Filemaker Consultants Houston, Filemaker Developer 6, filemaker technical support, database cross-platform engine, Texas, TX, Hal Payne, Project Management, Filemaker developers, Filemaker pro, database windows, database mac, filemaker solutions alliance associate, database system management

Filemaker Consultants Houston, Filemaker Developer 6, filemaker technical support, database cross-platform engine, Texas, TX, Hal Payne, Project Management, Filemaker developers, Filemaker pro, database windows, database mac, filemaker solutions alliance associate, database system management

Filemaker Consultants Houston, Filemaker Developer 6, filemaker technical supportFilemaker Consultants Houston, Filemaker Developer 6, filemaker technical support

Filemaker Consultants Houston, Filemaker Developer 6, filemaker technical support

 

Project Management in the Relatively New Millennium

It’s a burning issue, this Project Management stuff.

There are over 1,500 searches daily on Yahoo alone containing the phrase “Project Management.” If each of these “Searchers” is spending only 15 minutes looking for answers, that’s about 400 hours, or 10 working weeks. Google’s numbers are even higher. It all adds up to 6 months of Project Management research every day on the Web. That’s 182 years annually!

What are they looking for? We assume that most of them already have a Project Management system of some kind, and it’s not working. Some have invested tens of thousands of dollars in them. Others have outgrown systems in place for over a decade. Many have pushed tools like Excel to their limit, and they figure there’s a better way. Even if you think you don’t have a system, you do. And like the others, it’s unsatisfactory on some level.

What are these Searchers learning? Well, about 14% of them end up at the Project Management Institute Web site. And there they learn that,

“Project Management is comprised of five processes –
Initiating, Planning, Executing, Controlling, and Closing
as well as nine knowledge areas. These nine areas center on management expertise in
Project Integration, Project Scope, Project Cost, Project Quality, Project Human Resources, Project Communications, Project Risk Management and Project Procurement.”
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx--Project Management Institute Web Site

We can’t help but notice the five processes track rather closely to the Five Stages of Grief:
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxDenial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.

And that stuff about nine knowledge areas reminds us of those projects we’ve worked on that had nine lives, like a cat. You know, they cough up a furball and keep going, and going, and going...

We’ve yet to figure out how to make these 14 processes and principles work for our clients, but we really haven’t tried that hard. They’ve got dozens or hundreds of projects to manage. Some of their jobs turn around in 48 hours. Others require every bit of their 3 or 4 week schedule.

Our specialty is designing systems and processes to manage large numbers of small projects, not the other way around. An ad agency or manufacturer producing 2,500 jobs a year are great prospects. A custom homebuilder with a couple of houses under construction at any given time is not.

When building a system from the ground up, we find it’s most helpful to identify the

Whos:

Team Members, Clients, Partners & Suppliers

Whats:

Project Name & Description

Whens:

Critical Dates & Deadlines

Wheres:

Logistics

Whys:

Objectives

Hows:

Schedules & Budgets

Most existing systems require this basic information to get a job done, but the data isn’t fully utilized. The system may lack custom reporting capabilities. Sharing data electronically may prove impractical. New users may require days or weeks of training.

We have a possible solution, a starting point, if you will. It's an Online Job Tracking System , very basic by design. It's made for Teams managing dozens or hundreds of Jobs, not just a few. It doesn't generate schedules because that's too high-maintenance in high-volume project environments. It can be customized to fit your Group at no extra charge.

Call us whether you need a simple Online Job Tracking System, or something more customized. Demonstrations of systems we've designed are easy these days using services like WebEx.

We hope to talk to you soon.

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Online Job Tracking System

 

Filemaker Consultants Houston, Filemaker Developer 6, filemaker technical support, database cross-platform engine, Texas, TX, Hal Payne, Project Management, Filemaker developers, Filemaker pro, database windows, database mac, filemaker solutions alliance associate, database system management