Journyx is pleased to announce that the latest versions of our applications, Journyx Timesheet 7.9 and Journyx ProjectXecute 8.5, are now available to the public.

Numerous enhancements and improvements to the user interface have been included in both products, as well as bug fixes and usability and performance improvements that, though not flashy, will make a grown man cry tears of joy.

Please Note: Timesheet 7.9 also serves as the latest maintenance release for Timesheet 7.8 and earlier. Customers using earlier versions of Timesheet are encouraged to upgrade to Timesheet 7.9.

Existing Timesheet customers can request the Timesheet 7.9 patch on our site.

Existing ProjectXecute customers should contact Journyx to receive the ProjectXecute 8.5 patch.

To see Timesheet 7.9 in action please contact the Timesheet Sales Team.

To see ProjectXecute 8.5 in action please contact the ProjectXecute Sales Team.

Sign up for a 30-day free trial of Timesheet 7.9.

You probably have overheard these words: software as a service. You may even have nodded knowingly despite not knowing much more than that they're more easily digestible as the acronym SaaS (rhymes with the thing that holds your evening martini).

It's pretty easy to get swept up in technology debates about what constitutes SaaS--is it the same as cloud computing or different? But you know what? You don't need to know what it is; you just need to know what it does for your growing business. As for what it does, we'll answer that question with another: What if you no longer had to spend thousands of dollars a year on communications gear, computer software and overall internal IT management? read more

Your friends at Journyx like sports. We also like games. Ergo, we're really excited about our brand new March Madness Bracket Game. We've got room for 400 folks to take part in this contest of skill, strategy, knowledge and luck. The winner of the bracket challenge will receive an iPod Touch.

If you'd like to take part, drop our organizers a line at bracket@journyx.com and they'll slide an invite your way.

Oh, and for the record, Journyx employees and their families are not eligible to play. So you don't have to worry about competing with our in-house bracketologists.

The Journyx "31 Days of Journyx Twitter Coupons" campaign is in full swing, and if you haven't taken part just yet, there's still time to get in on the action.

We've already given away 15 free licenses of Journyx Timesheet to the fine folks at MIT and to the rockstars at Conner Clark. Hillary Laza is the fortunate soul who gets to have dinner with Journyx CEO Curt Finch and Daniel Ordway was the lucky winner of an iPod Touch.

There's still an Amazon Kindle, tickets to the Austin City Limits Music Festival, and the grand prize of 50 Timesheet licenses left to win.

You can find out the full details on this crazy, one-of-a-kind social-media-based festival of prizes on our website. But all you really need to know is that following us on Twitter is the key to playing.

1) If you're going to put the fox in charge of the henhouse, plan on losing some chickens. If the project manager (PM) is seeing the project only as a means of showcasing themselves and their talents, or a way to bring negative and/or false information regarding coworkers to management, you can lose your best people. This can work as a way to make the messenger look superior, make other team members look bad or to shift blame. It will anger the better workers and send the poorer ones scurrying for their resumes coming out of the shared laser printer. Both reactions suction energy from the project...... read more

Journyx knows that while technology is powerful, sometimes a little education can also boost your business. With this in mind, we are offering a free copy of the latest Aberdeen report on project profitability to our faithful newsletter readers. Here is an excerpt:

Project-based businesses face a variety of challenges in driving profitable business. These challenges are as diverse as the products and services offered, yet all strive for a common goal of delivering projects on-time and under-budget. As the number of moving parts increases, so does the difficulty in maintaining visibility and control. This report explores the extent to which the added visibility and control afforded by enterprise level project management tools can directly impact the profitability of projects and the businesses that rely on them for growth and profit.... read more

• In Journyx ProjectXecute, how do I view total availability statistics for groups or resources who share similar characteristics?
• What is a good strategy for filling out my NCAA tournament bracket?

Get the answers to these and other questions in the Journyx Tip Archive.

Most of us have heard that IT projects as a whole have a very high rate of failure. TechRepublic has a new blog post up on 10 ways PMs can avoid catastrophic mistakes throughout the process:

1. Learn from other’s mistakes

2. Do your research first

3. Have a plan

4. Follow standards and use templates

5. Communicate and coordinate with others

6. Allow enough time

7. Reuse proven code

8. Use checklists

9. Test, test, test… and carefully review your work

10. Test again with a third party

It seems that anticipating mistakes (learn from others, do your research, have a plan) and thinking about how to avoid or react to them (testing, communication) is half the battle. What else would you add to the list?

Project Times has published an article about how change management, which often provides extensive benefits to an organization, can be completely derailed by a lack of strong leadership.

When we have run into difficulties and the approach failed to deliver the expected harmonious change, it was always because a group of stakeholders were not sincere and would try to manipulate the others in preserving THEIR status quo. When such a roadblock appears, I really expect that upper management, as the sponsor/client of the changes, will take on its traditional role as the legitimate ultimate organizational authority.

[...]

None of the chief executives involved came forward to apply the required directive approach. They preferred waiting for the conflict to just settle by itself [...]. Of course, the change then stalled and stalled; the status quo desired by the resisting group was maintained. And the organization ended up worse that it was in the first place, because the vast majority that desired the change was deprived of it and will not collaborate next time we come to them to work on improving their organizational project management maturity.

Ineffective leadership is a real problem in project management with very serious consequences. If you are a project manager who needs to hone these skills, you might check out another recent Project Times article on the top 10 leadership qualities for PMs.

CIO reports that Robert Half Technology has published the results of a study on IT project plans as the economy turns around. 1,400 CIOs were interviewed and here are some of the results:

[...] 37% intend to implement software and hardware upgrades that had been deferred due to poor economic conditions in 2009. Another 16% plan to roll out virtualization projects that were previously shelved, and the same percentage of IT leaders polled said Web site design initiatives would get the go ahead following an economic recovery.

These new IT projects include cloud computing and social media initiatives. Interestingly enough, our CEO recently published an article on how you can be ready for the recovery by prioritizing and executing projects that are coming off the bench.

Which of your IT projects might come back into play now that the recession is nearing its end?

A recent Project Times article lists the following 10 leadership qualities as required for project managers:

• Inspires a Shared Vision
• A Good Communicator
• Integrity
• Enthusiasm
• Empathy
• Competence
• Ability to Delegate Tasks
• Cool Under Pressure
• Team-Building Skills
• Problem Solving Skills

These skills enable project managers to keep their team motivated and to adapt to different situations that arise. They are necessary in order to steer projects through the inevitable storms that come. A ProjectSmart article agrees, stating that "a project manager with a combination of strong project management technical skills and relevant leadership and other important skills will find him/herself in a position of strength within their organization and a valuable resource overall."

What would you add to the list?

The Requirements Network has an excellent article out on the necessity of well-developed requirements for any project. The author likens requirements gathering today to the popular 90s sitcom, "Seinfeld," writing:

In a nutshell, we approach requirements the same way we approach any other communication or conversation. When you think about it, most communications and conversations are one-sided and egocentric. Seinfeld was an excellent example of multiple people carrying on conversations in the same room without either listening or being heard. Translate this into requirements gathering and you get ambiguity, miscommunication and missed requirements.

She goes on to recommend that requirements gathering adhere to the SMART philosophy, meaning that requirements must be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Repeatable and Timed in order to succeed. She argues that there wouldn't be such a dismal IT project failure rate if organizations adhered to this formula. Do you agree?

A new installment of Dr. David Hillson's "Managing Risk in Projects" series has been published at PM World Today this month. In this article, Dr. Hillson focuses on the problems that can arise to hinder effective project risk management. He groups these into 3 categories: problems with process, problems with people and problems with persistence. In the first situation, project risks that are identified are not always addressed. If no action is taken, then the exercise was in vain.

Regarding problems with people, Dr. Hillson writes, "Risk is managed by people, not by machines, computers, robots, processes or techniques. As a result we need to recognise the influence of human psychology on the risk process, particularly in the way risk attitudes affect judgement and behaviour. There are many sources of bias, both outward and hidden, affecting individuals and groups, and these need to be understood and managed proactively where possible."

Finally, problems with persistence includes the fact that risk management "must be an iterative process, requiring ongoing commitment and action from the project team. Without such persistence, project risk exposure will get out of control, the project risk process will become ineffective and the project will have increasing difficulty in reaching its goals."

Kimberly Wiefling at ProjectConnections has written a new article about "catalytic events" that can lead to permanent behavior change and improvement. She encourages readers to work to find permanent solutions to recurring problems, using the following analogy:

Imagine a parking garage that installs timestamp machines at the entrance to spit out tickets than can be checked upon exit to verify the total time spent in the garage, but without the gates that force cars to stop until they take the ticket. Without the gates in place, some people would surely forget to take their ticket at the entrance. Maybe a pile of tickets would accumulate at the base of the machine—no big deal. But from time to time there would a line of cars backed up at the exit when an exiting driver finds themselves ticketless. The parking garage attendant is left to sort out the mess. Repeatedly. Yuk.

Simply installing a gate at the entrance that is raised only once the ticket is removed ensures the right behavior by the customer—each driver must take a ticket before entering the garage. As long as the gate is working properly, and ignoring the possibility of criminal activity, the problem of forgotten tickets is now permanently solved. Of course the driver could still manage to misplace or lose the ticket, perhaps by removing it from the car, or—in the case of extremely messy cars or disorganized drivers—the ticket could actually become lost inside of the car itself. (Maybe in the future parking garages will just slap a barcode on the outside of the car when you drive in, or just take a picture and use pattern recognition to match exiting cars with entering cars, who knows.)

The entrance gate is a permanent solution to a recurring problem. Having seen recurring problems on project teams decade upon decade, and growing weary of asking, urging, coaxing, begging, and pleading with people to change their ways, I dream of such remedies to errant behavior!

Can you think of ways to address recurring problems and change behaviors in your organization?

Many of us will face the day when we are assigned a project that we are not equipped for. Rather than letting it ruin our careers, TechRepublic suggests a 5-step plan for taking on the project and driving it to success.

1. Make the project a priority from the start.
2. Commit talented people to the project.
3. Get over the learning curve as fast as possible.
4. Plan the project work but adjust quickly.
5. Keep communicating.

The writer also encourages readers to keep in mind that it is often highly visible, challenging projects like this that can launch your career to a new level. Rather than run from it, IT professionals and project managers should embrace the opportunity.

A ProjectSmart article called The Hidden Costs and Dangers of the Shortcut highlights how the strategy of taking shortcuts can sometimes derail the project entirely. Michelle LaBrosse writes:

Let's say you are running a project, and the goal is to upgrade a road to a remote property. You solicit bids from several contractors and ask them to do it for the least cost possible, and you also stipulate you don't want to get any permits.

None of the contractors are willing to work under those conditions, so you get your own earth moving equipment and a friend with some experience to help you upgrade your road.

In the process, you fill in a spillway to a dam for a reservoir. You think this is no big deal because the fine you pay for that is far less than what it would've cost to hire a contractor to do the job properly.

Three years later in a heavy rainstorm, the dam breaks because the spillway has been compromised. Seven homes are washed away in the ensuing flood and 10 people die. Now, what was intended as a shortcut to save money ends up taking lives.

What kind of results could come from taking shortcuts in your own projects? Lost revenue? Lost opportunities?

Over at TechRepublic's IT Leadership blog, Rick Freedman has written about the importance of not only focusing on projects in themselves, but also to understand the core business strategy that fuels the portfolio. He writes:

Here are my three best practice tips for keeping the overall project strategy in mind:

* Participate: The best scenario is one in which IT has a seat at the table as corporate objectives and strategies are being devised. Even if you aren’t invited to the strategy meeting, you can still contribute by posting your ideas and opinions in forums, suggestion programs, user committees, online communities, and various social media outlets.

* Study: Learn what directions your organization is thinking about taking in the future. Many enterprises have internal communication programs that are set up to ensure that all associates have a clear idea of the overall corporate strategy. Publicly traded companies must report to the SEC, and these reports are gold mines of data about the strategies, challenges, and risks associated with the company’s market, competitive position, and product mix. So are analyst opinions, which often cut to the heart of the challenges with a company’s strategies. In addition, trade magazines are one of the deepest sources of data on the risks, concerns, and opportunities in a particular vertical market, and they provide budding corporate strategists with plenty of great ideas about what the competition is doing and about what IT can bring to your firm.

* Think strategically: IT professionals and project managers who can think past their project and can see the entire context of the organization’s portfolio and strategy, are enabled to make the right decisions at every level of the project, from selecting the right components to pilot in a prototype or early iteration, to determining which projects should live or die depending on their overall contribution potential.

Your pals at Journyx are at it again. This time we're breaking new ground by launching a month-long giveaway campaign called 31 Days of Journyx Twitter Coupons.

This campaign will take place over the month of March and in it we'll be giving away lots of great things, ranging from Timesheet and ProjectXecute licenses to an Amazon Kindle, an iPod Touch and tickets to the Austin City Limits Music Festival.

You can find out the full details on this crazy, one-of-a-kind social-media-based festival of prizes on our website. But all you really need to know is that following us on Twitter is the key to playing.

"It's been nearly three hundred years since Ben Franklin admonished a young tradesman to "remember that time is money", yet many companies still do a poor job of tracking how employees spend their time and the financial consequences are significant.

"No one likes to fill out time sheets," said Curt Finch, CEO of time management software firm, Journyx and author of the book All Your Money Won't Another Minute Buy: Valuing Time as a Business Resource. "But they are extremely valuable in helping you understand the cost of doing business on a per project or per customer basis, and fixing projects that are broken..." read more

As many of you know, our CEO Curt Finch is the author of All Your Money Won't Another Minute Buy: Valuing Time as a Business Resource. ÊWhat you may not know is that he's picked up the pen again and is currently working on a second book on how to execute projects on time and on budget.

To that end, he's looking for project management war stories - the good, the bad and the ugly - and wants to hear from you if you've got one. Please e-mail Curt with the following information:

• Number of employees at your company
• Number of employees who work on projects
• Company industry

We look forward to hearing from you!

Parsons Brinckerhoff (PB) Ð a leader in developing and operating infrastructure around the world Ð is currently working on the multi-year revitalization project of a major metropolitan airport. PB, together with five other consultant firms, comprises a Construction Management team that manages a number of contractors working as an extension of the city on the airport project. Tracking the time and billing for six different consulting firms in a cohesive manner, with each firm managing multiple contractors and projects, proved to be a difficult task... read more

• In Timesheet, how can I give my users special instructions for logging their time this period?
• In ProjectXecute, how do I give Project Managers access to an entire project plan?

Get the answers to these and other questions in the Journyx Tip Archive.

A recent PM World Today article begs the question, is project management a core skill and no longer a niche capability? The writer, Peter Taylor, had recently set up a poll in LinkedIn that asked this question, and 42% of respondents said that it is a core skill while 36% said that it is both a core skill and a niche capability. Only 19% believed that it is a niche capability alone.

What does this mean? Taylor writes,

Project management methodology is a ‘core skill’ that all managers need to be aware of but, the actual project management activity is still a ‘niche capability’ that requires additional training and experience in order to be successful. Managing a small, simple project is no big deal and most people can do it. Managing a large, complex project with substantial risk, diverse stakeholders, a geographically distributed team, multiple constraints and high stakes is best reserved for real experts. The successful business of the 21st century recognizes the value of ‘niche’ project managers working under a supportive executive that has a foundation of project ‘core skills’.

CIO published the findings of a Forrester Report in a new article, "The 10 Key Capabilities of Next-Generation Project Managers." Forrester interviewed IT and project management professionals in order to learn what the future of project management will look like. Here are the top 10 capabilities they found:

1. Emotional Intelligence
2. Adaptive Communication
3. People Skills
4. Management Skills
5. Flexibility
6. Business Savvy
7. Analytical Skills
8. Customer Focus
9. Results-Orientation
10. Character

Another important finding is that project managers must be willing to embrace agile methods in the future in order to keep up with IT and software development trends. According to Forrester Analyst Mary Gerush,

In an Agile software delivery environment, the traditional command-and-control approach of project managers is counter-productive. [...] Instead of defining roles and making sure team members are following project management processes and procedures to a T, next generation project managers need to focus on improving collaboration and removing obstacles and distractions so that project team members can get their work done on time and on budget.

For more information on how to integrate agile and project management, check out the newest article by our CEO, Curt Finch, entitled "How to Create an Agile PMO."

PM World Today has published a new article by Melvyn Lee about why critical thinking is a necessary skill for project management. He argues that critical thinking can weed out "enemies of project management" such as risk, complacency and an excessive reliance on prior assumptions and dependencies.

Lee also lists the benefits that critical thinking provides for PM:

1. Integrating thought processes to develop integrated solutions
2. Removing “taking things for granted” attitude and pervasive culture of complacency
3. Modifying old patterns of thoughts
4. Exposing Blind Spot
5. Evaluating paths that are less traveled
6. Away from the crowd instinct

You can download the PDF of this article to read more.

Paul Slater at Project Smart offers advice on how to deal with project risk in his article, "Project Risk: Is It All Bad?" He recommends that project managers ensure that the risk management strategy that is employed is appropriate and specific to the project at hand. No large RM programs applied to small projects, no applying the same risks to a number of projects in a program where they might not be applicable.

So, are all risks bad? Of course not. Make sure you are managing the risks that are appropriate to the project and make related programmes and projects aware of them and you are most of the way there. Opportunities can be anywhere within a project space, but just remember to think about them as you go through the risks; it starts to make that risk review meeting far more meaningful.

Are there any situations where project risk is not "bad"? Perhaps where it can even be positive?

Carl Pritchard at ProjectConnections wrote a new article, "Falling in Love with GREAT Communications," that addresses our everyday methods of communication and offers suggestions on how to improve them. E-mail, voicemail, conference calls and face-to-face meetings all have certain types of protocol that we would all do well to remember. Here are some of Pritchard's suggestions for each.

E-mail:

Be consistent about the use of the To:, CC:, and BCC: lines. To: people are those who have to take direct action related to the e-mail. CC: folks? They're the ones who are being informed, but we want others to know who they are and that they have visibility on the information. Still, if you're on the CC:, there's no need to make a direct response. And BCC: folks should be those who have a need to be informed, but should not be included on the inevitable parade of responses that may follow.

Voicemail:

As the person leaving the message, keep it succinct. If you hit voicemail and don't know what you're going to say, hang up. Think it through. Come back. Then leave the message.

Conference calls:

If there are any handouts or materials that were sent out in advance, have them on a website as well, so that latecomers can pick them up

Face-to-face:

Schedule interactions. Give the person you just bumped into the opportunity to walk away. If they don't have the time to spend with you, they won't be focused on your message. Give them an "out" in case they aren't ready for the face-to-face experience.

A Project Times article notes that "the difference between decent project management and excellent project management can be measured in delays, cost overruns, lost customers, employee misery, and business jeopardy." The writer goes on to list 8 'secrets' that separate the excellent PMs from the decent, including:

• Always looking ahead and anticipating and preventing potential problems

• Ensuring that team members have complete and clear assignments regarding who needs to do what by when

• Knowing when to push, when to be patient, and when to intervene

• Shifting easily between the nitty-gritty details of execution and the high-level options and opportunities that impact project scope and quality

(You can read the entire list of secrets over at Project Times.)

Judging by this list, it seems that what makes a project manager truly excellent is years of experience that teach him/her how to read situations. They know what certain team members need from them, as well as what needs to be tracked and heeded in order to avoid major problems. They don't waste time on the things that do not matter, but they do keep an eye on the things that do.

What would you consider a key trait for project managers?

The International Community for Project Managers is a repository of articles, links and other useful pieces of information for project managers. (In fact, our CEO is one of their contributing writers.) One of their recent articles, "Implications of Diversity on Project Management," raises an issue that most of us might not always consider - the fact that diversity in project teams is not only beneficial and desirable, but is also something that must be accounted for and managed in order to maximize value. The writer says, "Of the many factors that are used in global management work, the most important - and most impulsive - are employees. While capital, land and technology can be planned and hazards predicted and managed, employees are most difficult to manage globally." She goes on to suggest not only fostering team diversity, but also addressing it by encouraging team members to talk through their feelings about diversity and to communicate their way to a better understanding of each other.

How large a factor do you think one's cultural and professional background plays in their interaction with other team members and with you, the project manager?

We make New Year's resolutions for our health, our finances, our relationships and more. But how about for our projects? Kent McDonald at ProjectConnections wrote about how to go about creating project goals for 2010 in his latest article:

Goals, especially those of the measurable type, are excellent ways to know when a project is successful. Having a clear idea of what problem the project is intending to solve doesn't hurt either. Yet it can be surprising how many projects start without any idea of what problem they're solving, and finish—assuming they finish—without any idea of whether they solved it. Weird.

One example he gives is a project described as follows: "Change the system to gather the customer's wedding anniversary, shoe size, and eye color." The problem here is the motivation - what purpose can be served by gathering these 3 kinds of information? Is the project being scheduled in response to an actual business problem? Sometimes we plug along without even asking questions such as this.

You can read the article for some suggestions on how to use problem statements and requirements gathering to improve your projects in the new year.