That’s why I've come up with the Ultimate Project Manager Playlist. How did these songs make the cut? I had strict criteria for each song: 

• How hard does it rock? The scale went from 1 (“elevator music”) to 11 (“melts faces”). 
• Whether this was demonstrated in the song title or in the content of the lyrics, the song had to have something to do with the project management profession.
• The song is just really fun/hilarious/great to dance to. The work day can already feel much longer than eight hours; what's the harm in listening to a little Jimmy Buffett to spice things up?

Your suggestions on Twitter and Facebook were also a huge help - keep them coming! So without further or do, let's get this party started:

1. Michael Jackson – Working Day and Night

2. Bachman Turner Overdrive - Taking Care of Business

3. Blue Oyster Cult – Deadline

4. Survivor - Eye of the Tiger

5. The Beatles – Help!

6. Billy Joel – She’s Right On Time

7. Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett - It's Five O'Clock Somewhere

8. Puff Daddy – It’s All About the Benjamins

9. Europe – The Final Countdown

10. Blink 182 – All The Small Things

How did I do? Did I miss anything obvious? Leave a comment and let me know!

I recently had a call with one of our longtime customers, Matt Nisonger. Matt is with SharedVue, an ever-growing cloud marketing company, and he's definitely earned the title of "LP Guru." Want proof of his LiquidPlanner prowess? Matt formulated his own project creation workflow trick that's so good, we just had to share it.

With SharedVue’s steady influx of projects, Matt needed to find a way to streamline project creation. As he explains it, “we wanted to find a way for our Project Managers to quickly set up projects without having to recreate the wheel each time with regard to scoping out tasks and phases." In short, his goals were to create a template that could: 

• Be used for the planning of all projects;
• Place the responsibility for scoping and task planning on departmental leads;
• Free the project manager from having to track detailed tasks outside of their domain.

Here’s how Matt’s project creation process works: 

1. He's started by creating a general “skeleton” template for his projects:

Note that the milestones are determined by client deadlines, are driven by department work, and the project manager is responsible for making sure each one is met. The grey sub-folders are for functional breakdowns that represent each department that typically works on the project. They are assigned to the departmental heads and will be populated with tasks as soon as they are scoped by the department.

2. When the “Project Approved” milestone is met, the project manager duplicates this template and keeps the new, "live" project low in the priority order until it is fully built out. To initiate the project work, the project manager uses our Email Integration feature to send comments directly to departmental heads requesting that they initiate scoping for the project. 

3. The department heads then create task deliverables within their allocated sub-folder, estimate them, and assign them to their team members. They have one week to scope their portion of the project. This locks down the scoping period, ensures that everyone involved has early input, and helps prevent future feature creep. Once this is complete, the project manager checks off the “Scoping” milestone for each department. 

4. Next, the “Scheduling Signoff” milestone is the kick-off to bring the project up in priority order and start prioritizing project tasks within the monthly package structure they have in place. See below:

The project manager and department heads have a 15 minute huddle each week (with LiquidPlanner up on a projector) to prioritize tasks within packages and discuss status updates and resource allocation.

5. Once each department has executed all tasks within their sub-folders, the PM signs off on all the work by marking the “Signoff” milestones complete. This process allows the project manager to focus primarily on managing the scoping process and tracking against major milestones. They can check on status by simply viewing how many hours have rolled up in the "Total Done" column for each of the the departmental sub- folders.

6. Finally, the last milestone for “Push to Production” is used to mark the date when the product is released and available to the customer.

Although this exact project creation workflow is specific to Matt and his team, you might be able to apply some of his ideas to your own project creation and prioritization needs.

Do you have any tricks you’d like to share with fellow LP customers for more efficient project planning? If so, I’d love to hear them! Feel free to shoot me an email at jen@liquidplanner.com or leave a comment below.

Why? At the end of the day, we want to track bugs along with the rest of our work—in our schedule. Bugs need to be assigned, estimated, and prioritized alongside our project work, based on their severity and impact. We fix bugs (new and existing) in every release of LiquidPlanner, and since LiquidPlanner is the one system we all look at every day, it doesn’t make sense for us to track them in a separate system.

But how, you might ask, does it actually work? Here are the gory details.

First, we have a single place to collect new bugs.  They all get sent to a Package called “UNTRIAGED,” which is the central holding place for new bugs, feature requests, ideas, and tasks until we can process them (Figure 1).  This Package has a relatively high priority position in the "Projects" page of LiquidPlanner, just under our urgent work and active sprint releases.

For us, bugs come to our attention in a variety of ways. They might be reported by a customer via email, found during the testing process or through our normal use of the tool, or sent to us as a system alert.

To get these items into LiquidPlanner, most of us use email integration. This “UNTRIAGED” Package has its own email address, which we’ve all added to our address books. When we mail an issue into LiquidPlanner, we automatically create a new “task” for tracking.

Using the subject line of the email, we can:

• Name the bug (usually it starts with “Bug: XXXXX”)
• Assign the bug to any member of our workspace
• Estimate it in any unit we want (2-4h, .5-1d)

The attached documents and body of the email (including screenshots, repro steps, or error messaging) get saved to the Details page of LiquidPlanner, ensuring that all relevant information stays with the item as it goes through our workflow.

Next, we have twice-weekly meetings to process our “UNTRIAGED” bugs. During those meetings, we review every new item, and assign, estimate, and prioritize it. Some bugs get moved into the current sprint, others get pushed into the staging sprint or out to the backlog. If a new bug is assigned to a developer, they get notified via email and it shows up on their personal tasklist.

We typically structure the work in each release into several major categories, one of which is “Bugs.” This allows us to view, analyze, and report on them as a group, separate from other tasks like new features or tech debt. However, as you can see in Figure 2, the amount of work associated with bugs is non-trivial – hence our interest in tracking them in conjunction with our other project work!

All comments, collaboration, updates, and files associated with the bugs are stored on the Details Page. This includes references to specific customers who may have been affected.  Sometimes this information can pile up, but since the most recent comments, documents, and links are added to the top of the list, it’s pretty easy to stay on top of the latest happenings for each item. We also have LiquidPlanner integrated with our source control system, so that applicable references/commit notifications are automatically added as comments to the bug.

Finally, once the bug has been fixed, we assign it back to the creator (or a tester) for verification. By simply switching ownership of the task, we can move it through an informal workflow that doesn’t bog us down in process. (The person who created the item is also notified by email that they have a new assignment.) Once the fix has been verified, the item is marked done and becomes part of our (fully searchable) archive for later reference.  Voilà!

We recently added new custom fields that allow us to track our bugs even more effectively. We've created a custom field for "bugs", "feature requests", etc. And, when a new issue comes up, we simply assign the appropriate custom field. This is great for filtering in the plan and for reporting purposes!

Naturally, you can argue that LiquidPlanner lacks some of the features of a dedicated bug management system. I’ll give you that. But what it lacks in dedicated features it makes up for in ease of use, simplicity, and integration into our other processes.

However, before you pack up and head off for distant, unknown lands, there’s one thing you need to remember to do: tell LiquidPlanner about your upcoming absence. Why? LiquidPlanner is constantly trying to predict and build the most accurate schedule it can for you and your team.

So if you’re not available to work at some point, LiquidPlanner needs to know so that it doesn’t schedule you for work during those dates. You wouldn’t want LiquidPlanner to think you’re working on those website specs when you’re actually perfecting cannonballs while cliff diving in Fiji, right? To tell LiquidPlanner about your holiday, you’ll need to create an event. Many teams like to do this by creating a package called “Events,” and then having each team member put their own personal events in that same package. Here’s how to get started:

1. Go to the Add button at the top of your Projects page. Click “Package.”
2. An edit pane will pop up. Call the package “Events.”
3. After it’s added to your project plan, the Events package may drop to the bottom of your page. For ease of reference, drag and drop that package to the top.

Now on to adding the event itself. You say you’re climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in June? Sounds a little insane, but good for you! To add this event or so called “vacation” (did I mention I think you’re nuts?) to your new Events package:

1. Go back to the Add button and select “Add an Event.”
2. The edit pane will pop up. Rename the event something like “Mt. Kilimanjaro” or “Someone Please Talk Me Out of This.”  
3. Double-check that the event is assigned to you.
4. Enter the calendar dates in which you’ll be gone. This is one of the only times that LiquidPlanner will ask you for hard dates. 
5. Hit save. 

LiquidPlanner will automatically recalculate your project plan, flowing work around your holiday. You’ll know instantly if your little jaunt will cause any project deadlines to become at risk, and you can go put out those fires before the big day comes.

Feeling a little foggy about this process still? Our Support Manager Mary Ellen can give you a visual tour step-by-step in our new training video, “Planning Events": 

And no matter where your travels take you: Bon voyage!

Start with Part 1 as an introduction to LiquidPlanner, and proceed through to your desired topic (we’ve got everything from “Logging Progress” to “Multi-Project Management” covered). Whatever questions you may have, our Support Manager Mary Ellen will walk you through the steps needed to get your work done in LiquidPlanner. Whether you’re a Workspace Owner, a individual contributor, a 30-day trial-er or a longtime LiquidPlanner user, we can guarantee that you’ll learn at least one new thing from these videos.

Part 1: Introduction to LiquidPlanner

Part 2: Creating Project Plans

Part 3: Date Calculations and Scheduling Tools

Part 4: Multi-Project Management

Part 5: Events

Part 6: Logging Progress

Part 7: Command Menus and View Gallery

Part 8: Filters

Part 9: Recap of Key Concepts

You can watch these videos any time on our website or on the LiquidPlanner YouTube channel (don't forget to subscribe!). What is the next training video we should produce? Give us your thoughts in the comments.

• Filling the pipeline
• Avoiding taking on more than I can handle

LiquidPlanner helps me do both these things and in turn, manages to keep me out of trouble. Here’s a step-by-step description of my process for preparing LiquidPlanner (and myself) for the New Year:

First, I created all the projects and tasks that have to be completed in the coming year. My volunteer commitments were the easiest to model. For example, my Toastmasters group has 90-minute meetings twice a month, so I created a project named “Toastmasters Member 2012.” I used the “Add Multiple Tasks” function to quickly create two dozen tasks to represent those meetings.

Second, I created a package for the year, and then within that package, I added 12 more packages, one for each month. 

I then put each task into the appropriate month’s package. It’s my practice to place every LiquidPlanner task into both a folder and a package. In this way, I can estimate both at the project level and at the calendar level.

Planning my projects and tasks for my consulting business is more difficult to model. It’s often true that in December, I don’t know what my big projects will be in the coming year. However, this year I have several ongoing projects as well as some big proposals in the queue. I had used LiquidPlanner to model the proposed projects before I submitted bids, and I already had a good sense of how much time I should budget for those projects. It was simple to plug the appropriate tasks into the months when I believed the work would take place.

And there we have it - by using LiquidPlanner, I saw that the month of June could be quite full if I were to receive all the contracts I’ve bid on. As I negotiate with other clients, I’ll keep this in mind so that I don’t end up overloaded.

LiquidPlanner is an integral part of both my daily work flow and my monthly planning, and I can’t imagine running my consulting practice without it.

With over 20 years of project management experience, Lisa Sieverts specializes in improving organizational project success rates. She owns and manages Facilitated Change, an independent project management consulting firm based in Harrisville, NH.  Lisa teaches project management at the Masters degree level at Marlboro College Graduate School and Northeastern University College of Professional Studies. Since 2001, she has been certified as a Project Management Professional (PMP) by the Project Management Institute (PMI), a global leader in the development of standards for the practice of project management. Previously, she worked for Hewlett-Packard in California and Idaho as a project manager in the HP Services division.

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In reality, projects are not filled with chocolate rivers, Fizzy Lifting drinks and Everlasting Gobstoppers. Most project teams are made up of cooperative (and sometimes uncooperative) team members with different—and often competing—priorities. The project manager doesn't always have authority over the entire project team in the traditional sense (i.e., the team members don’t “report” to the project manager). When project managers lack positional influence, they need to rely on other “organizational currencies” to influence others and get the job done. 

In the book Influence Without Authority, Dr. Allan Cohen and Dr. David Bradford introduce the Cohen-Bradford Influence Model that describes how to influence others through a "give and take” exchange (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Cohen-Bradford Influence Without Authority Model

Effective project managers know they get work done by working well within their peer network. If someone does something for the project manager, there’s a good chance the project manager will do something for them in return.  To pave the way for these exchanges, project managers need to build a “bank account” of organizational currencies.

Below are a few types of organizational currencies and a few sample questions to help you think about how to apply them: 

Influence in Action

In one of my IT projects, the team needed additional servers that were not scoped in the original hosting order. Due to the demand for capacity, I knew the timeline to rack, stack and install servers could take several weeks. George, the infrastructure manager, already had a long list of server requests ahead of my project. I had to spend some of my organizational currency to improve my project’s place in the priority list.  Based on the Cohen-Bradford model, I exchanged the following organizational currencies: 

• Position-related: My project had high visibility with executive management and by pushing it through, George’s team got recognition for supporting a critical project.
• Task-related: I had cost information from outside vendors who provided a similar service.  By sharing the information with George, he gained additional insight and competitive information that helped him develop a center of excellence within the company.
• Relationship-related:  George and I had a personal friendship because we worked together over 6 years, three companies, many team lunches, coffee breaks, and general commiseration.

In this project, there were still challenges and other delays that couldn’t be resolved solely using organizational currency and peer-influence.  However, by relying on the relationship we had and leveraging these organizational currencies, I was able to move the project forward.

Learn More About the Influence Without Authority Model

Influencing without authority isn’t an easy task. Project managers need to spend time to earn organizational currency with co-workers.  Time isn’t a luxury many project managers can afford, but investing in relationship-building will ultimately help them be more productive and generate quicker consensus with project team members (for more information on the Cohen-Bradford model, please visit their website). Cohen and Bradford have several case studies and articles that take a deeper look at influencing without authority.

Until I find my Golden Ticket and inherit a team of Oompa-Loompas, I’ll continue to invest in my own organizational related currencies.  Perhaps that’s how Willy Wonka kept an entire tribe of Oompa-Loompas on-task and happy.

Author’s note:  A note of thanks goes to Dr.Cohen and Dr. Bradford for their permission to reprint their Influence Without Authority model in this article.

About the Author

Dr. Andrew Makar is an IT manager, author, instructor, and lecturer on a range of project management topics including PMO management, ERP implementation, application portfolio management, and infrastructure management. 

An involuntary and reluctant project manager is born.

Most jobs require some amount of project management, even freelance jobs. When the stakes of a project's outcome includes your livelihood and likelihood of future work, you will undoubtedly respond as I have done: sink or swim.

Treading Water: Signs You Need to Start Swimming

I was once hired for an ongoing freelance postiion with a small but fast-growing company. Interestingly enough, they made productivity software for managing projects. My job was simply to write the user documentation and help systems for various parts of the software suite. This demanded that I stay on top of my targets and deadlines, track my time, and liaise with internal developers and product managers to complete my admittedly small part of the final software product. 

When I finished my first piece of documentation, roadblocks started popping up everywhere at work:

• There was no structure to implementing my work or getting the final approval for its inclusion in the software
• A major staffing crisis with outsourced programmers in another country
• The acting product development manager was also the business development manager, trying to juggle too many responsibilities at once

I recognized quickly that I was treading water (in fact, my client’s whole team was), and despite the fact that it was completely outside the scope of my role, I took on some of the tasks a project manager would handle. The process needed to move forward again.

Learning to Swim: Managing Projects When You Are Not A PM

The dearth of communication and coordination taking place in my office undermined the potential success of the entire product launch. All the parties were capable, dedicated people but they did not have the bandwidth to follow through and coordinate with each other. I needed to take matters into my own hands. Here were just some of my self-assigned tasks:

• Relieve pressure from key actors to help them be more effective at their main responsibilities. To do this, I acted as a liaison between the frazzled biz dev-sometime-product-manager and the local software development team to ensure that the most up-to-date information about program and system changes were conveyed to all the appropriate individuals. This cut the need for long, time-eating meetings among people who needed to devote their time elsewhere. You can also alleviate this sort of problem in LiquidPlanner with our online collaboration tools. 
• Identifying problems and bottlenecks and finding a solution. In this case, I was far enough removed from the day-to-day workings and office politics to see simple processes and fixes that could alleviate or eliminate a major problem. Being too close to a situation makes it easy to overlook even basic missing factors, such as clear communication between the right stakeholders. A good project manager, even an involuntary one, can step in and see past these blind spots. 

In the end, the component of the software we were working on shipped on time, even if there were fixes that needed to take place after the fact. However, by stepping in where I saw a need, I helped to facilitate this outcome. You might find yourself in this position, as companies downsize and employees are increasingly asked to contribute more. Using your communication and organization skills while also recognizing that you are now indeed a project manager will serve you well in the long run.

It’s become a holiday tradition at LiquidPlanner to dedicate the last software update of the year to something straight off our customers' wish lists.  So what’s our “End of the Year” gift in 2011? A complete overhaul of the LiquidPlanner email notification system.

Starting this Monday, your LiquidPlanner change notifications are going to look very different. If you’re new to LiquidPlanner’s online project management software, we’re talking about email integration features that help you and your team stay informed and engaged with the projects and tasks in your LiquidPlanner project workspace.

These notifications keep people informed about changes to their tasks, as well as tasks and projects they choose to watch, without ever having to log in to LiquidPlanner.

The Old

To be honest, the circa 2007 email design we were using didn’t even look like LiquidPlanner, especially not since we upgraded to LiquidPlanner 3.0. The design was weak and a little, what’s the word? Oh, right: boring. 

With this release, we’ll be jumping forward to a new contemporary HTML design that is much more useful and easier to navigate. We’ve been using it internally for a month now and we can’t even look at the old design anymore.

The New

Here’s what you can expect after we deploy the update this Saturday:

• One e-mail per task instead of batched updates. If you’re subscribed to real-time notifications, you’ll receive a different email for each task that changes. The name of the task will be in the subject line, which means multiple changes will get threaded in most email clients (i.e. you can group by conversation). It also means you’ll also be able to scan subject lines and quickly decide if you need to pay attention to the email, saving you valuable time. 
• “[LP]” in the title. This will make it easy to spot notifications and to build an email rule to move notifications into a folder.
• No more “Do not reply to this mail” warning. Instead of hunting for “Reply” links in the email, you can simply hit “Reply” in your email client to add to the conversation. This is the best part of moving to per-task emails.
• Human readable changes. The text in the change notifications has been reworked to be more human-speak and less machine-speak. It should be much easier to follow what’s going on with your projects.
• More relevant information will be included. Recent change notifications will include more relevant information, like document thumbnails, important updates, and full text descriptions, notes, and more. This is particularly helpful when a task is transferred from one person to another and they need to get up to speed.
• Low volume option. If you don’t want to be blasted by too many change notifications, you can subscribe to a daily digest that will summarize the day’s changes for you.
• Upcoming Tasks. The “Upcoming Tasks” email has also be redesigned. We dropped the weekly mode in favor of a daily mail that focuses on what’s planned on your list today and tomorrow.*

I know that we’re all very sensitive to how products respect our inbox, and I hope we’ve done a good job with this particular upgrade. We definitely want to make staying connected with your work easier and quicker, and we always listen to what our customers are saying. Let us know what you think, and I hope we’ve made email a little less tedious and a little more fun.

*But Wait, There's More!

Email notifications are definitely the star of this update, but here are a few more changes you don't want to miss: 

• We added the @All function for commenting.  This allows you to address a comment to every person in the workspace at once.
• We renamed the Promise Date feature to Deadline Date.  There's no change to the way it works; we just gave it a new name to better reflect its function.