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 (ie 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
- 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