Author: Brad Egeland

Brad Egeland is a Business Solution Designer and IT/PM consultant and author with over 25 years of software development, management, and project management experience leading initiatives in Manufacturing, Government Contracting, Creative Design, Gaming and Hospitality, Retail Operations, Aviation and Airline, Pharmaceutical, Start-ups, Healthcare, Higher Education, Non-profit, High-Tech, Engineering and general IT. He has been named the “#1 Provider of Project Management Content in the World” with over 7,000 published articles, eBooks, white papers and videos. Brad is married, a father of 11, and living in sunny Las Vegas, NV. Visit Brad's site at http://www.bradegeland.com/.

Business Analysts: 7 Things They Want Their Project Managers to Excel at

Written by Brad Egeland on December 19, 2016. Posted in Articles. 5 Comments on Business Analysts: 7 Things They Want Their Project Managers to Excel at

Well, PM’s wake up. I did a survey of some colleagues of what PM’s wanted their business analysts to excel at for the most productive and successful project experiences.

And to keep things fair, I also reached out to several business analysts I trusted and valued the opinions of and asked them what they wanted their project managers excel at. After all, turnabout is fair play, right?

That said….here’s the list of seven. As you read through this…whether you are a project manager or business analyst,

be thinking about what your own list might look like and please share those thoughts. This is certainly not a complete list…but it’s a start.

Trust and delegation. Business analysts tend to be as independent thinking as project managers are. What does that ultimately mean? They want to be left alone to do their jobs and do them well. They do not want micro-managing project managers hovering overhead. That’s not a problem for me because I don’t have time to hover. I prefer to staff a project with good people with the right skills and delegate…trusting they can get the job done. Keep them informed and monitor progress, but don’t interfere unless you’re needed or unless performance becomes an issue. In other words…let things happen and no one gets hurt.

Manage the customer. Customers want updates on their project. They are spending the money so they want to know where it’s going and if progress is being made. And in between the meaningful stuff that the business analyst has to relay on to the client, there is all the other “communication” that just has to happen but doesn’t add much – if any – value to the project. They want the project manager to handle that and they should want that as it is the PM’s job. But on too many projects the project manager is overloaded or not competent enough or not managing the project very will so the customer is constantly going to the business analyst for information. That should not have to happen.

Keep senior management at bay. We love our senior management in these big organizations. We really do. Or at least we acknowledge that we need them from time to time. We need them to fund our project efforts. We need them to pay for training and outside vendors and new tools and technology. We need them to knock down project roadblocks when they come up. And we also need them to stay out of the way most of the time. The business analyst wants the project manager to make sure that happens. Get what we need out of the executives to make our projects successful like the right resources, funding, and support. And then stay out of the way. All that is the project manager’s job to make happen and the business analyst wants his project manager to be able to take care of that daily.

Run the show. The business analyst wants to always be confident that the project manager is running the show. And by that I mean they want to know that the project manager is “in charge” and “on top of it” and is in communication with the customer and taking care of requests and things that come up and keeping the team informed as needed and up to date at all times. Just like they don’t want to be micro-managed by the project manager, they also don’t want to have to micro-communicate with them either. Trust that everyone is doing their job and that the project manager is always working in the best interest of the team and the project.

Make the decisions that need to be made. All good project managers should be good, decisive, and confident decision makers. Not that business analysts shouldn’t and won’t make key decisions on the project. Project managers need to empower the good business analysts out there to make critical decisions for the project when necessary and the project managers need to trust that their business analysts can make those decisions and make the right or best decisions possible and follow through on those decisions.

Let the team function. The project team is the project manager’s to manage. No doubt about that. But often the PM is busy with project status reports, client meeting preparations, schedule revisions, budget forecasting and analysis, resource forecasting…the list goes on and on. So the business analyst wants his project manager to let the team function while that is going on. What that means, is this…trust that the team is going down the right path and let them go. The business analyst can “manage” the team at times so let him. And trust that he can and will handle it well.

Sometimes…be the notetaker. The business analyst wants and needs the project manager to run the show – as mentioned above. But there are those times when the business analyst needs someone by their side to take notes…and participate. I’ve done that with my business analysts many times at different points of the project like when they are leading a functional design session, or a requirements definition session or preparing for user acceptance testing with the customer. Someone has to take notes and help follow up on communication with the customer – might as well be someone who is very knowledgeable about every aspect of the project like the project manager so the information is accurate and timely and efficiently preserved.

Summary / call for input

So, now we have a list for both the project manager of what the business analyst wants them to excel at and the other way around – for the business analyst of what the project manager wants them to excel at…the sister article to this one. Readers – what is your view on this list? Business analysts…do you feel this is a good list? Just the tip of the iceberg possibly? What would you change about it or add to it? From your experiences, what do you most want your project managers to be good at? Please share and discuss.

11 Tips for Better Project Results

Written by Brad Egeland on November 23, 2016. Posted in Articles. 3 Comments on 11 Tips for Better Project Results

Customer service. Much of project management is about customer service.

You do, after all, want to keep the customer informed, happy, involved in the project, and wanting more work. Customer satisfaction is one of the three key ingredients to successful project delivery. My motto is always “You’re only as successful as your last customer thinks you are.” So, keep the customer happy, and you’re successful.

Related Article: Deliver Project Results by Engaging Employees

To that end, I’m identifying 11 tips to a better project outcome. And that isn’t always just about customer happiness and satisfaction. It also means a more productive and high performing team.

It may just mean more efficient project management processes which lead to the project manager doing a better job of managing the project and the resources working on it.

Here are my 11 tips for doing a better job of delivering on your current projects.

1. Dashboard Reporting.

If you aren’t already doing so, implement dashboard reporting in your regular – hopefully weekly – project status reporting. I fully believe in a one size fits all status reporting style. Why create one for your customer, one for your team, one for your supervisors and one for whoever else needs it on your long list of stakeholders? Just create one project status report that generally takes care of everyone’s needs. Adding a dashboard will go a long way in making those many different stakeholders happy. That quick insight will either answer a lot of quick questions or dissuade other questions, freeing up your time to manage the project and do what you need to be doing.

2. Shorter, increased frequency status calls.

Want to make project improvements fast? Increase communication, don’t decrease it. If you need to improve things this week, add communication including team and customer touch points. Do this by having more calls, more meetings, more status report discussions and distributions, and more distributions of the project schedule. I’m not saying to do that for every project every week from now on. We do have lives and need to do the actual project work. But if a project needs some help, increasing the project touch points with key stakeholders can improve things fast. At least in the short term and sometimes that is all we are talking about.

3. Budget review.

Review the budget with the team. You may be doing this every week on your own as the project manager, but if you want to ensure team accountability for their hours then involve the entire project team in the budget review process. Awareness breeds accountability. Trust me; this does work.

4. Resource review.

Likewise, your project team members are the ones working daily on the project tasks. They may have some added insight that you don’t have. They also know – firsthand – their commitments to other projects. Their participation in weekly resource forecasting efforts can only help.

5. Mid-project review.

We conduct project reviews periodically and post-mortem. It all depends on the project and the customer. But if you’re not conducting any mid-project reviews, then be sure to add one or two to the schedule. Again, more review and more communication can be a very good thing for accountability and for customer satisfaction – especially if the project needs that kind of a boost.

6. Add issues to the project report.

Make sure there is a place in the status report for current, outstanding issues on the project. You should be driving to have one size fits all status reporting and including issues on the project status report keeps it all in one place.

7. Send someone onsite for some tasks or for the next meeting with the remote client.

If you’re working with a remote client or leading a virtual team and rarely have physical touch points with the project client, arrange to either visit the client yourself or send someone from the team onsite to complete some tasks. It will serve double duty to get some work accomplished and accomplish some face time with the project client. Always a good thing if there is any indication that the project needs that at this point.

8. Get a C-level involved in your project.

It never hurts to get senior management involved in your project, proactively, I mean. If the client calls your CEO, then that’s bad. But if you ask your CEO to show up to a client meeting just to make the client feel important, then that’s a good thing. The project client will get the feeling that their project is a priority to your organization and their satisfaction level and approval level will rise.

9. Do a disaster recovery or cyber security presentation for the client.

These can get costly so be careful, but asking the client to come on site and see a presentation of the disaster recovery and / or digital security measures and backup processes you have in place could be a good thing for the project – especially if you’re handling extra sensitive information for the client. They will gain confidence that you have business continuity under control and that a security issue isn’t likely to knock their project off the rails.

10. Give away some work.

If you’re finding the client to be extremely concerned with cash and budget, perhaps you can offer some work for free. Obviously, be aware of what you’re giving away and get approval to do so from your senior leadership. But if the project client knows they are getting some free work, that will definitely be a benefit to the project.

11. Pick up the phone.

Finally, just pick up the phone and call the customer. If you are usually just emailing status, questions, and answers back and forth with the client, give them a call. The voice is a good thing to inject when usually all they are getting is electronic communication. Ask them how they are doing. Ask them how they think the project is going. Listen. Learn.

Summary / call for input

Want to improve how the project is going? Want to set the project up for a positive outcome? Try any or all of these 11 tips for project improvement and shake it up a bit. What else would you add to the list? What do you do periodically to improve your project outcome and customer satisfaction?

Top 7 Reasons for Project Failures

Written by Brad Egeland on November 7, 2016. Posted in Articles. 8 Comments on Top 7 Reasons for Project Failures

We all know that more projects fail – in some way or another and to some degree or another – than succeed.

But what causes those failures? Perhaps a better insight into the root causes will help us to avoid or mitigate some of those failures as we are attempting to deliver on our project engagements.

I decided to take an impromptu survey of business analyst and project manager colleagues, and connections as well as CIOs, CEOs, creative directors and PMO directors, and CTOs to see what they thought were the top causes of project failures. I received a little over 150 responses – a good sampling – and created a top 7 from those enlightening responses.

1. The project has gone over budget.

Too common, very painful. I always say, a 10% budget overage is usually acceptable and if not, can probably be fixed over a relatively brief period of time. However, a 50% overage will almost always be disastrous, will likely never be acceptable, and probably can never be fixed. At least I’ve never been able to fix one that is that far off the mark. The key is to stay on top of the project budget on a weekly basis. Weekly review, analysis, and re-forecasting of the project budget will help the business analyst and project manager to keep the budget manageable and will mean those in charge of the project financials are never surprised by a project budget that has gone off the mark by 50%. They will realize there is a problem in time to take proper corrective action.

2. The project is too far off the timeline.

The next most common problem – the project has gone too far off schedule. So many variables can cause this one…work that wasn’t planned but can really be assigned to a change order, gold-plating of the solution, poorly estimated work efforts, a project delivery team that is lacking the right skills to get the work done on time…the reasons for missing the schedule could be nearly endless. What do you do to get it back on track? If it’s realized too late or corrective action doesn’t happen at the first sign of a scheduling problem, then there likely isn’t really anything that can be done. You keep moving forward because you have to…but you’ll never get the the project back on the proper timeline.

3. Requirements were poorly defined.

Requirements are the lifeblood of the project. Good requirements are the basis for estimating and pricing, building the schedule out, building the right solution for the customer, recognizing when change orders need to happen, properly testing out the solution, and rolling out the right solution to the customer’s end user base. If requirements are poorly defined, then any or all of these could miss the mark. When that happens, the project will experience many issues, possibly a decent amount of expensive re-work.

4. The customer was not ready to start.

Sometimes the customer just isn’t prepared to start. I had this happen once when my business analyst and I were working on requirements definition with the customer. They weren’t ready because they didn’t understand enough about the potential solution to connect the dots with us on their business processes and how they translated into real project requirements and a functional design. I had to halt the project and line up some customer training. Likewise, sometimes the customer says they are ready, but they still have some project defining left to do on their side or possibly even some issues completely unrelated to the project at hand that are getting in the way and have to be taken care of first. I’ve had that happen many times in my consulting practice with clients I’m working with. The end result is time and effort and budget wasted on work that basically gets erased, leaving the project a mess when the work is restarted.

5. Delivery team did not have the right resources.

When the project is started with the wrong team in place, it can be extremely painful. You didn’t realize you needed a database guru with ‘x’ skill set or experience. Now the project has started, and you need that experience ASAP. What are you going to do? The project and project timeline suffer as a result. And onboarding project resources later in the project that do have the right experience or skill set can be expensive.

The best situation is never to start the project without the right team ready to go, but that can’t always be the case because you may not realize you don’t have the right team till the project is well underway.

6. Inaccurate estimating of the work to be performed.

This can be a common issue. Often, initial estimating is performed by an account manager or technical sales person, and that often leaves the project manager, business analyst and tech lead in the position of making that original estimate work because it was the basis for pricing the effort. You can’t write change orders if the effort hasn’t changed. The end result is a project that goes off budget if the work is performed as planned but there aren’t enough hours and dollars in the project to cover it. Hence, a project failure.

7. The project did not have proper support of the organization.

Any project undertaking that lacks support at the top of the organization is unlikely to remain viable for long. Funding and staffing will be an issue, and client confidence will suffer as well if they become aware that the project does not have the support of the delivery organization. Reasons for this could be a realization that the project does not align well with the delivery organization’s core competencies or possibly the direction the are planning for future project engagements. Either way or for whatever reason, the project is likely doomed.

Summary / call for input

This is my top seven reasons for project failures as gathered from BA, PM and related project colleagues around the world. What are your top reasons? What would you change on this list or add to it? Please share your own experiences and discuss.

Manage Your Projects in 60 Minutes a Day

Written by Brad Egeland on September 13, 2016. Posted in Articles. 5 Comments on Manage Your Projects in 60 Minutes a Day

60 minutes. There are 24 of these segments in each day. What can I do in 60 minutes each day?

Well, you can watch your favorite one-hour TV show and still have 18 minutes left over if you record it and skip through the commercials. You can order a pizza and pick it up or have it delivered. Apparently, Bruce Springsteen is now doing nearly four-hour concerts on occasion, so you can see a few songs of one of his concert in an hour. But I think you can also manage your projects in an hour. Yes, one hour – each day. Am I crazy? Maybe, but read on.

I’m not one for multi-tasking. I don’t think men are really good at it – it’s how our brains work. So, if you happen to be overseeing say, 5-6 projects at a time, then spend 60 minutes each day on each project. Certainly, if you have a project that really requires it, spend more time. Maybe one is running full steam ahead, and two are not seeing much action at the moment. Spend two hours on the one that needs it and 30 minutes each on the two that are not requiring much attention right now. But, I think you get the picture – basically an hour per project per day should be the goal. Every project needs some daily attention. And what do we do during that 60 minutes of project-specific project management each day? Focus on these general areas and you’ll be covered every day and every week on every project on anything and everything major AND you’ll be initiating the communication to ensure that the little things do not fall through the cracks.

(Note: keep in mind that this is a general list of tasks that need addressed at least weekly, but not all need to be addressed daily. Make sure you hit all of these at some time during the week when you’re spending your 60 minutes managing each project).

Revise and distribute the weekly project schedule. Using information gathered from your project team via email, phone calls and/or a weekly internal project team gathering, you will need to use a good portion of one day’s 60 minute allotment on a detailed revision of the project schedule, including task progresses, resource assignments, new dates, and any additional work that needs to be added to the project. And be sure to ask for feedback – this is your chance to make sure key needed updates haven’t fallen through the cracks and you can be putting the onus on those all-important project stakeholders to take a good look at the schedule and give them another chance to get any updates into you that they haven’t already covered. If you don’t ask for them, you won’t get them.

Create the weekly status reporting to all stakeholders. Every week we need to spend time preparing a formal status report that – along with the revised project schedule – drives a weekly formal status call with the project customer. This activity, done weekly, shouldn’t take too long – especially if you’re spending focused time every day managing each of your assigned projects. From my experience, though, on the larger, more complex projects this will likely take most of one day’s 60 minute allotment. And just as you do with the revised project schedule and distribution – ask for feedback and updates. Make the stakeholders look at it with fresh eyes and put the responsibility in their hands to actually read it and provide you with any missing updates. I find – through this method – that there is at least one missing an update or key piece of information from at least one stakeholder every week.

Take care of any mail/phone calls and face-to-face discussions that need to happen with the customer and project team and other stakeholders. Regular connection – whether there is much to say or not – is great for keeping project team members and the customer engaged and on task. Included in this is weekly meetings that every project of any real size should be having. You can see where your 60 minutes can really start to get consumed through just keeping in contact with everyone. Communication is Job One for the project manager. Period. Nothing is more important to project success.

Check the resource forecast. Every week time must be spent analyzing your current resource needs on each project and ensuring the availability of your resources today, tomorrow and for the remainder of the project. You do not want surprises. Do this regularly and you won’t be surprised.

Revise the project budget with update actuals and re-forecast. Just like resources need to be examined regularly – at least weekly – the budget health needs the same scrutiny. A budget will almost never get out of hand if you’re on top of it regularly with close observation, frequent revision, and regular forecasting and re-forecasting. Flags can go up almost before there is a problem – while corrective action can still be effective. As I always say, a 10% budget overrun is fixable. A 50% budget overrun likely is not. If you are watching the project budget closely and re-forecasting every week – then you’re on top of it. And it will never likely go outside of that acceptable 10% variance range.

Summary / call for input

We often spend most of our days reactively putting out fires on our projects. What if we just stayed ahead of the game as much as possible with good project management focused on each project every day? What if we didn’t let any project go unmanaged for more than 24 hours. I’m not saying we do, but often we are reacting rather than being proactive.

What would go on your weekly/daily list of project management activities to stay on top of for each of your project engagements? Do you think the 60 minute daily project management scenario works? Please share your thoughts.

Project Management Related Tools and Services to Consider for 2016 and Beyond

Written by Brad Egeland on August 29, 2016. Posted in Articles. 2 Comments on Project Management Related Tools and Services to Consider for 2016 and Beyond

In more than 20 years of project management experience, I have seen a lot of growth in the field of project management tools.

It was extremely slow at first, of course. I started out using ABT’s Project Workbench as a DOS application and then later as a WYSIWYG application. I then moved on to MS Project as a Windows app. Good times! Of course, Lotus 1-2-3 and Excel were often used project management tools – Excel still is, and I use it often…Lotus is gone and forgotten, may it rest in peace.

Slowly, more and more project management tools entered the marketplace, giving all project managers, PMO directors, and project team members some options we didn’t have before. Many of these newer tools were created by organizations for their own use to fill a void that was not being handled by the regular players in the marketplace. And, once they felt strong enough about them as a productive tool that could likely satisfy the same voids for other organizations, they began offering them for free, or as open-source solutions or for a very affordable price to other organizations looking for PM solutions.

Which leads us to today. There are now well over 100 potential project management tool offerings available. These include much more than just project Gantt chart applications. Some are task management focused. Some are strong in risk management. Others focus on document storage and sharing. Some excel as CRM packages. Others are mind-mapping tools. Several are excellent at tracking issues and bugs. Some try to offer at least a little of everything. Most offer a way for us to collaborate with our team and manage our projects better than we did yesterday.

While I haven’t necessarily used any of these software offerings myself, and I am not endorsing any one software application over another or over any that are not listed here, I am offering these to show you an array of what is available that you might not otherwise know about. Plus, I’ve had some interactions with many of the individuals behind these software tools and I can say that they are good people who are confident in their applications and want them to be something you can use and be confident in as well. Basically, they stand behind their products proudly.

InLoox is an enterprise-wide project management and work collaboration software fully integrated in Microsoft Outlook. What gives InLoox a unique standing among PM solutions it that you can either access it directly from Outlook or from the web, as InLoox comes as an Outlook client installation and browser version. The seamless Outlook integration makes InLoox extremely user-friendly and intuitive while simplifying workflows and project planning, monitoring, and tracking. Outlook emails, calendar events, notes or reminders can be directly converted into tasks, assigned to projects and people, or filed as documents. You can access your Outlook contacts and assign them tasks, invite them to your projects, or put together teams for resource and workload management.

Project planning can be done traditionally with an interactive Gantt chart or agile with Kanban boards. For creative teams, the mind map is the ideal starting point for project planning as it can be directly converted into tasks for the Kanban board or project phases for a Gantt chart. InLoox notifies project team members about any updates and the InLoox chat lets you communicate quickly with your co-workers. Time tracking and budgeting are also directly done in InLoox and its API lets you integrate your existing programs e.g. for procurement or invoicing. For tracking project and team performance, InLoox offers customizable dashboards and reports to monitor progress, costs or workload in one overview or individually down to a very granular level. This makes InLoox a one-platform solution that provides everyone, from the team members to project managers to the CEO with the ideal tool set to better execute, manage, and analyze projects, improve collaboration, optimize workflows, and make better business decisions.

Samepage is an award-winning team messaging and collaboration solution that combines several tools into one powerful app. With Samepage you have chat, video chat, task management, and file sharing, all in one fully live and dynamic project management platform.

The core of Samepage is the Team – create a Team for any group of people to collaborate on projects. Bring together people inside and outside your organization, from distributed team members to contractors and consultants. Teams have privacy levels from open to private. Each Team has a dedicated workspace made up of team chat, and pages where you can organize everything you need to plan and execute your projects. Samepage also has a built-in messaging feature that lets you chat 1-to-1, with teams, via video with Google Hangouts, and page-level chat. This keeps your conversations alongside to your content, providing much needed context.

Pages are dynamic work environments where the entire team can work together and see changes happening in real time. Pages can include meeting notes, actionable tasks, and calendar events to help team members manage project work. With cloud storage app integrations like Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, and OneDrive it doesn’t matter where you keep your files, they’re all accessible on Samepage. With native file support, team members can edit files and save them back to Samepage, so your team always works from the most recent file version. Samepage’s simple interface makes it easy to get started; invite your team members and start collaborating in minutes. Workers can create teams, share files, and message their coworkers without IT support. Samepage is designed for teams as little as two people to organizations with hundreds of users.

Workspace.com is a desktop and mobile cloud-based enterprise project management solution for technology projects. From Requirements to Defects, their 8 apps enable teams to put an end to information silos and combine all project data in one, secure space. With project data unified, teams are better informed, and can make project decisions using the most current information.

Project teams are deriving a number of benefits from using Workspace.com. They are better managing schedules and budgets that are more compressed than ever. Teams are able to adjust quickly to project scope changes that seem to expand without limits. With Workspace’s traceability and collaboration features, teams are better able to connect and share what matters most, amidst an endless sea of information and communications. By bringing project teams together in a shared, on-line workspace, their customers are discovering a more connected experience of teamwork than they’ve ever had before.

PrimaveraReader is a cost effective viewer for Oracle Primavera P6 schedules, saved as .xer or .xls file types. With intuitive user interface, PrimaveraReader users are able to start analyzing the project’s current health and gain complete visibility into the project’s progress.

Companies implement PrimaveraReader with aim to achieve competitive advantage and save on Oracle Primavera P6 total ownership costs. From project contractors, to stakeholders and executives, PrimaveraReader ensures everyone involved is informed about the latest project developments.

Seavus Project Viewer is the leading viewer for Microsoft Project files, allowing team members and project executives to open, analyze & print project plans without Microsoft Project license. With support for 100% of the views available in Microsoft Project, Seavus Project Viewer promotes transparency throughout the project team, delivering accurate project information to everyone involved. Seavus Project Viewer comes with identical MS Project look and feel, eliminating learning curve and training costs.

Available to companies from all sizes, from small project teams to large corporations, Seavus Project Viewer has helped more than 3000 companies save on Microsoft Project licensing costs. It is a product of choice for more than 50% of Fortune 500 companies.

PREVU is a cloud-based platform uniquely designed to integrate with the software of small and medium sized companies. It is built on the practice of good portfolio management, focusing on the portfolio, rather than the project management execution piece. PREVU was developed by system development experts with knowledge of product management, as well as the ability to create software that solves a need agnostic to business type.

PREVU aligns strategic decisions with repeatable results and provides a holistic view of project information, all through a user-friendly interface. Users can evaluate an unlimited number of portfolio alternatives with a virtual whiteboard for advanced “What if” modeling. With PREVU, we are able to evaluate planning against resource capacity in real-time, ensuring that every potential step is thoroughly considered.

Redbooth is an all-in-one group collaboration and project management platform that helps teams get more done via a seamless integration of advanced project and task management capabilities (Gantt charts, Kanban boards, advanced analytics, etc.) with real-time messaging, voice and video communications, centralized into an intuitive virtual workspace. Founded in 2008, Redbooth is a pioneer of team collaboration and work management solutions. More than half a million teams in more than 100 countries rely on Redbooth to plan, manage and complete their work. On average, a new task is created in Redbooth every 3.4 seconds — and more than 18,000 tasks are completed daily.

Redbooth uniquely combines project and task management capabilities, with real-time communications, enabling teams to find easily and share content, collaboratively plan and manage work initiatives and seamlessly communicate, ultimately becoming more productive, efficient and accountable. Additionally, Redbooth solutions are pre-integrated with an extensive array of enterprise content and productivity solutions, including file share and sync (Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft SharePoint), email (Microsoft Outlook, Gmail), communications (Slack, Cisco Spark) and productivity (Zendesk, Evernote), enabling Redbooth to centralize teamwork and collaboration, regardless of the enterprise system of record where content and business logic may ultimately reside. This ecosystem of integrations is further extended via a robust developer API and SDK, which can be leveraged to integrate Redbooth with customer-specific applications. Additionally, Redbooth enables teams to standardize and streamline their mission-critical workflows, via a library of pre-defined workflow process templates that automatically replicate a consistent process across every project.

Redbooth’s solutions can be accessed via mobile smartphone & tablet applications (iOS & Android), industry-standard browsers and desktop clients running on Windows, Mac OS and Linux operating systems, as well as Apple Watch and Apple TV. The core Redbooth platform can be accessed as a Cloud service, or can be hosted on-premise in a customer’s data center (known as Redbooth Private Cloud).

Celoxis is a sophisticated project portfolio management and collaboration platform for medium to large businesses. It is a fully-featured software that lets you keep everything in one place. It is not only a very powerful tool for project managers but is also easy and intuitive for teams and executives. Celoxis has everything you need to plan and manage complex and diverse project portfolios. You can prepare task schedules with cross-project dependencies, juggle resource workloads and manage portfolio risks. Resource managers can track utilization across projects and also balance demand with available capacity. With Celoxis, you can also estimate and keep track of all project costs and forecast profitability. Teams can easily collaborate on work items, share progress, log time spent and also enter their expenses, all in one tool. Celoxis creates real-time visibility for executives and business owners through a range of reports, dashboards, and drill-down charts.

Celoxis is one of the very few online tools that offer a SaaS (Cloud-based) and On-Premise model. It is a comprehensive system that can easily integrate with your other enterprise tools and help manage, track and report on projects, processes, and resources. The team at Celoxis seems to understand very well that each business is different and maintains customization at the very core of its product.

Workamajig

Workamajig is the original web-based project management software for creative agencies and is used by more than 3,000 firms every day. Workamajig was created by agency consultants and was designed exclusively around the unique workflows and processes of creative companies.

Workamajig is pretty much a one-stop-shop for tracking and managing every single detail of an agency’s operations. Features include:

Resource Management
Project Management
Project Collaboration
File Sharing & Proofing
Client Billing
Revenue Projections
Agency Metrics
Media Integration & Management

Upland Software provides cloud solutions covering project & portfolio management and professional services automation that help organizations gain the highest returns from their projects. Through their platform, organizations are able to successfully manage projects and resources, project workforce, and IT costs all within one product family.

Upland provides award-winning products that align project selection with strategic business objectives, simplifies the management of project portfolios with constrained resources, improves service delivery, resource and project management, and demonstrates the value IT provides through complete visibility and service benchmarking.

Fusioo is a customizable CRM and project management tool that allows teams to work the way they want to. Unlike other project management tools, with Fusioo you can set up your custom workspace to track and manage the information you need.

Given its versatility, Fusioo can be used for a variety of use cases, such as issue tracking, applicant tracking, expense management, you name it. Together with your team, you can choose to either set up your team’s workspace from scratch or get started by using an App Bundle from the Fusioo App Marketplace.

TeamHeadquarters is a simple, effective project management system with an integrated service desk. IT projects generate issues and the project members are often required to deliver the support required and solve the issues. With TeamHeadquarters, you can easily manage your projects and support activities with a single system for your entire company.

This unique integration of project management and service desk is what makes TeamHeadquarters a suitable choice for IT teams of all sizes. Project Managers can easily see an entire picture of resource availability across all work (not just projects) taking away the guess work when assigning project tasks. IT leaders can get an accurate picture of where resources are spending their time and produce the evidence they need to explain reasons for project delays and resource capacity staffing requirements.

The package includes comprehensive resource management, task scheduling, portfolio dashboards, status reporting, integrated reporting, and a customer self-service portal. This results in predictable project schedules, productive IT teams, and IT leadership control.

Viewpath is an online application which manages project activities and resource allocation in one complete picture. Its scheduling engine delivers fast performance, enterprise-class scalability, and built-in integration with popular apps such as Salesforce or Google Drive. The app additionally provides security settings for free Guests and free Observers so project teams can collaborate with anyone, in any organization.

The unique flexibility of Viewpath lets teams easily plan and track project activities in either Waterfall or Agile views, while still providing unified status reporting and dashboards. It also has layered functionality which simplifies collaboration and workflow at all levels of the organization — whether it’s an individual contributor completing one assigned task or a seasoned team leader doing interactive scheduling across a portfolio of projects.

Priority Matrix is a lightweight project management solution designed to make teams highly effective. Priority Matrix serves as an ideal replacement to heavyweight tools like Microsoft Project while meeting the needs of teams who have outgrown simple task managers. Teams who use Priority Matrix see an increase in visibility across their organizations, more effective collaboration, and streamlined communication.

Priority Matrix stands out due to the fact that it serves as a true solution, rather than simply software. The app provides a variety of views, such as a Gantt chart, built-in calendar, and Priority Level, which allows each member of your team to work the way they want. Furthermore, Priority Matrix integrates with tools you already know and love, such as Evernote, Google Docs, Outlook, Gmail, and more. To top it off Priority Matrix provides Productivity Insight reports that allow you to measure the heartbeat across your organization, team, and projects. The app works natively on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and web.

Summary / call for input

This is far from an end-all list. Literally, more than 100 other options are out there to try, but this list gives you a good start of some great solutions that are out there that some large organizations and heavy-duty users swear by and are currently using to effectively manage their teams and project needs.

What about our readers? What experiences do you have with any of these offerings? Are there others that you have found to be effective for your project needs? Please share and discuss.