Whirlwind Discussion of Project Management Utilities

This fast-paced session will allow participants to share the various project management utilities available, including Time Tracking, Task Management, Source Code Control, and more.

TOOLS

INTRODUCTION

4 General Task Areas

• Database/CRM
• Communication
• Large Scale Planning Tools
• Types of wikis

COMMUNICATION

• Chatting: Skype, Trillian, Gaim, AIM, Skype, gchat
• Desktop Sharing: WebX, Yugma, Copilot, VNC
• Voice: Skype, Vonage, VOIPCheap (free calls)
  • Wikis--communication among members asynchronusly

 When do wikis not work?  What happens with team members when they don't work?

• Project Management Software: Basecamp, Central Desktop, @Task, SharePoint

Project Management Tools:

• GANTT Charts - a lot of people use MS Project but are afraid to admit it. It does provide a way of planning a project in detail, communicating the project plan and progress to clients and colleagues and then day-to-day management of the project.

"Given that there are so many project management tools, why do we still use Excel?"

• It's flat and easy. "It's basically a piece of paper that does math."

Presentation Software: Camtasia, "Why do people switch over to GoogleDocs from Word vs. switching from PowerPoint to the Google equivalent?" EEE laptop and presentations

WIDGETS (i.e. CoolLittleThings)

• www.doodle.ch--scheduling meetings with people from external organizations software--free
• Meeting Wizard
• FoxMarks--synchronizes bookmarks on different computers on Firefox
• SurveyMonkey, Zoomerang--Technology Assessment
• GoogleApps
• The Nonprofit Soapbox

The importance of tying it all together. Overhead elimination.

You can hook up BaseCamp to SugarCRM.

AH-HA's:

• SpongeBob Squarepants
• Tools are great but they're heavy in overhead. Everyone should realize that tools take effort and that there is a cost to adding tools.
• Tools are no good if nobody uses them.

GoogleDocs just added some features

Google Docs gets better

• You can never be too organized. Now, with the addition of nested folders, it's even easier to keep track of your important documents. Check out the details at: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2008/01/sub-sub-folders.html
• Thanks to a recent update, you can now print documents with headers and footers.

Read more: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2008/01/headers-and-footers.html

• Checked out presentations lately? If not, you may be missing a slew of new features: you can drag and drop images into slides, easily import slides from other presentations, embed a slideshow in a webpage, and more.

Here's a round-up of updates: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2008/01/new-features-for-2008.html