DISQUS

I wonder how viable is the business model focusing on such a small niche (Project Management for Video Creators).

Sorry I meant responsibility without authority!

The functionality of parsing tags, such as @tomorrow @2:50 @tuesday is very cool.

Most of these tools are extremely similar in both functionality and interface. It always amazes me how many small businesses out there are tapping into the Project Management Software market.

Nice cartoon.

The problem with Project Managers in general (giving them a lot of stress) is that they have responsibility with authority. Most of them have to deal with lots of politics, and team members that are usually loyal to their functional manager. A Project Manager who cannot establish his/her authority can never run projects.

I think this is a bit unfair for Project Managers. There are some really brilliant Project Managers out there.

Educating the client (Slide #15) is key to managing his/her expectations. IMO, when the client tries to educated the Project Manager, then the Project Manager has already lost.

Erik,

This is an excellent article, and I'm interested on republishing it on PM Hut under the project management office category. Please contact me through the "Contact Us" form of the PM Hut site in case you're OK with this.

Thanks for your time!

F2F communication is indeed the best (I have published an article about it, the join-up meeting), as for email, the potential of misunderstandings is quite high, that's why it's always good to follow up with an email. There's also the issue where email threads drag on forever. My strategy is to answer emails near the end of the day, this way I will avoid these endless (and nearly always useless) threads.

I love it when i read such objective posts on Agile/Scrum. If you think that the Product Manager role is trivial, then what do you think when there are 2 roles, the Product Manager and the Product Owner?

I did publish an article on the role of the product owner/product manager. What's interesting is that the author merged the 2 roles from the get-go (Btw, in case you had the chance to read the article, look at the challenges part).

Thanks for the explanation. Maybe if more people start building applications using silver light, then more people will start to use it. I, for instance, don't have it installed.

I went to their website, clicked on Pricing and Signup, and I got this thing about installing MS SilverLight. Whatever happened to Flash or static HTML? I work in a small company right now < 50 people, and none of us have silver light installed. Most of the employees never heard of it before...

BT is one of the largest telecom companies in the world. It's impressive that they were able to adopt agile, at least for part of their operations. Historically, Agile is not the easiest thing to implement in traditional/waterfall organizations. I'm wondering how big are the teams involved (and I agree with the previous comment that the team's work was impressive). One of the limitations of agile is that it doesn't work well with larger teams.

Blogging as a communication tool for PM can be a bit messy. Wikis, on the other hand, are OK (I was against them at first because of some bad experience using them). Twitter is also OK, I have heard of one (can't remember the name) that is mainly dedicated at enterprises.

The demographics are very realistic, I do know for a fact that there are Agile Product Managers in their late twenties out there, whether they're doing a good job or bad job is another story. Experience plays a huge role here because IMO, to be an Agile Product Manager you have to have a solid Project/Product Management experience, as it builds on it.

I love Parkinson's law, it applies to everything in life, and you see it all the time when you're a Project Manager. Give someone 2 days to finish a 2 hour task, and it will be finished in 2 days (unless, of course, s/he's new, but you're only new for a couple of months).

They should probably merge into one company, or else some other company will create a tool merging the functionalities of both.

I think it's more convenient for a Project Manager to use one tool instead of one.

Can't see how behance relates to Project Management...

I remember working on a Time and Expense online software (a long time ago), the requirements were very unclear and constantly changing, and Project Management was not the greatest. Needless to say, that project never saw the light.

I do agree with the previous comment about having a comprehensive Project Management tool instead of just going with a part of it.

Design is excellent, although I think that the blue/gray combination is now overused (I'm seeing it everywhere).

Now you said it best: "Web-based productivity applications and services are many", and probably they're too many these days (I follow these things as I run PM Hut and I'm telling you there's currently a lot). Again, is the market that big? and how are these companies advertising their products?

The interface is extremely sleek, and the price is very reasonable IMO.

We avoided subversioning for a while now, and I think we're going to avoid it for the next few years. It does make sense when you're working in a huge company and there are lots of developers working simultaneously, however, for smaller companies with a few developers (like mine) it's not even worth it.

A Project Manager usually handles costing/scheduling. Even in very small companies where roles are a bit foggy the Project Manager is still responsible for the scheduling.

The idea of the integrator is nice, and quite frankly this is the first time I hear about it. From what I understand, the integrator should be educated (if not proficient) about the technologies used. A Project Manager can only have a very basic overview of the technologies used.

An integrator, in my opinion and based on your post, is just another word for team leader, and not really a Project Manager.

This site is excellent for fast networking.

3 things:

- Site is restricted to UK, there's much more potential worldwide.
- Site design looks outdated by today's standards.
- The Interest Groups page is different than what one might expect (I expected to see something like Project Management Group, for example).

<abbr></abbr><abbr>PM Huts last blog post..The Beginning of the End: Defining Project Closure</abbr>

That's an excellent post Eric! 2 things:

- An idea taking more than a month is not worth your time
- An idea that keeps changing (in your mind) is also not worth your time

In this time and age, there are IT projects getting finished in 2 days (in a weekend), and that's the whole process, not just the implementation phase.

<abbr></abbr><abbr>PM Hut´s last blog post is: Preventing Scope Inflation</abbr>

I have been involved myself in the Telecom industry and I can also tell you that one of the biggest time wasters was the roaming (especially in small operations, where resources are multi-tasking).

Selling Project Management to the client is an excellent idea, the whole thing is about presenting proposals professionally.