accurately, no definition.)

So in order to find the right tool – the question must be asked: “What is project management?”

And the answer is best summed up in explaining what it’s not.

Earlier this year I purchased Sitepoint’s The Principles of Project Management – and on page 8 the obvious truth stood out:

Firstly, project management is not personal productivity. This is an easy mistake to make, however. Most folks’ early experience with project management is on smaller projects on which they’re doing most of the work themselves. It’s easy to start treating the project schedule as your diary, the task list as your to-do list. But as soon as you add anyone else to the project, be it a client who wants to understand the time line or a colleague helping out with some of the work, this approach starts to cause problems.

If you make your project management tools double as personal productivity tools, you’ll almost certainly be including far too much detail. Keep a clean line between what you need for yourself personally, and what the project needs. This way, when you have slightly larger projects with more people involved, your tools will scale.

If you think about it, many of the project management tools pitched at web design businesses are very much focussed on tasks. Way too much detail – and the whole project management things just gets way too hard.

So I have found a solution that is surprisingly low-tech:

A whiteboard.

Yep – that’s it. It happens to be a magnetic whiteboard though. So here’s what I do.

1. The whiteboard is divided up into columns – with each column representing a milestone. “Received Content”… “Design Approved”…  I have about 7 stages I think from memory (I’m writing this from home) but there’s no magic number. Divide your workflow into milestones you can tick off.
2. Each project is represented by a little piece of paper with some essential details. And it’s held to the whiteboard with an amazing piece of technology called a magnet. When you have received the content, move it into the next column!

This overcame a couple of problems:

1. Software wants you to enter due dates for everything, whereas in reality a lot of when something gets finished depends on the client. So due dates regularly got missed, and planning went out the window. The whiteboard has no dates.
2. It’s quite easy to stand back and see any bottlenecks on your process. Got a lot of projects sitting in stage x? Why? Then do something about moving some of those along.

That’s about it. Check the whiteboard once or twice a week with your team and get progress on where everything is at, and what projects can be moved to the next column.

This does not address the question of the detail though. What actually needs to be done during each stage of development? And how do you know when it’s done?

Ah, well that’s a topic for another post…

I read this article on email and customer service about 6 months ago but while I was looking at some goals for 2008 I thought it was worth revisiting. So how do you stack up in those figures? If I’m not careful I tend to find myself amongst the 70% who fail to respond within 24 hours. Definately something I’ll be fixing for 2008. A good tactic is mentioned in Mike’s first point:

Automatically respond to all emails received: People will be more willing to wait for a reply if their initial communication has been acknowledged. Include a commitment to act on the issue and when you will respond fully.

I think people will generally understand if you can’t address the issue immediately – but it’s important to acknowledge the email and set an expectation of when you will be able to do so. It also ties in to something I wrote back in 2004 about controlling your email (instead of the other way around!) – it’s as relevant now as then. So, my top tips:

1. Choose when to check your email – don’t let your computer decide for you
2. As you’re going through your messages, fire up your diary (or whatever time management tool you use) and mark a time to actually attend to the task or issue
3. Respond to each email as soon as you read it (even if it’s only a brief response) – and at that point you can let the other person know when you’ll attend to is as well

Of course, if it’s an emergency you may need to deal with it straight away and all the above advice is null and void, but we don’t live in a perfect world, do we?

Originally posted at almostanything.com.au

We have come so far with browsers, but unfortunately most email clients are, well, a long way behind. If you have ever tested an HTML email in a few different clients you’ll know the frustration.
Yesterday’s launch of the Email Standards Project hopes to remedy this situation. Some people love it, some hate it, but HTML email is here to stay. And if we could have the proper standards support in email clients then it’s probably fair to say that a lot of those opposed would change their mind.

We have a long way to go, but at least now we have a vehicle!

Very badly.

I’m sure you have all seen it. Several paragraphs of text per slide. Cheesy animations (and different animations for each block of text). The “handouts” get handed to you as the presentation commences, so you and up reading the handouts during the presentation. And then you feel a little guilty, so you start listening to the presentation, only to find it contains exactly what’s on the handouts anyway – nothing more.

Yikes – if this is what teachers do then I’m really sorry for my kids.

It reminded my of an eBook by Seth Godin called Really Bad Powerpoint. (Links to a PDF file.) Well worth a read if you ever have to give a presentation.

And then today I read a comparison between the presentation styles of Uncle Steve and Uncle Bill. (Jobs and Gates if you’re not sure.) Which reminded me of Seth’s eBook again – especially if you look at the comparisons between the 2 sets of slides used in the example.

Now, I know public speaking is hard – and I’m trying not to be too critical of the teacher here. But please! Put some more thought into your presentations!!!

Yahoo would plug a “strategic hole” at Microsoft that was not filled by the purchase of AQuantive, announced last week, Mr Noto [a Goldman Sachs analyst] wrote in a note to clients.

AQuantive, which creates web ads and measures whether they reach the target audience, does not give Microsoft the roughly half a million advertisers required to compete against Google, Mr Noto said.

Windows Live Search obviously isn’t being used for search as Microsoft had hoped. But one has to ask: would this be a good thing or a bad thing for Yahoo? And does Google care?

You can really see that their purchase of Measure Map, a blog-specific statistics tool, has inspired much of the Analytics overhaul.

Below is the menu from Measure Map on the left, and Google Analytics on the right.

Now, they are obviously different as they serve different purposes, but the revised Analytics layout is much fresher – benefiting from the great work Adaptive Path did with Measure Map.

If you haven’t already, sign up for an Analytics account. It’s amazing what info you can get, and now how easy it is to access! (And have nice reports automatically emailed to you every week!)

So it was refreshing to see this story on an Australian TV network using a little forward thinking.

Channel 10 has embraced YouTube, whom some might feel to be a potential rival, as a new opportunity to broadcast content.

From the article:

“Unlike most television organisations, we don’t regard YouTube and Google as the enemy. We think that they will be great distribution partners,” Mr Smith said. Ten last year offered clips of local comedy Thank God You’re Here on YouTube.

“One of the reasons we put stuff on YouTube last year was that it was free, incremental traffic,” Mr Smith said.

Ten treated the YouTube videos like a broadcast, including ads for the show’s sponsors in the clips. “The fact that we put it out on YouTube means that there were tens of thousands of additional eyeballs watching those things for free.”

The lessons here? Just because you don’t understand something, that doesn’t make it an enemy. And perhaps look for ways to leverage something new to your own advantage instead of dismissing it.

But I won’t be going back to Video Ezy.

You see, I had a couple of late returns. Nothing major – 2 movies that were returned a day late. One day late.

Didn’t think too much of it until I received a threatening letter from Video Ezy. Followed by a letter of demand from this mob called Entertainment Recoveries.

Now get this – it’s all over $12.

If new release movies are $6 each, in the month after we finish with our Stargates we would probably have spent $48 with them. That’s 4 times the amount of the late fees, in 1 month.

Now, for the sake of $12, I’ll never go back.

What business would permanently distance a customer over $12?

Think of it this way. Even if I only hire 2 movies per month (which is pretty conservative) that’s $156 in a year, or 13 times the amount of the late fee. Pretty good chance of hiring more than 2 movies a month, mind you.

I don’t understand the marketing logic behind this. Sure, if I hadn’t actually returned the movies I can understand the legal threats.

(And to top it off, I now have a $15 “Administrative Charge” as well. Give me a break!)

And I love this bit too – notice at the top of the excerpt above? I have a “Member Number”! I’m a member of Entertainment Recoveries now?

Although I don’t think it’s just limited to Geeks. I have people come in from time to time wanting a quote on a website that, in their eyes, will be the next big thing. Some are extremely reluctant to tell me about their idea “in case I steal it”! (How can I possibly do up a propsal for them if they won’t tell me what they’re wanting to do???)

And I look through this list and they are making all the same assumptions that are listed here.

Think I’m going to hang onto this link and print it off for the next one that comes in!

He’s called it “Mattcuttsarama“… Dunno about that title(!) but the post itself makes pretty valuable reading.