Business And Project Planning And Management

Managing The Blog Consolidation Project - Time Efficiency

2013-08-30T22:31:00.000-04:00

IMPORTANT NOTICE TO MY READERS
If you would like to continue reading articles written by Douglas E. Castle, you have two new choices:

1) Visit his new professional website and business blog at http://DouglasECastleBlog.com, where he discusses fixing broken businesses and fueling and accelerating the growth curve of successful or potentially successful companies or organizations, or you may:

2) Visit his multi-subject personal blog at http://DouglasECastle.com which will now be the ultimate, centralized consolidation of the large list of blogs which follow. While I might continue to post to these blogs directly, I will be doing so only sporatically. Thank you, as always, for following me and for sharing my articles with your colleagues across your many social media networks using an ever-increasing variety of sharing tools,. The selected blog list follows for your reference:
SELECTED LINKS TO BLOGS BY DOUGLAS E. CASTLE:
TAKING COMMAND! ACHIEVING YOUR OBJECTIVES. SENDING SIGNALS! - Communicate With Precision And Power. QUORA DISCUSSION FORUM DOUGLAS E. CASTLE: Observations, Thoughts And Commentary. Disruption Theory And Disruptive Innovation InfoSphere™ Business Alerts And Intelligence THE GLOBAL FUTURIST - Douglas E Castle
LINKS 4 LIFE ALERTS! Building And Managing Customer Relationships - CEM Instant Biz 101 Radio DAZZ - Music Breaks To Make Your Day! THE INTERNATIONALIST PAGE - Douglas E Castle GLOBAL EDGE NEWS AND ARTICLE FEED BRAINTENANCE: Train, Strain And Improve Your Brain. Expand Your Mind. Blogging Tips, Tricks And Tools MAD MARKETING TACTICS™ ! Business And Project Planning And Management

Scoop.it

For My Readers...

2013-08-03T11:00:00.000-04:00

I'm Not Jealous Of Alec Baldwin. I'm Just Jealous Of His HAIR.

Friends, Colleagues, Clients, Readers And The Occasional Paper Clip Thief:

I should be back to my usual pattern of obsessive blogging on too many subjects by August 8th, and I thank you so kindly for your patience while I'm rapidly on the mend.

In the meantime, would you please do me a great kindness and 1) visit my new blog at http://douglasecastleblog.com, and then 2) follow me (please...this only takes a quick moment) on my brand-new Twitter account at http://twitter.com/DECastleAdvisor?

Thank you, and I'm hoping that you've missed me.

Until then, please be healthy, safe, of good spirits and prosperous -- or on your way to prosperity.

Faithfully,

Douglas

LinkedIn: http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/douglascastle

p.s. Kindly look at the image below. When I've looked at it (in a darkened room) for more than a minute or two, I have found that simultaneous with my body relaxing, my mind starts to wander in a fascinating way. I recommend it. It's wonderful, easy meditation, and you don't need any dangerous drugs. Seemingly silly exercises like this one have made my "comeback" much quicker. You can click on the image to see it at its full size, which is considerably larger.

The fascinating shape is actually an impossible recursive pattern wrapped around a doughnut-like shape called a toroid. Really. Look it up if you like.

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Sponsored By:
CFI - CrowdFunding Incubator LLC
ICS - International Connection Services
Global Edge Technologies Group LLC
CFI Business Growth
Douglas E. Castle On LinkedIn - Join Me!

***

Scoop.it

Newest Issue Of Business Plans/Project Management Is Out! - 07.03.2013

2013-07-16T17:11:00.000-04:00

Business Plans/Project Management

Planning and Management are the true synergistic elements to achievement of every objective. Either one is useless without its counterpart. Plan, Manage And Succeed.

	Published by
	Douglas E Castle

14 July 2013

Business Education Stories Technology Environment Leisure #pmot #jobs

Today's headline

How to Build and Use a Business Budget That's Useful All Year Long

Shared by

sba.gov

www.sba.gov - Budgets are difficult to plan and maintain at the best of times – unexpected events, cash flow problems, supply chain issues and more can all reap havoc with even the most thoroughly planned busine...

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Scoop.it

Project Management Employment Alerts And Other News

2013-07-02T08:00:00.000-04:00

The information which follows is brought to you as a courtesy of The Business And Project Planning And Management Blog. Thank you as always, for reading us, and for sharing our articles with your colleagues.


Project Manager / Implementation Manager (Healthcare Services) Career Engineer Project Manager / Implementation Manager (Healthcare Services) Our client is the world's leading provider of point of care systems in healthcare, including media, information, clinical support software and infrastructure services. Position ... See all stories on this topic »
Project Manager, West Yorkshire printweek.com Exceptional Client relationship development ability, an enhanced eye for detail and strong project management skills are an absolute prerequisite. Working within a spirited & fast moving environment, you will be a key member of a dynamic & empowered ... See all stories on this topic »
Senior Project Controller / Asst. Project Manager (Engineering) Career Engineer An opportunity has arisen for a Senior Project Controller / Assistant Project Manager to join their busy Operations Department. Reporting to the Project Manager the post holder will be accountable for ensuring that our clients increasing range of ... See all stories on this topic »
Seeking CSM/Project Manager in Rockland Office PenBayPilot.com This opening is for a Client Services Manager/Project Manager and will entail duties that include communicating with clients, keeping track of projects and deadlines, gathering information via phone and email, fielding client questions and much more. See all stories on this topic »
Project manager didn't plan construction role Albany Times Union Not a place with professional sports," said Yancey, who has been project manager for the West Haymarket construction project for the past two years. And she didn't play sports in high school. She says the bumper sticker "Picked Last in Gym" describes her. See all stories on this topic »
Manager of big project in Lincoln didn't foresee construction role The Republic It did not mean she dreamed about being an engineer, wearing a hard hat or building arenas. As a kid, her goals were far more traditional. Yancey thought she would be a teacher or work in an office. She would marry someone in the military, like her dad ... See all stories on this topic »
Talygen, the World's Leading Business Management Automation Application ... DigitalJournal.com Talygen is committed to making sure that all business owners have access to the best Business Intelligence, Time Management, Project Management, Human Resource, & Team Collaboration software on the market. Talygen newest version of its Software as ... See all stories on this topic »
Newtown PBSC Reviews Sandy Hook School Project Voices News Senior Project Manager with Diversified Project Management Geralyn Hoerauf, AIA, LEED, AP ID+C, said she has been working to extract pieces of information from the responses, such as insurance details, creating a matrix to easily compare candidates. See all stories on this topic »
Paladin Data Systems' Announces Pilot Project with Regional Councils of ... DigitalJournal.com Paladin Data Systems, a leading developer and provider of software development, integration, implementation, database administration, and project management services, announced today the launch of a pilot project with the Regional Councils of ... See all stories on this topic »
Helsinki Energy selects IFS Applications 8 ARC Advisory Group IFS, the global enterprise applications company, announces that Helsinki Energy, one of the largest energy companies in Finland, has chosen IFS Applications™ 8 to streamline financial processes and project management. The contract includes licenses ... See all stories on this topic »

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Azendoo – Simple Multi-Function Project Management Web App
There is certainly an overabundance of project management and team collaboration apps these days, making it hard to choose the best one for you or your team ...
www.hongkiat.com/blog/azendoo-project-management-app/

Civil Engineer - Project Management, Wastewater, Drinking Water ...
Civil Engineer - Project Management, Wastewater, Drinking Water job in Houston , Texas, US. Read the Civil Engineer - Project Management, Wastewater, ...
jobview.monster.com/civil-engineer-project-management-wast...

Making the Grade: Instilling Project Management Values - PM Hut
PM hut - The Project Management Hut Project Management Articles Project ... June 27, 2013 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Project Management Best Practices .
www.pmhut.com/making-the-grade-instilling-project-manage...

In case I haven't mentioned it in a while, please remember to always check in with Project Management Hut (http://www.pmhut.com), as they're a wonderful source of information, and take a look (from time to time) at the website for the Project Management Institute ("PMI") at http://www.pmi.org/

Douglas E. Castle

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Project Management Crossroads: Humans Versus Machines - Update at June 30, 2013 [Must Read]

2013-06-30T13:44:00.001-04:00

Further on in this quick article and update are some of my latest collectibles from Scoop It, which is a nifty news aggregator with a name that's supposed to reflect the notion of a news reporter getting a "scoop" on a hot story (almost an anachronism), but which sadly suggests something more today along the lines of picking up after your Schnauzer -- but at least it's a better product name than "Monitis". The copy and pasting part caused some loss of content and quality, but the spirit of most of the subjects, plus some ideas to think about (forget about Agile and Scrum for a moment, you IT-obsessives who don't like really dealing with people -- you know who you are!), going forward have come through. I will be posting quite a bit more frequently in the near future, and I wanted to thank you for your patience with me. I'd also add that the content will simply reek of original thought.

It's interesting to note that the Project Management field is growing in terms of its frequency of appearance in the news, in terms of its employment/ contracting opportunities, and in terms of its sea change and paradigm shift from a mechanized, "set it and forget it" discipline to something that has become merged with fields of management and leadership. It's no longer about machines, or merely about 'managing processes' -- its about dealing with people through better communications and management skills.

In the War of the Machines (at least within Project Management), the Humans are reclaiming a great deal of lost territory. It's not because Humans are better than machines, programs, processes or systems, per se. It's because Human Beings are an inexorable part of commerce. And you dashboard addicts -- phone and web conferences are in your future. You can't hide in the Transporter Room -- you've got to get up to the Bridge.

Thank you as always for reading me, and for forwarding my articles to your friends, colleagues and contacts across your social media networks using your ever-expanding arsenal of social media-sharing tools. Techno toys can be fun, I'll confess.

Douglas E. Castle

Rescooped by Eduardo Lucas from Project Management onto Project Management around the globe

From www.projectmanager.com - June 29, 7:12 PM

Eduardo Lucas's insight:

Knowledge is never enough!

Scooped by TonyaPriceConsulting onto Web Project Management

From www.projectaccelerator.co.uk - June 26, 10:42 AM

Tonya Price Consulting's insight:

Great recap on talks regarding need for collaboration. Whether you are using Agile or sequential methodologies, collaboration is proving to be essential to a team's success. My favorite lines from this recap are:

"Translating strategy into execution is the role of the project manager," (Professor Darren Dalcher)

-and-

"“Project managers need to have productive failure. Make mistakes in a good direction.”
(Tim Harford, the 'Undercover Economist') In a hurry? Skip the video - most of the info is covered in the article.

--------------------------------------

I sincerely think that it's time for those of us involved in an aspect of Project Management to take a fresh look at the terms "project" and "management" to discover what it is we are truly expected to do. In the past, there's been too much focus on project and process automation, and not enough about the Human Element. Management involves dealing productively with other individuals and it also involves monitoring of people and processes at frequent intervals during the implementation of a project just to make sure that no course correction is required in order to maintain the goal attainment trajectory.

DEC

See you very soon. Thanks again for your patience with me and my hectic schedule. There are some additional article links which are set forth right here:

PMI Offers Advice To Government Workers

Download Project Management Risk Containment Guidelines

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Hackers, Backers, Handlers And The Future

2013-05-28T14:05:00.000-04:00

Every computer system, every data storage system, every IT platform, and every data transmission line or port can be hacked. It just takes expertise (in the form of an adrenaline-fueled, cerebrotonic young genius who sees the thrill of the challenge before applying any moral or other standards to the actions or to the potential use), excellent equipment (state-of-the-art) and a powerful, charismatic handler to point the hacker-for-hire in the desired direction required to meet the corporate or financial backer's directive.

The term "hack" has become synonymous in modern tech-speak to any tool or method which makes things easier. It used to be a pejorative categorization - today it is something to be sought after in accessing utility or finding a workaround. Hacking, as a practical matter, is a reality, and as such should be dealt with. It can be prosecuted or promoted -- and in prosecuting it, the use of experts (i.e., hackers) will absolutely be required. In the "only performance counts" world of business, the organization with the best hacker/s has the best competitive advantage; nothing more, nothing less.

A recent article addresses a very real incident, with true implications not for anything as mundane as industrial espionage or tampering with records, but national security. As strategic business planners and project managers we are all Global Futurists, and that is precisely what makes this article so intriguing:

Yahoo News via The Global Futurist Blog: Chinese Hackers Access Key U.S. Defense Technologies And Weapons Secrets.

I had predicted that hackers would someday soon become accepted as real-world residents of the C-Suites of companies. They are already in common usage in all types of domestic and international spying and intelligence-gathering, but those hackers are still kept out of the mainstream media or even mainstream acknowledgement because they are always involved in classified operations or Covert (Black) Ops which are theoretically (supposed to be) nonexistent.

In the Information Society, hackers, backers and handlers will ultimately be the unholy trinity which determines the ultimate distribution of power and wealth. They may well determine our future -- if indeed we have one.

Think about that for awhile.

As always, thank you for reading me, and for sharing my insights and articles with your colleagues and connections across the many social media platforms.

Douglas E. Castle for The Business And Project Planning And Management Blog, and for The Global Futurist Blog.

***

Agile: Not A Complete Solution.

2013-05-21T12:55:00.000-04:00

I am one of many strategic planners and project managers who has seen some very disappointing results from over-dependencies on Agile. It would seem that many IT and professional programming participants use this admittedly time-saving organizational and communications tool as a substitute for continuous, responsive communication (i.e., in real time), and for an actual planning process which follows a sensible, step-by-step path.

There are no automated substitutes for the native Human thought processes of goal-setting, envisioning success, real-time communication and feedback (especially for the purposes of truly measuring progress, reaffirming goals and for trajectory correction), and step-by-step planning. These things require organized, educated thought and interpersonal action. All too often planners, managers and implementers foster unwarranted reliance upon automation where it is insufficient for problem-solving or objective achievement.

The article which follows speaks of the deficiencies in Agile technology, as well as of its unintentional misuse.

Posted by Mark Corley
on May 08 2013

Agile software development is an often misunderstood and misused term. In an exclusive new series of articles, IDG Connect offers expert insight and opinion on Agile. In this piece, Mark Corley, UK CTO of business technology services company Avanade, explains why Agile is sometimes just an excuse for no method.

A customer I know uses Agile and is relatively new to it, having moved away from a highly stage-contained, waterfall approach that was designed by committee. At each stage there was full documentation and a committee would come together to discuss it, ask questions, catch up on any previous meetings and, eventually, sign it off. It was a slow and arduous process that didn't mitigate risk or serve the company's intentions particularly well. Recently they've moved to what they call Agile and have a small team to do Agile projects. And really they're using it as a way to avoid documentation or process...

I'm not a fan of documentation for the sake of it, but they've gone to almost no documentation, which causes problems downstream when the project is handed over to new people to support. Agile is sometimes used by organisations as an excuse for no method.

Others try to develop on a ‘Waterscrumfall' basis, combining elements of Agile/Scrum and waterfall methodologies but this is an immature field. They're not confident or comfortable enough to ‘do' Agile so they do an analysis, come up with a list of requirements, list all the sprints and prioritisation before they get into an iterative process. Then it gets handed over to support and with immature customers it can whimper out.

There is a hybrid way to capture some of the advantages of Agile. I like the practice of demonstrating to the business early and making sure the users are involved. Iterations and milestones keep the pace up. But too often in Agile projects you see no product owner or representative form the business, no endpoint and it's forgotten that most of the cost in a software project lies in support and maintenance.

If Agile gives you an excuse to stand up and explain what you're doing and show work rather than delivering a status report every week, great. But common sense should apply in any methodology and I've yet to see a methodology that says you shouldn't have regular interaction with customers.

Perhaps it's a generational thing and a reaction against mega-projects and some of the worst-case failures. Or maybe because of the sheer amount of data that's processed today and the way devices have proliferated, the hype is amplified. But the problems we're trying to address today are all the same problems as before and we have the answers. It's just that people come up with new ways of packaging those answers.

Mark Corley is the UK CTO of business technology services company Avanade
---------------

To many in the C-Suite, and to many corporate directors, "Agile and Scrum" would be perceived, conversationally as a comedy team or a country-western band. It is not because these people are ignorant - it is because they are dependent (and justifiably so) upon the simply direct verbal communication of answers to these questions, and metrics to accompany and bolster them in terms of visualization:

1) What is our target objective?

2) Are we still on the right course in terms of budgeted assets, time and capital?

3) What are the difficulties or barriers, if any, and how do we overcome or solve them?

4) When can we expect completion of the project?

Human beings provide answers to these important questions, and, generally speaking, simple graphs or charts of metrics enhance these communications so that they may be better visualized and understood. There is no out-of-the-box product or technology that does these things.

Douglas E. Castle

***

Are You Too Competent? 5 Suggestions.

2013-05-16T09:28:00.000-04:00

In the industrialized nations, most employed persons are either apathetic (i.e., willing to embrace mediocrity) or incompetent. They have either kept under the radar to avoid being tossed out, or they have spent far more time politicking than doing anything meaningful for the advancement of any project or directive within the organization. Smaller, entrepreneurial companies don't suffer from this malady as much as do their much larger counterparts, where the mere size of the staff and the vast amount of unproductive administration help to camouflage apathy and incompetence.

If you seek acceptance, admiration and kudos (i.e., you might have low self-esteem, and your therapist is telling you -- every week for $150.00 per session -- that your mother is probably at fault), and if you are truly stunningly competent, you often volunteer to take on more responsibility than you can actually handle in order to impress others, who are trying to shed their workload and put it into your briefcase. You are likely overworking because of your competency and willingness to take on extra responsibilities beyond the scope of your position.

What may indeed be worse is that you are aiding and abetting others at continuing their policies of mediocrity, apathy and incompetence. You are covering a hole in the boat with scotch tape - it causes you to suffer, and it helps others to remain non-contributors to what should be a project management effort or a business management effort.

In most medium to large-sized companies and organizations, most of the employees are either incapable or unwilling to do the critical inch of work required of them - instead, they are politically jockeying for preservation or promotion, and passing the work (and also any blame for failure) off upon others. Don't allow this to continue. Here are some constructive ideas:

1) Learn to simply say "no" when put upon by your "admirers";

2) Learn how to simply recommend to others how they may do the chore or solve the problem themselves. Point them to resources;

3) Learn to delegate some of your lesser responsibilities to others - some reasonable amount of delegation will actually ease your burden and enable you to focus more on the quality of your own workload;

4) If you are a manager or team leader, don't just give assignments to your charges -- ask them in a quick weekly progress meeting what they have accomplished, and for a brief explanation how they went about it. The laggards and politicians will be exposed, and peer pressure, combined with a small hint of embarrassment will get them to be a bit more self-sufficient. Call upon each person to account for his or her assigned responsibility;

5) If you are a manager, don't promote sycophants, toadies, and followers. Work hard to spot the problem-solvers, and promote them. Also (and this may sound ironic), promote those who show the greatest potential to lead others -- these people are not your future competition, per se; view them instead as your successors as you climb higher within your company, organization or project team.

What? You'd like another picture. Always happy to oblige my fellow strategic management consultants and project manager brethren!

Thank you, as always for reading me, and for sharing my articles with your connections and colleagues through your social media.

Douglas E. Castle for The Business And Project Planning And Management Blog and The Sending Signals Blog.

***

Top 5 SEO Tools - Free!

2013-05-10T09:30:00.000-04:00

Every business needs an internet presence in the form of a well-crafted website, and, for even better perceived authority and thought leadership [and with the benefit of more client interaction], one or more blogs with frequent, interesting postings (articles) are a proven path.

The best, easiest-to-use and most highly effective website or blog SEO tools are a must to make use of, and they are all available for free. I recommend them to clients, and I use them myself. The objective of good SEO is to attract the largest possible audience to your site, and to have each visitor stay for the longest possible time; this increases the likelihood of sales (of products or services), subscriptions and the development of a following, in the form of a list.

Your SEO must be structured in such a way that your site will not be deemed a 'spam site' or that it will lose its positioning and ranking with every change in Google's or Bing's search engine algorithms. Your SEO must be visitor-oriented, and as organic as possible if you want to survive and thrive while other contrived or 'black hat' - built sites are either suspended or fall down the ranking ladder.

Here are the 5 best tools for building SEO:

These first tools appear here courtesy of Scrub The Web, on of my favorite resources for both blog site building and for website improvement.

Free Meta Tag Analyzer - See what search engines think about your web page. The Meta Tag Analyzer will analyze, check for errors and calculate the search engine visibility score of any web page.

Free Meta Tag Builder - Our Meta Tag Builder can help you create search engine friendly titles and meta tags for all your web pages. Google, Bing, Scrub The Web and others are looking for these tags when they visit your web pages.

Free Easy Submit - Submit all your web pages to search engines the easy way! With Easy Submit all you do is click and watch the submission in real-time.

HubSpot's Free Website Review Tool: The Marketing Grader - This is one of the best SEO analysis tools I've ever used. It analyzes any given page on the internet, grades the page in terms of SEO viability, points out the specific areas that could use improvement, and suggests the improvements to be implemented. A good routine is to use the tool, get the results, implement the suggested changes and run the page through the tool again to see how effective your changes have been...or if they have compromised other SEO advantages and need to be refined. It displays results simply and makes easy-to-understand suggestions for improvement.

Submit Your url To High-Ranking (PR6 - PR9) Directories: CLICK HERE - This is a good supplement to create some credible (but usually short-lived) back links from these information resources to your blog or website. The best approach is to choose the highest ranking directories and submit to them monthly (repetitively), and to add some new, lower-ranking directories to your list of submissions, as well.

Now that I've given you the tools, enjoy them, and build something to make me proud!

As always, thank you so much for reading me, and for sharing my articles with all of your connections, comrades and colleagues through your ever-expanding list of social media platforms, portals and sites.

Douglas E. Castle

***

Top Time Management Tools - The Best For Business And Personal Use

2013-05-04T15:35:00.000-04:00

Top Time Management Tools - The Best For Business And Personal Use

As a Project Manager, a professional, a consultant an executive or an entrepreneur you are always the principal resource in your working endeavors. You must consciously view yourself as a Human Asset with time being your output. And after you have achieved a life/ work balance [i.e., hours dedicated to non-work activities, versus time allocated to business activities], you must take the "work" portion, for example say 50 hours per week, and start to physically record your hours in the form of a time sheet.

Certified Public Accountants, attorneys, and professional consultants are used to filling out time sheets on a regular basis. These reports provide vital information (I've left out the implicit question marks):

1) How many hours were spent per client;
2) What was done for that client during that time;
3) How many hours were spent on business or client development (non-billable!);
4) How Many hours were spent on administration, i.e., the non-billable time used internally for preparing management reports, doing general research, attending courses, and the like.

Obviously, the first objective is to maximize billable hours and to minimize non-billable hours. The second objective is to maximize the number of non-billable hours on client development. The third objective is to use as great a percentage of administrative time as possible toward research and education, to keep yourself up-to-date on the news and rules of your profession, and expand your intra-cranial knowledge base to make you a more highly billable asset for the firm.

This documenting of time spent (as lost time cannot be recovered) is also a fabulous self-evaluation and feedback tool. If you judiciously document your hours as described above, you will notice your work-time patterns. If you evaluate these, you might find where you are being productive, and where you are tossing away valuable time, and focus on changing them. Find out where you are losing time, and discard any of those activities which are simply drains on your time.

As promised, as of 05.04.2013, these are the 5 Top Management Tools, according to The Business And Project Planning And Management Blog :

Some of these tools are, or have available, smartphone apps, so you can track your time while you're on the move!

TIMESHEET TRACKING TOOLS

actiTIME offers both downloadable and hosted version of their timesheet software. The downloadable version is offered for free, for teams of up to 10 users, but you will need to pay an upgrade fee for any subsequent major upgrade. More advanced features are available in the Management and Accounting extensions for an additional fee. The downloadable version only works on Windows or UNIX operating systems. There is also a web-based iPhone version and an integration add-on with QuickBooks.

ClickTime is a web-based timesheet solution that features daily or weekly time entry options, customizable reports, a built-in stopwatch and even e-mail reminders for late submitters. It integrates with all major billing and accounting software including QuickBooks. A free 30-day trial is available.

Dovico Timesheet is an award- winning project time and expense tracking software that easily integrates to Microsoft applications (Project, Excel, etc.) and Quickbooks. You can either install the application on your computer (preferably a PC) or use the cloud-based version. Mobile apps for iPhone and iPod Touch also exist. The company’s headquarters are based out of Dieppe, New Brunswick. The basic plan for unlimited projects is free if you do not require more than one user.

FreshBooks - despite its name – is not a full-fledged accounting software but more of an online invoicing software designed to help service-based businesses track projects, timesheets, invoices and expenses all in one place. The basic plan is free, but you may need to upgrade to a paid version to enjoy all the features, including Team Timesheets. A 30-day free trial is available. The company is based out of Toronto.

Harvest is an easy-to-use, web-based time-tracking, invoicing and project management tool. The application is extremely flexible and offers extensive reporting capabilities, along with native iPhone and Android applications. It is easy to create online invoices and to set up online payment via PayPal or other gateways to get paid faster. The free 30-day trial can help you decide if you need more than the free basic version.

TIME ORGANIZATION, "TO DO", REMINDER AND PLANNING TOOLS

Learn more about each of these products and applications by clicking on its name and visiting its website.

1. Evernote

2. Stickies

3. I Want Sandy

4. Google Calendar

5. Remember The Milk

6. ToDoIst

PRIORITIZATION TOOLS

Learn more about each of these products and applications by clicking on its name and visiting its website.

1. Task List Guru

2. Tasks On Steroids

3. SmartSheet

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While time sheets are essential in terms of keeping track of time, they are not the best planning or prioritization tools, unless you care to analyze a a chronology of them and spend a great deal of time evaluating them. Many of the programs, tools and apps above allow you to: A) create a complete detailed list of all tasks or projects to be completed; B) prioritize each of the listed items in terms of:

1. its importance (cost versus benefit analysis) -
2. its time-sensitivity (when is its deadline and how long does it take to complete - a bit of a Critical Path Analysis as well as a coordinating Gantt Chart type of approach and analysis, too) -
3. its "exportability" by delegation;

C) See where you stand at any given point in time of:

1. tasks completed -
2. deadlines approaching (a ticklerized system, occasionally with alerts or reminders as the deadline draws closer) -
3. new tasks to be added -
4. an overall look at the task load, and where the heaviest points will be in terms of many deadlines coinciding, and the amount of time needed to complete each task.

Lastly, for those of us who need a multiple-user application or program for getting things done, or for those of us who need a painful poke to remind us what needs to done because we are naturally order-resistant, or obsessive about what we are working on at this moment without regard to its relative importance and other work to be done, we have some additional goodies:

1. Nozbe

2. LifeHacker's List Of Annoying, Embarrassing And Self-Blackmailing Applications To Get Everything Done - Hysterical and worth reading

"And that," with a salute to Forrest Gump, is all I have to say about that."

As always, thank you for reading me, and for sharing my articles with your connections. comrades and colleagues across your social media groups and platforms. I am deeply appreciative. I certainly hope that you found this article helpful, or will find it to be a fine informational resource.

***

Business And Project Planning And Management

Managing The Blog Consolidation Project - Time Efficiency

For My Readers...

Newest Issue Of Business Plans/Project Management Is Out! - 07.03.2013

Project Management Employment Alerts And Other News

Project Management Crossroads: Humans Versus Machines - Update at June 30, 2013 [Must Read]

5 More Project Management Terms - ProjectManager.com

APM Conference 2013: Adapt! [Video]

Hackers, Backers, Handlers And The Future

Agile: Not A Complete Solution.

Are You Too Competent? 5 Suggestions.

Top 5 SEO Tools - Free!

Top Time Management Tools - The Best For Business And Personal Use

Business And Project Planning And Management

Managing The Blog Consolidation Project - Time Efficiency

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For My Readers...

Newest Issue Of Business Plans/Project Management Is Out! - 07.03.2013

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Project Management Employment Alerts And Other News

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Project Management Crossroads: Humans Versus Machines - Update at June 30, 2013 [Must Read]

5 More Project Management Terms - ProjectManager.com

APM Conference 2013: Adapt! [Video]

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Hackers, Backers, Handlers And The Future

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Agile: Not A Complete Solution.

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Are You Too Competent? 5 Suggestions.

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