To fix this:

1. From the FastTrack Schedule menu select Application Preferences…
2. Select the Dates tab.
3. First, try clicking on the Reset to System Default button.
4. Still not what you want? Click on the Date Order: popup.
5. Choose the Date Order that you desire.
6. Select the Display choices for your dates.
7. View the Example area to see what your choices will look like.
8. Edit the Separators: if necessary.
9. Click OK.

Your dates should display in accordance with your choices.

When versioning system is functioning, you can roll back a file to prior versions (even after saving and reopening) via the File menu “Revert To” command. If you are saving to a volume (drive) that doesn’t support this feature, you can still use FastTrack Schedule 2024 without any problem. You just won’t be able to roll back a file to a prior version. The message sounds more alarming than it really is.

The versioning feature works with Mac OS Extended (HFS+) volumes that are directly connected to your computer.

Standard thumb drives that have not been reformatted to HFS+ and network connections to volumes over AFP, SMB, or NFS don’t support Apple’s versioning system, so macOS via FastTrack Schedule 2024 presents the message, “The document [document name] is on a volume that does not support permanent version storage.”

This alert and the limitation of certain kinds of drives comes from macOS, and is not something FastTrack Schedule 2024 has any control over.

Here is a link to support.apple.com which provides additional information that may be of interest.

https://support.apple.com/lv-lv/guide/mac-help/mh40710/mac

FastTrack Schedule 2024 for Mac – completely redesigned for macOS 15 Sequoia, macOS 14 Sonoma, macOS 13 Ventura, macOS 12 Monterey, 11 Big Sur, 10.15 Catalina, and 10.14 Mojave.

We are excited to announce that FastTrack Schedule 2024 for Mac is fully native on Apple silicon M1, M2, M3, and M4 processor Macs, taking full advantage of all the speed and performance of Apple silicon.

As always, FastTrack Schedule 2024 files are cross-platform. FastTrack Schedule 2024 for Windows has all the same great new features and it runs natively on Windows. Check out the new features.

We’re extremely pleased to share this news.  Roads and Bridges magazine’s “Contractor’s Choice for Project Management Software” silver award has been given to FastTrack Schedule!

If you’re unfamiliar with Roads and Bridges magazine, here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia to catch you up.

“Roads & Bridges magazine is a 107-year-old trade publication serving construction and maintenance professionals, as well as heavy equipment manufacturers … It provides industry news, information on relevant equipment and safety recommendations and has been cited in studies of American infrastructure.

Roads & Bridges works with associations such as the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM), and American Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA).

Roads & Bridges presents multiple annual awards and produces yearly Top 10 Roads & Top 10 Bridges Lists. As of July 2013, Roads & Bridges had 61,000 subscribers for its print edition.”

The only way to make Roads and Bridges’ Top Ten Lists in any of their annual categories is for actual persons in the construction field to submit nominations and votes.

Thank you for submitting our software for the award and for your votes.  It means the world to us.

Thank you,
The Team at AEC Software, Inc.

“Does anyone have a fire extinguisher?!?”

Yep. There is always a joker in the crowd.

The icing on one cake says, “FastTrack Schedule, 30 YEARS!” while the second one reads, “AEC Software Inc, 33 Years.” THAT IS A LOT OF CANDLES!!

The 3-O is BIG for anyone, but for a software company and its product, that is an almost unheard of milestone that very few, if any reach.

So many start-ups have come and gone, imitators have tried and failed, and just like that fire hazard, 7 packets of trick candles, we are still going.

Happy Birthday AEC Software and FastTrack Schedule!

PS. We wish you a happy and healthy 2018! May you acheive all your goals this year!

The poor man was so upset. He was already behind schedule with deliveries and thanks to our party, he was going to need to make a repeat visit to our office! Thankfully, we spotted him before he could sneak away so he wouldn’t have to come back again. he told us how behind he was with his deliveries, all of us at AEC Software, looked at each other with a brilliant idea.  We could help Santa!

And so, with a twinkle in our eyes, we gave Santa a very special gift.

Santa received the first official copy of FastTrack Schedule and a lifetime of free training and software updates.

This Christmas, we received a thank you note from Santa and permission to share his story with you.

As our oldest customer (he’s 1,748 years old and has been using FastTrack Schedule for 30 years), Santa is very special to us.

Happy Holidays!
AEC Software, Inc.

“You can’t stay on schedule if you don’t have one!”

Today, most people only need to harvest their local grocery store to obtain all the culinary ingredients for making this meal.  But with all the basting and brining, cooking and thawing, food safety times and temperatures, stirring gravy and… (what is that burning!?!), might have you taking a second look at that normal Thursday night frozen meal aisle.

Fear not, with a little planning you can do it.  Since we know you are busy, we’ve created a sample schedule to help you plan an amazing meal where everything comes out piping hot at the right time.

Please be our guest, revise and use this schedule (Mac | Win version) to host a successful, stress-free Thanksgiving. Get started early with excellent tips and useful links to helpful sites.

Happy Thanksgiving!

PS. To open the full schedule, you’ll need a copy of FastTrack Schedule (you can download a free 21 day trial).

PSS. We have more free template schedules on our website.

Now it is time to start stamping metal and shipping boxes… or more likely, not.   Jumping straight in, without a schedule or even a plan, is a false economy for fools that have yet to learn luck strikes both ways.   Often that first step is imagined as more difficult than it needs to be and is skipped, resulting in a fall later.

Making a plan, and building a schedule is not, and should never be, some onetime event to get past at the beginning but rather a living thing that should grow, at times literally with the weather.  But like the weather, at some point, every project will have some degree of uncertainty or events that it must adapt to.

Planning makes all the difference in where you apply your margin of error so that you can deal with the risk of uncertainties, and still have confidence that your schedule has cushion time available in it to jump on opportunities as they arise.

4 Pointers for Planning to Plan

Here are some simple pointers to help you take that first step right to get your project up and running:

1.    Failing to plan, is planning to fail

We have all heard this truism, but very few PM’s think to apply this to planning itself.  It is easy to say the customer did not ask for any formal documents or perhaps you are your own boss with no one to answer to but yourself.  But at some point, you’d also like to finish that project and maybe even get paid for it.

Deadlines, invoicing, resource constraints or even just your own personal time all impact your project and deserve a few moments of thought.  Maybe your project is small enough, and those few thoughts are all you really need.  Or it is really big and will take some time to work through all the unknowns.  Asking questions about project scale is the start of your planning to plan, just that easy.

PRO TIP:  It is easier to dial back on the level of detail in your record keeping than it is to go back and try to piece information together after things break.

2.    Rolling wave planning

The dirty secret is not trying to plan every detail from the beginning, but rather to plan for when you need to know and how you plan to get those details.

If you are going to hammer a million nails and have never touched a hammer, you might want to update your schedule after you hit one, and maybe again after you hit your thumb a few times.  In fact, if anyone ever tells you they are done planning because they did it all at the beginning, then they are lying to you and probably themselves.

Does the project have a major milestone?  Do shipments only arrive on Wednesdays?  Do you have invoices or payroll to factor in? Make it your planning plan to use these natural rhythms to give a few moments to look back at how well reality agreed with your schedule and use what you learned to add those details into the path ahead.

PRO TIP: It may sound redundant, but date your schedule.  Change the file name and save it as a new file.  If it impacts a deadline or an external commitment, then print the new parts they need and ask them to sign and date it.

3.    No plan survives past first contact

The analogies between combat and project management eventually come up when talking about the other.  Putting debates on who your “enemy” is aside, expect the unexpected.  Plans are just that, plans.  Do not get attached to them.  Deliveries get lost, trucks have flats, kids get sick… every schedule needs a little float if it has any chance of making it against the “enemy.”

PRO TIP:  Things happening ahead of schedule can be just as bad a delay. (Concrete sets and cookies burn)  Be mindful and have a plan for both possibilities.

4.    Risk and Margin of Error

Good, you made it this far.  You have your schedule detailed as far out as the eye can see (or at least until payday).  You added the float, by doubling the time and cost of everything, so you will always come out looking good with the boss (maybe less so with the customer).

You can see victory just past that dark cloud ahead, that new oddball task that you just do not know enough about to know how to guesstimate how to plan for it.  At some point, every project will have a degree of risk and uncertainty, adjust your plan accordingly.  Maybe instead of doubling everything, tighten up where you can with the tasks you have done before, and apply more in areas of less certainty to mitigate damage.

PRO TIP:  Spreading your scheduling margin of error out throughout all the tasks is fine for a best guess case.  But consider consolidating it in one place and treating it like a management reserve account.  This will allow you to look at best and worst cases and use that reserve wisely on the biggest risks and opportunities.

To Conclude for Now…

Great things in life are rarely easy, but with the right tools, they can be done.

Did you find this article on “planning to plan” helpful? What would you add to this list?

FastTrack Schedule 10.2.1 has been optimized for macOS High Sierra. If you’re a Mac user currently running macOS High Sierra, please update your FastTrack Schedule software to take advantage of our improvements towards your project management computing environment.

Note: If you are using FastTrack Schedule on Windows or a running a macOS earlier than High Sierra, you do not need to apply this update.

PS. If you haven’t yet tried FastTrack Schedule, today would be a great day to give us a try… for 21 days free.

When this goes on for very long, it tends to result in an office space where the employees don’t really know or have strong bonds with each other. It also encourages the scenario where the company has a high changeover of employees since the emotional connection that creates loyalty to their organization is just not there.

The Work “Family Dinner”

One of the easiest and most effective ways to bring a sense of “team” and “family” to the workplace is incorporating together time with food.  Just like family dinners, communal lunches can create strong bonds.  Revelations on home life and personal food preferences (which are very often cultural in origin) help us find commonalities with each other and forge new experiences with each other.

As interpersonal relationships develop through shared social time together, we each gain a deeper understanding of a co-worker’s inner workings and communication needs and that in turn builds skills to work together on professional, work-based projects.

Even if it is not possible to each lunch with the whole office space on a daily basis, it is a good idea to have them on a regular basis.

Creative Examples for Incorporating Food

Here are some ideas for how to use food as a team unifier:

• A regular lunch OUT sponsored by the manager.
• A regular lunch IN sponsored by the manager (group order from Chipotle or whatever people can agree on).
• Lunch at a designated time for the whole group. At the cafeteria/or common room.
• A potluck day.
• A turn list for bringing in donuts, or a group meal.

What About Working Lunches?

A popular thing many office spaces do, which I personally do not like… is utilizing a brown bag lunch/working lunch.  They sound like a good idea, in that people theoretically save time by eating and working at the same time, but they don’t really work well in my experience.

What typically seems to end up happening… is some people forget to bring food and one person is trying to eat while everyone else is waiting on them to finish chewing to answer their question. The pressure to eat quickly, take notes/operate a computer, and talk at the same time is not pleasurable or time efficient.  For many persons, it is also embarrassing to have people watch you chew, or to be the person watching someone else chew.

For eating food to be a bonding experience, it needs to be a pleasurable experience.

Additional Benefits of Focusing on Food in the Workplace…

Relationship building is not the only benefit to shared mealtimes; surveys indicate that employees:

• Tend to make healthier food selections when eating with others.
• Feel more valued and appreciated when company provided food is in the office space.
• Would be more likely to accept a job offer with an occasional free lunch.
• Would eat with coworkers if the food was provided.

What Do You Think?

Does your office use food to bring your people together? What do you like or dislike about it? What do you think about brown bag/working lunches?

PS. If you liked this article, you might also like:

• Can You Build Teams with Alcohol?

The issues list is growing and growing

This may be one of the single most frustrating situations to be in. It’s happened to me on two projects – both of which I inherited with an already loooong list of outstanding issues that the project team was trying to resolve.

You can fight a fire with a garden hose, but you’re not likely to get too far and when it starts spreading… watch out.

On both projects, I found that I had to halt all current project work and block out time – two weeks on one project and a full month on the second one – to dive into and resolve the issues. Trying to move forward AND to resolve old issues was getting us nowhere. Yes, halting work and focusing key resources on issue resolution ate through the project budget quickly. But had we not done that – and it was a successful action for both projects – the project customer most assuredly would have pulled the plug on their respective engagements, and that would have been a far more significant disaster than an overrun budget with no more income coming in to offset any of it.

Disengaged Customer and/or Project Resources

Whether it’s your project resources or the customer, having critical project resource either unavailable or not fully engaged in what’s happening on the project can be frustrating. But it can also lead to added risks on the project:

• Overlooked issues
• Incomplete deliverables
• Decreased customer satisfaction
• Increased costs
• Extra time spent making decisions
• Completing tasks using less experienced or non-key personnel

The best way I’ve found to keep resources and customers engaged on the project is to keep them busy and keep them accountable.

For your project team, be sure to hold weekly internal meetings before the weekly customer meetings and make your team members responsible for their assigned tasks. Have them participate in the project status calls with the customer.

Likewise, with the customer, find jobs for them to do. Big or small, it doesn’t matter…the key is to give them tasks that they must be accountable for so they aren’t skipping meetings and forgoing project work for their ‘regular’ work. You need them available for key decisions and to review work – hold-ups and delays cost money.

Summary / Call for Input

These are just three areas that I’ve experienced a few times in my project management career. They stick out in my mind because they were incredibly frustrating and significant – for the project, for my customer, and for my executive management. Resolution had to happen, or the projects were going to collapse.

Readers – what are your thoughts? Feel free to share your thoughts on these items or share your own experiences and how you resolved them.

This answer is subjective to each project manager, and generally, consists of:

• On-time delivery.
• On-budget delivery.
• Quality.

My answer to this question does not contain “quality,” instead, I use “customer satisfaction” in my concept of three key project success determiners because the customer needs to be satisfied with the end product no matter what.

Considering Project Success when it is 40% Complete

Let’s look at project success and failure at the mid-stream of the project rather than at completion.  Questions to ask yourself are:

• Is the customer happy?
• Are we delivering on time?
• Is the budget healthy?
• What are our failure points so far?

When the project is still midway, recognizing issues and making proactive, strategic decisions may let us correct whatever is going wrong.

Three Causes of Project Failure

There are usually three causes of project failures to examine which should still be in the project manager’s realm of control to take action on and hopefully ‘right the ship,’ so to speak:

• An out-of-control budget. (Covered in Part 1)
• An ever-growing issues list. (Covered in Part 2)
• A disengaged customer or project resources. (Covered in Part 2)

An Out-of-Control Budget.

This can be both an impossible thing to fix and an easy one to prevent, depending on the project.

But seriously, if your budget is overrun by 50%, then it’s not likely you’re going to ever see the light at the end of the budget tunnel. But if it’s in a more manageable position of say, 10-20% over, then there definitely are a couple of things you can do to correct the situation.

1. First, manage the budget closely on a weekly basis.
   Make a new forecast of the budget every single week.  Each week, update the estimate with actuals and share it with your team so that everyone knows exactly where the budget stands at all times.A project team that knows you’re closely watching the project budget will sometimes even accidentally help you ‘fix’ the situation. At the end of the week, employees need to put their work hours somewhere. If your team members know you’re watching hours and expenses closely, then they aren’t going to put their ‘grey’ hours (those hours we know we worked, but aren’t sure what we worked on) to your project – they’ll charge them to another project they are working on.
2. Secondly, pay extreme attention to scope management.
   You can’t do it alone – engage your team as well.On a project where your top developers are working closely with the customer, it can become easier for them to gold plate their work or say ‘yes’ to small enhancements along the way. That gold plating or those ‘little’ enhancements add up over time and soon you have many hours of unplanned – and non-budgeted – work expended.  

   Educate your team on the change order process and make sure they are on the lookout for requested work that is beyond the agreed upon scope. When those issues arise, they’ll know to bring them to you – with an estimate – that you can then turn into a change order to present to the customer so they can pay for that work.

To Be Continued…

In the next segment, we’ll look at the two other sources of project failure I mentioned earlier… an ever-growing issues list, and a disengaged customer or project resources. Continue to Part 2.

Yes. Good, focused project management can save a troubled project engagement – there’s little question about that. Best practices applied well by an experienced project manager and team, will nearly always have a favorable impact and more often than not, outcome. But can it save a company? Well…that’s an entirely different question.  A whole company – beyond just the project issues? Let’s consider…

Best practices for a stable organization

It goes without saying that implementing sound project management principles based upon the industry’s best PM practices along with an injection of good project management experience will likely get your company off on the right foot. A setup like this will help an organization do a good job of managing projects, providing consistent project outcomes to customers, retain good project professionals, and maintain higher levels of customer satisfaction. And that’s great for the organization that is not yet in trouble. For a stable organization, setting up a good, repeatable PM practice is likely a good use of some targeted dollars.

Will it work for the troubled company?

But what about a troubled organization? Can a group that is already experiencing severe financial drain due to poor customer performance and is near the end of its rope find any hope in implementing project management best practices? Or is it just a waste of dollars or at least not the right injection of money where it is most needed?

I think the answer is somewhere in between yes and no. Good project management breeds good customer service and usually increased customer satisfaction. It’s never the wrong time to try to serve your customer better. It’s never the wrong time to work hard to improve your overall customer satisfaction levels.

One study indicated that troubled companies fail for one of three significant reasons…

• Poor leadership (52%)
• Inadequate customer care and satisfaction (38%)
• Bad investments, fraud, or poor cash management (10%)

These are very broad, general categories. However, as you can see, the failure rate indicated in this study is quite high for customer satisfaction. That backs up my reasoning that it’s never too late to inject good customer service and good customer management into an organization. It may not save your company, but it won’t be the reason it does go under if that scenario plays out. At least your business will go down trying.

And a late turnaround due to good project management practices may be enough to make the difference between another company purchasing the troubled organization or the failing organization just closing their doors.

Summary / Call for Input

So, I’m going to say yes…in some cases good project management can save a company in trouble. It’s not a catch-all for everything, but logically whenever you apply the right processes to a troubled situation, things can often get better.

Readers – what are your thoughts on this? Can good PM save an organization? How?

It’s a given that project managers are spending most of their time managing tasks and resources on the project. In fact, they have a hand in ‘managing’ everything including issues, risks, conflicts, people, activities, communication, the customer, and vendors as well as all of the unknowns that can and do arise. This is all true whether the project is being handled remotely or if your team and customer are sitting in the same room with you. It’s just that the skills needed to effectively manage tend to skew more heavily on effective communication and the remote aspect can invite some challenges that don’t necessarily exist in the co-location project environment.

The project manager may need to pay more attention to certain tasks or activities when managing a virtual team in order to make the team more productive and to help better ensure project success. In the past six years, I’ve only managed one project with an entirely co-located project team, so I’m fairly opinionated on strategies to focus on for effectively managing the virtual project team.

Strategies for success.

There are many ways to bring a team together when they are not physically together.  I’ve narrowed my list down to six key strategies to discuss:

1. Hold meetings regularly.

Keep every meeting. It can be very tempting to skip what might seem like a meaningless meeting. Even if there is nothing new to report, it’s still important to have those touch points with your team to keep them fully focused and engaged. Even if your team status call is only 5 minutes long – you still need to have it.

2. Know your team members and manage accordingly.

Every employee is different. Mobile workers make it easier for managers to take a more personalized approach in how they work and interact with members of their team. It takes more work and effort on a manager’s part but the results can be very rewarding. Understanding what enables each employee to perform at his or her best is the most important responsibility of a manager.

3. Practice effective and efficient communications.

Consolidate and prioritize communications. Use email, texting, blogging, threaded discussions, etc. for relationship-driven communications (i.e., staying in touch and being personal). Communications of an important nature should be cohesive and never delivered in fragmentary pieces that have to be pieced together by the receiver. Mutually assess the communication preferences of yourself and your team members to develop a communication plan. Avoid assumptions and revisit your plan on a regular basis especially when the nature of the work is about to change.

4. Be the best listener you can possibly be.

When you are out of easy reach and you are tasked with managing the performance of others it’s easy to get sucked into the trap of needing to transmit lots of information. I’ve often found myself in the role of heavy communicator on the project as the lead of a virtual team and project.

Don’t forget the listening part because the virtual project manager doesn’t have the luxury of seeing facial expressions and gestures that can portray concern.  And always be sure to keep an open mind. Be present and try to enter the perspective of those speaking to you. This will help you ask effective questions and identify what direction to go with your own needs and agenda. You might be very pleasantly surprised at how much more information you get from your team this way.

5. Manage deliverables, not activities.

It’s critical in the virtual project world that you stay focused – and keep your team focused – on the project deliverables. Activities are important, but those are the responsibilities of the individuals who are assigned to those tasks. Don’t get too bogged down in managing the minute details because the distance you have between you and those that are performing those activities makes that type of micromanaging even more difficult. Focus on the higher-level tasks and the overall deliverables and expect your team to perform.

6. Leverage technology.

Today, there is literally endless technology and tools to manage your remote teams and projects effectively. How we manage tasks, schedules, workflows, budgets, customers, and communication is easier today for the virtual project manager than ever before as there are hundreds of project management and collaboration tools available to assist.

There are many web-based programs but don’t feel limited to using one of those, remote login’s and servers can give you a bigger range of robust tools to accomplish your goals.  Choose a solid tool for PM scheduling, status, and document sharing for teams and ensure that your project team (and customer, if you so choose) know how to use each tool. Sharing tools with the project team can definitely make a project manager’s job easier as those actually doing the work can be delegated to update their task’s progress as it occurs. If you decide to go web-based, you’ll still need to use the usual spreadsheet, word processor, and other tools you would normally use to create and communicate project status information and create project deliverable for the client on the engagement.

Choose the tools that work best for your team and project.

Summary / Call for Input

There are countless ways to make remote and virtual team management work. What are your suggestions? What have you struggled with and what strategies helped you overcome it? Please share and discuss.

We all know deep down that new, fresh bleeding-edge technology should not drive the solution. Never ever, ever. It may be a solution, but there’s work to be done first to get there. Follow the process, push back on the persistent customer who knows exactly what he wants and how he wants it done. Take a deep breath and simply, yet politely, tell the customer … no.

Why? You would think that a customer who has money, has a need, and knows the solution is an easy customer. All we have to do is do as he says, cash the check, and move on to the next project – everybody’s happy, right? Not always … and not likely.

The problem with this scenario is that the customer often doesn’t really know what they want. What they know is that they have a need. The customer needs help cultivating the information from that need into a solution that will fit or solve that need. That’s where you – and your team – come in. Being a ‘yes’ man for the customer won’t do them any favors and will more often than not leaving them with a final solution that doesn’t meet their needs. If the customer’s end users are frustrated, the customer will be frustrated. And customer frustration = customer dissatisfaction.

The Process for Finding the Best Choice Solution

In order to best ensure that you’re going to be providing the customer with the actual solution that their need requires, you’ll need to follow a process similar to the following:

1. Have the customer map out business processes.

Mapping out their own business processes is something that is very helpful for the customer to do, but they’ll often overlook this activity unless you specifically require it. It’s really a good idea to require that they go through this activity before you ever even sit down with them. If the customer goes to their end users and subject matter experts (SMEs) and gets business processes mapped out with them, then there’s a real good chance that they’ll have the best possible view of their real need going into requirements definition on their own or with you.

2. Review or create high-level requirements with the customer.

Ideally, the customer would do this on their own, but what’s ideal and what the customer actually does aren’t the same thing. So, assuming that you and your team have to at least ‘help’ the customer map out their high-level requirements, at least you’ll have their business processes in place from the previous step to really help you understand what their need is.

3. Create detailed requirements with the customer.

Next, drill down with the customer further into the requirements. It’s best at this time to also categorize and prioritize requirements. The key is to capture more requirements detail at this point.

It’s inevitable that there will be three general categories of requirements: must-haves (the #1s), should-haves (the #2s), and nice-to-haves (the #3s). Prioritizing now will help you later if and when the scope or schedule changes affect the project and you have to get functionality up and running by a specific date leaving the rest for a later phase of the implementation. Then, you’ll be able to focus on first getting all the #1 requirements met, if necessary, and push 2’s and 3’s to a later phase, rather than watching the entire project crash, or go over budget and time.

4. Propose a solution.

Unless it’s already obvious, now is the more likely time to actually propose the technology for the solution. Up to this point we’ve been examining the current processes and need and detailing the requirements. Now, based on all of that information we can propose or confirm the right solution to meet those needs. Now is when the real work of utilizing the proposed solution to meet the requirements of the project can start to happen.

Summary / Call for Input

Many times the customer comes into the engagement “knowing” what they want for the technology solution. However, don’t be tricked into going down that path with them. Remember, you have the team of experts that they came to for the solution. You’re the leader – lead them down the path to the right solution. Don’t let the customer dictate the solution to you and your team.

Readers – Have you found yourself in this scenario? What did you do to modify the client’s expectations? Please share and discuss.

Legal Issues with Open-Source Software

The premise is that by using open-source software within your company, you could be opening yourself up to severe legal issues – regardless of your intentions. Private companies have had acquisitions fail or have needed to be restructured at a significant loss of value during the due diligence process or they’ve had to cancel or postpone anticipated IPOs.

Apparently there are complex and restrictive licensing requirements in the open-source software niche that are somewhat ambiguous and definitely deserve the proper scrutiny. Many widely used open-source licenses include requirements to:

• Make source code generally available.
• Prohibit using the software for commercial purposes.
• Deny rights to transfer or assign it.

As an example, the GNU Operating System general public license requires as one of its provisions that a company’s products derived from its use must then be licensed to all third parties. What this means is that competitors can potentially examine, copy, and develop derivatives of what would otherwise be considered proprietary code developed by the company. Ouch. On the other side of the coin, there is usually no provision in the open-source license that guarantees that your company did not copy the protected works of others while utilizing it.

Open-Source Risk Management

So what does that mean for your company? What does that mean for your projects?

The wake-up call.

First, it should be a wake-up call. It’s very tempting to consider the use of open-source software as a cost savings measure. It may come with no upfront cost, but way lies ahead could end up being very costly and could bring a software project based on it to a complete halt … permanently. Definitely brings to mind the old adage, “there’s no such thing as free.”

An ongoing risk to the project.

Next, it must be considered throughout the project as an identified risk. Pursue it as you would any other risk. Identify it, monitor it, and definitely assign it to your legal team. Your legal team needs to run point on determining if the open-source solution will work for your project and your needs and not present you with legal issues later on.

Always have a backup solution.

Finally, third, consider non-open-source solutions as back-up options should #2 present a major problem. The last thing you want is a long delay as you completely rework the issue, requirements, and the solution from ground zero again.

Summary / Call for Input

Open-source software can be great – I’m a big fan. I use Open Office every day for something. In fact I ditched Microsoft Office 365 to go back to using Open Office after being a customer for, like, 50 years. Ok … I’m exaggerating a bit there. But open-source legal concerns definitely can have major consequences for a business, or project.

Readers – Do you use open-source software on any of your projects and have you experienced any issues?

There is just no guarantee.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could guarantee success on our projects just by being good at what we do? A good plumber or electrician can pretty much know they’ll eventually achieve success on every project just because they’re very experienced. Some jobs may take more time, but they’ll get it done right eventually because they know their job and they know what works and what doesn’t.

As project managers, we’re not so lucky. We are one piece of a million-piece puzzle. There are probably about 150 factors that we could probably list right now that we know as having a hand in the successful or unsuccessful outcome of a project. And there’s probably a few hundred more that we can’t even fathom and that can depend heavily on the customer and the specific project that have some determination in the overall success of the engagement. How can we possibly manage all of these factors? Unfortunately, the answer is, we can’t fully manage them…we can only do our best using sound practices, manage issues as they come up and rely on others to do their jobs properly.

What we can control.

Here’s what we can do as project managers to help ensure project success on the engagements we manage:

• Practice good customer management and communication.
• Deliver on your promises.
  These can be project status reports, status calls, project schedule updates, and the like.
• Track risks and issues.
  These are known potential derailing factors to your project, so manage them very carefully. Since they’ve already been identified, you have no excuses if they arise and devour your project without evasive action by you, or on your team’s part.
• Follow a PM methodology or hybrid methodology that your organization and your customer understands and accepts.
  If it is sound and followable, then it should help your project run more smoothly. If it’s difficult to follow and manage, then you’ll be fighting a losing battle from day one.
• Manage your resources as carefully as you manage the issues and risks.
  Resources are the components executing the work on YOUR project. Keep them happy and engaged… and replace them if they are a drain to the project or the team. You should have that power… if not, speak to your executive management immediately and get that power.

Summary / Call for Input

As I said, there are probably 150 factors we could brainstorm and write down that you can be aware of and try to manage and control as you attempt to keep your projects on track. And there are literally hundreds of other, unseen factors that are out there and probably depend on the customer, the project, and the technology… among other things.

The best we can do is practice good, sound, fundamental project management skills, manage our customer and team well, do what we say we will do, and hope for the best. In the long run, you’ll be happy with your performance and hopefully, others will see through the issues and recognize a good project management effort for what it was.

Readers – What can project managers do to help guarantee success or rather make it more likely? Please share and discuss.

So, what is the best way to decide what technology to buy?

Stay true to the methodology.

The process should drive the project, not the technology. Right now, somewhere… there is a wife buying her husband some cool new tool to entice him to do a job around the house that can be done a number of different ways with a number of different materials. I know this has worked for my wife with me, but in the long run, it didn’t really motivate me beyond the initial task at hand… and now we have lots of tools collecting dust.

No amount of cool software will replace good sound fundamentals when it comes to creating repeatable processes that can be taken to the masses in an organization and help take it to the next level. For example, there are nice requirements management tools out there, but if a customer or a project team has no clue how to capture requirements and can’t follow a process to get from requirements definition to actually develop a solution, then the project will fail no matter what requirements capture method or methodology is used.

PMI and PMP promoters would say this is where like-mindedness and common dialogue helps an organization create those repeatable processes and helps keep all project managers in an organization traveling down a similar path. It allows the organization to put the same face on each project, remain consistent and create the same type of customer experience for each customer and for returning customers…and thus, likely creating greater customer satisfaction.

I don’t disagree with that statement, though I also don’t think it is the only way to get there. Experienced project managers bring invaluable knowledge to the table and can also easily adapt to sound project management methodology and principles.

Enough about that though…I’m heading down the wrong path again. What I’m trying to say here is that when managing a project, know the following:

• What does the end solution need to accomplish?
  This will help the team determine the best technology to use to accomplish the end goal.
• What information needs to be captured and presented?
  This will enable the project manager to utilize the best software or technology to deliver information in a timely and understandable manner.

When I was the Sr. Project Manager at Rockwell Collins, I was required to present larger, more visible projects to a Technology Council comprised of leaders within the organization. The goal of the council was to help ensure that the proper technology was being used for the solution because many customers pushed for a particular technical solution that may not be in the best interest of the project or the corporation (these were internal projects for internal business units, for the most part).

By presenting a high-level view of the project and a proposed solution to the council, we could jointly decide on these larger projects what the proper solution should be. We had a good process in place, which allowed us to utilize the best technology for each project. Process first, technology second.

Summary / Call for Input

If the proper process and practices are in place and skilled resources – such as an experienced project manager and skilled project team members – are leading the effort, then the technology is almost an afterthought. If you allow technology to drive the solution, then the possibility of delivering a solution to the customer that does not fully meet their needs is infinitely higher thus increasing the likelihood of customer dissatisfaction overall.

Bypass these problems by creating a logical process to evaluate problems and proposed solutions, put that process on a regular schedule, and follow the plan.

What about our readers? What are your thoughts and experiences with this issue? Have you had clients that want the shiny new technology enough to create projects that didn’t really solve the need that actually needed solving? What is your process for deciding what technology to buy? Please share and discuss.

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