When you hear the word “transparency,” project management software probably isn’t what comes to mind. Maybe you think of the window next to your desk. Unless the blinds are closed, you can see clearly into your yard. It’s not much different in the work context: Unless you have a reason to block the light, you should be able to watch what’s going on from where you’re seated. Project management software is that transparent window.
So you’ve decided on a project management software you want to introduce to your team. Great! Choosing a project management software is a challenge in and of itself. But now that you’ve found the perfect one, the real battle begins: implementation.
Business is a battle, and the companies that best optimize their resources tend to win. But without a clear look at project-level data, it’s impossible to distribute those resources well. The right project management software shows you how and where your resources are spent. Organizing, executing, and analyzing projects is a lot easier when you can find it all on a single platform.
Our legal team shares its favorite tips and tools for automating repetitive tasks, collaborating with outside counsel and much more, all inside Slack
Telecommuting or remote working is no longer only a strategy to scale up your customer service or globally distributing your support teams. It’s a growing necessity that is more about future-proofing your customer service against business-related uncertainties. Apart from being a developing global necessity, the need for telecommuting also entails the preferences of workers.
As a native New Yorker, I almost get the feeling I’ve seen this movie before. I saw 9/11 up close. I experienced the 2008 financial crash from inside Goldman Sachs. I’ve been through bomb threats, water main ruptures, and a hundred other predicaments too banal to remember distinctly. But even having worked and lead teams through all that, I still find the COVID-19 crisis challenging to navigate.
Studies of customer feedback already tell us that the majority of customers prefer to solve their problems on their own over contacting a support agent. It makes sense—self-service puts the customer in the driver’s seat, empowering them to be autonomous and find the right answers with speed. But self-service is also better for businesses. It enables them to do more with less and frees their support teams’ time up for higher-stakes issues that require a human touch.
This year, I got a unique opportunity to call in at Mattercon 2020 and give a talk about my experience working on Mattermost and open source software (OSS) in general. I talked about how OSS helped me grow as a self-taught developer and how working on issues from Mattermost’s repos helped me gain experience and confidence in software development. In this article, I will highlight some of the things I talked about and also throw in a few pointers related to working on OSS.
One of the most common frustrations we hear from team leaders who don’t have robust project management practices in place is a feeling of constant firefighting, leaving them unable to complete projects on time or within budget. In fact, in a recent PWC poll, only 2.5% of companies successfully completed all of their projects. Firefighting is a natural human response to a chaotic workload as a means of “getting more done”.
