Virev PMO Blog

Bye Bye 2008 - Welcome 2009

In the realm of the project management, a few find peace and tranquility, I am not one of those few. I have been so busy with work and my other site project (http://thedailysavings.com) that I have been neglecting this blog for quiet some time. What kind of an admin am I? Well, I keep an eye on things around here to make sure the site is always up and running. I have yet to experience a site outage. 

I see a few more people have joined the Virev PMO, thanks for joining! Tell me how I can improve this to meet your goals. Email me, comment to this blog entry. I now have sometime that i want to give to this PMO to enhance it a bit. I am looking for ideas and feedback. 

I want to thank everyone for visiting and joining the Virev PMO. I wish you all best of luck and happy holidays! Let us enter 2009 with a spirit to achieve your goals and exceed YOUR expectations. 

Drop me an email if you ever have any questions.

HolyInsomniac

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Lessons Learned

We have all seen some sort of challenges, road blocks or different problems during the life of our projects. Mistakes are made, things are overlooked, there will be problems with the server configuration, you may also have unexpected resource constraints or you may have no problems at all (ya right…good luck with that :-)).

I always say that problems are but opportunities in disguise. At this time, I am managing 4 large projects for our client. Two of the critical and most challenging projects just got implemented and currently we are providing post-production support on them. I cannot appreciate the importance of documenting lessons learned any more than at this time.

The only way to learn from the past is to document the present. Lessons learned is a road map to the success of your next project. It will help you not make the same mistakes over again. It will help you improve performance. You should create a input template and distribute it among the stakeholders. It is important to get their input. I find the following to be a good starting point:

1. Identify all challenges, problems, mistakes, improvement opportunities.
2. Determine what needs to be done.
3. Determine how a certain process should be improved?
4. What needs to change?
5. Who should have done what?
6. Ask everyone involved to provide their input by a set target date.
7. Setup a meeting with everyone involved to discuss all the above in real time.
8. Typically its not needed to setup a follow-up call for Lessons learned unless you feel you need to have one.

Your template should include the following:

1. Project overview section
2. Some project statistics such as date implemented, number of bugs identified etc.
3. Document what needs to improve in a task format.
4. Document resolution strategy.
5. Assign ownership
6. Set target completion date for each task.

It is very simple and extremely important to perform this critical step after each project. If you want a template, contact me and I will email it to you. Thank you for reading.

Azam | Virev

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News: Beefing up Virev PMO

Virev is an idea, it’s a concept, it’s a Virtual Revolution but All in due time. There are many steps to climb yet. We are only at the begining.

I have many great ideas for Virev PMO and my priority is to always keep this application secure. Features can be added at any time. Currently, this application lets you manage your projects, clients, expenses, your team, invoices, time and share your project files. It also gives you an option to share your project progress with your clients. Let me briefly share a few updates with you.

Increasing Security: Virev PMO is a secure application as is but it does not go over a secured connection i.e https at this time. I understand the importance of securing sensitive information. Your project may contain sensitive financial data. I think I speak for both of us that we will feel much more comfortable if our data was secured by 256 bit of encryption. Tonight 7/23/08, we will try moving this application over a secure connection. Before we purchase a secure certificate, we will experiment with a self signed certificate. Please note that your browser may give you a warning that you are now moving to a secured connection. This is normal. We will regression test the application to verify the functionality for a few days. When everything looks good, we will purchase the security certificate and will no longer be prompted since the certificate will not be self signed. A lot of mumbo jumbo…. Bottom line is that we are trying to make your experience and your data as secured as possible.

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A little something about Scope

If you have managed or have been involved in any project then you have been involved in Scope management one way or another. Scope Management is defining and setting limits to the work that needs to be done, nothing more nothing less. Once you have defined the scope, the ideal thing to do is to get a sign off on the scope statement so it cannot be changed down the road. Who is to say it won’t? It probably will, but at least you will be covered as a project manager. Any additional changes to scope should be treated as addendum to the original project.

1. The client should only get what they have asked for. Gold plating is usually never necessary or recommended. You don’t want to set an expectation that your deliverables will always be gold plated. It never adds any value to the project.
2. Be absolutely clear in your scope about what is and is not included in the project.
3. Never let anyone update the scope without your consent/knowledge and always follow a structured change control system.

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12 Project Management Mistakes

This information originally appeared in the article “True confessions: What’s your biggest project management mistake?,” by Patrick Andrews.

In preparing to write about this topic, I realized that most of the project management mistakes I’ve made over the years are due to a lack of concentration. The truth is, when things are running smoothly or when you’re diverted by other priorities, it can be easy to take one’s eye off the ball. I often mistakenly thought that, even if things got a little out of shape, there would still be plenty of time to catch up.

#1: Pay attention to details

“I realized that I’d been sending e-mail updates to the client and spelling the name of his company incorrectly for a month.”

It seems comparatively unimportant, but to that client, the error is a sign that you don’t recognize his corporate brand. Oversights like this will cause significant, unnecessary friction.

#2: Don’t mess up the simple stuff

“At my last company, I accidentally overwrote the data files for an online project plan, leaving me to re-create large parts of the plan from scratch. I couldn’t believe it when, later that year, I lost two people’s month-load of work because I was using an unfamiliar, source-safe revision-control package — with the wrong settings.”

The moral is to make sure to be professional even when you’re doing simple stuff like backups.

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Introduction to Virev PMO Blog

Hello,

Welcome to the Virev PMO Blog!

This Blog will be used to share updates on the Virev PMO application as well as post interesting articles related to Project Management. As you may already know that we are very close from the launch of the Virev PMO Beta. We have a few dedicated monkeys working towards its first release. Virev Project Management Office is the most complete set of online office management tools you’re likely to find at any price - and it’s completely free! Manage your team, clients, projects, invoices, events and quotes (coming soon) from one web-based application. Virev PMO is well suited for both independent professionals and small teams of programmers and web developers as well as any small business. It is filled with easy to use features that will be improved as we go on with your input and feedback.

Come back to Virev PMO blog for up to date information on revisions, bug fixes and plans for future upgrades to Virev PMO.

Thanks,
Webmaster

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