What are /r/projectmanagement's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Scrappy Project Management - This book is great because it cuts through the academics of project management and gets down into some real-world solutions to project management that will work between some and most projects.

Here's a short list: Leading Geeks, by Paul Glen. Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, by Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister. Fierce Conversations, by Susan Scott. You already have The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White, right? Project managers write a lot, and the good ones write well. If you haven't taken a course in business writing, The HBR Guide by Bryan Garner is excellent. Although EI doesn't pass the sniff test among actual psychologists, it's worth reading Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry. Finance for Nonfinancial Managers, by Gene Siciliano is also worth your time.

What do I wish I knew before becoming a PM? That's easy: project management is a business function, not a technical function. You don't need to know the difference between a procedure and a function, but you damned well better know the difference between OpEx and CapEx. If you want to do well, you have to be proficient in the language and practice of business.

Learn and know the product well, use your PM skills to kick ass on the implementations (I assume you will be in there not just pre-sales?) and be very good at keeping your clients (internal/external) well informed and happy with you providing help for key decisions. Never let bad news ferment and own any issues. Make yourself invaluable but do not BE invaluable. Always make it so you can be removed easily from the equation (once a project is done) while making sure they know how valuable you are. Counterintuitive, but when doing re-orgs or turnarounds, the first thing I find and target to change are any one person dependencies (management perspective - this is a RISK to have). From your perspective, this also can limit your growth and new opportunities. If you are the only one who can do it right/well, you may be the only one doing that until you retire. Another golden key for me was to eliminate, automate and standardize everything I came across to reduce "work", increase output and have more available space on my plate. I then took on more. Do that judiciously and you'll learn more, get exposure to new things and become a "keeper". Oh and track EVERYTHING - accomplishments, challenges, team issues, etc. Journal it or use a note system (check out Obsidian.md for a nice easy and free tool if you like). If you ever end up redundant again - you'll have a nice track record to show and likely little idle time before the next gig. Best of luck

https://www.wrike.com/project-management-guide/faq/what-is-a-roadmap-in-project-management/

Don't over complicate it. You can find templates online to help. If you think about it in terms of something you do know, then it's not overwhelming. Don't get lost in the details. It's high level.

Check out The Goal. Discusses performance / production management in a manufacturing plant. Not a long read but insightful in many ways.

Well, a good PM does not necessarily have to have experience to be succesfull. There are some skills that a PM needs to have, or needs to develop, like being an excellent communicator and organizing skills. There are my good websites on the internet that discuss those skills. Here is a website with some recommended books

Use Monday.com or Asana. They both have gantt chart capabilities and portfolio management. I prefer Asana, but look at feature offering for both the products.

A reference https://everhour.com/blog/asana-vs-monday/

It looks like you have a two part problem: Tools & Culture

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Tools:

• Project Management — Basecamp — It does everything you listed as needs in your post. It's only $100 per month.
• Everything else (Email, calendar, Drive) — GSuite — You already use this, great!
• Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) manual — A document with crystal clear step-by-step instructions for every part of what you do. The project steps, the email subject lines, the customer interactions; everything.

​

Culture:

• Everyone has access to the SOP manual
• If someone doesn't follow the SOP, they are called out on it
• If someone repeatedly doesn't follow the SOPs, they are fired
• This culture must be actively s*upported* and actioned by company leadership, otherwise people won't take it seriously and it will fail.

​

Source: I run a 7 person project-based company very much like yours, but in a different industry. This is how we've run things for 2.5 years and IMO it is vastly better than any other system I've used or been required to use. I'd consider our day to day work very calm, clear, and organized; despite the fact that we regularly work on dozens of projects simultaneously.

​

Good luck. Let me know if you have any questions.

One thing others haven't yet mentioned is Notion. It would work similarly to Trello but with much more variation in my opinion. I use it for personal planning and project management.

From reading the plans, it seems like the Personal Pro plan at $4/month (just for you as the super user) would be the best option. This assumes the guest access is enough for everyone else. Afaik they can edit the fields of the pages you share with them, but can't add new pages (in that server) themselves. Personal accounts are free, so they can also use Notion as their private workspace too. It's worth a shot with a couple of test users to make sure it fits your needs, and YT has some good setup videos. https://www.notion.so/pricing

Since I use it for personal and have tried a few different PM features, feel free to give me a shout. If you also use Google docs and sheets, you can integrate them easily.

Try using Jira Advanced Roadmaps - called Jira Plans earlier. Depends on the version you are using.

Jira- Advanced Roadmaps

What you would have to do is:

1. Create a plan for every team
2. Bring them together in a Program or Portfolio plan

There are some team, capacity, dependency, release, field configuration you should know how to do.

Look up Atlassian's own tutorial to understand how to set it up !

Off the top of my head I'd recommend Invison (https://www.invisionapp.com/) for managing the proofs process. Designs are viewed in browser via share links and clients can comment on them as necessary - it cuts out the email edits back and forth. I also believe it's free for the most part. It's a nice interface for both design teams and customers. I'm not aware of an export function in Invision as you upload the designs to the system in the first place.

In terms of job lists and management, I've had good success using Jira with Agile for the teams I manage - https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira. Put simply, you create projects (e.g. email design) and sub-tasks within that project (e.g. initial concept, client edits round 1, etc.) in the system and assign team members to the tasks. Each project or type of task can be assigned to a customised workflow to track it's status through the phases.

I've found it useful to get a sense of where each team member is at and it provides good visualisation of where each task is at, provided the teams buy in to it and keep it up to date. You can also export the tasks from the system to Excel which you can then print if you need to.

A free (and more simple) alternative would be something like Trello or Asana which basically track to-do-lists rather than statuses. Those might work as a first step.

It's inherent with moving to a software solution that you minimise the amount of paper floating about. If you're working in a digital industry like myself (I'm making an assumption based on the email design job) then it's kind of strange that they want to keep a paper record of everything. Strikes me as being pretty old school - you're probably thinking the same - so you'll probably still be doing a lot of printing!

Anyway, hope this helps.

When talking about a project plan people mean one of two things. Either it is a schedule (typically a gantt chart) or it is a written document that explains much of what the schedule does, but in written form. Usually the written document can say something about strategy and what not as well, so it can cover more than a schedule is capable of.

Sure! I know a project management software called Azendoo. I do both with the board's view feature inspired from Kanban's view. Meanwhile I can still @mention my colleagues in comments.

We have the Business tier with about 40 users. The advantages are huge whereas you have access to many of the useful (and in my opinion necessary) tools within Wrike, like reporting, automation, workflows, request forms, calendars, etc. You probably saw this grid that shows the difference between the plans.

My team receives a lot of requests to update our website from outside (of my department) teams. We have a form that we built with Wrike that they fill out and submit. Based on their selections of what kind of request it is, it is assigned as a task to the specific team member. The management team can look at a dashboard to see the incoming requests and see the progress status of the task. Tasks among individual teams can also be shuffled around by management based on workload. For this, it has saved a huge amount of headaches - as most of this was being done via random email requests in the past.

I also like the reporting features in Wrike. I produce weekly/monthly reports on work in progress or work completed that goes out to management. I also have a report that goes out weekly to management for approving all new work requests that were submitted throughout the week.

For a project manager, it's an amazing product. The trick is getting leadership buy-in so that they can ensure that the rest of the team is using it.

Getting certs won't help you become a better PM. They'll help you get jobs or raises, and might guide you in study, but there's a lot to PMing that exists outside the certs.

Rita's guide for the PMP is good. I recently loaned some books to a co-worker and wrote to him:

> I also recommend Difficult Conversations but I only have it on Kindle.

> In order of priority, I'd suggest Trusted Advisor (though in my review, I indicate that Difficult Conversations is better, so if you choose to read Difficult Conversations, you could skip Trusted Advisor... but Trusted Advisor is shorter and simpler), Scrum Mastery, Coaching Agile Teams, Kaizen (at least the first half... I don't think I ever finished it), then Mythical Man Month. Creating Effective Teams was interesting to me, as was Getting to Yes, but they may not ultimately be necessary.

What that book list gets at is that working with people and leadership skills are just as important, if not more important, than using the right forms and calculations, especially in IT. PMI is catching onto that and is trying to change their certs to highlight matters of ethics and leadership, but that's tricky to test.

I also suggest picking up Pritchard's book on risk management.

I've met a number of PMs who got certs but didn't really learn much along the way. You'll be a better PM if you pursue learning rather than certification, and someday you can go and get the cert to prove to someone else what you have learned. Don't get caught in the trap of thinking certification proves knowledge. Rather, it is a step on the path, and nowhere near the last step.

:) couldn't resist!

I'm a big fan of audiobooks, as I can listen to them commuting, in the gym, doing the lawn etc.

Some audiobooks that have really helped me on a variety of management, communication, team and business topics:

• The Hard Thing About Hard Things, by Ben Horowitz

• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't, by Jim Collins

• Flat Army: Creating a Connected and Engaged Organization, by Dan Pontefract

• The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries

A lot of these are general and apply to not only project managers, but everyone from the C-level to individual contributors.

In terms of project management specific material, that's really going to depend on your industry. Of course the PMBOK provides a solid framework, actual execution will vary greatly across sectors. I'm in IT and I probably wouldn't do very well in construction, for example.

The one book you should read is 'The Mythical Man-Month'.

And I agree with highdiver_2000. Choose manage or do. You can't do both.

Keep a tight plan and each time your boss gives your developer another piece of work you can calculate and tell him or her the impact to deadlines.

Have a daily standup where you track progress on tasks, schedule it so it's not a surprise or an imposition when you discuss where they are at.

See if you can drive test driven development (tests up front) for the developer for whom quality is a problem.

The pther developer sounds like his or her nose is out of joint by something. you need to sit down and explain that the project will not meet it's schedule if you all continue at this pace and solicit their ideas for how you can improve speed. There will likely be something going on you don't know.

Just my two cents.

Trello. Keep it simple. You can have a free account and still get loads out of it. Board for dev, sales, admin, hr. keep labels to a minimum. Lists for To do, In Progress, Done. Take a look at Trello Inspiration for examples https://trello.com/inspiration

Edit: gantt plugins are available, but they’re pretty crumby. Do it manually with excel (Gantt charts are the devil’s work)

For that much space you'll have to pay, but we're talking the cost of a couple of coffees or beers a month.

Amazon S3 would be about $12/mo: https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/

Google is $10/mo: https://www.google.com/drive/pricing/

Indeed salary information is imperfect, but a decent place to get an idea.

http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=Project+coordinator&l1=California&q2=Project+assistant&l2=California&q3=Project+manager+&l3=California&tm=1

Now take these searches and add industry specific terms.

For example adding technical, health care, or engineering to most search terms increases the salary estimate

Having used a lot of different project management platforms- including Asana. I’ve recently started to use Notion, it’s not a traditional project management platform, I use it to manage projects and a lot more, it’s a holistic productivity platform. It’s working well for me so far and here’s a good resource .

Notion may not be for you but I hope you’re able to find the right platform.

First off, you can't really learn PM out of a book. It is as much Art as Science, and a lot of people think it's simply creating a Gantt Chart, and making some phone calls. It isn't. Secondly, Project Management books are very general in nature, to appeal to a wide audience, but a great read if that's where you want to direct your career. You seem to have a very specific need, so I'd start with organizing that first. You don't need templates for charters, or risk analysis, or stakeholder matrixes, or any of the deeper tools. And you probably don't need to manage it in something like an enterprise project management suite. Project managment is mostly about planning, and then everything that ties into managing that plan. Why don't you start with the checklist that you made while doing the trade show project, and then have a post-mortem meeting about the good things and bad things that happened, and use that to improve your next project.

If you do need software, and don't want to use something huge like MS Project, try one of these: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/five-apps/five-free-microsoft-project-alternatives/

If you do want a more formal grounding in PM, take a Coursera course in it - https://www.coursera.org/specialization/projectmanagement/18/overview It's ridiculously inexpensive, totally online, and work at your own pace option for learning. For practical project management books, I recommend Dennis Lock, "Project Management", or the Gower Handbook of Project Management, by Rodney Turner. Both of these books is very practical, and is probably more than you need, but are a very good start. There are other offerings from Wiley and other publishers, and other PMs may have their favourites, but these ones are mine.

Aha! This helps a whole lot. You’re in a pretty bad spot and I’ll get to it in a bit. First off, cradle to grave kind of thing would be PMP. You don’t necessarily need to to read the whole book. First understand the highlights. This may help, but could be a bit intimidating: https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/SayedAbdellah/pmp-in-summary . It’s also not pictorial which I don’t like. See if you can find a pm process flow chart to start.

Now to the issue. It seems your boss may be a bit clueless...there is nothing worse than a bad boss (well there could be worse, but let’s assume there isn’t lol). You need a good boss to guide you thru career progression and individual growth. Since you’re already interviewing people, I’d say apply for it now. I’d also force the hand and say you want the position, if they think you’re not ready then have them tell you why, what you need and how to get there. It is the functional managers job to lay that out. If they can’t do that, then it’s hard to justify not giving you the position. A ballsy move though. In the perfect world you would have a skills matrix and show them how you fit the role, but it seems your company is far from that...

Mind map would be a helpful addition, I think this service combines a user flow nicely with UI: https://moqups.com/ But I'd still need to have the user stories/requirements as work packages that can be broken down into activities(tasks), then assigned, estimated, brought through workflows with different states, etc.

What I'd have to do currently is use a PM software tool separately like Jira, Trello, VSTS to assign and track tasks to devs. And then a prototyping/wireframing tool like InVision, Lucidchart, Google Slides to communicate with clients and designers. There is a lot of duplication of effort in having to use 2 segregated tools like that.

Over a 20 year career managing software projects, I've tried most project management tools.

The least bad one I've found is https://www.pivotaltracker.com/. It's opinionated in all the right ways, its UI is powerful, attractive, but intuitive, and its pricing is reasonable.

It can also do cool stuff like automatically forecast what's going to get done by when, based on data - not just guesswork.

I recommend you look into Miro https://miro.com/ It's considerably cheaper than Illustrator and it's focused is on processes and project management. The teams i work with, we use it daily either as a collab tool or to shares timelines or even during meetings. It has been life savior since Covid.

Take a look at Restyaboard, simple and powerful software to use for freelance/collaborative projects that allows managing all of your tasks, resources, files, and collaborators in one place.

The simple truth is a tool is only good if you use it.

My work for example is a huge healthcare system spread over a huge geographical region. Should be ripe for innovative technological pm software. Truth is the majority of the work force wants nothing to do with it.

It much like all the new disrupters to healthcare they forget the tool isn’t the problem it’s the people.

Honestly I think good old 1950s style GE pm is best for most places. Holding hands, removing barriers and actually communicating/messaging.

With that said I think slack with AI bots seems like the coolest kid on the block.

slack

list of bots

http://www.conceptdraw.com/products/project-management-software

I would advise you go check a powerful desktop ConceptDraw PROJECT app and a web-based ConceptDraw PLAN tool. Setting predecessor and successor dependencies between tasks will not let you start a new one before finishing a previous one.The Complete Value is great for updating your current status. But please note the visualization is calendar based though.

I have been using https://winio.io with my team. We can manage our task list, have target discussion inside the task, a quick chat about the project and share all the documents. Is super easy.

Imagine an application based on kanban boards (think Trello) but where every card can be open as its own board.

This way, you can manage all the parts of your projects simultaneously:

• software development
• bug tracking
• product communication
• sales
• design
• business planning
• content publishing
• etc

Every card would have its own worflow, discussions and attributes - which you could customize ad infinitum (assignees, contacts, managers, specs, invoices, places, bug reports, etc). You could also integrate it with other services, like Github, Asana, Discourse, etc.

Guess what? We're building this tool right now :)

Sounds like you are looking for something along the lines of mapping a product roadmap. Check this out and see if this is what you're looking for: https://www.aha.io/

Can you sketch up and share exactly what you're looking for? I am trying hard to picture what you mean by "capacity vertically".

Did you tried: https://www.proprofs.com/project/creative-project-management-software/? I am using it from couple of years and I think it has most of the features you have listed. Clean UI, works smooth, easy to use by internal teams & stakeholders.

You might get useful answers to this from /r/sysadmin, or maybe even /r/msp.

I also would expect there to be a number of open-source projects for this. IT is full of people who can program and some of them would want to write their own instead of buying. Things such as https://snipeitapp.com/ - I have no idea if this is any good or not, it was just the first result in a google search.

Hm, I have not found a way to choose the audio source in OneNote, it seems to just default to the computer/laptop mic, even when I take a skype call through a headset. As a result, I go to a room so I can play the audio through the laptop speakers and record through the laptop mic. I have not spent time researching a solution though.

As a result of this post, I'm now exploring Otter.AI.

The one I use is Teamwork Projects.

You can also have a look at dapulse.

If you would like me to show them both to you and discuss the differences, PM me.

I'm liking Smartsheets right now. I've been demoing, and will likely purchase a subscription with the new year.

It hits all the points you mentioned, though I am fairly unfamiliar with the Resource Management component, as it is not needed for me.

Edit: I missed that you already tried Smartsheet, whoops.

https://www.mylifeorganized.net/

Gives you outline task hierarchy, task dependencies, serial tasks and importance/urgency for each task, and uses them all to present you with an ordered task list view of what to work on next.

Each task has a free form notes field, and I think it does allow for attachments. I use the notes, but not the attachments. (I have an overly detailed file system for that. :P)

Individual tasks are only incomplete or complete, but you can mark the parent task as a project and set that as not started, in progress or done.

It's amazingly powerful software and I've used it for nearly my entire professional career. It's the only task management software that's been able to keep up with my complex projects and plans.

Only problem is, it's Windows, Android, and iOS only. However, it's powerful enough and useful enough that it was one of the pieces of software that came with me when I used a MacBook air for a few years. I tried most of the Mac based task managers, and they just didn't have the planning capabilities that I needed.

You might want to check out https://taiga.io/

It's a little more robust than Trello but still lightweight, easy to figure out, and free. It allows you to create a backlog, shared kanban boards, and a wiki.

Try Airtable. You can create your own custom project management system or start with one of their templates. Best of all, it is free.

I keep finding new uses for it every week. Project management, editorial calendar, managing my JV webinar instructor lists, accepting freelancer applicants and more.

Try Airtable - it is like spreadsheet meets database. Has good online team management options and the views section lets you filter and present the data in different ways.

I use it to manage multiple client, business and personal projects.

Inability to customize. If you don't like their approach, you are stuck with it. Tools like dapulse and Airtable do allow more customization.

I've actually found it quite difficult to get good software for this.

I started off with the following many years back:

http://www.criticaltools.com/wbschartprosoftware.htm

It really looks as old as it is.

When I want to do a WBS I now use XMIND.

https://www.xmind.net

they include a WBS template in the package and I find it quite useful (as the rest of the XMIND application). XMIND also includes Gantt capabilities so you can use that if you're so inclined.

Given the emphasis on a solid WBS it surprises me that it's actually so hard to find a decent bit of software aligned with the need.

Excel Gantt templates work paired with PowerPoint for org charts or WBS. Can also check Google Spreadsheets has free project sheets and Gantt charts. Go to https://www.google.com/sheets/about/ -> Personal -> Template Gallery (top right) -> scroll to second to last and see Gantt and Project Timeline

Most companies have these, but if you have MS Project I would use that first. It works for projects of all sizes. If you have budget, Jira is also pretty snazzy.

Read this one recently which I thought was excellent

How to Reduce Workplace Conflict and Stress: How Leaders and Their Employees Can Protect Their Sanity and Productivity From Tension and Turf Wars https://www.amazon.com/dp/1564148181/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_19C5R4R4W8R00ZJVSVX4

I have a mic built in the headset and always got compliments on the sound quality. They're also very convenient (you can move around the room without losing any quality. There's also less echo etc.

I have one similar to this, although there must be cheaper options.

https://www.amazon.com/SteelSeries-Lossless-Wireless-Headset-Headphone/dp/B07G176F76

Just some random googling gave me this book (Amazon). No reviews but the preview makes it look like a pretty good experience based reference manual from a project manager's perspective. Just to clarify, I have not read this book so I can't vouch for it. Buy at your own risk.

In addition, I am US based and have no experience with NEC contracts. Most projects here are under ASCE's standard terms and conditions, which IMO exists mostly just to legally shield the owner and engineer, and establish the engineer as the final authority on any project issue. I am curious how much equality NEC contracts provide.

I used the All-in-One CAPM/PMP (Amazon link: CAPM/PMP Project Management Certification All-In-One Exam Guide, Fourth Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/1259861627/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_5p4TDb81SP7EF) and was able to pass the CAPM first try. There’s a bunch of helpful practice tests/questions!

If your projects are interdependent rather than just competing for resource, you have a Program and you need to look at Program Management tools and techniques. If you have a set of unrelated projects with their own timelines which are competing for resource, you have a portfolio, and portfolio management is different. Start from there. What is the nature of your problem? Also, you say you're hiring new people, but you're still behind... Yep, that's how it works. Read The Mythical Man-Month. New staff consume your available resources for longer than you expect before they become productive. Most PM software assumes all human resource is equal; for new staff, you must lower their expected contribution by reducing their effort hours (increasing their cost per hour) and do the same (but less so) for the existing staff supervising them.

It’s on the sub’s booklist, but let me +1 The Goal. There’s a danger/tendency for folks starting out in CI to fall in love with tools. Process maps, SIPOCs, whatever, early career practitioners conflate the tools with the work. The Goal focuses on the concepts, not the tools, and helps you develop a CI perspective that carries regardless of which tool is getting used. This is important, because you need to fit the tools to the problem, not approach every problem the same way.

Absolutely read The Phoenix Project. It will describe half the projects you inherit over your career and tell you exactly how they need to be put back on the rails. Also it's just a great read.

Yes, these are base skills.

You need additional Project management and technical skills to go along with these skills.

How to get the skills? -- How about start with this book - Head first project management

We haven't integrated additional software into Wrike. I've heard of others doing it and I do know that they offer many options. If you haven't seen this page, it shows which they partner with, but you can also find this within your Wrike - Profile/Apps & Integration. https://www.wrike.com/apps/

Asynchronous work (which by definition is Remote work)... requires you use a system for status updates. There are many good ones.. I particularly like basecamp. My approach is .. set a metric for whether you meet. During QA ... it's if your sticky defect count is greater than 3.. we meet for example. Drive them to use the tool to update statuses and collaborate.

Hello guys I'm building a tool for internal feedback, It is 100% focused on feedback, you can give feedback to another teammate you can add what I ever you think about the current sprint and previous want, add topics to discuss in on coming meetings etc..
If you're interested on it, go to the Wait-list

Read the Bare Knuckled Project Manager by Tony Grubel. It is not an Agile or predictive book but it does a great job on explaining stakeholder (and team) management. It is a good, quick read, and maybe it can help you reframe your approach with the stakeholders.

I just found out about this one recently:

Get on Track: How to Build, Run, and Level Up Your Program Management Office

Fast forward MBA in Project by Eric Verzuh was a good starting point for me personally. It is a book used to teach project management at UC Berkeley Extension.

I'm a software developer and founder of a micro-startup, here are my 2 cents.

The way you describe your situation, it sounds like what this start-up needed was a Scrum Master but what they got was a traditional PM (where the Waterfall methodology is generally the norm). These are such vastly different roles that it's a major red flag that management may not be fully committed to the agile work culture.

The good news is that you could develop an extremely valuable and in-demand skill by adopting an Agile approach, the bad news is that you're going to need to do a mental backflip and it's going to feel very uncomfortable compared to what you're used to.

Firstly, it's important to ask yourself why Agile software development practices exist to begin with. It's because software developers build the wrong thing most of the time. Most of the industry learned that users don't know what they want. If Henry Ford had asked what people wanted to improve transportation in 1895 they would have asked him for faster horses instead of the automobile! To minimize the about of time wasted, the agile approach is to set up small usable experiments in a short amount of time in order to collect feedback, rinse and repeat.

I would highly recommend pausing here and doing some required reading so you understand the core concept before reading further on down.

1. What is Agile?

>Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
>
>Working software over comprehensive documentation
>
>Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
>
>Responding to change over following a plan

1. What is Scrum?

Lots of great advice on here. I am the tech side PM and I/we used this app & template for our latest project. I also binge watched Layla & Yvi on Youtube (search their names with “Clickup” in YouTube).

I hope this helps! Good luck!

I'm no longer seeing that experience had to be in the last 6 years. It could be I saw it on an application some time ago. But the training requirement is 35 hours. Just fo and get one of the Udemy course for like $20 or less.

All you are doing is test prep with these courses. If you want to revamp your skill set, go and get the Rita Mukcahey training set on her website, or just the book.

Does everyone use outlook for email and calendar? If everyone uses the basic office suite, you should be able to see availability when scheduling.

I volunteer for a couple of things where have to schedule large meetings. I use a doodle poll for those - https://doodle.com/en/

Congrats on the job. While it takes some time to really get the basics, get Rita's crash course the PMBOK 6th edition and simply observe.

Don't try to change anything for 6 months if you can. If you have to make changes, make them one at a time and be prepared to adapt.

If you are the only project manager, or the first one, be prepared to come up with your management plan. This is the document that guides you, and the organization on how to do the work. I ha e many templates in the template library, so feel free tonpull those into your plan and make it yours.

Read or listen to the audiobook The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael Singer.

Everything we do to improve ourselves takes work. I believe if you take a moment to dive into this book, you'll get more than you expect out of it.

I recommend this consulting textbook (cheap to rent!). I recently got it and it made me understand some of the things I am doing wrong about managing my relationships and requirements as an internal employee managing a large project for the first time.

It sounds like your focus on developing happy and fun relationships is actually undermining your project. And, perhaps, in trying to be more positive for your boss, you are actually undermining her opinion of you. When she suggests something you were already going to do, tell her how you planned on implementing it, and why you had it later in the project schedule, instead of complimenting her to see if that works better.

Don't try to get everyone to like you. It sounds like you have about 50% very positive relationships and then 50% that are testing boundaries and seeing what they can get away with. Focus on your own effectiveness and professionalism. As the project manager, you're going to have to be the person people don't like sometimes. Design your own acceptance criteria, communicate it clearly, require that they meet it, if they miss deadlines, escalate it. When you get results, clearly communicate them to your manager and move on.

I hated Trello and started using AirTable. Seems to be pretty straightforward and I like the UX so far... maybe give it a shot and see if you like it? Good luck and happy productivity!

Zapier is great, it basically allows you to take advantage of public API's from a huge variety of apps without knowing how to code anything. For example, you can have Application A send data to Application B when a certain condition is met, and then have an email or text notification be sent, etc. With the premium/pro Zapier version you have access to more applications to integrate with, but you can try it for free and experiment. It's very similar to IFTTT.com.

Back then I used a ton of engineering notebooks. These were bound books that had graph paper in them. I wrote a table of contents in the rear of the book flipped, and in reverse (this was so we could extend to additional pages. You flipped the book and it looked like a normal front of book contents, some old tech writer showed me the trick). I kept a punch list of each project with assignments and notes. I still use these today, but a smaller version. I have stacks of them in boxes in my garage.

We also, we had ugly spreadsheets. It is one of the reasons I am very anti-Excel when it comes to project management use. I liked Excel, but it lacked the automation functions you really need to do the job, plus it was a pig on resources as most of us in the field were using laptops.

We also used MS Project. MS Project 2000 to be specific. It wasn't bad for the bigger projects, but not many of us used it for tasks.

Ooh I'm a huge airtable fan!!!

I think the biggest plus about Macro (similar to airtable) is the simplicity in getting started and understanding what it does. You can make checklists with automated steps for any process and assign it to any / multiple team members so that (1) we have one place to see the status on any task (i.e. X launch still needs A and B review) and (2) we don't have to open multiple tabs to just complete something like customer onboarding or dogfood testing

Here's the user guide that I used to get started: https://www.notion.so/Macro-User-Guide-f7cd5065f175473d83ab95082424bba2

>I'm afraid if I ever change jobs, I won't sound educated in this field even though I have all of these "common sense" tasks nailed.

Most PMs come about this role accidentally. It is the mark of a good project manager in the long run. You don't have to over educate or over certify yourself, just grab a few good books to start with and begin "formalizing" your processes. A good start is Rita Mulcahey's PM crash course. Next, grab The Bare Knuckled Project Manager.

After you've used those references and maybe watched a few videos, tackle the PMBOK, I recommend the 6th edition right now because that is more traditional.

Pick up the lingo by using it, don't force it, think about things like risk, schedule impact, stakeholder management more than Earned Value Management or RACIs. Think scope creep versus backlog grooming. Just approach a few simple terms and start using them in your conversations. Understand what they mean and apply them, but don't go all academic on your coworkers.

I think you will struggle to get any free videos showing the entire Prince2 topics as this is highly commercialised. Ultimately they want to to pay for the course.

But you can buy the Prince2 book from the likes of amazon.

Managing successful projects with PRINCE2 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0113315333/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_E6B8WFZT344V9CBEM77R?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

I am a huge proponent of pen and paper. I received a Mont Blanc pen from my wife and I have this moleskin. I carry it every where and go through about 4 a year.

Standard, wide screen monitor, laptop on a stand. I use both screens, mainly keeping Spotify or personal email open on the laptop. The widescreen is big enough to fit two browser windows, so it's like having three screens.

Also, a must: My 3 month hanging calendar on the wall next to me. I look at this thing while scheduling tasks/planning projects about once every hour.

If you are thinking of getting the certification I suggest this one:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0934NKG45/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

People have already said all important stuff. They hired you for a reason, be yourself; you will not be an expect on day one, it takes time to build experience; understand what the project needs to deliver, break it into agreed tasks, resource the tasks, fund you project and track your spending.

I first bought this book in the 1990s, and I still dip in for inspiration from time to time. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fast-Forward-Project-Management-Comprehensive/dp/1119700760/?_encoding=UTF8&pf_rd_p=1eabb4a6-227d-44f8-a020-cc8e05d5e08f&pd_rd_wg=rGjsA&pf_rd_r=RWCS9J60JFR4VK4RYQM4&pd_rd_w=q2hyj&pd_rd_r=42650e6d-27ce-4... if you read only one book on PM, make it this one.

Good luck and well done landing your new job.

I'm not sure this is really an answer to your question or not, but an interesting nugget I recently picked up while researching this same topic.

In Extreme Programming Explained the author suggests that most folks think about project constraints as only Time, Quality, and Cost. But in software development there is a fourth constraint, and that is Scope. I found that really interesting.

If you can't change time, quality, or cost, you can change scope, which means somebody on the agile team needs to make a decision about what makes it into the project, and when. My team is only "agile-ish" at this point and we don't have one person responsible for that decision, but I think it'd probably be the Product Owner/Product Manager. They get to look at the backlog and decide which tasks/stories don't get implemented, to keep the overall project on track.

I'm planning a complete rewrite of my company's SaaS software. I know the number of developer's, BA's, and testers I can dedicate to the project. I've broken the massive project into hundreds of tasks and based them on estimates of old/similar tasks. So I have a rough idea of how much time the task will take, and how many "story points" it costs. I can use this information to setup sprints and Epics. As we start burning down this backlog, we'll track our time and use Martin Fowler's Yesterday's Weather approach to dial in the time/story point estimates of future tasks.

Not sure if that helps or not.

I release an app called micro habit on android store which have some ideas from Atomic habits, try it out. App can help you manage your habit.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.infielight.microhabits Suggestion are welcome.

I don't know if this would be helpful, it's a Udacity product manager nanodegree course:

https://www.udacity.com/course/product-manager-nanodegree--nd036

I've found udacity courses to be excellent

we have a various 1 to 1 sessions over each month (an article on on our org.´s blog written by me is coming up on this topic!). This culminates into a bi-annual feedback where we identify kpi´s and mark on a scale of 1-5 how close or far away they are from the ideal...... alternatively, in another organization i worked in we used the 9-box estimate, here is an explainer, https://pingboard.com/blog/what-is-the-9-box-model-for-hr-how-to-use-it-template/ We had a small locally developed app where at the manager level we used to drag drop employees to each section, we used to discuss the ratings with the HR who would finalize this.

It comes down to habit. I've used David Seah's timesheets described below, and it works. However, it's paper and easy to forget to fill in the circles, or lose track when are rapidly answering emails/task switching.

I now 'clear the decks' when switching projects, using multiple virtual desktops in windows, as well as physically setting aside any project folders when I change tasks. I then log the time as outline below.

What works for me at the moment is Notepad++ and Autohotkey. I have a day form I can key in with -day that gives me this:

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

29 June 2018 Friday (datestamp autogenerates)

--------------------------------------------------------

Meetings

--------------------------------------------------------

to do

--------------------------------------------------------

Project1

--------------------------------------------------------

Project2

--------------------------------------------------------

Calls

--------------------------------------------------------

Project3

--------------------------------------------------------

Misc

--------------------------------------------------------

I then use another set of shortcuts to add timestamps [-ts] for start/stop times, [-ca] called BLANK about BLANK, [-em] emailed blank about blank, etc.

Still requires some attention to stay on top of, but it also doubles as my scratchpad for random thoughts, and lets me go back and keep track of how long I have spending on my projects.

This is a pretty classic example of how projects go off the rails and a great opportunity to show some leadership.

>I heard some wisdom once about piloting aircraft,

I use this all the time in PM - it goes aviate, navigate, communicate

Now, for a pilot they do it in that order, be we PMs know you just have to do all three... at once.

I can't tell you how to solve the problem, but here are some things to consider, what can be fixed. These seem to be in your case, pushing the deadline, establishing some rules of order, and re establish communications. The logistics stuff needs to be addressed with the proper person, and the customer red tap? That is on them.

First look at how to properly inform the client. No blame, just state, "look, we know we are in the proverbial shitter here. We need to sit down and rebaseline this project, figure out our punchlist, flag the items we can't control, and prioritize the stuff we can".

Then start triage, what can be solved quickest or needs the most attention, fix it, pull in other stakeholders to apply some pressure, especially internally. If your customer pushes back and keeps up the red tape, tell them every day of delay adds at minimum a day to the project.

Do a daily check-in meeting on all the items due. If someone is delaying an item under control, hold their feet to the fire.

All items such as supply chain issues need to be addressed from a risk/issue standpoint, what can you do without? What can be gathered locally, what can be begged, borrowed, or stolen?

Grab the following book - link. It's on my top 100 books listed on this sub. Read it through over a weekend, then read it again and highlight the stuff you need to know. Tony knows how to pull a project out of the shitter and this is a great lesson to learn.

I was a federal contractor there in the 90s and they had their own flavor of Project management which was introduced by J. R. Thompson. He formed the Program and Project Management Institute (PPMI), which is now called the Academy of Program/Project and Engineering Leadership (APPEL). It is very diverse from the PMI standards, on purpose. It applies practical knowledge from a STEM perspective, and applies common sense. When I started to learn the PMI structure, I struggled with how different it compared.

This program became even more emphasized during my time there under Dan Golden, the guy that coined the phrase "Cheapet, Faster, Better".

The agency was working with global partners such as the European Space Agency, and one of my favorites Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales, the Argintine Space Agency. I cut my teeth on a project as a project administrator.

At that time of the program, the Agency focused in on competencies versus procedures like PMI does/did.

There is a ton of information out there in the online publication NASA Issues in Program and Project Management, and a few books. One of my favorites is Shared Voyage: Learning and Unlearning from Remarkable Projects.

NASA is, in my opinion the greatest American success story when it comes to doing well by its citizens. We gain so much from their knowledge as opposed to many other agencies. We don't give them enough money to innovate.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07H5G44HL/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_d_asin_title_o00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Good book.

You probably want to find an industry that takes advantage of your degree. Just ideas ... user experience, social, neighborhood or revitalization, human services, etc.

http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=psychology+PMP&l= ...for some ideas.

Not sure if there are really good tutorials for the server part. but maybe the technet documentation would be good enough since what you want is a comprehensive manual

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc303399.aspx

Hrishikesh http://www.projectmanagementlexicon.com

It really depends on how you "feel" about it, try many of them.
We wrote about the subject in our blog, hope it helps :
https://zenkit.com/en/blog/5-times-an-online-project-management-tool-will-make-your-life-easier/

They have both an app and desktop view, both of which work great. https://todoist.com/home

It’s free to setup an account. I highly recommend setting up an account and playing around with it. Note: I do have the Pro subscription. It is a reasonable price ($36 yearly) worth it for me to pay since I use this to organize my work and general life.

I just checked and you can copy a link to a specific task. You can also organize your tasks by projects and labels. If you use projects you can share an entire project. Based on their website they are definitely geared towards teams if you have multiple people working towards something.

I believe ToDoist may be what you want here. I believe the Pro tier is $3 a month and you can have 25 collaborators included. Not sure if they will need to pay as well but it looks like they wouldn't based on the pricing page.

"Pricing | Todoist" https://todoist.com/pricing

No beer, unfortunately :(

But some good speakers over the last few months, and a steady attendance of around 40/50 people

​

Sign up page is here: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAtc-uupjwsEtYUCjlfYSg9wpdNRizHRXnD

Start out with the Charter and the scope statement. Make sure you know what the requirements are and have an idea on how to meet them. Then have a talk with the folks on the team, getting a sense of what needs to be done and how long it will take. You might try PMI.org for more help - they have templates you can look at and use.

I'm doing some research on what new project managers feel are their biggest challenges or questions. Feel free to participate: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/G7FXMDD

Check out Fibery.io.

Less known, but with a great dedicated support team.

The software is designed to give you complete control about the information being managed, how it's visualized, and how it's connected to other parts of your business.

You could achieve a lot of this implementing a harvest/forecast integration. Check out the brief webinar and see some of the dashboards the integration offers

https://www.getharvest.com/forecast/webinars?wvideo=7x479midgt

Umm I think the question is probably too broad to get good answers. I'd suggest grab yourself a couple of books (the accidental project manager) and a good book on product management. E.g. here's a good one if its a tech product:

https://www.g2.com/reports/grid-report-for-project-management-fall-2020?featured=smartsheet&secure%5Bgated\_consumer%5D=7d26517b-cfa5-40df-bb53-dc45741033d0&secure%5Btoken%5D=b7e7673f56d3ddefcf1cc2de93ea3a889ee747cf7cb118041d419bbc57c70a21...

Check out Float.com, rated the #1 resource management software on G2. The schedule is designed like a calendar style gantt chart. Project and resource planning is super easy with your inputs like team work hours, billable rates, location tags etc all saved and automated for you!

I will be brave enough to suggest the 8.) Life-Saving strategy for personal time management. If you have to plan - tasks, to-dos, projects, emails, calendars - then just try the new sexy Gmail/Outlook + Trello app - Flow-e

Check out Eylean Board it is basically an electronic task board where you can see the project progress, deadlines and responsibilities

You could take a look at Eylean. You can add as many projects, tasks and sub-tasks as you need and it is all presented in a clean, easy to use taskboard.

I've poked around with Clubhouse.io, but I've never seriously used it. The impression that I got, however, was that they (like a lot of tools) try to offer a lot of things for a lot of people who may be using it in different contexts.

In your context, as a hobby project, you may not need different projects. I can see it being useful for a larger team who wants to separate out discovery work from delivery work from operational/maintenance work and have different workflows for each one. It can also be useful as another way to slice work that is closely related for tracking purposes.

I'd think that Milestones/Epics/Stories would be sufficient for your use case and you can set up a single project (just because it's a requirement of Clubhouse).

I prefer Planner for our small team. Planner is a project management tool which supports Gantt charts, resource allocation and some degree of integration with other apps.

Its goal is to be an easy-to-use no-nonsense cross-platform project management application. It can store its data in either XML files or in a PostgreSQL database. Projects can also be printed to PDF or exported to HTML for easy viewing from any web browser. Included in the HTML document is a simplified Gantt chart, task list (with %complete, start, end, work, and resource columns), and a resource allocation table. It is an excellent way to give people easy access to project status information. Planner page