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Meeting a Schedule vs. Team Member Suggestions

Posted by Deborah at 12:12 am

I recently posted a question in the LinkedIn group Project Management Link about how project managers juggle the needs of meeting a schedule versus taking suggestions from team members once the project has started (which could push the project back).  Here are the spectrum of responses:

Leaning Toward Schedule

“Managing projects involves different roles and skills of the project manager. As project manager you have to manage ALL stake holders, including your team AND meeting project objectives such as cost and schedules. One of the most important skills a project manager MUST have, is TEAM-INVOLVEMENT. However to answer your question, I also explain to my team that when the schedule is tight we have to apply the rule “NOT WRONG = GOOD”. So if someone comes up with a brilliant idea, but the schedule is tight and what we have will work, we DO NOT change. Finishing a project on time is important. Brilliant ideas are also important, but we have to try to get those ideas during the scoping phase of the project.” – Victor Hunt, Project Management Consultant

Leaning Toward Team Member Suggestions

“Project time-lines are usually aggressive, but if you don’t build a cohesive group, involve people in decisions, and manage people you are not going to get the support you need when the crunch invariably arrives.  By taking on-board comments/ ideas from your team will allow you to present meaningful ideas and solutions (you cant know everything) when it comes to change-management. With effective communication you CAN change the time line of a project to allow you to effectively deliver.  The biggest sin in PM work is to cut feature on a deliverable in the pursuit of meeting a timeline. I am always happy to dive into this challenge — and if you listen actively to your team you will present this as it happens (ie earlier on in the project) rather than waiting for the “by the way, we cant do x,y,z” as you get into the last 1/3rd of the project.” – Tom Magee, Project Manager

Where do you lie on this spectrum?

-Deborah Fike

P.S.  I found this observation (also from Victor Hunt) very insightful and worth mentioning:  “Be very aware that managing team members is not the same as pleasing all team members. Trying to please all team members can ruin your project.”

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Little Conversations > Big Event

Posted by Deborah at 10:10 pm

I just saw this characteristically brief post on Seth Godin’s blog celebrating the death of the “big event.”  He no longer sees the need for big annual sales events, big product launches, or other big marketing events that cater to mass  marketing.

To be honest, I’ve never been good at the “big events.”  I enjoy working booths at conferences, but that’s in spite of the big event, not because of it.  I love little conversations – the ones that lead to real relationships, real insight, and real communication.  The lectures, the over-the-top marketing promotions, and the drunken after hours parties could all go away, for all I care, as long as I can meet people I can actually sit down and talk to.

In fact, tomorrow morning I’m going over to meet Ron Jenkins of SMU Guildhall to catch up on his Indie Game Challenge project.  We initially met at a conference and just plan on catching a quick cup of coffee before the day begins.  No banners, no sales, just a quick sit down.  I’m really looking forward to seeing what he’s been doing in the last few months.

-Deborah Fike

P.S. I’ve been a big fan of Seth over the past few years.  I just got done reading his book Meatball Sundae.  He always advocates authenticity and loyal followers over marketing spin and a bajillion Twitter followers.  While his advice isn’t too specific (you’ll never see him advocate 34% year-over-year growth using traditional marketing techniques), he always makes me think and question my marketing approach, which makes me learn for myself.  Teach a person to fish and all that.

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Is the Customer Always Right?

Posted by Deborah at 9:52 pm

Is the customer always right?  I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, “no.”

In the first place, the customer doesn’t always know what they want. The first time I heard of deep frying a turkey, I balked.  You mean, the same thing you use to cook French fries, you want to cook a turkey?  But when I tasted it…pure deliciousness.

In the second place, customers don’t necessarily want to switch, especially when they’ve already switched a few times.  When Gmail first came out, I just rolled my eyes.  “Another e-mail platform, goodie.  I’ll add it to my Hotmail-AOL-Yahoo collection.”  I thought I was done with e-mail clients and didn’t want to switch.

And finally, there are just some customers that have no idea what they are talking about:

Service Provider: Ok, we’ve pushed the site live.

Client: Why isn’t the site #1 on Google yet?

Service Provider: We just pushed it live five minutes ago.

Client: Optimize the fireball.

Service Provider: I’m sorry? Do you mean the firewall?

Client: I need more hits NOW, so I need you to optimize the fireball. I know what I’m talking about!

Service Provider: We’ll get right on it.

So, no, I don’t think the customer is always right.  However, don’t make the mistake in thinking the customer is always wrong.  I’m sure if Colgate would have done just the tiniest bit of market research, many people would have told them not to launch a brand of frozen microwave meals.  On a less negative note, it was a group of potential customers who discovered the many uses of post-it notes, a product built on what was thought to be a useless invention.

Somewhere in between “always right” and “always wrong” is where you need to define your business, as an entrepreneur.  For us at Fellowstream, we’re looking into a service called Get Satisfaction for our beta.  That way, we’ll be able to get information on what customers like and don’t like about our first dry run, and use our brains to adjust accordingly.

-Deborah Fike

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Fellowstream’s Ticketing System

Posted by Deborah at 2:41 pm

MetaLab Design finished skinning Fellowstream this week.  Although Jacob still has his work cut out ahead of him to finish Fellowstream functionality (say that three times fast!), I thought I’d give you guys a quick sneak peak at our first look ‘n’ feel of the tool.

For those of you new to our site, Fellowstream is both an individual task management system as well as a project management tool.  The idea is that day-to-day, you can manage your tasks, but on a higher-level, you can also see how project work is being completed.  This allows team members to not only manage themselves, but help work as a team to manage entire projects.  All users are required to show what they are working on, and all work must be assigned to a user, to ensure that all work to be completed is owned by an individual.

You can see from the top menu bar that Fellowstream is focused on a couple of key areas:

• Fellowstream homepage, aka “The Stream”: This is where you see a daily stream of up-to-date information about what’s happening within your entire team.  It will be customizable so you can filter out all but the relevant information you want to see in real-time.
• Workspace: This is your profile and list of things to do, whether it be finish up a project task, finish quick requests from other team members, or something you’re trying to remind yourself to look into later.
• People: Everyone involved in your project, as well as their tasks and priorities (useful if you’re waiting on them for a dependency or just like to spy on people).
• Projects: An overview of all the projects inside of your Fellowstream account.  It will have milestones, wikis, and all the other good stuff you’ve come to expect from top-of-the-line project management tools.

The basic unit of measure in Fellowstream is a “ticket.”  A ticket can show up in your workspace, in the profiles of your team members and also in related projects.  Below is the ticket preview for Fellowstream (click on the image to see it in full screen):

Note that the current structure has new comments listed toward the top of the screen.  I can also edit the ticket directly or see the comments that other team members have made.

Let us know what you think! I’ll keep posting screenshots of Fellowstream as Jacob continues to create the alpha version of Fellowstream.

-Deborah Fike

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Competition and Fear

Posted by Deborah at 10:54 pm

Entrepreneurs with a vision fear that someone, somewhere, somehow will capitalize on their idea.  How many times have you had a “great idea,” only to see that someone else has already launched that product or service?

In the last four months since Jacob and I began fleshing out Fellowstream, we have seen company after company launching project management tools.  Some of them are leveraging social media like we are, some of them have figured out there’s a gap between task management and project management, and still others have even used our taglines in their newsletters and blogs.  It can be heart-wrenching to see market forces at work when you think about the “what ifs”…

• What if someone else finds our “secret sauce” and launches Fellowstream first?
• What if I’m not good enough to spread the word about what we’re doing?
• What if we’re aiming for the wrong market and someone else takes it?
• What if our design doesn’t resonate with people?
• What if we just wasted our good time and money building something people just don’t care about?

But no matter how many “what ifs” I come up with, there’s one that trumps them all.

What if we let fear stop us from creating something truly fantastic?

The truth is, Jacob and I just stepped into a ring filled with competition.  It only takes a guy and a computer to make online project management tools. But we believe in Fellowstream.  Even with 16 billion apps showing up every day, we still haven’t seen someone execute the type of bottoms-up-and-top-down approach we are taking with Fellowstream.

But let’s give fear a “reasonable voice.”  Let’s say, tomorrow morning, I fire up the ol’ laptop and see a Fellowstream clone, straight down to the curvy logo.  What should we do?

Traditional decision making models would tell us to throw in the towel.  This new product has “first mover advantage.”  It will gain more buzz, have more time to figure out flaws.  All we would have is a 3/4 finished alpha consisting of a bunch of sunk costs.

But we’d still finish Fellowstream anyway.  And it would be a great fight too.  Whether based on finding Fellowstream a new market, revamping its interface, adding/subtracting features, or just running a gajillion usability tests, we’d give it our best shot.

That’s the attitude that entrepreneurs need.  Fear need not apply.

-Deborah Fike

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