There was a nice article in the PMI Community post on the do's and don't's of project scheduling:

http://www.pmi.org/eNews/Post/2008_05-09/WhatNotToDoWhenPrepProjectSchedule.html

Technically everything this article suggests is quite accurate for project scheduling. However, sometimes we seem to get stuck doing things too mechanically. My experience has been that the more tasks are scheduled as inter-dependant, the less hangers (as the writer calls it) you have in a project, the more likely you are to finish late and go over budget.

This book Critical Chain is an old favortie of mine that challenges this type of traditional mechanical project management techniques:

http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Chain-Eliyahu-M-Goldratt/dp/0566080389/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214226091&sr=8-1

Contrary to the PMI article assertions, with regards to project scheduling, Goldratt's stategy is to have as many hangers as possible. The idea is that any chain is as strong as its weakest link (i.e. the critical chain), so the less your tasks are dependant on each other, the more likely you are to allow people to work independantly and hit their targets; therefore the more likely it is for the project to finish on time.

Critical Chain is a highly recommended read whether you are a project manager or not. It opens your mind to a new way of thinking about defining and managing constraints.  In this book Goldratt applies "theory of constraint" to project management. I can write a more detailed summary of the concepts in this book; if you are interested, let me know.

In a previous post, I argued that the advertised drought in the American high-tech talent pool isn't nearly as bad as what Microsoft and others claim it to be. I also said American companies ought to look first to small-town America before filing the paperwork to import foreign talent on worker visas.

Here's another solution: Instead of debating an arbitrary number such as how many H-1B visa immigrants should be allowed into the country - who really knows whether the 65,000-person cap is too high or low? - instead of artificial caps of any kind, reward those companies that perform their research and development here in the United States.

Congress can introduce legislation that would give tax credits and other incentives to companies that choose to do the right thing by employing Americans to perform high-tech tasks that have recently gone to foreigners in India, China, Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

Canada has its collective head screwed on tightly concerning this issue. More on that shortly.

Governments should not be in the business of telling private companies who they should and should not  be hiring. But they should be in the business of encouraging - even rewarding - responsible behavior. With an R&D tax credit program, it would be in a company's best interest to look first at small, hard-hit towns in America. With such a system, free-market principles would be at work. If credits were compelling enough, those companies that choose to go overseas for talent would likely be the ones that really need it, as opposed to those just looking for cheap labor. And let's face it, a big benefit of the H-1B visa system as well as off-shoring is cheap labor.

For years, Congress has debated the merits of liberalizing the worker visa system. Much of the debate has been centered around the H-1B program, which allows foreigners to temporarily work in the United   States to fulfill mostly specialized, high-tech positions. The system is currently capped at 65,000 new visas per year, with an additional 20,000 for foreigners who have earned advanced degrees in the United States. Efforts to raise this cap have gone back and forth for years, with no clear outcome in sight.

In April, the Bush Administration extended the amount of time foreign nationals can work here on student visas from one year to 29 months. The move was in response to the increasing demand for foreign talent. Many students, some argued, didn't get their chance to work here under H-1B status because of that demand.Now, that decision is being challenged by a number of groups including the American Engineering Association, the Immigration Reform Law Institute and The Programmers Guild. They argue that the administration overstepped its boundaries.

I think these arguments could be lessened substantially - even settled - if there is a real program aimed at both helping American workers and keeping American corporations competitive in the global marketplace.

Canada could be a fine example. The federal government of Canada and many of its provinces make remarkable efforts to keep R&D in the country. One such initiative is called the Scientific Research and Experimental Development program and it offers substantial federal and provincial tax credits for wages, materials, machinery, equipment and contracts. Here's how it works:

A privately held Canadian-controlled corporation that performs qualified R&D in the country can earn a 35 percent tax credit up to the first $2 million of qualified expenditures and 20 percent for any excess amount. There are similar programs in certain provinces such as Quebec that provide additional tax credits. Qualified work includes experimental development, research and support work in areas such as bio-tech, pharmaceuticals, engineering, operations and computer software. This is a refundable tax credit, which means that even if your business makes no profit, you will get the appropriate refund back in cash.

To take advantage of these programs, hundreds, if not thousands, of multi-national corporations including Wyeth, Compuware, IBM have setup large R&D centers in Canada employing hundreds of thousands of Canadians. The huge positive economic impact of these programs on the prosperity of Canadians is quite visible everywhere you go. These are high paying local jobs for highly qualified resources that stay put and contribute to their own communities.

I don't see any downside to having such a system, even a stronger one. Let's eliminate the silly cap program. Let the free market reign.

Technology isn't the panacea for everything. It's not even a panacea for all of our project management needs.

Recently, I was visiting a customer. As usual, I started by discussing with their VP of professional services how they use our software for cost tracking, billing and project management. But what he showed me next was truly an eye opener -- he took me to his "War Room."  A traditional conference room had been transformed into the "battle bridge." Whiteboards covered every wall. A couple of flip charts were place at each corner with all kinds of "action item," diagrams, and notes scribbled on them. In the center part of the room, a projector was connected to a computer running Tenrox software, displaying reports of live project financial data. This was the only "hi-tech" aspect of the war room!

What I discovered from the war room is that we've become too enamored with technology. Even with the best software systems in place, managers and team members can't get a bird's eye view of everything that's going on. And project contributors don't fully comprehend the consequences when they are late with their deliverables.

A few weeks after the trip we built our own war rooms at Tenrox, one for the services team and one for R&D. We bought special whiteboard wallpaper and put all of our key projects on them. Best of all, we put the project owners on them too. All of the projects have color-coded indicators, with late projects getting red stickies. It turns out project owners don't particularly like seeing yellow or red beside their names.

Team members meet here and go over project status. The key here is that the room is for high-level conversations. The boards, if you will, are the war plan. The projects on them are the individual battles. The live reports are like a general "drilling" to get more detail about a specific battle. Imagine one battle being lost -- perhaps a project that's late -- and you can imagine the visual and mental context such an environment presents.

Now imagine all of these projects in an Excel spreadsheet, or in a software application, with ETAs being altered by changing a cell on the project manager's monitor. Not the same impact, is it?

I recently ran across one company that has taken the war room to a whole new next level. The company, Belgium-based Cockpit Group, (http://www.cockpit-group.com/en/index.html) has organized an entire design business around its "Management Cockpit" concept.  This so-called cockpit, developed by neurologists, human intelligence scientists and computer engineers, "translates strategy into operational terms" through an ergonomic presentation with four walls of goal-oriented visuals.   

The visuals are designed to meet the support needs of senior execs. During meetings, only the visuals needed for the particular projects on hand are presented. It's kind of a targeted version of our war room.

In one corner of a cockpit is the "flight deck," a six-screen computer that powers the entire room. On the screen are training and checklists that help a management team conduct more efficient meetings and to make decisions faster, the company says.

For one client, ice cream manufacturer Iglo-Ola, the flight deck -- the black wall -- depicts the main key performance indicators. On the red wall, there is information on the company's market and customers. On the white wall are important projects. And on the blue, internal resources.

Certainly not every company needs such an elaborate system. Our low-tech war rooms have done wonders for our projects. The accountability, big-picture thinking and transparency this has created is simply incredible. Suddenly, our project managers, contributors and vice presidents (generals) seem to be better aligned and more in tune with where we stand on all of our key initiatives. I will report back to you in a few months with more feedback on how much the war room approach has impacted our project delivery.

As the US teeters on the cusp of recession, news is everywhere about decreased employment and increased layoffs.

In each of the last four months, employment rates have declined. While not the best economic indicator month by month, these rates over half a year are nearly a perfect bellwether of the health of the economy. Whenever employment has declined steadily over six months, a recession has almost always been underway. I, for one, will be watching this metric closely. The next report is due June 6.

And while layoffs don't equal 2001 levels, they are something to watch. From telecom equipment maker Avaya (http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2008/05/avaya_says_it_will_cut_400_job.html) to the city of Atlanta (http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2008/05/19/daily38.html) news of major downsizing is increasing.

It doesn't take an economist to realize that layoffs can have ripple effects in the marketplace and local communities. And it certainly doesn't take a psychologist to imagine how layoffs can damage employee morale and customer perception.

So what's the best way to avoid layoffs?

How about not over-hiring in the first place? The truth is, even though we are in a downturn, many of these layoffs don't need to happen. The best way to avoid deciding how to cut loose one-third of your workforce is to employ a project workforce management philosophy. Instead of hiring carte-blanch during prosperous times, always hire as if you are living in lean times; leverage outsourcing and build teams for a period of time on a project by project basis. That's the heart of the project workforce strategy. The project workforce -- also called the "Hollywood Model" -- was envisioned in the 1990s by author Tom Peters and is quite simply a highly-specialized group of professionals assembled on a need basis and called upon to execute specific projects.

Many types of companies can take advantage of a project workforce. In particular: software companies, IT service providers, professional service firms or any corporations that work on contracts. All it takes is solid relationships with and actionable data on a pool of internal and external talent you can tap into when required.

At Tenrox, I'm proud to say we have never had any major layoffs due to the adoption of this model.
With a project workforce, you can scale back some of your initiatives if the economy goes south or if cash flow becomes an issue. The resources you do not need, when they lose your business, have other projects to keep revenue coming in. They don't lose their jobs. Plus, your full-time employees -- you'll have fewer of them -- will often be more loyal since you can remain loyal to them and you can also invest in training them for the new challenges of a changing marketplace.

With the traditional model of business, created before the Internet and globalization, companies go through endless cycles of ups and downs and hires and fires. Employees have to learn new jobs when their colleagues are cut loose. Integration becomes a problem. Morale declines. And suddenly, your best employees -- fearful of losing their jobs and bitter about increased workload -- start looking elsewhere.

Not only are massive layoffs not employee friendly, they're not customer friendly either. Responsibilities inevitably are not transitioned efficiently, a fact that can have a direct impact on current customers. Worse, news percolates that Company X just fired one-third of its workforce. How do you think a prospect perceives this? If you were presented two otherwise equal companies: Company X, which is cutting people left and right, and Company Y, which appears to have a stable workforce, which one would you go with?

Technology isn't the panacea for everything. It's not even a panacea for all of our project management needs.

Recently, I was visiting a customer. As usual, I started by discussing with their VP of professional services how they use our software for cost tracking, billing and project managenent. But what he showed me next was truly an eye opener -- he took me to his "War Room."  A traditional conference room had been transformed into the "battle bridge", whiteboards covered every wall, a couple of flip charts were place at each corner with all kinds "action items", diagrams, and notes scribled on them. In the center part of the room a projector was connected to a computer running Tenrox software, displaying reports off of live project financial data; this was the only "hi-tech" aspect of the war room!

What I discovered from the war room is that we've become too enamored with technology. Even with the best software systems in place, managers and team members can't get a bird's eye view of everything that's going on. And project contributors don't fully comprehend the consequences when they are late with their deliverables.

A few weeks after the trip we built our own war rooms at Tenrox; one for the services team and one for R&D. We bought special whiteboard wallpaper and put all of our key projects on them. Best of all, we put the project owners on them too. All of the projects have color coded indicators, with late projects getting a red sticky. It turns out project owners don't particularly like seeing yellow or red besides their name.

Team members meet here and go over project status. The key here is that the room is for high-level conversations. The boards, if you will, are the war plan. The projects on them are the individual battles. The live reports are like a general "drilling" to get more detail about a specific battle. Imagine one battle being lost -- perhaps a project that's late -- and you can imagine the visual and mental context such an environment presents.

Now instead if all of these projects are in an Excel spreadsheet, or in a software application, with ETAs being changed by changing a cell on the project manager's monitor. Not the same impact, is it?

I recently ran across one company that has taken the war room to a whole new next level. The company, Belgium-based Cockpit Group, (http://www.cockpit-group.com/en/index.html) has organized an entire design business around its "Management Cockpit" concept.  This so-called cockpit, developed by neurologists, human intelligence scientists and computer engineers, "translates strategy into operational terms" through an ergonomic presentation with four walls of goal-oriented visuals.   

The visuals are designed to meet the support needs of senior execs. During meetings, only the visuals needed for the particular projects on hand are presented. It's kind of a targeted version of our war room.

In one corner of a cockpit is the "flight deck," a six-screen computer that powers the entire room. On the screen are training and checklists that help a management team to conduct more efficient meetings and to make decisions faster, the company says.

For one client, ice cream manufacturer Iglo-Ola, the flight deck -- the black wall -- depicts the main key performance indicators. On the red wall, there is information on the company's market and customers. On the white wall are important projects. And on the blue, internal resources.

Certainly not every company needs such an elaborate system. Our low-tech war rooms have done wonders for our projects. The accountability, big picture thinking and transparency this has created is simply incredible. Suddenly, our project managers, contributors and vice presidents (generals) seem to be better aligned and more in tune with where we stand on all our key initiatives. I will report back to you in a few months with more feedback on how much the war room approach has impacted our project delivery.

USA Today has an article about how rising airline ticket costs -- attributed to soaring fuel costs -- is leading businesses to try and find ways to cut their travel expenditures.

The article, http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2008-04-30-jet-fuel-high-fares_N.htm, says thanks to fuel costs, which are 44 percent higher than last year, fares have risen at least 18 percent. More and more airlines are forced to introduce fuel surcharges to their increasing list of airfare costs. That means businesses -- large and small -- are finding other solutions to increase sales while at the same time mitigating travel expenses.

One powerful solution is teleconferencing and online presentations. Companies such as WebEx (now owned by Cisco) and ACT Conferencing have proven technologies that are now widely used to "meet over the web". And Nortel has a product called "Telepresence" that brings businesspeople together with a life-size, full-motion cinematic view and stereo sound. It's like IMAX and Dolby Digital for business meetings.

Here are some of the changes we made at Tenrox to try and reduce travel costs:

1. Onsite versus online services

Just two years ago, I would say more than 75 percent of our implementation work was done on site and face-to-face, whether they were done in New Tork, Sydney or London. Today, our on-site activity is down to 30 percent -- at most.  So what changed?

We started to communicate with our customers about the benefits of online instead of on site services. Today we go onsite to meet our customers, the project teams, to get to know one another, to understand their needs and their business. After the initial one or two face to face meetings we have established the trust and the relationship to do much of the remaining work online. Customers love it. More work gets done faster with remote online delivery; and we are able to handle a larger number of implementations with less staff since less time is wasted on travel. Our customers win by saving on travel costs and faster service delivery, and we win by having lower turnover rates on highly specialized consultants since less travel creates a more stable and a happier career life for our service teams.

2. Project meetings

Disconnected systems and management spreadsheets lead to oganizations that often require more face to face meetings to get things done. At Tenrox, we have agreed on and implemented role-based dashboards and key metrics per department. When I come to work, I log into my portal and I can see how every team is doing. The information I look at is not coming from the team leaders or their assistants. The reports I look at are derived from data entered directly from the project contributors; managers simply have to approve/reject the data entries. Therefore the business unit performance, project costs, revenue, issues, and change requests I look at are based on actual data reported by our staff.

These reports and dashboards have virtually eliminated status report meetings. We meet to discuss strategy, to celebrate wins/review losses, and yes to review project progress; but at least in any such meetings people are not showing up with manipulated spreadsheets or to verbatim repeat what I could get from the dashboards/reports I already have access to.

Dashboards, project management reports based on live data, online approval workflows, and online collaboration technologies have reduced our G&A travel costs by at least 50% over the last two to three years. Not to mention the reduction of time and energy we wasted going over "design your own" spreadsheets in management and review meetings.

3. Combine events

Like many other companies today, we have a highly dispersed workforce. Our employees and outsourced teams work from various offices and from home throughout three continents. To make sure all of our teams are aware of the company's mission and business plan we try and bring everyone together once or twice a year in Montreal, where the company was founded and where most of our R&D staff is located. In the last few years, we have combined such all hands meetings with performance evaluations, training, company parties and picnics to try and make the trips as fun, worthwhile and productive as we can make them to be; and to avoid additional travel costs we would incur if we did some of these events separately.

These are some of the travel cost savings we have come up with. Do you have any insights to share? What are you doing in your company to try and reduce travel costs?

Responding to record demand for foreign workers and the beating of the "I can't find enough American talent" drum by Bill Gates and other prominent business leaders, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are urging Congress to raise the H-1B visa cap.

H-1B visas allow foreigners to work in the United States for up to six years to fulfill specialty positions - usually tech-related - that require at least a bachelor's degree. To keep the loss of American jobs to a minimum, the government imposes a yearly limit of 65,000 visas with an additional 20,000 allocated to foreigners with advanced degrees from U.S. universities.

Earlier in April, the government received 163,000 requests. That means filers have a 50 percent chance of getting an H-1B worker for next year, especially since the system is designed to be random. Literally, American companies have to win the lottery to get foreign talent.

With so much demand, America must really have a critical technology talent crunch, right? My answer is "No."

Yes, India and other developing countries are outpacing us in the engineering department. And yes, some skill sets are hard to find here. But I believe there is far more talent in the United States than advertised. One needs only to look at the dot-com crash of the early 2000s. As American high-tech workers lost their jobs in droves, H-1B applications still poured in.

And this continues as the country is facing a weakening economy.

Proponents, however, say a weakening economy is when you need more - not fewer - foreign workers because American companies need to be extra competitive to survive. Large tech firms and groups such as the American Electronics Association are pushing for increased caps and new rules, saying American competitiveness is hurt because the country does not have enough high-tech workers. Said Gates to a recent House panel: "The current base cap of 65,000 H-1B visas is arbitrarily set and bears no relation to the U.S. economy's demand for skilled professionals."

As a result of the growing support, this could be the year when more liberalized H-1B laws are passed. There currently are several bills floating around, including the "SKIL Act," which would raise the number of visas to 115,000 and increase the cap by 20 percent each year afterward.

That would be a mistake. Yes, we are living in a flat world and many companies have to bring in foreign talent. But another big reason why these companies want more H-1Bs is simply to import cheap labor. Rules on H-1B wages are hardly ever enforced. And employees from India and China are happy to work for wages below American standards.

In my recent travels across small-town America, I have seen first hand the high number of skilled workers - American workers - who want to be employed in technology fields. I see many of them who want to be designers, programmers and developers. There are states such as the hard-hit Michigan and Wisconsin that have plenty of young college graduates who would be great candidates for Microsoft, Google and other high-tech firms such as Tenrox.

Why do we want more workers from Bangalore? We should be looking to Detroit, Madison and Milwaukee first.

You want more students to take high-tech courses in school? How about offering fewer jobs to foreigners? Let's send a message to young Americans that high-tech careers are safe - as safe as any job can be in a flat world - as long as they train to compete in that flat world.

What Microsoft and others should be doing is setting up more development centers in hard-hit markets - whether they're hit by lost manufacturing jobs or the real estate crisis. Not only would those companies get a workforce willing to work, but they'd get employees cheaper than in places such as Redmond or Mountain View. Government can help by providing research and development tax incentives for companies that invest in small town America; just look at Canada's successful R&D tax credit program as an example of a model that can be adopted for America's hard hit states.

Global IT giant Wipro is taking a page of that strategy. The company - one of the world's largest offshorers - is currently building software development facilities throughout the United States that will employ hundreds of recent college graduates. Wipro CEO Azim Premji, realizing that it's good business to be developing in the places one is selling, trains the employees in intensive programs and puts them right to work. We're not talking six-figure salaries here. But these are 20-somethings who are getting valuable educations.

So, what's the best part of these two strategies? Premji would not be reversing a 20-year offshoring model if he didn't believe it wasn't good for shareholders. Ultimately, though, more American IT workers will be entering the market. That means companies can rely less on going through government bureaucracy to find the world's top talent and rely more on fostering technology talent right here in the United States.

I'd like to hear your thoughts. Do you think the United States really does have a critically-short amount of high-tech workers? Or do you think the claim is overblown? What do you think should happen with the current H-1B system in today's flat world?

I enjoyed this blog post on the Lighthouse Consulting blog, originally written by author Larry Wilson, entitled, "The Two-Tunnel Trap."  Wilson tells the story of engineers digging a tunnel through a mountain: one team on one side, and one team on the other, with the objective to meet squarely in the middle.  If successful, these teams will dig one continuous tunnel--but if not, they will dig two tunnels leading into the middle of the mountain.

Wilson prescribes a formula of "simple, familiar, and dramatic" to help people avoid two-tunnel communications.  For regular speaking or writing, this is a winning formula for communicating new ideas.  And for the business communications that we generate in our project-based work, I add "organized" to the list. 

By "organized," I mean "ordered and structured in a fashion that allows team members to find what they seek."  Without organization, teams have no platform for sorting through or communicating the many events and messages that are part of a project.  This requirement is easy to grasp, but difficult to deliver without one centralized system.  I emphasize "one" because multiple systems are like multiple tunnels into the mountain.

In the extreme, multiple disconnected systems result in a MESS (meetings, email, and spreadsheets) that is (to use Larry Wilson's words) neither simple, nor is it familiar to all users--although the results can be dramatic in that they lead to chaos and drama in the workplace.

Even in our own company, we have seen many tunnels into the mountain. When each manager used to attend a status meeting with his or her own spreadsheet of project information, costs and revenue, each group was able to show success and profit.  However, in the aggregate, when you look at the consolidated picture it was never as rosy as the individual managers had painted it with their spreadsheets. It was amazing how people could interpret and manipulate the data.  As a customer put it: "Many business executives and project managers are experts at the movement of costs, but not the reduction of them."

This is just an example of how one centralized project workforce management system enables the members of a team to dig one, and only one, tunnel through the mountain.  A unified platform is the key to avoiding slow (or fast) death by manipulated spreadsheets; and making sure that communication--in the sense that we communicate in business--connects people on all sides.

For more details about the benefits of enterprise travel and entertainment expense management as a part of Project Workforce Management, see Rise of the Project Workforce.

Travel and entertainment (T&E) is the second largest cost for most organizations, after labor. Yet it is frequently managed manually on paper and spreadsheets. Automating T&E not only reduces administrative effort, but it also simplifies the allocation of costs, expedites billing, and provides critical information for enterprise-wide reporting. Companies can save not just thousands, but millions of dollars in administrative costs and boosted productivity. But moreover, automated and integrated T&E helps prevent data entry errors and omissions, "rogue" spending, and even fraud and the resulting legal liability.

T&E expenses generally follow an expense management cycle, which consists of the initial recording of expense data, approval and review, forwarding to payroll/accounting for processing, reporting of billable expenses to the billing manager, reporting to A/P and A/R for financial reporting, and inclusion in executive dashboards and reports.

To ensure that this data gets reported appropriately, and that users at the appropriate levels see only the data they are authorized to see, an integrated and automated solution is key. Such a system can be configured to accommodate scenarios such as multiple levels of approval, late submissions and approvals, and automatic approvals of certain types of expenses. It can also accommodate line item approvals, and requests for expenditures, such as travel, that may need approval before the fact.

Automated T&E has become essential for companies that operate across multiple currency and tax jurisdictions. More frequently, employees, their employers, and customers are in different countries with different currencies, subject to different tax laws. The automated system facilitates reporting, reimbursement, and compliance issues that might otherwise become severely delayed when processed manually.

T&E systems, as a part of project workforce management, ensure that project accounting is accurate, corporate policies are followed, and office expense reports are accurate and timely. Offline as well as online expense reporting systems provide employees who travel with easy-to-use tools to avoid the frustration, delays, and inaccuracies of manual systems.

I enjoyed this insightful article on SandHill.com, written by Anthony Deighton: "Simplicity: What's Next in Business Software."  Deighton explains that the simple and straightforward user interfaces that software users have come to expect on the web will, and must, influence enterprise software investments. 

Deighton explains that enterprise software (such as traditional ERPs) became complex by promising managers the ability to "command and control" the work environment.  But newer, smaller, "grassroots" applications are changing the end-users' expectations and behavior.  He writes:

The "consumerization" of enterprise software is rapidly underway. In today's Web 2.0 and Internet-driven world, consumers download applications and use them on their own. Their expectations are that the software they use at work will be equally powerful, simple and engaging.

The world of Project Workforce Management is a collaborative one.  To be effective in deploying and managing these solutions, we promote and depend upon on very high end-user adoption--from the project workers who report their time, expenses, issues and project status, to the executives who analyze that data on their dashboards. 

Therefore, Deighton's message is a critical one: "Simplify or Die," and I agree.  The huge command-and-control enterprise systems with long, expensive implementations are already the dinosaurs of our industry. The software we use at work has to be fun, simple and should not require a user's guide. 

However, as Deighton states, simple does not equal "lite."  Vendors who can offer solutions that are simple and fun to use, yet powerful in their functionality--and the most effective at solving real business problems--will be rewarded in the software marketplace.

In BizJournals, Brad Patten warns that Microsoft will stop selling Windows XP on June 30.  He states that Microsoft is about to put many businesses between a rock and hard place, and I agree.  "...There is no compelling reason to upgrade. Vista isn't more stable, faster or easier to use."

Here is another article on CNN about how users are resisting the forced upgrade: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/14/microsoft.xp.ap/index.html?iref=newssearch

XP has been stable and reliable.  Vista looks cute/fancy, but it does not provide enough new features to make a change from XP worthwhile.  In my opinion, Vista is an "innovation" that is driven only by the desire to appear innovative--not out of any solution to a compelling business need.  As a business person, it is difficult for me to justify the expense and effort involved in upgrading--except that Microsoft is forcing our hand.

As I discussed in this post about innovation among CIOs throughout the world, the "next new thing" is not always a good business decision.  The reluctance of businesses to embrace Vista further validates this observation.

While US companies resist the change from XP to Vista, companies in rapidly developing areas, such as China, will buy new PCs that are only available with the Vista operating system.  If you follow the same logic as Accenture did in its recent study, this indicates that Chinese are more innovative than we are.  But that logic is faulty.  When we meet the needs of our customer in the most efficient and cost-effective ways possible and we offer something worth investing in right now, that is true innovation.
 

For more details about the benefits of enterprise timesheet management as a part of Project Workforce Management, see Rise of the Project Workforce.

Enterprise timesheet management is the centralization and streamlining of all time data processing for an entire organization.  It covers both project and non-project work, and paid and unpaid leave.  Despite the many benefits of enterprise timesheet management-including reduction of compliance costs and administrative overhead, improved project visibility, and accelerated billing-automation of the timesheet management cycle must be approached carefully to ensure widespread adoption across the organization.

Enterprise timesheet management addresses the requirements of labor law compliance, managing leave time accrual, scheduling shift work, tracking project time as well as non-project time, streamlining billing, and providing analytics.  Through the use of differentiated time, also known as activity-based costing, time is recorded down to the task level, which provides the detail necessary to meet these requirements.

The main benefits of treating time and attendance as an integral part of Project Workforce Management are to provide a single system to track employee availability, skills, work time, pay, project and non-project work, leave, expenses, billing, and other related processes; it also centralizes reporting and and analysis across all work groups.  Other measurable benefits include reduced payroll processing time, reduced misappropriation, detection of absenteeism and erroneous entries, and reduced timesheet review time.  For project-based organizations, enterprise time management has the added benefits associated with project planning and project status reporting.

Managing time data is generally described by a cycle that describes how time is tracked, reported, approved, and processed:

• Employees, consultants, and field workers enter time into the system.
• The timesheet is sent to the appropriate person(s) for review.
• Once approved, the timesheet is forwarded to payroll/accounting for processing.
• Any billable work is reported to the billing manager for invoicing.
• Project plans and schedules are updated to reflect the actual work done; project managers can measure earned value and actual project performance.
• Detailed or summary cost is sent to accounting for financial reporting.

Only through an integrated, enterprise-wide system-integrated with workforce planning, project planning, payroll, billing, accounting, and CRM-is  the entire enterprise timesheet management cycle possible.  Furthermore, a configurable enterprise-wide system is necessary to accommodate the various timesheet approval processes and workflows required in today's workforce.  These workflows may be simple or complex, and may include multiple review cycles, line-item approvals, and leave requests.

Jim Carroll, Futurist, and Trends and innovation Expert, who delivered the keynote at the Tenrox User Conference in the fall, has published a new document on his web site, entitled "Where's the Growth?"  This is a good read for project managers who are taking charge of their own careers and seek to keep their careers on the leading edge, even in the "economic downturn" that so many experts are forecasting.

Carroll outlines a number of industries and ideas that point toward growth in the coming months and years.  Whether the economic indicators point upwards or downwards, the skills for survival in a flat world remain the same.  They include the ability to learn new things, and to adapt to the ideas and skills where there is growth.

I continue to recommend that today's professionals should commit to projects and not to companies, even though a recession might tempt us to focus on the promise of a steady paycheck.  The real "steady paycheck" comes from your ability to deliver successful projects, not from your reliance on any one company. It makes sense to stay where you are as long as the projects you work on truly challenge you and make you more competitive.

A study by The Hackett Group, covered here on the CIO Magazine blogs, describes four qualities of a top performing IT department.  As is often the case, such studies validate the case for a Project Workforce Management approach in IT. 

The four qualities are (as excerpted from the CIO Magazine post by C.G. Lynch):

1) Investment allocation. The IT department invests less in existing infrastructure and utilities, and instead focuses on innovation and improvement.

2) Project pipeline. Top performers don't invest in just any project. They are incredibly discerning, which allows them to keep the project list short and deliver projects on time.

3) Delivery performance. When a project gets started, it gets finished in the proposed time period.

4) Application portfolio management. You manage all of your existing systems well and efficiently (so well that they're just "there," rather than ever really being a problem or hindrance to the business). This allows you to focus on new, innovative apps that come down the pipeline.

Delivering on #2 and #3 depends on IT's ability to intelligently prioritize and select their IT projects, and then manage those projects to success, two popular topics on this blog and in Rise of the Project Workforce.

The mentions of "innovation" and "innovative apps" in #1 and #4 make an interesting contrast to Accenture's recent conclusion that many IT departments tend to lag in innovation--but the top performers will discern which innovations are appropriate and provide real benefits to their organizations.  Again, intelligent project prioritization and selection supports this effort.

Despite the many studies like this one, it is alarming how many IT departments and other project-based teams still manage their people and projects using the MESS (meetings, email, and spreadsheets), or use in-house developed or non-integrated point solutions.  Even for smaller teams, the emergence of on-demand Project Workforce Management solutions makes this technology accessible to IT departments who seek to be top performers.

For more details about how to implement effective project planning using Project Workforce Management, see Rise of the Project Workforce.

Any nontrivial project needs a plan-especially if it requires complex tasks and resources.  The enterprise project planning component of Project Workforce Management interacts with workforce planning and time and expense tracking.  It also generates earned value reports, which measure the true value created during project execution in any given point in time.  Together, these features keep projects on track and on budget throughout their life cycles.

The project planning process begins after project initiation, during which requirements and scope are defined.  The deliverables of project planning include:

• Project Work Breakdown Structure (PWBS): a hierarchical grouping of the project's tasks and milestones.
• Gantt Chart: A display of the PWBS showing task dependencies, scheduling constraints, task durations, percentage complete, and the critical path.
• Resource Breakdown Structure (RBS): a hierarchical list of the personnel on the project, including functional groups , skill sets, and roles.
• Reports: Real-time project earned value, project status, budget, and cost/revenue reports, based on data collected during project execution.

Earned Value

Earned value reporting provides simple but powerful answers to questions such as: "How much is it going to cost to finish the project based on current progress?" and "What are our problem areas? And why?"  Earned value analysis calculates many indicators that are used to directly answer these questions.  These indicators include: Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled (BCWS), Actual Cost of Work Performed (ACWP), Cost Variance (CV), Schedule Variance (SV), and To-Complete Performance Index (TCPI).

Calculating these indicators provides a systematic method for comparing budgets to actual for the parts of the project that have actually been completed, so that performance can be measured throughout the delivery of the work.  When budgets and costs are attributed to each element of the PWBS, then these can be evaluated to determine which tasks and milestones are on track, and which need additional support-while it is early enough to take corrective action.  Earned value analysis can even calculate the amount of effort required to get a late project back on schedule, and where that effort needs to be applied.

Budget and Status Reports

The project planning tool allows the project manager to compare budgets, estimates and actual for individual tasks, milestones, or the total project.  Automated alerts, integration with timesheets, and a workflow engine are a few of the features that tool provides to keep project managers abreast of all aspects of the project's progress. 

Through effort tracking (enabled by integration with timesheet data), estimated time to complete, and written status reports, project contributors can use the project planning tool to communicate their progress to the project manager.  The tool should also support schedule management that is based on milestones as well as deliverables.

An article from the W.P. Carey  School of Business at Arizona State University, entitled "What Job Shortage? Firms Go Begging for High-Tech Talent," addresses the surprising trend that fewer students are enrolling in IT programs:

Nationwide, [Randy] Guthrie [Microsoft academic relations manager] maintains, enrollments in college-level computer science programs have dropped as much as 70 percent compared to enrollments of 10 years ago. "Information systems are down a similar degree."

It follows, according to the article, that the demand for entry-level IT workers is outpacing supply:

"Every employer I've talked to says they can't find enough people to hire," [Robert] St. Louis [professor of information systems at the W. P. Carey School of Business] maintains. "There are internships that aren't getting filled ... new positions that aren't getting filled. Every employer says programs like ours are not turning out enough people."

The dramatic drop in the workforce pipeline is being attributed to the fear that all IT jobs get offshored, and that the career offers no job security.  This trend is particularly alarming as the bulk of the current IT workforce ages and retires. 

However, not all IT jobs are in computer programming, and not all jobs are offshore-able--companies need analysts and managers who can solve business problems, not just code:

Employers, [St. Louis] maintains, need people who can handle "management of technology in business. It requires all the leadership skills, strategic vision and project management ability used in any management career." (emphasis mine)

In an earlier post I asked if offshoring would threaten innovation.  I expressed my hope and belief that the market will value innovation.  It does seem that the job market is slowly, perhaps clumsily, responding to the need for innovation.  Offshoring can help companies get deliverables produced once project requirements are carefully spelled out.  But identifying and solving business problems cannot be summarily "outsourced" and "offshored".

The companies who need innovators and schools who need students need to keep getting the word out--that the smart jobs, the innovating jobs, are aplenty.

Recently I posted my commentary about Accenture's recent assumption that the US is falling behind in its technology leadership.  Their assumption is based on a study in which CIOs did not state a strong preference to adopt new technologies, relative to their counterparts in other countries.  The news of that study happened to coincide with my own contemplation about how companies try too hard to "innovate" their business processes by adopting or creating new technology.

I frequently see companies get caught up in a compelling, but sometimes incorrect assumption that "new," "high quality," and "appropriate to my business" are equal.  IT projects such as implementing enterprise software systems, like Project Workforce Management, are usually major investments of time and money.  For many companies and situations, it is wise to mitigate the risk of these investments by selecting proven technologies and products, and ensuring that they will solve the company's real business needs.

I often see a similar phenomenon when companies develop home grown applications or customize an existing enterprise system.  Some companies try too hard to create their "dream" solution, especially if they are automating for the first time.  Like kids in a candy store, they get excited about each new possibility that some custom application development might offer.  They request customizations that are so detailed and complex that the last 5% of functionality costs them more than the entire implementation budget.  Their ideas are innovative, but they are very specific to a specific resource group or the company's ideal business processes--which are not necessarily best practices. 

These customization projects become almost living organisms. The allocated budget creates employment for consultants or internal resources who work on the new new thing. These same groups eventually become special interest groups that resist any innovation, always choosing their own self-interest and job security over improving the company's competitive standing.

In too many cases, these customization projects fail.  I have seen companies who spent a lot of time dreaming, evaluating, and tire-kicking, sometimes for years-and finally accomplishing very little in terms of value creation.  If they had just saved their money and rolled out a product with its out-of-the-box functionality and very limited, highly selective customizations, instead of paying for a consultant to take them through a long specification process, they would have accomplished so much more and become more efficient than they were ever before, for far less of an investment.

Innovation and dreaming big are critical to our growth--as people, companies, and nations--but they have their place.  Dreams must be followed by action.  And to be actionable, a dream must be backed up with proven experience.  Otherwise, dreams can cause us to over-complicate our plans.  As project managers, we know that a complicated plan, which relies on unproven tactics or technology, is not as likely to succeed.

My advice to companies who seek positive change: stick to the basics.  Start with the proven experiences and offerings, and then innovate as you grow.  Adopt technology out-of-the-box as much as possible, customize but very very selectively, and adapt your business processes accordingly.

For more details about how to implement workforce planning strategically, using Project Workforce Management, see Rise of the Project Workforce.

In a project-driven or professional services organization, human capital is the most important asset to be managed. Not only do companies need to put the right people in the right place at the right time, but they also need the ability to forecast their supply and demand for talent, account for the differentiated time data generated by their work, and be ready to comply with regulatory requirements such as Sarbanes-Oxley. Companies without a workforce planning strategy risk inefficient processes, unstructured work product, lack of collaboration, long billing cycles, and projects that are out of control.  Especially in an era when talent is becoming scarce, workforce planning is an imperative for organizations whose main product is the time of its talent. 

Workforce Planning Cycle. Workforce planning is an iterative discipline. The cycle of workforce planning includes filling resource requests, analyzing utilization, forecasting capacity, managing and identifying the people to fill that capacity, and then starting the cycle again. Organizations committed to managing and planning their workforce in this iterative manner will optimize their time and talent over time, because they will be equipped to look ahead and take corrective actions as needed.

Considerations in Deploying Workforce Planning.  To gain the most advantage from the workforce planning system, organizations should consider the following:

• Eliminate "stovepipes," and view the organization as a shared workforce. Doing so ensures the most appropriate talent on each project, and overcomes the "buddy system" wherein managers only use their favorite people, regardless of their skills or the needs of the project. 
• Make workforce planning bidirectional and collaborative. Get involvement from many users when outlining requirements and selecting a system, to ensure widespread adoption. Consistent participation by employees at all levels is critical to success.
• Model demand and supply. Measure gaps and plan to fill them. Use the system to answer important questions like "Do we have the right talent to meet upcoming demand?" and "Are billable resources being used optimally?" 
• Close the "intelligence loop." Workforce planning helps tie operations to business strategy, and provides executives with the decision-making tools they need to identify risks, support growth, and become profitable.
• Understand your scalability and flexibility needs. In change-oriented, fast-moving industries, organizations need the ability to alter business processes quickly, in response to regulatory and market changes. Workflows should be easy to configure without programming.

The Power of Collaborative Workforce Planning.  The optimal workforce planning system is a collaborative platform that serves as a system of record for the customer, the project, and the workforce. It has an intuitive workflow engine that adapts to business processes. It allows managers to find the most qualified resources based on configurable, flexible criteria. And, it provides a complete view of the organizations human capital that enables actionable intelligence.

New research from Accenture, covered in this article on CIO Insight (by Eric Chabrow, "US Tech Leadership Seen Slipping"), leads Accenture's Chief Technology Strategist Bob Suh to the conclusion that the US is falling behind as a leader in technology innovation.  I believe this conclusion is wrong and misleading. 

The CIO Insight article states:

Suh reached that conclusion after reviewing results of a survey of more than 500 global CIOs that the business advisory firm conducted late last year. Only 6 percent of American CIOs surveyed responded that they wanted to be leaders in adopting new technologies vs. 15 percent among European and 19 percent among Chinese IT leaders. But 54 percent of American CIOs said they would rather be followers in adopting technology, compared with 44 percent in Europe and 27 percent in China.

These numbers could suggest a lag in innovation, if you choose to read them that way-and Accenture can certainly drive its consulting business by encouraging CIOs to "innovate" (i.e., implement new enterprise systems).  But innovating just to innovate is misguided and costly.  There are several ways to interpret Accenture's findings-and none of them equate to any loss of overall leadership or lack of productivity by US IT leaders.

• First of all, "the basics" are the basics for a reason-they work.  Project Workforce Management is a perfect example.  There is no rocket science here, and what we do may rarely be seen as "innovative technology."  But I see companies over and over again who fail to implement fundamental systems and best practices, especially in Europe and China.  If improving Project Workforce Management can increase a company's top and bottom lines, then it is a good investment, even if it means that the companies who implement it are called "followers."  I suspect that "54 percent of American CIOs would rather be followers in adopting technology" because they are charged with helping their business units get "the basics" right.

• Innovation doesn't always equate to leadership-it can also indicate a need to catch up.  One commenter to the CIO Insight article, Ben Breeland, states it well: "Just because some a developing country, with no existing infrastructure chooses to deploy fiber optic; it certainly does not mean that existing (operating) companies should scrap copper and replace it with fiber."  In other words, China's drive to innovate has more to do with keeping pace than with leading.

• In one of CIO Magazine's blogs, Laurie M. Orlov states: "The driver seat in technology is increasingly going to be in the business units, not in IT. Which means that technologies will be discovered and eventually thrown over to IT to support, with CIOs becoming involved at the implementation stage."  This is simply good business sense.  Companies innovate when they truly need a new solution to solve a business problem, and that innovation may not necessarily be driven by IT.

• I also have to wonder: how does SaaS (Software as a Service) fit into Suh's conclusions?  For example, a company that subscribes to an online project management or CRM system has effectively "outsourced" innovation to the provider of the SaaS, and relies on that vendor to provide innovative upgrades to its technology.  If I subscribe to a leading SaaS provider's product, am I a leader or a follower in Suh's survey?

In a future post, I will bring this topic more close to home with my own observations about innovation for its own sake, especially as it relates to implementing enterprise solutions such as Project Workforce Management.

For more details about how to initiate projects more reliably using Project Workforce Management, see Rise of the Project Workforce.

While considerable energy and effort goes into executing and delivering projects, too many company still use informal, email-based processes to initiate projects.  Instead, a corporate-wide policy and process for project initiation will ensure that the right projects are executed, that they are funded appropriately, and that there is accountability for their approval.  Additionally, a project initiation process that can be audited and archived will ensure compliance with government regulations, where applicable.

In some cases, project initiation can be a project unto itself--especially if it requires a feasibility study or business case development.  Project Workforce Management provides a workflow foundation that can guide the project initiation effort, whether it is a full-scale project, or a routine business process. 

Having a structured process within Project Workforce Management provides the benefits of: streamlining the information gathering phase; closing information gaps; integrating with CRM and other enterprise applications; reducing time spent on compliance activities; enhancing productivity; and formalizing the launch.

A typical project initiation workflow consists of:

• A standardized proposal, which can often be submitted using a web-based form, and ensures that all initial information is complete and distributed to the proper stakeholders.
• Business case review, in which the decision maker(s) can evaluate the proposal, request more information, and accept or reject it.
• Feasibility or readiness study, to assess the project's resource requirements and risks.  Usually, the executive or manager who will be responsible for the execution of the project  will  manage this activity.
• Budget approval, to assess the monetary requirements.  Usually, the COO or CFO will manage this activity.
• Launch, during which all planning is completed: the project plan, individual roles and responsibilities, tools and methods, reporting cycle, and other critical elements of the project's execution.

Too many projects get funded based on incomplete assumptions, false expectations, and favoritism.  But a structured, workflow-based project initiation process, especially when combined with intelligent project prioritization and selection, will enhance your ability  to approve, fund and plan the best projects--ones that are aligned with your strategic direction.

I hope our readers will join us for a webinar on Tenrox's Project Planning module.  The event will be held on Thursday, March 27th, at 10 a.m. Pacific/1 p.m. Eastern.  Click here to register.

The title "Help Me, Help You" refers to the ways in which we need to enable our project workforces with the right tools.  Given the right tools, a workforce can easily input the data that managers and executives need every day to make informed decisions in real time. 

It takes two key components--input from the team, and output from the tool--to make project planning and execution as effective as it can be.  When both the input and output are working correctly, not only do managers get an accurate picture of a project's progress, but they can improve their project delivery success over time.

Tenrox's advantages include its Estimated Time to Complete (ETC) feature, which allows both project managers and team members to collaborate on planned work, actual work, and estimated work to be done.  Plus, the Project Workforce Management approach means that these tools are fully integrated with Tenrox Time and Expense (to get project actuals) and Tenrox Workforce Planning (to book resources on a planned project).

In the webinar we will provide an inside view of Project Planning and address these key components.  Please join us on Thursday.