Entry Software Corporation

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Project Management Tools

How to Motivate your IT Team

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Employees may lose motivation over time leading to a decrease in work efficiency. This declined motivation can cause the company’s productivity rates to go downhill. The implementation of incentives may improve employees’ health and drive. Happy and healthy employees make for satisfied managers. Incentivizing properly provides a motivating and energized work environment which leads to a successful company. Here are a couple pointers below on how to motivate your employees to improve productivity and company success. 

Set Individual Standards

Setting quotas may be just what you need to improve the motivation of your team. Working and being held up to a standard is a key motivator for everyone to complete tasks. When setting a quota it must be challenging but not unreachable in order to maintain motivation. Employees must maintain confidence in their abilities to reach their quotas. Quotas can work to measure employees productivity levels and help employees take accountability for unfinished work. When setting quotas, it is important to review each employee separately to find the rate at which they work. realistic Individual goals and requirements can then be set for the following month that are greater than what they are currently producing. With company standards in place, employees are motivated by the fact they may be rewarded or penalized based on their work productivity.

Facilitate Friendly Competition 

Naturally we all want to be the best at what we do or at least on the same level as those around us. This translates into the workplace where creating friendly competition for employees can positively affect their productivity levels. Providing a visual representation of each employee’s sales or project milestone completions can enhance motivation. This may be used in combination with rewards for the top performers to push them to their full potential. Rewards can be as simple as a gift card or you can get creative with them. Competition allows for employees to visualize the work and progression it takes to get a promotion or raise within the company.  

Implement Incentives

Offering rewards for accomplishments in the workplace can improve the motivation of your team. Recognizing quality work gives your employees the feeling that they are of value to the company. Depending on the nature of the project, these rewards can be large or small, material or cash. However, incentives must be implemented properly in order to be effective. Different types of incentives can be used for all the stages of a project. For example, when the first milestone is met you may have an incentive for the top performer on that team. This could be small, something as simple as a gift card to their favorite restaurant. Then the rewards may increase in value as the project progresses towards greater milestones for optimal motivation of the team.

 

Eliminate Your Fears and Doubts About Resource Management

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Resource management is all around us. Even at the dawn of human-kind, man has thrived off managing food supplies, mental and physical energy, as well as implementing everybody effectively. Resource management has become integrated into our everyday lives in ways we may not even recognize such as the use of broad media advertisement and the automation of technology. Despite its constant implementation, the implementation of resource management is constantly evolving.

In business, resource management is important to the efficiency of the business and the satisfaction of the customers and employees. However, to implement good resource management into a business, one must first understand the process and factors that affect its effectiveness and discuss the benefits of good resource management.

First, let us understand what resource management is. Resource Management is the process of effectively distributing necessary amounts of one’s resources. Its primary goal is to minimize ones unnecessary loss in the process. When applying this to business, its application fits the process perfectly. Resources can be anything tangible or intangible that a business may own such as equipment, supplies, labor and time. The goal of applying resource management is to effectively run a project to provide a great experience for the customer.

Now that we understand the process of resource management, it is important to understand factors that influence the effectiveness of it.

Understanding What Resources are Required to Complete the Project

The first step to the resource management process is to understand what resources the project requires. When given an objective, the project manager will have to decide the amount of time each task will take and the resources it will take. This entails providing a detailed list of resources for access to employees in order to inform organizers about the upcoming project. Once they have received the project requirements, such as time limit, persons available, and material, the next step of the process occurs.

Acknowledging Scope of Resources the Business can Provide

The business must understand the scope of resource that the business can provide. This means understanding the number of resources that the business can provide to fit the requirements outlined in an effective manner. Often times, we will jump to the conclusion that if we need a resource it is better to have more of the resource available. While this is true as there can be some unforeseen errors; people will often purchase large amounts of resource they will later have no use for. While this method is time effective as one will spend less time worrying about the resources, it is financially wasteful. On the flip side, however, only assigning the necessary resources would be financially effective, it could leave the business stressed as any mistake would lead to a dysfunctional project.

Calculating a Work Load Balance

In this step, the project needs to be organized to find that balance between the resource usage and financial efficiency. For example, if thirty tasks need to be completed (resource requirement) and it takes employees two hours to complete a task (scope of resource), the organizers have to find the time frame to complete them. On one end of the spectrum, the time frame could be “complete in sixty hours”. This would mean that the thirty tasks would need to be completed in succession with no breaks. While this is financially efficient and time resourced efficient, it does not satisfy the labor resource of the business as it is unreasonable to have workers work for sixty hours straight. On the polar opposite, the time frame could be “complete in one month”. This would mean that employees could perform one task a day to complete the project. While this is labor resource efficient, it is time ineffective and financially wasteful. This is why a good workload balance incorporates both resource effectiveness and financial efficiency. Taking these aspects into account create a great resource management plan.

There are a number of benefits of that come with developing a resource management plan, this includes satisfying both employees and customers, and being financially beneficial. Employees are satisfied because they are not over stressed by their workload. Customers are satisfied because they are receiving their goods or services in a timely manner. Finally maximizing financial efficiency will benefit the business as a whole. So don’t be afraid of tackling resource management, it is fairly simple and very beneficial to master in one’s business practices!

What to Look for in Project Management Software

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Managing an organized work schedule and workload can be difficult. Managing many people’s workloads and schedules can be even more difficult. Having organized project management software in place to organize the resources, events, and schedules will make the job of the project managers a whole lot easier.

Project management software can provide services that will help businesses organize teams and projects in an organized fashion. Not all software offers the same services. Here are the necessities of a good project management software system:

Resource Visibility

When deciding on a project management software, always keep in mind whether it will have complete resource visibility. When acting as the project manager of an operation, understanding the assets you have and how you are going to use them is important to keep organized and on budget. Project management software should visually inform the project managers and users of the resources currently available and what the used resources have pertained to. Additionally, it should contain all team members’ resources displayed for clarity among the team so resource utilization is maximized.

Simple Work and Event Scheduling

A good project management software system should integrate all of the user’s work and events into their system. Calendars such as Google Calendar or Outlook can be integrated so you receive email or notification reminders about upcoming events. You can also create plans or events so it will notify you in advance.

Team Member Work Loads and Scheduling

Project management software should allow for team members to be organized and managed in projects. Aspects such as their workloads and schedules can be organized and altered at any time by the manager. It should also relay clarity to the team members by including information about their assignments. Each team member works with their schedule and the system works with their availability. Finally, timesheets are included so the managers know the effort consumed to complete work. Overall, the project management software should organize the ideas and jobs of the project managers and provide a clear schedule and fair workload for employees.

Quality Project Help Desk

A very important aspect of a quality project management software is to improve customer service through the use of an integrated project help desk. A help desk is an online system where customers can comment, advise or inquire about difficult or confusing aspects of their project deliverables or experience. The customer sends a ticket to the project support team who then answers the request, which is then sent back to them. The software will set up the system and provide the support team with an organized system to address each problem. The system should allow the support tickets to be affiliated with a project since issues will arise as the project is in the development or deployment phase.

Organized Project Management Support

Overall, good project management software should provide support to the project manager through organized UI, automated reminders, visual resource management, team member overview and scheduled events. All of these aspects should be presented to the user in an organized and easy to use way. When all of these aspects are together they form a proficiently functioning project management software system.

The Triple Constraints of Project Management

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Project managers who firmly grasp the triple constraints of project management have a higher chance of achieving quality outcomes that are within the defined scope and budget of the project plan. Your strong understanding and use of this project management concept can provide your plans with benefits including well-trained project sponsors and teams, lower costs, clearly defined project scope and happy customers.  Use these ideas when having discussions with clients, your project teams, executives and project sponsors.  When you do, you’ll subliminally train them to think like project managers. [Read more…] about The Triple Constraints of Project Management

Using Google Sheets for Project Management

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Who would have thought that someone would use Google Sheets for project management? 

Who would have thought that someone would use Google Sheets for project management? There’s even a G-Suite course on how to do it. Fantastic, isn’t it? I’m impressed by the ingenuity shown by individuals to create useful tools using spreadsheet programs. Google Sheets with its built-in ability to share and collaborate, make an excellent choice as a team tool.

However, I’m left wondering who would use Google Sheets to perform Project Management? 

Fortune 500 to Fortune 1000 companies would use Google Sheets – not a chance. There are so many additional integrations and moving parts that a database program with programmers is the only choice. Fortune 500 organizations are using big and expensive tools to manage their projects. These tools typically have integrations into their ERP and organizational reporting systems.

Schools and Universities and publicly funded organizations would use Google Sheets to manage projects, possibly. There are times when looking for tools, asking for budget approvals and implementing software must be put aside. At those times using something like Google Sheets works; even if it means more work, less control, more error and less accuracy. I know, that doesn’t make any logical or financial sense, but when you’re dealing with publicly funded organizations, it rolls like this.

Manufacturers and Industrial businesses would use Google Sheets to manage projects – not likely. For-profit organizations know the value of a dollar so creating project management systems using spreadsheets is not an option; it takes too long, is not accurate enough, has no controls and is prone to error. When it comes to making money, that also means spending less. When customer satisfaction, timeliness of the project, scope and cost are on the line, having a real project management system pays.

If Google Sheets works for you – super!  If not, you might want to try out a formalized, highly controlled project management system like TeamHeadquarters.  It assigns tasks, tracks task updates, helps to create status updates and provides the perfect opportunity to monitor resource utilization.

Is Project Management Timing Everything?

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Project management timing is everything, right? That’s how you succeed in most of life’s pursuits. “Where the rocky road of preparation intersects the freeway of opportunity.” This is a great way to think about education, preparation, practice, discipline, and work ethic. It is not always the best way to prioritize work. Why not use management, instead of timing, to set priorities?

[Read more…] about Is Project Management Timing Everything?