TaskManagementGuide.Com Articles

Interactive Task Priority Template

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

We all have to cope with dozens of our daily tasks (whether at work or at home), and it is easy to lose effectiveness while approaching all this abundance of commitments. We may do something all day long, but in the evening, when being completely tired, we just realize that we have missed to complete something really important – this happens because we lose control over the priorities.

In business such mismanagement may appear quite “expensive”, that’s why it would be helpful to use database – an instrument to keep accurate control over the workflow priorities and objectives. Good example of task priority organizer for personal use is VIP Organizer that features a template (its interface) for inputting your tasks and operating with priorities. With a help of this tool you can:

Enter all essential task information and then record it into your list.
Select appropriate priority (with a help of selecting a fine task priority icon).
Sort, group or filter your task list by priority to display the most urgent or pressing tasks.
Once something is done change its task priority status to exclude it from the list.

VIP Task Manager is business-oriented software with certain project management capabilities, including three possible modes to review tasks – Task Tree, Task List and Calendar.

To manage priorities on the project – do the following:

use appropriate mode to set a suitable layout of project task groups (ex: by project stages);
prioritize team tasks;
add instructions on how to perform them;
plan tasks in terms of priorities, costs, target dates, etc;
assign tasks to performers and supervise execution in real-time regime

What is Task Breakdown? (Its definition, formats, and purposes)

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Project Task Breakdown (also called WBS, or work decomposition) is a practice of creating a hierarchical structure (representation) of interconnected project deliverables or tasks that need to be performed to accomplish a project. It shows the scope of work decomposed from general to specific matters. Correctly composed breakdown gives a clear-cut work scope overlook and better understanding of activities to be done.

There are two formats: Activity-oriented and Deliverable-oriented, where the first one means a work breakdown in terms of verbs (assignable actions or tasks) and the second one is a nouns-based way (products and sub-products of the project). The practice of task breakdown appears vitally important, because the following purposes are covered in projects:

WBS assists on developing a rational view of resources and labor required to accomplish the job (the amount, scope and character of work demanded);
It helps to understand the skills, qualifications and experience required;
It provides a framework for assigning clear-cut work definitions (work packages) to the project participants;
It assists on determining the inter-dependencies between project tasks or deliverables;
It gives the basis for scheduling the actual project milestones (enables composing a schedule);
It locates isolated functional areas for determination and managing connected project risks;

VIP Task Manager is designed to help you in managing projects and tasks within your team. This application can be used to decompose projects into smaller tasks and deliverables.

To breakdown the project into smaller tasks – do the following:

start your project planning software;
use Task Tree mode to set a suitable layout of project task groups (ex: by project stages);
prioritize team tasks and add instructions on how to perform them;
plan tasks in terms of priorities, costs, target dates, etc;
assign tasks to performers and supervise execution in real-time regime;

What is Task Priority?

Thu, 18 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Task Priority definition: It is one of the key features in task and time management, as it stands for rating your tasks by their values for you in order to build your action plans in regard to urgency and importance of your tasks. Priority management is a practice that every work planner should master and use to avoid wasting valuable resources (time, energy, labor, money, etc) at senseless activities, while the vital or just really important goals stay almost unserved.

In order to prevent situations when some minor tasks (even if they seem to be quite important at the moment) occupy too much attention and resources of their doers, time managers are offered to create and conduct their registers – prioritized to-do lists, organized in a manner when the most important tasks are put at the top of the list to be served in the first place.

There are different prioritization methods, while appropriate tools can be applied to simplify using of these methods in practice. Such a tool is task priority software, like VIP Task Manager that allows you to plan, assign, schedule and prioritize tasks in teams working at projects.

To prioritize tasks on the project – do the following:

start your project planning software;
set a suitable layout of task groups (Task Tree mode);
set target dates of all tasks;
assign tasks to performers;
plan these tasks in terms of their costs, priorities, objectives, etc;
Set Priorities suiting value of the tasks;
control project execution in real-time regime;

What is Project Test Plan

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Project Test Plan is a document which describes procedures to be used for assessing the project’s results (deliverables and products) in terms of their suitability, usability and quality. This document expounds the entire test process to be carried out along with implementation of the project’s results. As well as any other activity, a testing process needs a good plan to avoid chaos and inefficiency, so a Project Test Plan is composed to guide and direct performers from initial stage of test planning to documentation, up to the final steps of project implementation.

Project Test Plan usually addresses the following matters:

Identifies available project results and their components to be tested;
Gives requirements for testing;
Specifies testing strategy and methods;
Lists recommendations and guidelines for test organization;
Identifies and specifies required resources (manpower, equipment, etc);
Provides a test effort estimate (schedule and budget);
Lists documents and other deliverables to be produced during the test;

What is Employee Recognition

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Employee Recognition is a one-time action or consistent systematic practice (a program) by which an employer appreciates and acknowledges the efforts or achievements of an employee. Employee Recognition is a practice including tangible and intangible rewards, which plays the major role in staff motivation and one of the key roles in HR matters such as:

Employee Retention (an employee’s level of loyalty to the company);
Employee Satisfaction (how well an employee is pleased with terms of employment, etc);
Employee Productivity (an employee’s ability to produce a good level of results);
Employee Performance (an employee’s adherence to proficiency and the best standards);

Tangible methods of Employee Recognition include:

Regular Wages;
Results-related Fees;
Bonuses;
Valuable Gifts;
Souvenirs;
Benefits (Social and Corporate);

Intangible methods of Employee Recognition include:

Professional Reputation;
Thanks and Praise;
Sense of Content;
Sense of Achievement;
Sense of Advancement;

What is Task Inventory

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Task Inventory is a list of tasks involved into the typical performance of a specific job. Such an inventory can be compiled for every job in your organization. It is usually done for the purposes of HR (human resource) management and business process improvement: Task Inventory is a method of job analysis that learns a workplace in terms of practical tasks and typical activities which are to be performed regularly. There are some basic facts about Task Inventory to explain this conception:

Task Inventory considers essential tasks forming up the regular duties peculiar to a specific job. These considered tasks are well-defined routine actions taking place recurrently;
All the tasks which are performed by a jobholder can be listed in a special table that contains the description of each activity, its current level of performance posted along with a desired level;
Information for a task inventory is collected using documented studies, interviews, observation, and questionnaires. The sources of information are employees and managers;
Task Inventory is not a job description, it is a way to get a deep overview of the real sense of a job to know what practical activities forms it up;
Tasks used in this method are characterized in the following way:
- Task are actions with identifiable start and end points;
- Tasks results are measurable accomplishments or products;
- Tasks utilize Skills, Knowledge, and Attitudes (SKA) to be performed;
- Tasks are observable (obvious) and performed in relatively short periods of time;

Product Development Guide

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Product Development Definition: a very important process directed at designing new and improving existing business products and services. Every company may have its own system of generating and screening exploitable ideas, as well as their own description of this practice, so their corporate strategy and objectives can seamlessly regulate goals which are mainly focused on the following functions:

Keeping the company competitive by offering new high-quality and good-featured products;
Designing new innovative solutions and studying ways for implementing better technologies;
Approbation, modeling and prototyping new products to ensure their workability;
Creating new quality-driven production processes to reduce defects and decrease costs;

Product development: how to organize this process in your company?

As you can see product development helps the whole company to keep up itself afloat. You can use task management software to cope with tasks and ideas, to carry out all related functions and establish proper workflow disciplines across the team. VIP Task Manager is such a product, as it can be used for planning and scheduling tasks in a collaborating team.

To develop products in business – do the following:

start your work planning software;
use Task Tree mode to set up a suitable layout of task groups;
prioritize team tasks and add instructions on how to perform them;
plan tasks in terms of priorities, costs, target dates, etc;
assign tasks to performers and supervise execution in real-time regime;

What is Task Duration?

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Task Duration definition: it is a task characteristic showing amount of time it takes to complete this job. Determining task durations is one of the key practices in the project management, as it enables calculating the overall project task duration (how much of time the project takes). When a project manager composes a project plan he foresees (estimates) scheduled durations that get mapped out on project’s timeline. Of course, during the actual project performance these durations of tasks may vary (usually within certain allowance interval), as there is a number of risks & factors influencing probability of tasks delaying (as well as early completion).

A project manager may create a schedule including the following types of durations:

Effort-driven Task Duration – duration of a task shortens or lengthens as resources (manpower, labor, equipment capacity, etc) are added or removed from a task, while the amount of effort (work) necessary to complete a task remains unchanged;
Fixed duration task – as its name states task’s duration remains the same disregarding resources added or removed, but when assigning additional resources the amount of work decreases for each individual;

VIP Task Manager is a product to be used for planning, scheduling and controlling durations of tasks in a collaborating team.

To plan durations of tasks – do the following:

start your work planning software;
use Task Tree mode to set up a suitable layout of task groups;
prioritize team tasks and add instructions on how to perform them;
plan tasks in terms of durations (Start and Finish date), priorities, costs, target dates, etc;
assign tasks to performers and supervise execution in real-time regime;

What is Schedule Deviation

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Schedule Deviation means a lack of convergence between the baseline plan of a project and the actual achievements obtained on certain date. It can be derived by comparing the budgeted value of work scheduled in a specified time (its planned value) against the budgeted value of work actually accomplished on that date. Also it can be derived through defining a percentage of work completed (in terms of results and deliverables) on a specific date against the percentage which was expected to be completed on the same date. Schedule Deviations must be accurately and promptly reviewed and investigated to discover a cause.

Schedule Deviation should be analyzed and handled in terms of:

Delays: what work exactly has been delayed? The project managers need to discover what areas and tasks have suffered from delays badly (to figure out what has been failed and why);
Impacts: how severe the deviation is and how straightly it will grow up into further project delay (impossibility to meet the due date);
Productivity problems: why some tasks have been failed, even though a company has invested into planning them? The project managers need to know what weak links they have in the plan, which conditions add to risks, and what project resources appear ineffective and why;
Resolution: the project managers need to come up with a solution early as possible to minimize overall impact of delays to the project schedule;

What is Schedule Slack

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Schedule Slack (or float) is a measure of flexibility in the project schedule: there is total float that means the amount of time which a task can be protracted without delaying the overall project’s completion date, and free float – a period of time that a task can be procrastinated without affecting any other tasks in the project’s schedule. In other words schedule slack is used by project managers to know how many of appropriate time units (days, hours, etc) an activity can be delayed before the project completion date will be delayed as well. Tasks on the project’s schedule, which do not have any slack time are considered as critical ones (cannot be delayed).

To calculate schedule slack you need to:

Calculate the earliest start (ES), the earliest finish (EF), the latest finish (LF) and the latest start (LS) for every activity;
Slack time is the amount of time between its earliest and latest start time (ES-LS), or between its earliest and latest finish time (EF-LF). Slack time is the time that an activity can be delayed past its earliest start (ES) or earliest finish (EF) without making the whole project late;

What is Employee Tardiness

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Employee Tardiness is an employee misconduct meaning that a person sticks to a wrong behavior that makes him or her repeatedly late for work. It makes sense to speak about employee tardiness when an employee is late to his or her workplace for 5-15 minutes (or even more) daily, or when the number of late arrivals prevails over the number of on-time arrivals. An employee who is habitually late can cause a demoralizing effect on other employees who arrive for work on time.

Many of HR researchers and professionals insist on the fact that Employee Tardiness is not a sign of employee irresponsibility, as far as a big number of workers suffering from the tardiness are characterized by their managers as hardworking, competent and effective professionals (except for their tardiness habit). The way to beat this misconduct includes:

Having a discussion with the employee to know his or her explanation of the tardiness;
Considering possible ways for the employee to arrive for work on time;
Stating the manager’s firm expectations to see the employee arriving to workplace on-time;
Giving a trial period (for example a month) to the employee to enable him or her trying different ways to arrive for work on-time systematically;

What is Process Element

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Process Elements comprise all the items and matters which it somehow makes sense to depict at a business process diagram (that is a visually descriptive roadmap of a process). Reasoning from this definition the Process Elements are the following:

Plan that directs the whole structure of how things are built up on the process;
Tasks (operations, activities, steps) which are to be effectuated on the process flow;
Transitions between tasks to identify where we should transit to after each step;
Ramifications on transitions to support different scenarios for the process;
Conditions (inputs) on every process step and following transitions reasoned by these inputs;
Results (outputs) to be produced on every step to keep up progressing with the process;
Variability of inputs an outputs to support different process ramifications and scenarios;
Process participants: workers (employees who effectuate the process tasks) and suppliers (those who input anything necessary for the process, such as material, information, etc);
Resources (equipment, tools and utilities consumed on every process step);
External and internal agents affecting the process (risks, decisions, suppliers, etc);

What is Process Report

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Process Report is a common name for a series of documents which are utilized by organizational management for controlling corporate business processes in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, risks, design gaps and needs for improvement. Process Reports can be composed on-demand or regularly, as it is required by a specific company’s strategy on process management. There are different kinds of process reports, for example:

Business process summary report: it includes the process diagram, process specification, and the specifications of each element involved into the process. This report is used by management to grasp a high-level picture of the process and revise its elements or design as appropriate.

Business process performance report: it is used to represent values of quantitative indicators by all parameters included into the process, such as timing on its steps, costs, level of service, etc. This report can be created after every turn of process performance (each time a process works).

Business process statistics report: this report is used to display how strong the fluctuations on the performance parameters are during the reviewed period of time, so management can make a conclusion if the process is effective enough or it needs a revision. It is based upon the process performance reports collected during certain period of time.

Business process analytics report: it is composed after a process is subjected to an audit. In this report the analysts suggest their vision of process problems, gaps and required improvements.

What is Schedule Slippage

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Schedule slippage means a delay in project performance which leads to non-meeting of the initially estimated due date of the project completion. If the schedule slippage is detected then it means that a project begins floating towards its upper limit of the schedule (the last time limit; deadline which bounds the area of the project’s profitability). To mitigate a schedule slippage it is recommended to accomplish the following:

Identify rout causes of the schedule slippage: it could happen because of poor or ambitious time estimation done on the planning phase, ambiguous project requirements, interpersonal conflicts in the team, and many other factors.
Forecast a likely delivery date: for example by utilizing CPM (Critical Path Method) that will help you in identifying slack (possible leeway) of the tasks.
Address the identified causes and rectify these problems effectively.
Identify some methods to neutralize/mitigate the schedule slippage: for example by adding more resources to make some critical tasks completed faster, or by making some trade-offs;
Negotiation with the project customers to communicate and discuss the current situation;

What is Project RBS

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Project RBS is abbreviation that can be deciphered in two different ways:

Risk Breakdown Structure;
Resource Breakdown Structure;

These two structures are highly important for the project management in two different respects:

Risk Breakdown Structure: this one is a map of project areas decomposed into smaller elements to identify risks associated with each of these areas. This document works as an important input for the Project Risks Assessment Team to guide them through addressing each of the risks listed on the project’s RBS in terms of its probability and impact. This type of RBS greatly helps the project managers to foresee concentrations of risks, their root causes and impact areas.
Resource Breakdown Structure: it is a hierarchical list of the resources engaged into the work at a project: mainly they include manpower, materials and equipment. RBS is a tool for organizing and structuring the resources required to accomplish the project deliverables and to reach the project objectives: by resource categories, functions (departments), and other sub-levels. This kind of RBS is widely used for directing and supporting procurement and HR management strategies of organizations.

What is Project Tendering Process

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Project Tendering Process (also known as Inviation to Tender process) is established to enable an organization to find out the preferred suppliers: it is aimed to assist a company on selecting the right supplier (the most suiting one among competitors) at the right time. Tender is a public release of an organization’s demand and requirements for supplies and services for their project(s). The sense of this process is to regulate procedures of requesting, receiving, analyzing, evaluating and prioritizing (screening out the less competitive) of the suppliers’ proposals.

Project Tendering Process is a formal way for an organization to reach representatives of the external market with their demands for supply and services required by their project(s). During the tendering process there are several major documents to be composed:

Statement of Work (defines the work or service you request from an external supplier);
Request for Information (defines the information that suppliers should provide to you);
Rrequest for Proposal (verifies that you have all the information to support you in making your preferred supplier decision and specifies the key terms you are going to include into a supplier agreement);

What is Process Reuse

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Process Reuse is a driving principle for designing business processes to be unitary for a number of related purposes. It is aimed to adapt more as possible components to be reused for different goals within one business function, so it will help companies to economize on planning, documenting and controlling business processes as the differences between them will be just minimal as necessary. In other words Process Reuse stands for minimizing number of independent, but still related, processes by merging them with each other to be held as a smaller number of unitary processes sharing the common schemas, controls, measures and documents.

Process Reuse example can be given with a Sales Process: the ways to sell to private customers and to corporate clients can be very different in their details. Each way has its own essential traits, but on the general level they are the same Sales Process with the same major steps, hence there is no sense to treat them as two different processes, but it really makes sense to merge these two ways into a sole process which supports a variability of actions and tools, while major common elements can be seamlessly shared and utilized as organic parts of the unitary body of the Sales Process being driven by a single set of controls, measures and regulations.

What is Employee Talent

Sat, 13 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Employee Talent is a concept which is usually considered in two dimensions: it could be perceived as an employee’s outstanding quality or a set of qualities making him or her uniquely valuable to a company, while another approach tells about identifying and developing talents of employees in a manner suiting a company’s interests (making investments into talents). A lot of companies employ special policies which are together called Employee Talent Management. This function is aimed to promote attractiveness of a company for highly skilled workers, along with supporting retention of current qualified workers, and developing talents of newly employed or available workers.

The Employee Talents are important to business because:

They are employee’s personal or professional traits which help him or her to be successful in his or her major or marginal job functions, surpassing the average level of success;
They are signs of employee’s promotional potential which can be developed and utilized both for a talented employee’s own welfare and for success of a company employing him or her;
They are elements of a company’s competitiveness – the more talented people a company has in the staff, the better advantages it owns on the market;

What is Employee Roster

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Employee Roster is a tabular document (a printed or electronic one) where employers can allocate their staff members to associate them with different shifts, roles and statuses. The purpose of the employee rosters is to provide the reader with the information on the following (optional):

The staff members available in the company, in its particular departments, affiliates, etc;
Their working shifts, or time they are available for business (when they are on duty);
Their roles, positions and competencies (professional degree, skills, etc);

Employee rosters (which can be also called rotas) can be composed using different patterns suiting needs of a company: patterns might be very different in their general design, layout and number of columns. Columns used in employee rosters need to represent different pieces of information which make sense or value for the reader. They can include:

Names and surnames of employees;
Their roles and positions;
Working hours daily or within certain timeframe;
Their competencies and experience;
Their photos and business details (phones, emails, etc);

What is Task Partitioning

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Task Partitioning usually refers to the process of division of one task into sequential actions which are to be assigned to particular individuals or units. This conception means that one task can be sub-divided, allotted among multiple performers or groups, and coordinated within a single workflow. With a help of task partitioning people can accomplish more within less amount of time and energy. Working units can process their portions one after another or in parallel – it is defined by character and requirements of each specific task being partitioned. The essential requirements along with the best manner to partition a task are derived with a help of task analysis practice.

Task Partitioning is a process of translating a task’s workflow into terms of division of labour – the ancient mechanism that has been developing over centuries and underlies the modern civilization of mankind. The phenomenon of task partitioning is also known as a part of animate nature – social insects (such as bees, wasps or ants) employ this practice for their survival, including collection of resources (food, water, building material) and construction of their nests.

What is Task Rotation

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Task Rotation is a method used to create work schedules which are friendly to health of employees and efficient in terms of production yet. This method is particularly suitable for environments with manual production. The root principle of Task Rotation states that for a better and faster recovery (hence a higher productivity level) the employees need to be involved into certain combinations of different tasks which are to be executed by turns, so employees avoid long periods of occupancy by some monotonous work and following exhaustion. The major principles of the Task Rotation are:

Every task has specific time limits for its safe performance, as over the working time, employee tiredness and tension increases, while attentiveness and concentration decreases. When these safe limits are violated, the productivity and effectiveness start reducing, while the risks of some errors, spoilage or injury begin to grow;
Overfatigue and other problems can be prevented if an employee will combine different kinds of tasks and will do them by turns (to stay at each task only within its safe limits), so his or her physical and mental workload over jobs can be equally divided and balanced. Rotating tasks is a way to rest from one task (for example which stresses your attention), while doing another task (which do not need so much of attention and accuracy);
It is necessary to analyze the tasks which are to be done by the employees: to define balance between the mental and manual components of each job and to classify them, so the optimal combinations of tasks can be determined for each position;

What is Employee Equity

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Employee Equity is a state policy which protects the employment and labour rights of people who often face discrimination, in the most common sense they are: women, people with disabilities and minorities (for example, in Canada the employee equity law requires from employers the proactive employment of the representatives of Aboriginal peoples). The conception of Employee Equity laws means more than treating all employees in the same way, but rather recognition and respect of their diversity.

The features of Employee Equity regulations enacted in the most of developed countries include:

The laws restrict creating special barriers for candidates who would like to get a job: nobody can be neglected because of gender, nationality, religion, physical disabilities that are not concerned with the job, etc;
Employees cannot be offered different terms of employment because of their gender, nationality, religion, etc. – everyone who works has the right for adequate, fair and transparent compensation for his or her labour;
Employer is restricted to create some situations or support some practices which can make some people in the staff feel uncomfortable: for example the business meetings cannot be held in strip clubs, etc;
Employers have to organize and maintain the building, premises and individual workplaces to be comfortable for people with certain disabilities, for example a building needs to be convenient for people using wheelchairs;

What is Employee Effort

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Employee Effort is an earnest, diligent and strenuous working attempt: a workplace episode when some results are achieved by an employee through exertion or hard work. Assessment of employee effort is a result of observations and subjective judgment made by his or her supervisors. It is commonly believed that a good level of employee effort is an indicator of valuable employee traits, such as assiduity, enthusiasm, ambition, professionalism, discipline. These traits may identify that an individual is not only one who possesses certain potential, but one who has capabilities to realize and develop it at a full scale.

When a person applies poor efforts to complete a job, he or she may reach just mediocre results, even though his or her perfect knowledge and skills. That’s why big numbers of employees are dismissed from their positions because of their unwillingness to apply sufficient level of efforts, but not because of their lack of ability. A strategic objective of any serious employer is to encourage, recognize and appreciate employee efforts with a help of verbal or written praise, thanks and some adequate tangible rewards such as promotions, bonuses and valuable souvenirs.

Project Management Training Guide

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Project management training is a course of exercises which are called to develop special skills of Project Managers. People who are appointed to manage projects must possess a number of essential skills making them highly effective. If a project manager wants to be called a real professional, he or she needs to approve this valuable status by passing examinations and getting appropriate PM certificate. The knowledge to be trained includes:

Creating Project Plans;
Estimating Time and Budget;
Composing Project Schedules;
Assembling Project Teams;
Negotiation with customers and communications with the team;
Resources scheduling and allocation;

Training goals are not bounded only by getting this certification, but they stand for continuous professional development of project managers, because even if they have their qualifications approved, they still have a plenty of skills to be raised.

Training benefits are the following:

Project managers get more confidence and respect from customers and project management community as persons committed to their profession;
Project managers stay on the top of recent situation and trends in the industry;
Project managers have more chances to be employed by large corporations;

VIP Task Manager is designed to help professionals in managing projects and tasks within their teams. This application can be used by trained project managers for work planning and controlling.

To work at your project – do the following:

start your project planning software;
use Task Tree mode to set a suitable layout of project task groups (ex: by project stages);
prioritize team tasks and add instructions on how to perform them;
plan tasks in terms of priorities, costs, target dates, etc;
assign tasks to performers and supervise execution in real-time regime;

What is Project Termination?

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Project Termination (aka "project close-out" and "project finalization") is a situation when a given project is supposed to be closed or finalized because there’s no more need or sense for further continuation. Project termination is managed under a respective procedure that requires the management team to examine current state of the project work, review progress of goals and objectives, evaluate the project against success criteria, and check status of deliverables.

The procedure of terminating a project is usually carried out in 8 steps, including:

Close outstanding agreements with suppliers
Transfer any responsibilities (if necessary)
Dismiss or re-assign the team
Release all remaining resources
Close the project book (resolve all accounting and finance issues)
Document lessons learned
Accept (reject) the product
Install and use the product.

Failure and Success are two basic reasons for terminating projects. In order to determine which of the reason is relevant to a project, first the team needs to understand criteria for success and failure and then evaluate the project against those criteria. Here’re some tips on this point:

Success: a project reaches success when its goals and objectives are accomplished on time and under budget, deliverables are produced as expected by stakeholders, and the final product is accepted by and handed over to the customer (end-user).
Failure: a project is regarded as failed when its requirements are not met; the customer refuses accepting the product; there’re some technical issues that can’t be resolved by using existing tools and technologies; there’s an unanticipated loss or lack of human, funding and other valuable resources; the project effort becomes counter-productive because initial goals and objectives are unmet.

What is Employee Time Sheet?

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Employee Time Sheet is a formal document designed in the form of a spreadsheet that indicates an amount of working hours an employee has spent on doing designated tasks and jobs, generally separated by days of the workweek. The spreadsheet is used by HR or accounting department of an organization to calculate pay-checks and develop the payroll.

A typical employee time sheet highlights the following key data:

Tasks and jobs completed each workweek
Date and time consumed for completing the tasks
Number of working hours spent each workweek
Names of workers assigned to the tasks

Employee time sheets are helpful for recording and monitoring the total amount of time employees have consumed to do their tasks during a certain period of time (workweek is the most frequently used period). Employers use the document for calculating salaries and imposing penalties for various forbidden or unauthorized actions (e.g. delay, procrastination, absence without leave, etc.). Besides, employee time sheets are used to:

Record all activities performed by workers
Request approval for time spent
Make employee re-assignments and delegate tasks
Detect and resolve any time management issues
Determine whether a worker is currently on track.

What is Process Transparency?

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Process Transparency means a process’s capability of being monitored, controlled and managed by decision makers (those who control and manage the process) in the way that ensures higher process performance and increases the likelihood of successful completion. When the process is transparent, stakeholders (those who are impacted by or have an interest in the process) are better explained about the process functioning.

Transparency of a process entails more than just simplicity in monitoring, controlling and managing the process. It allows decision makers to address three important issues, such as:

Factual Issues
Normative Issues.
Stakeholders’ Concern.

When a process is transparent, decision makers are enabled to compare actual (factual) process performance against expected (normative) performance to determine any discrepancies and then develop a corrective action plan. Meanwhile, process requirements and expectations of stakeholders will be the primary condition for such a plan. It means in case of any performance gap detected, decision makers need to create a solution that meets stakeholders’ requirements. Such a solution should also ensure that current level of process transparency remains the same.

What is Employee Utilization?

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Employee Utilization is a method of utilizing available workforce of a company for the purpose of maximizing the employee efficiency. It is the company’s vision regarding the best possible use of available human resources for accomplishing strategic goals and addressing tactical decisions.

The idea behind employee utilization is to prevent wasteful and inappropriate use of available HR through reaching optimization in the working environment. Successful realization of this idea entails a continuous increase in a company’s revenues in the long run.

Employee utilization is an attempt to make current use of workforce more efficient through the following activities:

Training and education (improving skills and knowledge of workers)
Time management (better planning and allocation of time among employee tasks)
Delegation (more optimized assignment of tasks)
Increased pay rates (workers earn more for the same period of time)
Recognition and rewarding (employees recognize their importance to the company and are rewarded for work success)
Motivation and leadership (employees are well motivated and led).

What is Process Tolerance?

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Process Tolerance is a blueprint specification of a process to describe an unwanted but acceptable deviation from a given dimension of the process. It determines maximum and minimum average magnitudes of possible deviations as well as a maximum standard deviation. The term "process tolerance" is often used in manufacturing when there’s some process or a set of interrelated procedures designated for producing large quantities of products or product components.

The measure of tolerance indicates a process’s capability to be stable and controllable. It’s supposed that when a process is tolerant, there is a higher probability that this process is performed as desired, within acceptable deviations.

There are two common approaches for estimating process tolerance. They’re briefly described below:

Statistical tolerance. This approach assumes that there’s a scenario for a process to specify requirements for variations while supposing that there’s some centered process serving as the baseline for measuring tolerance of the first process.
Worst-case tolerance. This approach entails using minimum and maximum average values of variations for a process to determine the worst-case scenario and define the tolerance measure. It actually means that such a scenario brings zero standard deviations, allowing the process to be performed at the extreme level.

What is Task Presentation?

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Task Presentation is an instructional event intended to communicate some information about planned tasks and to summarize the amount of work to be done. It is also a process of engaging the audience in understanding goals and objectives of the tasks. The purpose of a typical presentation of tasks is to present a challenging problem and provide listeners with a clear and proper understanding of the problem, so that the listeners get involved in the problem solving process.

Just like any other type of presentation, task presentation uses physical messages (posture, eye contact), story messages (words, sentences) and visual massages (pictures, slides) as ways to communicate necessary information to the audience. The speaker (a person leading the presentation) needs to use all possible ways of communication to deliver a better understanding of the challenging problem to the audience. Here’re the key points the speaker should focus on during task presentation:

Tasks to be accomplished
Goals of the tasks
Resources (incl. people and funds) involved
How the team is supposed to accomplish the tasks
Supervisory mechanisms to be used to manage the team.

What is Schedule-Driven Project?

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Schedule-Driven Project is a project that is performed and managed under the overriding constraint of time. The management process of such a project is mainly based on the final delivery date. It actually means that time becomes the key condition for making project management decisions. Time scheduling will be the prioritized activity among other activities (such as staffing, budgeting, quality control etc.) of the project management process.

A project becomes schedule-driven when either the sponsor (a person/organization investing funds in the project) or the customer (a person/organization supposed to use/consume the project’s product) determines time as the core constraint of the implementation process. The team is allowed to use as many resources as possible to implement the project and create the product within the desired delivery date.

Schedule-driven projects differ from resource-driver projects. A resource-driver project tends to consume resources in optimal way because availability, quality and quantity of project resources (personnel, funds, technology etc.) are regarded as the overriding constraint. Therefore, the time duration of such a project can be expanded as much as needed until the project remains within the dominant constraint of resources.

What is Schedule Sharing?

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Schedule Sharing is a procedure of making the whole schedule or certain portion(s) available for accessing and viewing by employees assigned to and supervising the schedule. It means employees are supposed to use the schedule jointly with each other for the purpose of monitoring personal and group assignments and contributing to the overall schedule implementation.

Sharing a schedule means distributing the schedule content among assigned employees and supervisors in order to apply collaborative efforts to schedule implementation. There are several reasons for scheduling schedules. These reasons are:

An individual schedule can’t be done by the assigned worker. It means there’s a lack of time, skills, knowledge or other resources required for the worker to do the schedule. Hence, the schedule is shared in order to allocate more human and time resources.
A schedule is supposed to be done by a group of workers. For example, a project schedule involves the team in performing scheduled events and activities in a collaborative manner.
There’s a need to supervise a schedule. It means senior management wants to monitor and control performance of the schedule. Then the sharing procedure serves as a way to let supervisors access and view the schedule content.
Lessons learned. When some schedule is successfully completed, it can be distributed among employees to show them how it is supposed to do other schedules.

Project Management Difficulties

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0100

There are a plenty of possible difficulties, obstacles and challenges that may rise against the project management. The major objective for project management, when facing any significant troubles, is to secure the main project’s constraints – approved schedule, quality requirements and budget. Let’s consider some possible hardships that a project management may suffer from:

Difficult People – usually some difficult personalities may appear in the staff. They may oppose commonly accepted discipline, practices, and decision-making, they may try to contest competence of the project’s stakeholders, and create interpersonal problems. It is necessary to organize proper staff selection to screen out problematic candidates (who do not pass certain success criteria) at the entry.
Difficult Situations – the project management needs to maneuver in a case of any unforeseen conditions to save the project mission and its resources, avoid project scope creep, budget or schedule overruns. To get ready against such problems, it is helpful to handle a good risks assessment practice that will give you proper backgrounds to prepare some reserves (pre-schedule time lags, assign reserve funds, etc).
Difficult Customers – sometimes project management suffers from “difficult customers” – project owners who mismanage their part of work – they provide faulty, loose or obscure inputs (requirements, vision, information, etc), or tend to changing them while project is on the run. This may result into hard disputes about project’s outcomes and customer satisfaction. To protect yourself against this kind of trouble, you should accurately negotiate and contract all possible project requirements beforehand.

The software product which can be helpful when overcoming difficult times is VIP Task Manager, because it is used to plan your project tasks and objectives, helping you to secure the project scope and constraints. Using its assistance you can collaborate with your team throughout project to mitigate risks and avoid other issues.

To operate the project and its tasks – do the following:

start your project planning software;
use Task Tree mode to set a suitable layout of project task groups;
prioritize team tasks and add instructions on how to perform them;
plan tasks in terms of priorities, costs, target dates, etc;
assign tasks to performers and supervise execution in real-time regime;

What is Project Rationale?

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Project Rationale is a detailed description of fundamental reasons or principles behind the need for starting a project. It explicitly explains why launch the project, what prerequisites for the project are, and what outcome is supposed to be obtained when the project reaches successful completion. Often project rationally is regarded as a formal document describing major incentives, causes and motives for project initiation.

As a document, project rationale has a certain structure that determines how the document content will be designed and organized. Here’re key elements of a typical project rationale document:

Background. The first element of the document content briefly explores existing challenges to be handled by the future project.
Purpose. The second element makes a description of why there’s a need to address those challenges and what core objectives are needed for completion.
Focus. The third element clarifies key actions the project will focus on to accomplish the purpose and objectives.
Expectations. The final, forth element explains what results are rationally expected to be produced through focusing on taking the actions and leading the project to success.

What is Employee Turnover?

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Employee Turnover (aka "staff turnover", "personnel turnover", "labor turnover") is a ratio comparison between the number of workers an organization must replace in a certain period of time and the average number of total workers available on the last day of the previous reporting period. Employee turnover occurs when workers decide on leaving their places of employment voluntarily. Such workers should be replaced; otherwise, the organization gets lack of workforce. Note that employee turnover does not reflect any redundancies; only natural turnover (such as termination, resignations, retirement etc.) is included.

There can be some essential reasons for a worker to decide on job leaving. These reasons are:

The worker has no required skills and knowledge to adequately do the job
Insufficient salary rate
Inappropriate organizational/corporate culture
Workload or hard working conditions causing employee burnout
Personality and relationships with colleagues and senior management

If one or several of the reasons occurs, there’s a high probability that the worker will decide on leaving current job place and start looking for the environment that will satisfy the worker’s needs.

All the reasons for employee turnover are explained by Maslow's hierarchy of needs. This hierarchy reflects the structure of human needs. In case at least one of the needs is not fulfilled, an employee is likely to search for a better place of employment.

What is Task Uncertainty

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Task Uncertainty is what we face when dealing with some new kind of work never done before, or when we have to cope with some task that has a plenty of X-factors in its structure. A case of Task Uncertainty occurs when we cannot determine all aspects of the work lying ahead due to objective deficit of exact information. A concept of Task Uncertainty is used to define a challenging state of work that people face in some extreme conditions (example: medical or military personnel) where:

We cannot get all necessary information, but we still need to act shortly;
We need to make immediate decisions without having proper grounds;
We cannot be fully sure about consequences of our actions;
We need to get maximum of use from a limited amount of information we have;

In business terms, Task Uncertainty is used to characterize some portion of guesswork embedded in a project, some blank spots in its plan, something kept for later elaboration, or something based not upon determination and calculations, but rather on someone’s expertise, opinion, vision, informal assurance, etc.

Making decisions in conditions of Task Uncertainty is usually based upon proficiency and expertise of those who are involved into such a task, but people who usually stand against situations of uncertain conditions can be supported with instructions and guideline which will help them to find a right way out, or at least not to make some false decisions.

What is Employee Expenses

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Employee Expenses are necessary to maintain the employment of a worker: supporting his or her social welfare, development, related taxes, etc. It is stated in constitutions and laws of many modern countries that a laboring person deserves adequate compensation for his/her efforts from a company or other person employing this worker. People are the most important business resource, as all other resources cannot work efficiently without appropriate input from the employees; therefore people are the primal object for investments of a company which wishes to survive and prosper in a long-term prospect.

The Employee Expenses are a complex matter and may incur the following items:

Selection and recruitment (employing the right person to the right position);
Training and development (improving skills and knowledge of employees);
Paying regular compensations (salaries, bonuses and pension plan payments);
Social package (insurance, healthcare compensations, lodging, etc);
Workplace expenses (maintaining on-the-job tools, uniform, equipment, software, etc);
Social taxes (different kinds of employment taxes collected by government);
Transportation (company vehicles, fuel for personal cars, etc);

What is Employee Role?

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Employee role is a prescribed or expected behavior of a worker who performs certain functions associated with a particular position or status within a group or organization. A role of an employee means a set of duties and responsibilities the employee is expected to carry out in a particular operation, process or workflow. Generally speaking, employee roles define a variety of assignments and objectives to be accomplished by workforce.

When an employee is assigned to a certain role within a team or organization, this person takes responsibility to do some job while focusing on solving current problems and communicating with colleagues and senior management. If the employee cannot perform the role there’s some portion of risk that the rest jobs associated with the role will be failed. That’s why, proper selection and assignment of employee roles is of high significance to success.

There are two possible types of employee roles, including:

Technical role. The first type requires a worker to be is accountable for doing assigned tasks and duties as prescribed. It actually means this worker needs to be appropriately skilled, have necessary knowledge, and be responsible for work results.
Social role. The second type refers to the necessity of an employee to socialize with colleagues and supervisors when doing assigned duties and responsibilities. It requires using communication as an effective mechanism to exchange information and share knowledge with other employees.

What is Task Revision?

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Task revision refers to a consistent process of revising or correcting a defective task-based activity or procedure that has a negative effect to the overall working environment or its separate parts within an organization. It is a way of re-thinking and re-examining the working environment to determine dysfunctional or faulty activities and then develop a corrective plan for revising.

Task revision is a great mechanism to handle work performance. When a manager successfully revises task-based activities and removes faulty procedures, he/she improves individual performance of employees and reduces the probability of occurring activity dysfunction.

The process of revising tasks or task-based activities can be carried out in three main steps, such as:

Examine. A thorough analysis of activities is conducted to determine dysfunctional or defective activities.
Isolate. The defective activities are isolated from the rest activities of the working environment in order to ensure continuity of the working procedure.
Revise. A corrective plan of actions is designed and used to revise the faulty activities and remove dysfunctions.

What is Schedule Plan?

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Schedule Plan is a detailed description of how some scheduled activities are supposed to be carried out and what duties and responsibilities are assigned to employees for performing the activities. It serves as documented guidelines for employees to learn what’s expected of them to carry out the activities on schedule.

Schedule plans are used in various fields to determine key actions for human resources to produce an expected outcome within a scheduled period of time. For example, in finance and accounting schedule plans are used to describe how an accountant can act to reconcile expenses in line with a preset schedule of allowances. In project management schedule plans serve as a standardized document to reflect tasks to be done by assigned team participants as well time requirements the team is supposed to meet when doing the tasks.

A typical schedule plan includes the following key components:

A list of tasks and activities to be done
Any dependencies and relationships between the tasks and activities
Time limits and requirements
A list of assigned human resources
A list of milestones or scheduled checkpoints to monitor the schedule plan.

What is Process Effectiveness?

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Process effectiveness is a measure of a process’s ability to produce desired results or effect that can be qualitatively evaluated. It refers to a qualitative output of some process to measure the degree of achievement of goals or requirements associated with the given process.

Process effectiveness serves as one of the main sources of information for making well-founded decisions on better process management. In particular, it allows decision makers to:

Measure process performance
Develop better management strategies and tactics.
Plan for improvements.
Conduct further process evaluations.

As a basic qualitative characteristic, process effectiveness allows auditing for the ability to achieve desired goals and objectives. It is used in various fields of management to determine if some process is performed as it’s planned to be.

For instance, in business management it can be used to evaluate effectiveness of the selling process and find out if this process produces a desired effect, so that prospective and current buyers wish to purchase products and services being offered.

What is Task Element?

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Task element is a component or constituent of a task to describe a certain part or the entire entity of the task and to explain what assumptions and principles are established for managing the task. It is the basis for creating tasks. Task elements compose the elemental structure of a task and determine input data for the task.

There are various elements of tasks. A number and type of elements for a certain task depends in the task’s size, type and nature. However, for any kind of task there are three typical elements, including:

Title. This element determines name and heading of a task.
Description. It specifies additional information about a task.
Body. The element describes steps, methods, approaches and techniques to be used for implementing a task.

Task elements serve as building blocks to define a task. In contrast to task attributes, elements determine the highest-level components of a task while attributes focus on specifying separate task parameters. Actually attributes are components of elements. For example, Description is a task element that consists of such attributes as Notes, Priority, Comments, Dependency, Associated Files, others.

What is Project Resource

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Project Resource is any type of tangible or intangible matters which can be estimated, planned, engaged, organized and utilized to accomplish a project. Conception of Project Resources includes the key project constraints: timeframe (amount of time before the start and end dates of a project) and money (budget of a project), but a wider understanding of project resources comprises:

Manpower (skills, expertise and staffing);
Technology (equipment, methods, vehicles and other machinery);
Assets (buildings, land, rights, etc);
Utilities (electricity, fuel, service water, etc);
IT (telecommunicational and computing equipment);
Plans and Standards (projecting documentation, specifications and measures);
Project Knowledge (information on risks, project-related facts, etc);

The most of Project Resources can be characterized by the following traits:

Availability (on certain date, at certain conditions, etc);
Amount (for quantifiable resources, such as utilities, money, time, etc);
Capacity (efficiency of resources: valuable input against useful output produced);
Capability (qualities of resources making them valuable and productive);
Limitations (the most of resources are limited in amount and capacity);
Costs (costs to involve and maintain resources);

What is Process Technology

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Process Technology is a way to establish a complex of interrelated and mutually involved matters including arrangement of equipment and furniture, organization of all productive resources, human labour, workflow, supply, tools and utilization of certain methods to convert the efforts into profit.

The constraints hampering development of process technology in business include:

Lack of finances on acquiring and implementing innovative technologies;
Lack of managerial support (political reasons) and resistance to change;
Lack of organizational innovation strategy (no continual seeking for innovations);
Lack of managerial skills, understanding and flexibility in thinking;
Constraints of technological progress and fundamental science;

The more productive process technology is employed the more profit a company can earn. Process technology needs a continual review and improvement because it always has a potential to be more efficient than before:

Consume less utilities, time and other resources while in run;
Produce more useful output per a check period;
Waste less resources unproductively (a higher coefficient of efficiency);
Take less space (due to smaller sizes of equipment and less space required for operations);
Maintain a better level of quality along with a smaller level of variability;
Involve less specialists to work at the process;
Comprise less operations;
Be easier in maintenance and service;

What is Process Risk

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Process Risk is a factor that threats successful performance of a process (its timing, costs, quality of results and other success measures). Any process can face a big number of predicted or unpredicted risks while it is on the run. All process risks can be characterized by:

Probability to occur;
Severity of impact;

One of the distinctive traits of all business processes is a comparatively stable and controlled environment in which they are operated in a recurrent manner. This makes a predictability of risks connected to business processes much higher than for example when assessing a project’s risks. Process risks have the following traits:

Comparatively small number (due to controlled environment);
Good awareness about them, which gets improved with every process iteration;
Possibility to improve process environment to reduce or eliminate some risks;
Well-known methods and technologies for mitigation of the risks;
Possibility to continually study and measure the risks to reexamine their probability and impact;
Opportunity to design and continually improve the risks mitigation methods;
All unexpected risks detected on a previous iteration can be isolated on a new one;

What is Employee Training

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Employee Training is an educational process which aims to improve employees’ skills, attitudes, knowledge and awareness on recent policies and business situation. Employee Trainings are called to increase efficiency and effectiveness of employees who are supposed to create more of real worth for the company which pays for the training programs and seeks adequate return on investments.

Employee trainings are regulated by a duration of the course (number of lectures to be given within certain course), topic of the course, and objectives to be attained with the course. At the end of the course it can be necessary for employees to approve the knowledge and skills they obtained on the trainings by informal examination (no documents will be handed out) or formal certification (people who have successfully passed the examination will get a certificate). A big part of business trainings are ordered from external independent coaches and consulting companies. Trainings are used to:

Improve performance and proficiency of employees;
Ensure safety of employees, security of quality and business growth;
Highlight talented employees;
Prepare employees for promotions;
Screen out employees who seem professionally impropriate;

What is Schedule Specification?

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Schedule Specification is a common term referring to a supplementing document that describes some additional information or special time-related conditions for the associated contract. The document specifies rules and requirements for time management procedures (for example, specific delivery terms, possible delays).

Schedule specification is usually designed by the customer who should create a drafted version of the document and submit it to the contractor for review and approval. Its purpose is to make the contract as clear and feasible as possible through addressing the following issues:

Schedule variance (a time deviation from the schedule baseline)
Resource leveling (how resources can be best allocated and used during contract implementation)

A typical schedule specification demonstrates the following information:

Level of activity detailing
Start and finish of each activity scheduled
Activity sequence
Dependence of every activity on completion of the preceding activity
Possible effect of preceding activities to subsequent ones.

What is Schedule Availability

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Schedule Availability means an amount of working time when a person assigned to a schedule is available for doing work items (like tasks, activities) placed on the schedule. The term is often used in business and project management to describe percentage of time when scheduled activities and events are available for implementation by assigned human resources. It is also used in other fields (such as education, medicine, sports) to determine what scheduled periods individuals are available for to do assigned activities, jobs, tasks, exercises etc.

Availability of a schedule can be characterized by a range of parameters that help organizations judge about the level of availability of their employees’ schedules. For instance, the more hours employees are available for doing scheduled work, the higher level of schedule availability is.

Here’re basic parameters of schedule availability:

Availability date (when the schedule is available for doing work by assigned individuals)
Hours per day desired (an amount of working time planned for daily consumption)
Hours per day spent (an amount of working time actually consumed)
Breaks when assigned resources cannot do the schedule
Special marks and comments.

What is Task Order?

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Task Order is a formal supplementing document that specifies additional liabilities and obligations of a contractor and elaborates a statement of work (SOW), under rules of a task type contract. It is a kind of contract specifications to formulate a contractual description of specific tasks and services the contractor is obligated to fulfill, along with the amount of jobs determined by the SOW.

As a contractual document, task order needs to be designed with great care because it defines job specifications of an agreement. There are several steps for designing the document. These steps are:

Define scope of work. First, the purpose of and minimal requirements to additional jobs or services to be fulfilled by a contactor are identified.
List Tasks. Next, a detailed list of tasks with dependencies and priorities is created to show the contractor what exactly should be done.
Identify Inputs and Outputs. Now, there’s a need to determine an amount and type of resources required for doing the tasks. Also it is needed to define deliverables or results to be produced by every task.
Set Performance Criteria. Finally, a list of performance criteria is designed to specify how the contractor needs to do the work in terms of quality, quantity, time and appearance.

What is Employee Recruitment?

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Employee Recruitment is a process of searching, selecting, hiring and orientating new workers to fill open vacancies available in an organization. Its ultimate purpose is to find, interview, select and prepare an employee for an assigned job place within an organization.

Employee recruitment has strategic importance to every organization because this activity matches individuals to current job requirements of the organization, so all employed individuals should fit with the required skills and knowledge. Otherwise, they fail doing their jobs because of the lack of competencies and skills, and the whole organization suffers from the unmatched workforce.

There’s a range of ways to attract applicants and recruit new workforce. These ways are:

Employee referral programmes (rewarding existing personnel for their references to potential candidates to open vacancies).
Advertising through mass media (the press, television, radio, Internet, outdoor advertising as well).
Personnel recruitment agencies providing professional employment service.
Special employment events (like job fairs and open houses).
School & college programmes (engaging newly-made graduates in taking employment opportunities).

What is Process Roadmap?

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Process Roadmap refers to a formal document, often designed in a graph view, to describe a detailed plan of actions to match short-term and long-term goals of a given process with specific solutions that help meet those goals. It specifies a range of activities required for producing and implementing solutions in the way that fits into initial needs and requirements of the process.

There are three major goals to design a roadmap for a certain process:

There’s a need to reach a consensus about a set of solutions required for accomplishing the process’s goals.
Get a feasible mechanism that helps forecast development of the solutions.
Build a framework that helps plan and coordinate the development procedure.

A roadmap of a process describes how to start and do an amount of work required for satisfying the process’s goals. It specifies the following information about the process:

Parties involved
Reasons for undertaking the process
Benefits and how to get them
Rules, standards and guidelines for process implementation
Possible ways or solutions for reaching the process’s goals
Success evaluation criteria
Ways for capturing lessons learned.

What is Process Tracing?

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Process Tracing is a procedure of identifying and testing causal mechanisms (events, actions, processes, expectations, or any other intervening variables) that link supposed causes to observed effects. The key idea behind this procedure is to conduct tests of co-variations between putative causes and obtained effects through generating and analyzing data on apparent causal mechanisms. Process tracing is widely used in many fields including business process control and project management.

Tracing a process means undertaking a continuous auditing and testing activity to identity a specific piece of process data and then track this data back to the original state of the process by following a trail made by causal mechanisms.

The procedure of process tracing can be carried out in two different approaches, which are briefly explained below:

Verification is a method of testing a given process observed among case variables to determine whether the process matches predictions that have been made by previously designated theories.
Induction is an approach of inductively observing apparent causal mechanisms of a process and heuristically interpreting these mechanisms as potential hypotheses for future testing of the process.

What is Process Termination?

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Process Termination refers to a formal procedure for ending, blocking or shutting off a certain process due to some issues so that further operational use and implementation of that process is stopped. It means the process is discontinued either permanently or for a certain period of time until the issues are successfully resolved. In case the process is terminated permanently it can be regarded as either failed because the issues can’t be addressed, or successfully completed because its initial goals and purpose are achieved so there’s no more need for continuation.

The procedure of process termination is used in various fields of management. For example, in business management it determines a number of steps for blocking business processes from permanent or temporary existence, depending on outstanding issues and status of desired goals. In project management it means a way for making formal closure of project activities and phases.

There’re two types of process termination. These types are:

Normal. When a process is terminated normally this situation means the process has addressed desired goals and expectations so further implementation becomes unreasonable.
Abnormal. A situation when a process is stopped or blocked abnormally for a certain period of time means that there’re some problems with the process or its parts so further implementation is not possible until the problems are successfully resolved.

What is Schedule Performance?

Sat, 23 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Schedule Performance refers to the resulting effect of scheduled activities performed by an individual, group or organization within a given period of time and measured against preset standards, such as accuracy, completeness, speed and cost. It is a comparison of initially planned tasks and scheduled events against the amount of work that is really accomplished.

There’s a measurement indicator to estimate performance level of schedules. It’s called Schedule Performance Index. It’s calculated as a ratio between actual value and planned value of some schedule. The index is widely used in project management. It shows a schedule’s efficiency regarding a project.

For example, there’s a project for supplying school furniture. The supplier is obligated to procure school furniture within a preset delivery schedule. This project will be efficient if the supplier fulfils the obligation on schedule. It actually means an appropriate performance level of the schedule releases the supplier from all liabilities under the delivery contract. Such standards as accuracy, completeness, speed and cost serve as additional parameters for measuring schedule performance and project efficiency.

What is Employee Transition?

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Employee Transition is an employee’s movement from current position to a new one with the right to have the same or alike pay range, the same level of tasks, and comparable job responsibilities and duties. It involves an alteration in employment with unchanged level of job hierarchy requiring similar skills, knowledge and expertise from the transitioning worker. Because employee transition involves unchanged level of job hierarchy it is often regarded as a method of horizontal re-assignment of employee jobs.

There are several major reasons for transitioning workers to new jobs. These reasons are:

Job re-allocation (when there’s a need for achieving work improvements through altering employees with similar jobs and duties between their positions).
Sharing experience and knowledge (when two or more organizations agree on exchanging their workers for the purpose of employee training and experience exchange).
Reduction in workforce (when an organization suffers from a reduced number of workers available so the management team decides to re-assign jobs and transition available employees to the most critical jobs).

In contrast to employee transfer, employee transition does not require a worker to have better faculties and competences to do a new job because the worker does not move vertically but just takes similar responsibilities and duties as compared to the previous position. Employee transfer often entails an increase in the pay range and career advancement as well as more complex duties and responsibilities. Meanwhile, employee transition never causes changes in income level and alteration in job responsibilities.

What is Project Review?

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Project Review is a process of examining and auditing planned tasks, activities, procedures, events and other work components of a project to identify whether the project’s requirements can be fully addressed by the planned amount of work and to determine what additional resources are necessary to match the work with the requirements. It is an attempt to align current working environment with the requirements prior to the project implementation process gets started.

The purpose of the project review process is to provide a team with a clear and unambiguous understanding of the steps required to complete the project as per requirements. When the process is successfully carried out, the team as well as senior management gains two major benefits, such as:

Improved decision making. Because the project is not started yet the team along with managers can analyze gaps of the initial plan and then make better decisions regarding necessary adjustments for further implementation of the project.
Preventive actions. Because team members audit and examine planned activities at the very beginning, they better understand possible issues and problems that may occur during project implementation; hence they can develop preventive action plans, instead of planning for reactive and corrective actions when some problem occurs.

What is Project Report

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Project Report (or Project Status Report) is necessary to communicate the status of a project to its staff and stakeholders. The Project Report embraces necessary scope of information that is demanded by stakeholders to stay in touch with all essential project matters, including progress, budget and schedule.

The Project Report should be composed by the project manager and his/her assistants in a manner allowing them to escalate any significant items or issues to the focus of project stakeholders, so they can support the project team with necessary decisions and guidelines.

There could be one or a set of smaller regular reports dedicated to such matters:

Project Schedule (to see how the real timing complies with the estimate);
Project Budget (to know whether additional funding can be demanded);
Project Deliverables (to learn if they meet requirements on quality);
Project Risks (how severely risks are affecting the project);
Project Issues (problems arising on the project performance);
Project Staffing (changes and improvements in the project staffing);

With a help of Project Status Report, project manager and stakeholders can identity whether the project is on the right track and it will be finished on-time, on-budget and on-quality, without serious overruns. Project Report is a way to capture and document the project performance for further analysis and decision-making.

What is Project Roadmap

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Project Roadmap is a diagram or document that illustrates a high level plan of a project, including its key milestones, stages and goals to be achieved. It is different from WBS and from usual project plan: it is a format to express project plans in a clear, easy-to-grasp manner (in a quite lay terms) when approaching the executive boards and stakeholders. The features of project roadmap are:

Expresses the project plans at a glance: highlights important milestones, gives a clear picture of what products to expect, and feasible time when these deliverables will be ready;
Expounds the planned utilization of project resources: allocation of the budget, involvement of technologies, manpower, equipment, etc. Focuses on a few of the most costly project items;
Makes emphasis on the most important issues to be resolved by the project and the benefits to be delivered with its realization (makes the worth of the project interesting to stakeholders);
Reviews the most probable risks and their mitigation methods;
Provides the stakeholders with understanding of what kind of inquire you escalate to them and what do you expect to obtain from them (sponsorship, managerial support, guidance, etc);

Office Cleaning Guide: how to create a timetable and what tools to use?

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Office cleaning plan is what necessary to compose and communicate to office cleaners in order to maintain proper timetable of office cleaning procedures. These regular tasks are necessary to keep office clean, safe and pleasant for staying there during the working daytime. Such procedures may include emptying trash bins, vacuuming carpets, disinfecting toilets, cleaning desks and computer accessories, decorative planting, washing windows and door-knobs, cleaning air-conditioners and ventilation channels, aromatization of premises, etc.

Some internal office cleaning rules can be a must for office workers, for example to regularly clean their desks, PC displays, keyboards and mice, to take care of their personal hygiene, etc. Office cleaning tips are the following: people who carry out these tasks should be certified and trained to do their job (they need to know how to handle chemicals they work with, they need to have knowledge in crafts of sanitation and hygiene), and also they need to be properly coordinated (they need to know the scope of their practical duties). The last purpose can be easily satisfied by using appropriate software products.

VIP Task Manager is a client-server program to manage and share office cleaning timetables in real-time. Such a timetable can be represented as a to-do list at Task List view, and as a time-grid schedule of activities at Calendar mode.

To assign office cleaning tasks to the team – do the following:

start your work planning software;
set office cleaning tasks and their dates at Calendar mode;
assign office cleaning to performers;
control office cleaning timetable execution in real-time regime;

What is Schedule Acceleration

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Schedule Acceleration is a set of methods used to minimize the duration of work included into the project in order to:

Accomplish it faster than it was originally estimated (to surpass the schedule);
Stay within the schedule if something critical was previously delayed (overtake the schedule);
Decrease a serious project performance delay down to an acceptable level;

A need for project schedule acceleration may arise when certain factors behind the schedule have been changed, for example a customer vitally demands a project to be completed faster, or if work was delayed due to some reasons, for example protractions with supplies. There are several methods to accelerate the schedule (they can be used all at the same time):

Canceling the staff’s days-off, vacations, weekends and adding certain overtime work;
Adding more resources (manpower and equipment) to complete certain tasks and stages faster (“Crashing” method of schedule compression);
Performing more tasks in parallel mode, without adding additional resources (“Fast Tracking” method of schedule compression);
Reducing the scope of work to skip or withdraw certain tasks from the schedule;
Implementing some innovative technologies and tools increasing the productivity;

What is Process Reengineering

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Business Process Reengineering (BPR) is a managerial approach that seeks radical redesign of the processes to reach the fundamental improvements and hence a dramatic growth of their efficiency measured in terms of cost, quality, service and speed. BPR encourages returning down to the roots of every business process used at an enterprise to reexamine and redesign everything from the very beginning. BPR stands rather for total reinvention of processes than for adding small improvements which may produce, let’s say, 10% growth of efficiency, while BPR is aimed to reach 10x growth.

BPR doesn’t have yet a single well-elaborated methodology to adhere, but it is a set of different correlated methodologies contributed and developed by different authors. At the highest level the classic features of Business Process Reengineering include:

It means building improvements of a business process when redesigning it from scratch, so BPR does not deal with existing processes and forms they currently have;
It stands for one-time fundamental revision and radical improvement of a process, which makes it different from other approaches such as TQM that works incrementally and continually;
Applying BPR may consume a lot of time and resources as it demands making deep, structural, cross-functional changes involving innovations and a wider use of information technology;
BPR does not take into account a bunch of human factors, such as resistance to change and lack of managerial support;
In order to mitigate disadvantages of BPR (which it is often criticized for) in reality it is often complemented with additional methodology, such as TQM that enables improving the process continuously after the reengineering was completed;

How to create Task Work Breakdown Structure?

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

There are several different methods to represent (visualize) the task work plans, for example WBS (work breakdown structure) which is a graphical manner to represent a task work (required to be done) as a multi-level tree-like map of interrelated activities to process throughout. Also, another effective way is to use calendar-like chronological charts (tasking timelines) to depict how the task work flows along with durational scale. In such a way, task work area (map of “work breakdown”) can be organized and managed in a different manner: from plain models showing order of activities and sub-activities to more complicated solutions that consolidate several matters at once (ex: a timeline associates essential steps of task’s workflow with calendar’s timescale to know when each of these activities should be started and finished). It is necessary to appoint appropriate task work packages to proper organizational executives who fully recognize their roles and understand what operational areas they stand for. To manage (plan, report and control) a task work order we can use special software products, like one represented below:

VIP Task Manager is designed for task-oriented team management and you can use its Task Tree mode to categorize your tasks according to stages of your project (to create WBS).

To assign project tasks to the team – do the following:

start your project planning software;
set a suitable layout of task groups on Task Tree mode to represent different work stages;
prioritize your tasks, set their order and schedule them in terms of costs, time, etc;
assign tasks to performers and control execution in real-time regime;

What is Schedule Allocation

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Schedule Allocation means mapping out the pieces of work (tasks, activities, etc) on a schedule to visually represent their durations and arrangement in terms of chronology. Schedule allocation may mean breaking down a time necessary to complete certain task into smaller periods being scheduled on different days throughout the entire project timeline, so employees are assigned to the work at this task in smaller portions, but regularly (for example several working hours every day, or twice a week, etc). This method works well for tasks involving a lot of routine work which can be hardly expressed in terms of particular activities, stages and steps.

Since a working task has an allocated timetable (work is allocated over a prolonged period of time), it is necessary to keep control over the time dedicated by employees to this task (to make sure their efforts actually match the allocated schedule). For this purpose a time-sensitive system of control over the check-ins and check-outs needs to be established, so the task supervisors can inspect the compliance of timing which was spent by employees at the task with the plan they have to follow. Besides the time controlling, it is necessary to inspect amount and quality of work done (which are regulated by specific level of plans standing behind the allocated schedule).

What is Task Interdependence?

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Task Interdependence is a set of rules and requirements to determine how information, materials and expertise will be shared between team members assigned to interdependent tasks. It is a functional way to plan structured work through defining interdependencies between tasks and elaborating roles for people involved in the work.

When specifying interdependence of certain tasks, there is an increased chance of conflicts between the tasks because the overall structure of work becomes more and more complicated, with multiple levels and sub-levels. In order to avoid any conflicts between interdependent tasks as well as clarify roles of team members, it is recommended to create a team charter which highlights the following information:

Names of team members
Roles with details on key duties and responsibilities
Supervisor-subordinate relationships
Rules of sharing information, materials and expertise
Requirements for sharing information, materials and expertise
Reporting rules

A team charter helps design a multi-level hierarchy of interdependent tasks. Every task within such a hierarchy is associated with an appropriate role and linked to interdependent tasks. A team charter also lets manage workload of every team member through providing a clear illustration of assigned duties and interdependent tasks.

Time Management List: skills to create and tools to manage

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Time management is a conceptual set of physical and mental essentials (skills) that you need to be a successful time manager. Let’s consider this conception in a form of time management list tips to learn and think about, and to follow in a way that suits your situation:

Time management: list of skills – once you make a firm decision to find some better methods for managing your personal and professional time to reach a new level of productivity, you need to study, understand, and regularly practice the following skills making your efforts meaningful:
- Ability to formulate tasks – you need to train yourself to describe your tasks in a basically plain and clear manner stimulating you to act, telling you what actually to do now and then, and making you to avoid any loose formulations and confusions;
- Ability to prioritize – it is very important not to lose effectiveness at some really important points while pursuing secondary goals. You need to prioritize your goals & tasks to invest your major efforts into attaining primary goals, while postponing things of less importance (there are some specific methods to appraise importance of your tasks);
Time management: list making – the basic instrument for planning your time is recording your plans (your tasks) on a to-do list. It is a sheet of paper where you can:

1. Formulate your tasks;
2. Prioritize your tasks.

Such a time management list of activities can be formed up and managed with a help of electronic means (software), like a product represented below:

VIP Task Manager is a program that allows us to establish time management lists in business or professional activities, as it is real-time teamwork software for planning, controlling and analyzing your time and tasks on the projects of different kinds.

To plan and analyze your time – do the following:

start your project planning software;
set a suitable time management technique and ideas;
prioritize your tasks;
plan and schedule tasks and arrangements in terms of costs, target dates, etc;
control performance parameters;

What are Employee Requirements?

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Employee requirements refer to a set of needs of an employer to identify what skills, competency, knowledge, experience and expertise an employee is supposed to have to meet the needs. The term is used in employee management to describe an employer�s demands to existing workforce as well as to new employees. Along with a job description, employee requirements are used to clearly define and spell out responsibilities and duties to a certain job.

Employee requirements are characterized by a range of attributes; for example, source of requirements, complexity, status, type, priority. All possible attributes are managed by using appropriate documents, such as traceability matrix and employee requirements statement.

Requirements to existing and prospective employees are usually established by determining what's demanded for optimal performance. The following factors are considered:

Work results expected
Specific job requirements (incl. education, experience, skills)
Working environment conditions (incl. relationships with colleagues, senior management)
Company requirements (cultural fit, values)
Desired individual and group behaviors.

What is Process Evaluation?

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Process evaluation is a systematic assessment of a definite process by collecting, analyzing and using process data in order to determine effectiveness of the process and investigate whether it has been implemented successfully. It is usually used to find out how one (or several interrelated processes) within a project or programme was implemented, who was involved in the implementation, what resources were used, and what problems were experienced.

In the context of a project/programme, process evaluation is a formal procedure to monitor project/programme implementation, identify changes occurred, assess current state, and determine possible ways for improvement. It aims to assess the following parameters of a process:

Interests. People and/or organizations interested in or concerned by the process are identified (they�re interested parties or stakeholders).
Requirements. Interested parties make a list of requirements to the process (how it should be implemented).
Implementation. A dedicated team needs to implement the process in compliance with listed requirements.
Impact. When the process has been implemented it�s time to determine what impact it has to stakeholders.
Efficiency. The process efficiency is measured to find out if interested parties are satisfied and whether their requirements are met.

What is Project Replanning?

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Project Replanning is a process for planning an existing project again in the same or some altered way. It entails repetition of the whole planning process or its parts to resolve execution failures of the prior plan and then develop a new, more improved plan which is called a re-plan. Sometimes, project replanning means reuse of current plan to solve a new problem while focusing on initial goals and utilizing the same resources available.

Correctness is the primary goal of the replanning process. For example, when a problem is revealed within an existing project plan yet no solution is found to fix the problem, the project manager needs to reuse or re-plan the project in order to correct the current plan and create scenarios for addressing the problem. Such scenarios will be necessary corrections required for turning the plan into a new efficient re-plan.

Quality is the second goal of the replanning process. Back to our example: when the manager works on developing corrective scenarios and re-plans the project, he/she needs to be sure that quality of the new re-plan becomes higher or at least remains the same as compared to quality of the original plan. Otherwise, the replanning process becomes pointless, and even if the problem is fixed with the re-plan the initial goals get under a higher risk of failure because of reduced quality.

How to set up Recurring Task with Reminder?

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Everyone has some recurring tasks at his/her schedule, for example daily activities such as “to feed the cat”, “to take the vitamins”, etc. There are more advanced algorithms of recurrence, for example some events may happen every Monday, or twice per week, or every two weeks, etc. Effective task management software is designed to cover a scope of your needs, including planning repeating tasks that occur with different regularity. While software gives you means for setting up your own algorithm of task’s or event’s re-occurrence, special recurring task reminders help you not to miss every new turn of recurrence (making you aware before task’s every iteration beginning or before its end). There are programs that let you set up such reminders, but there are also popular solutions that have a deficit of such function, like MS Outlook. While Tasks Recurrence is a quite developed option, recurring task reminder in Outlook appears ineffective. That’s because you cannot associate reminder’s settings with task’s parameters of recurrence anyhow (reminder can popup only on a fixed date), so every Outlook recurring task with reminder needs manual resetting before task’s every new iteration.

VIP Task Manager is alternative to MS Outlook. It employs a more flexible way of setting up task reminders, and real-time collaboration capabilities. With its help you can set up reminder to appear on a fixed date and before the task’s start/finish date. This product can send recurring task reminder emails to all concerned persons, so you can get recurring task reminders with a help of Blackberry, or usual mobile phone, or remote computer that is not connected to database of VIP Task Manager.

To set up project and task reminders – do the following:

start your project planning software;
set a suitable layout of task groups to represent different stages of your project;
plan tasks on every stage;
schedule tasks and set their recurrence settings;
set up reminders to pop-up before start or finish dates of your tasks;

What is Task Execution?

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Task execution is a consistent process of doing planned tasks and producing expected results by one individual or a group of individuals joint into a team, in compliance with preset requirements and expectations. It determines a sequence of tasks assigned to the team for implementation. Every task has a range of preset parameters or attributes that define execution sequence and implementation time. For example, priority and due date are attributes preset prior to implementation to determine in what sequence tasks are supposed to be executed and within what time limits.

Task execution is a synonym to task implementation. In order to execute or implement tasks there should be a well-defined plan of actions. Such a plan is called a task execution (implementation) plan. It is usually created by decision makers and carried out by a group of performers. For example, in terms of project management, a task execution plan refers to a formal document that determines certain tasks and their attributes (like priority, status, dependency, etc.) defined by a project manager and assigned to an implementation team. Such a plan becomes a component of general plan for managing the project.

Recurring Task Calendar for those who cannot afford wasting their time

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Recurring Task Calendar is a time-grid that shows up your repetitive tasks and events. Example of using such a time management tool is a widespread practice of managing your recurring tasks on Google calendar that is accessible through the Internet. Functionality of recurring tasks in Google calendar was added recently, and it helps its users to schedule iterative tasks and events. However, option of Google calendar recurring tasks is still not well enough associated with task reminders (alerting function) as they can pop-up or be emailed only before tasks’ start dates.

New possibilities of recurring tasks for Google calendar made all their regular users happier, but this update is not an ideal solution yet. If you need really effective Recurring Tasks Calendar events with alerts, along with other powerful features to operate with your time, then you may consider commercial software products for business users, such as VIP Task Manager that is a client-server program with Calendar mode, Recurring tasks and Alerts (Reminders) to appear on a fixed date and before the task’s start/finish date.

To set up task recurrence and reminders – do the following:

start your project planning software;
set a suitable layout of task groups to represent different stages of your project;
plan tasks on every stage;
schedule tasks and set their recurrence settings;
set up reminders to pop-up before start or finish dates of your tasks;

What is Schedule Adjustment?

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Schedule adjustment refers to any modifications and changes made to a given schedule after some issues have been revealed, so the changes are aimed to solve the issues and put the schedule back to the original state. Adjusting a schedule means making some updates to its content due to variations for the purpose of preventing negative consequences of the variations and realigning the schedule content with the initial state. For example, in a production schedule a lack of inventory and personnel has been revealed so the manufacturing process can�t be continued until the issue is solved and a necessary adjustment (such as engaging additional workforce and inventory items in the production) is made.

Schedule adjustments are usually managed within the change management process. A person responsible for progress of a schedule needs to regularly audit status of the schedule items (like tasks, events, various activities) and check it against expectations established at the design phase of the schedule. For example, in project management the change management process involves a project manager in reviewing status of tasks and activities put on a schedule and check the status against the schedule baseline determined at the project planning phase. In case there�re some variations detected, the manager needs to evaluate the gap and decide on what adjustment is required to solve the problem.

What is Task Implementation

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Once a need for a task (certain amount of work to reach a necessary goal or rectify certain problem) is approved by the appropriate manager, a task gets researched by technical specialists to be verified as technically sound and implementable. Task Implementation is a sequence of actions to be done in order to effectuate the approved task, and these actions are also subjected to skillful study and approval, so once they are recognized as rational and effective the management gives a green light to the process of task implementation. These task implementation activities comprise everything necessary to put the task in motion, including adapting it to administrative structure of organization:

Defining the scope of work included into the task (a work package);
Technical design and projecting to plan the task realization;
Estimating of time, costs and necessary resources;
Technical and administrative assignments to effectuate the task;
Delegation of managerial authority to those who are in charge of task realization;
Identification of measures and success criteria to capture the progress over the task;
Preparing and verification of the necessary documentation;
Step-by-step action plan to accomplish the work;

What is Task Evaluation

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Task Evaluation is a process of giving an objective estimate to amount of work, efforts, decisions and resources required to accomplish a task, along with its worth to organization. The point of Task Evaluation is to define whether the costs incurred by a task are adequate to expected level of gain. With a help of Task Evaluation the management of an organization can make a decision on giving the green light to execution of a certain task (as Task Evaluation process implies collecting a wide scope of information that ensures a proper ground for making such a decision).

Since the objectives of a task are clearly defined, Task Evaluation is based upon defining:

Obvious constraints of this task (its due date and quality level);
Complexity of the work (amount, character and intensity of labour involved into the work);
Amount of required material resources (raw materials, utilities, transportation, etc);
Risks that endanger successful task performance and increase costs;
Compensations to be paid to workers engaged into the task;
Ability of organization to accomplish this kind and amount of work;
Impact of the task on success and development of the organization;
Benefits to be gained by the organization during or after performance of the task;
Comparison: Overall costs incurred by the task against overall profit brought with the task;

Time Management Keys: what you need to know to become a real achiever

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Time management key element is your right knowledge about this discipline and about your mind. What you need to remember about “time management” is that it is not some kind of magic panacea against all problems of your inefficiency, such as regular procrastinations and therefore usual frustration of your plans or non-achievement of your objectives. Time management key points stand for opportunity to reach a better attitude for managing your time, but this discipline is an instrument that will not work if you don’t change your deep way of thinking. We can recognize the following examples of time management key areas where you need to acquire a new mindset:

Get a sense of achievement – you cannot get anywhere until you understand why you need to be there. Unsatisfaction and anxiety are generated by your inability to realize your path and goals;
Increase your energy – you need to learn concentrating at things that are up to order of the day, you don’t need to process in your mind any things that where undone in the past (regrets about your failures just suck out your energy), but you need to focus at things that can be done today;
Do not neglect organizing daily things – time management is not only about some serious tasks, like your long-term professional activities and projects, but one of the time management key features is to organize your simple things (like eating your meal, feeding your pets, approaching your hygiene and health, etc) to cope well with everything and therefore free up more time for important or pleasant activities;

Other essential time management key components (categorization, prioritization and optimization of your tasks) – all these methods can be managed with a help of special software like VIP Task Manager.

To plan and analyze your time – do the following:

start your project planning software;
set a suitable time management technique and ideas;
prioritize your tasks;
plan and schedule tasks and arrangements in terms of costs, target dates, etc;
control performance parameters;

What is Task Report

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Task Reports are necessary for project management to capture status of progress made over the tasks previously handed out to performers. Since tasks can be considered as smaller parts of greater projects, task reports should comprise a set of information which makes it possible for managers to qualify a level of performance on each task, and then to convert and summarize this information in a high-level picture of the overall project progress.

Task Report can comprise the following parameters:

Time (the time when the task was actually completed against the pre-planned due date);
Costs (how the real expenses on the task fit the pre-planned task’s budget);
Resources (amounts of materials and utilities consumed);
Issues (notes on problems, lessons leant and other observations);
Objectives (checklist on key objectives completed or missed);

Task Reports can be created with a help of templates which outline the necessary scope of data to be inputted by task performers (or their managers) to characterize the progress done at the task up to certain date. These reports can be communicated to upper management electronically or on a paper. Task reports can be collected with certain regularity during the task execution, and once a task is complete a final task report should be composed to sum up the work done, issues resolved, and goals reached (in some cases along with lessons leant and other observations noted). Task Report needs to be verified by the immediate supervisor of a task before this report goes up to a senior managerial level for further analysis.

What is Schedule Overrun

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Schedule Overrun occurs when a project’s time restriction is violated. In other words project doesn’t meet its expected deadline as some of tasks from its Critical Path have been delayed by the project team. Schedule Overrun makes the Project Customer not satisfied by performance of the team, as the project has run out of its predefined timeframes, but the desired products haven’t been delivered to the Customer yet. Schedule overrun may mean not only non-meeting of the final due date of a project, but also missing to match predefined project milestones while this project is still in process, which may underlie further delay if not rectified as appropriate.

The main reasons for Schedule Overrun can be the following:

Poorly performed time estimation of the project tasks and activities (in other words the project schedule was not fully accurate and feasible);
Risks were underestimated on the project planning phase (some of project risks occurred much more threatening than thought before);
Unforeseen circumstances and factors hampered the progress (something really unpredictable has broken the project plans, let’s say a tornado);
Poor quality control caused frequent and costly reworks (the quality management system wasn’t properly implemented and it wasn’t able to fulfill its functions on every step);
Poor work organization and planning;
Internal conflicts within the project team;

Employee Retention Guide: review, ideas, tools

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Employee retention definition: it is a business management term referring to policies and efforts of employers focused at retaining current employees in their workforce. Employee retention goal is to secure employer’s available mature workforce, being one of the most important competitive factors, from dissatisfaction & therefore unavoidable leaving, and from “head-hunters” who try to poach the best HR. Today, when competition for qualified workforce on all national HR markets appears quite intensive, investment into corporate employee retention management is not something to ignore, as a company that treats its human resources irresponsibly blasts its own success in future.

Actually, corporate employee retention system should be accurately developed over the years, along with approaching every employee individually, so employers should strongly avoid situations when their leaving employees (who just appear standing in the doorway with their letters of dismissals) are immediately offered a higher salary to be retained – it is just a one-time remedial action that will not cure a deep and systematic HR crisis. The best long-term employee retention tools include:

Sure opportunities of career growth and professional development;
Phased manner of salary increasing (stable salary growth over the years);
Considerable social package that upgrades along with years of service;
Friendly atmosphere in the team, no severe administrative pressure from managers;
Recognition of employee achievements and talents;

These employee retention ideas can be supported by proper managerial style. In order to avoid employee stress at work, it is necessary to carry out clear planning of tasks and goals, which can be done with a help of VIP Task Manager that is software for employee scheduling and controlling in real-time regime, and it is designed to help you with time management.

To schedule project tasks for the team– do the following:

start your project planning software;
set a suitable layout of task groups (Task Tree mode);
set project timeline (Calendar mode) and target dates;
assign and schedule tasks in terms of their costs, priorities, objectives, etc;
control project execution in real-time regime;

What is Employee Empowerment

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Employee Empowerment means granting employees a necessary level of authority to support them making self-dependent decisions without obligatory consulting with their bosses. Employee Empowerment means making employees more autonomous and accountable to themselves on what they do. It is up to every organization to decide on degree of employee empowerment, but once they are provided with more freedom in action, employees get a new stimulus to think, behave and work better as now they are empowered to reveal and realize their ideas and talents, as well as they better feel the cause-and-effect relation between what they do and what they get later.

Employee Empowerment is a part of Employee Engagement – a set of managerial approaches that stand for making employees more responsible, productive, satisfied and motivated. Employee Empowerment entails the following benefits:

Managers get more productive time to be spent for useful activities instead of controlling what and how employees do on every small step of their work;
A way for micromanagement (which is a sin of many managers) gets reliably closed;
Employees obtain a greater feeling of self-worth and they get greater opportunities for realizing their potential and ideas;
Employee activities involve less formal approvement procedures, therefore a business workflow becomes faster;

What is Schedule Adherence

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Schedule Adherence is a common parameter that characterizes the degree (percentage) to which particular workers or project teams are sticking to their schedules (timetables, workflow timings, project schedules, etc). Many industries and business functions employ their own conceptions of Schedule Adherence, along with methods to calculate it. For usual employee who undertakes his or her duties daily, degree of schedule adherence may be derived from a number of late arrivals to the workplace, early checks out and excessively long breaks taken.

Some ways to determine degree of Schedule Adherence:

Schedule Adherence can be defined as a percentagewise share of a number of hours actually worked from a number of hours prescheduled to work, after deducting duration of meetings, lunch time, breaks, and other legitimate non-productive periods. This approach requires accurate control over tasks and attendance of employees.
At timing-regulated jobs, such as workflow-based production where the actions of employee are controlled as a sequence of off-the-shelf operations with limited timings, Schedule Adherence is defined by checking a time spent by employee on every operation and on the workflow entirely.
In project management, Schedule Adherence means a share of work completed on-time.

Employee Daily Report: what is it and how to build?

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Employee daily task report represents how well the employee performs assigned job throughout workloads delegated to him/her by managers. Such employee daily status reports can be formulated in different terms, with different level of details, and they are important for managers to identify and update the working progress picture over the managed projects, and therefore regular employee daily work reports should be quite accurate, clear and profound, so data management requirements of supervisors can be fully satisfied.

In order to avoid any kind of misconception, to reach good level of accuracy and obtain adequate explanation, employee daily reports are regulated by certain procedures, including report template with appropriate fields (essential work performance indicators) to be filled-in by the employees and to be read by their managers.

The channels to deliver employee daily activity report are a traditional one (standard paper-based sheets and forms to be physically transported from employees to managers, or transferred by fax), or a more advanced one requiring use of special software with a powerful set of embedded reporting tools, such as one represented below:

VIP Task Manager is a client-server program that can be used to deliver Employee Daily Reports from employees to managers (as well as weekly, monthly or yearly).

To assign project tasks to the team– do the following:

start your project planning software;
set a suitable layout of task groups (Task Tree mode);
set project timeline (Calendar mode) and target dates;
assign and schedule tasks and arrangements in terms of their costs, objectives, etc;
control project execution in real-time regime on Task Tree or Task List;

Employee Daily Schedule: software to keep up work planning throughout your projects

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Employee daily schedule is an instrument which your employees can rely upon to be aware of their assignments and agenda to follow throughout the project’s timeline. In order to make a regular business practice of composing and using such working schedules much easier and handier, the managers are encouraged to use special electronic employee daily schedule templates that work just perfect in modern office environment where they facilitate creating workflow calendars, allowing managers and employees to newly produce their schedules with minimal time and efforts spent (as well as to update existing schedules).

Some popular examples of programs to be used as schedule creators and editors are just among daily used working packages, such as MS Office – employee daily schedule Excel based files are not a rare case when a manager wants to compose a timetable to plan employees’ activities and tasks. However, there are more convenient and simple alternatives to design the employee daily schedule spreadsheets and to share them with actually employees to make them informed of their tasks. Example of such a tool is represented below:

VIP Task Manager is a client-server program that can be used as your template collaborative task manager for employees and managers (as well as weekly, monthly or yearly). This is not a kind of employee daily schedule template free program, but commercial ready-to-go tool.

To assign project tasks to the team– do the following:

start your project planning software;
set a suitable layout of task groups (Task Tree mode);
set project timeline (Calendar mode) and target dates;
assign and schedule tasks and arrangements in terms of their costs, objectives, etc;
control project execution in real-time regime on Task Tree or Task List;

Marketing Materials Guide

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Marketing materials definition: different printed and electronic informational carriers (web-sites, printed brochures, booklets, letterheads, business cards, etc), different podcasts and broadcasts (the Internet, TV, Radio and mobile communications) that are used to market your business (to advertise and promote your goods, services and brand). Modern marketing materials design is a science and art that aspires to affect even the gut layers of target audience’s psychology to make commercial messages remarkable and striking. Marketing materials importance for business is really vital, so to promote your goods you need to plan and organize effective marketing campaign that will reach the soul and purse of your target audience. Marketing materials work includes the following essential points:

Planning goals and messages to be communicated through marketing materials;
Designing appropriate appearance and other audio/visual parameters for materials;
Creating marketing materials;
Distributing marketing materials;

As it was mentioned before, marketing materials include:

TV or Radio broadcasts (usual advertising);
Printed brochures to distribute by mail, curriers, network of promotional stands, etc;
Complex Internet promotion (direct or viral marketing methods);
Interpersonal messaging (multi-level marketing);

VIP Task Manager is a program that helps you to manage marketing plans in business or professional activities, as it is real-time teamwork software for planning, controlling and analyzing your time and tasks on the projects of different kinds.

To plan and analyze your marketing plan – do the following:

start your work planning software;
set a suitable layout of marketing plan’s tasks;
prioritize your marketing tasks;
plan and schedule marketing tasks and arrangements in terms of costs, time, etc;
control performance parameters;

Virtual Collaboration Advantages and Disadvantages

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Modern life-style that requires seeking for more intensive ways of utilizing any resources, including time as one of the most valuable ones, predefines virtual collaboration success as it is provided by modern communicational means, such as computer-based technologies. Let’s consider real virtual collaboration value to know if it actually makes any sense to implement this practice as a part of your normal day-to-day business process, & therefore let’s take a look through virtual collaboration advantages:

It enables individuals and workgroups to communicate and work together at a single project from any remote locations worldwide through the use of proper technology;
It allows minimizing time spent for interactions between employees and managers since there is no need to use any time-consuming paper-based administrative procedures – all operations are performed electronically;
Decreasing administrative costs, because of paperless collaboration, no need to maintain office space for some employees working remotely, and other factors increasing productivity;

Virtual collaboration disadvantages may appear in some industries where people need face-to-face interpersonal contacts to carry out their duties:

Cannot completely replace interpersonal contacts;
Needs acquiring and installing different software packages (extra costs for company’s budget);

If you would like to try out virtual collaboration benefits in your own experience, then you may try using VIP Task Manager that is a client-server program that allows establishing collaborative relations at workflow and tasks.

To perform collaborative tasks – do the following:

start your project planning software;
set a suitable layout of task groups to represent the project;
prioritize your tasks and define how to lead your group through them;
plan and schedule tasks and project arrangements in terms of target dates, costs, time, etc;
assign tasks to doers and control their productivity in real-time;

Employee Scheduling Problems: types, and ways to rectify and avoid in future

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Employee scheduling issues are confusing conditions or situations that might seriously reduce employee efficiency and collapse appropriate rhythm of workflow. These counter-productive issues can be prevented by accurate planning and considering all the related factors by the managers who assume scheduling. These employee scheduling issues may be the following ones:

Employee scheduling conflict: one of the most typical issues is when an employee gets assigned to concurrent tasks, so that he gets overloaded with two (or more) competing commitments, and he faces a working dilemma created just by mistake of his manager.
Employee scheduling change: sometimes manager may decide to update something on a general schedule, but forgets to update employee’s individual agenda (or at least to inform him about this change), so employee keeps working according to old variant, keeping old dates in mind.
Employee scheduling stress: a result of improvident scheduling when employee gets assigned to a couple of stressful activities within a short time period, which make his schedule too intensive (while it was possible to elude this situation), is moral and physical exhaustion.

According to conclusions provided by employee scheduling consultants we can say that one of the possible ways to prevent all these counter-productive problems is to apply special software, such as VIP Task Manager.

To assign project tasks to the team– do the following:

start your project planning software;
set a suitable layout of task groups (Task Tree mode);
set project timeline (Calendar mode) and target dates;
assign and schedule tasks and arrangements in terms of their costs, objectives, etc;
control project execution in real-time regime;

Project Teamwork and Collaboration

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

The difference between teamwork and collaboration is the following: when people collaborate they have to temporarily work together to pursue their own goals and interests, while people having teamwork are those who mutually support each other to reach their common objectives.

Project teamwork definition: it is a continuous joint collaborative endeavour of a workgroup that is united by the shared project ideology, terminology, common objectives and special mindset.

Project teamwork skills: self-organization and self-motivation, effective communications, problem-solving, developed social skills, result-oriented work planning, analytical skills, etc.

Project teamwork activities: regular meetings & discussions to analyze current situation to decide on how to move forward, work for quality improvement, regular progress reporting, providing help and coaching to each other, coordination of efforts to reach synergy in work, etc;

Before starting a new project, people who will participate in it are invited by project management to have special project teamwork exercises: teambuilding, learning project’s ideology and mission, etc, so the team gets prepared to cope with forthcoming challenges of collaboration. For Internet-based projects it is a common practice now to establish project teamwork websites where collaborators register their credentials and share their working matters.

VIP Task Manager is a program that helps you to collaborate in business or professional activities, as it is real-time teamwork software for planning, controlling and analyzing your time and tasks on the projects of different kinds.

To plan and analyze teamwork – do the following:

start your project management software;
set a suitable project management layout of tasks categories;
prioritize your project tasks;
plan and schedule tasks in terms of their costs, time, etc;
assign tasks to employees;
control performance parameters;

Top Time Management Productivity Tips

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

There are tons of time management productivity quotes that discover wisdom for us to learn. For example this one is quite revealing: “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift, that is why they call it the present.“ – Kung Fu Panda J

Time Management Productivity Pyramid: Governing Values (The Fundament) –> Long-Range Goals –> Intermediate Steps –> Daily Tasks (The Top of Pyramid). This is a conception of how your activities should be perceived – as things to pursue your long-range objectives that are regulated by your governing values (let’s say family’s welfare, material wealth, career, etc).

Top Time Management Productivity Advice:

Get Self-Organized;
Get Motivated;
Avoid getting Overcommitted (Learn to Say No);
Avoid Perfectionism;
To-Do list your actions (not wishes, not loose items, but just strict ACTIONS);
Carry out time planning every day and align your actions with greater goals;
Read time management productivity books such as GTD;
Study useful information across the Web to learn the live experience of time managers (such information can be found in a variety of time management productivity blogs);

VIP Task Manager is a program that enables us to carry out time management in business or professional activities, as it is real-time teamwork software for planning, controlling and analyzing your time and tasks on the projects of different kinds.

To plan and analyze your time – do the following:

start your project planning software;
set a suitable time management technique and ideas;
prioritize your tasks;
plan and schedule tasks and arrangements in terms of costs, target dates, etc;
control performance parameters;

What is Project Risk?

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Project risk can be regarded as a combination of probabilities of an event and its possible outcomes that are achieved within the lifecycle of some project. It covers threats and uncertain circumstances that may have an impact to a project as a whole or to certain results of the project in particular.

Project risks are usually combined into a single factor that negatively affects success of the project. Such a factor should be considered during the planning phase in order to increase the likelihood of successful project completion. Risks are opposite to opportunities which are another factor having a positive impact to the project. So when we talk about project success, we mean estimated probabilities of occurring both negative and positive factors (risks and opportunities).

Project risks are managed under an appropriate process. The risk management process is initiated during the planning phase of a project and performed throughout the entire lifecycle until the project is successfully completed and its product is delivered to the customer. The process has the following steps:

Identification. It is to identify possible events and circumstances having negative or positive effects to the project.
Analysis. This step is to analyze identified risks and opportunities and then find ways for mitigating or eliminating the risks and exploiting the opportunities.
Estimation. It is about estimating every analyzed risk and opportunity in order to develop a system of measurements for further monitoring and control.
Control. The final step is to track status of every risk and opportunity, measure their impact to the project, and take corrective actions in case some risk or opportunity gets out of control.

Project Organizer Tips: how to get rid of traditional managerial tools and methods

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Project organizer definition: it is a special type of different office tools (including office stationery and technologies) that assist you on keeping your project-related information, documents, tasks and other matters properly organized and optimally arranged. There are the following traditional elements of the project organizing system:

Project organizer storage – a special room in the office where project documents and files are stored in a systematized manner (archive) where authorized employees and managers can come to in order of accessing certain documentation. The modern facilitating solution is to digitize all project documents and organize them electronically to save a lot of time and energy every day.
Project organizer boxes – special personal cabinets in the office can be dedicated to storing files associated with jobs and tasks assigned to certain employees, so everyday each of employees once finishes his/her tasks, takes all documents into individual cabinet to lock them until the next morning. Modern project organizing systems enable to set up confidence across the project without using any physical means.
Project organizer supplies – as far as tons of blank papers, pens, inks, and other office essentials are utilized during the project’s flow, they should be stocked up beforehand in a great abundance. Modern software solutions are recommended as a way to establish a considerably cheaper and ecology-friendlier paperless workflow.
Project organizer books – in order to keep tracking over activities and tasks to be done, to keep statistics, to control budget, priorities and other matters special books where used (everyone had to carry and conduct project organizer notebooks to plan their agenda). Modern software makes all traditional paper-based means just irrevocably outdated.

Project management workflow can be controlled and managed with a help of special software such as VIP Task Manager that is designed to plan and control working tasks and calendars in real-time regime across the team of collaborators.

To assign project roles and tasks to the team– do the following:

start your project planning software;
set a suitable layout of task groups (Task Tree);
set project roles and user accounts (Resource List);
assign and schedule tasks and arrangements in terms of costs, time, etc;
control project execution in real-time regime;

What is Employee Scheduling?

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Employee scheduling definition: it is a regular managerial practice that stands for recording time-related workloads and assignments to let the workers and their managers control business time. Employee scheduling methods are dictated by a work-style employed at each specific enterprise and tools that are used to carry it out, so for instance if the accepted workflow requires the employees being rotated, then working shifts for everyone need to be scheduled on a special timetable exposed to the team members. Specific examples of employee scheduling methods:

Timetable of working shifts to regulate employee rotations;
Calendar-styled agenda for a day, week, month, etc;
Plain table-like roster of activities (to-do list with start dates and deadlines marked out);

Employee scheduling policies are also predefined by needs of organizational management, so in some organizations schedules are strictly delegated from upper management to lower levels, while employees usually don’t discuss these assignments, while in other organizations with a more liberal workflow scheduling may be performed by employees themselves. Employee scheduling laws are official regulations stating certain industrial requirements for scheduling to their protect employees from overwork, etc.

Employee scheduling summary: Any organization that wants to be effective with time management needs to plan and schedule activities of their employees not to miss any target dates or obligations.

VIP Task Manager is software for employee scheduling and controlling in real-time regime, and it is designed to help you with time management.

To schedule project tasks to the team– do the following:

start your project planning software;
set a suitable layout of task groups (Task Tree mode);
set project timeline (Calendar mode) and target dates;
assign and schedule tasks and arrangements in terms of their costs, objectives, etc;
control project execution in real-time regime;

Product Launch Guide: goals, essentials and tools

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Product Launch definition: it is a process of new product or service release on the market. It is vitally important to invent appropriate product launch strategy in order to introduce new product or service to its target audience and to boost it up on the market, pursuing the major product launch goals:

Informing a wider as much as possible share of target audience;
Introducing new products or services to the market via advertising and promotional events;
Capturing attention of customers with beneficial pricing and offers;
Fair sales forecasting, matching current market trends, and securing long-term sales growth;
Using fair product launch tricks (original ideas and methods), without any deceptions;

Successful Product Launch formula:

Robust product or service;
Right positioning;
Right time to enter the market;
Right way to approach target customers;
Effective advertising campaign with a profound message;

There are tons of product launch tips on the Web, as well as ideas, methods and techniques to correctly position, promote and introduce your products. Product launch process can be represented as a project, and therefore it can be managed using VIP Task Manager – a client-server program to manage tasks, time and objectives in collaboration with your product launch team.

To plan and analyze teamwork at new product launch – do the following:

start your project management software;
set a suitable project management layout of tasks categories;
prioritize your project tasks;
plan and schedule tasks in terms of their costs, time, etc;
assign tasks to employees;
control performance parameters;

Time Management Performance: why it is important and how to improve?

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Time management performance review: it is a way to define if a person copes well with his time to detect and avoid time wasting, distractions and counter-productive habits. The time management performance objectives are to define if an employee still possesses certain potential to become more productive through optimizing his/her practical approaches in managing time & tasks. This can be done via controlling if an employee regularly screws timings of tasks.

Usually time management performance measures are those which help to define if employee was focused at his duties at critical periods of time, so if, for example, the document which is normally prepared during two days appears done by employee in actually three day, then it is necessary to investigate how adding one excessive day can be explained – why the job took more time than it was allotted for it? And, therefore, what is the basis of inefficiency? Probably the employee is professionally incompetent or he was just loaded with over-commitment – was assigned to several competing tasks that didn’t let him being productive while performing any of them.

Time management performance appraisals are carried out with consideration of objective measures and different conditions that influenced employee’s efficiency, and with a help of special software to manage time management performance improvement plan which helps the managers to undertake these functions. VIP Task Manager is a program that allows us to control success in business or professional activities, as it is real-time teamwork software for planning, controlling and analyzing your time and tasks on the projects of different kinds.

To plan and analyze your time – do the following:

start your project planning software;
set a suitable time management technique and ideas;
prioritize your tasks;
plan and schedule tasks and arrangements in terms of costs, target dates, etc;
control performance parameters;

Time Management Guidelines: what are they, where to get them, and how to cope with?

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Time management guidelines business is a regular form of personnel consulting service rendered by professional consulting agencies to boost up performance at serviced organizations. The purpose of such a popular service is to help workers and their managers in coping with their duties and tasks in a smarter way to reach more productivity. Time management guidelines work for eliminating severe time-wasters, optimizing working schedules, rectifying wrong counter-productive approaches and behaviors, such as lack of prioritization and regular multitasking, etc. These time management services include cultivating proper time management guide skills: formulation of tasks, creating to-do lists and calendars, correct methods of prioritization, categorization of tasks, etc. Of course such a time management guide list can be much longer as time management is a discipline enriched by multiple theories and methods; however, it is not necessary to employ a consulting company to teach your employees to be more effective in this question. Different Internet portals are full of time management guide free articles and books. What can be really helpful for any modern organization is to employ some effective software product to plan and control their tasks and schedules, like one represented below.

VIP Task Manager is a program that allows us to establish time management guidelines in business or professional activities, as it is real-time teamwork software for planning, controlling and analyzing your time and tasks on the projects of different kinds.

To plan and analyze your time – do the following:

start your project planning software;
set a suitable time management technique and ideas;
prioritize your tasks;
plan and schedule tasks and arrangements in terms of costs, target dates, etc;
control performance parameters;

Collaboration Definitions: different kinds and software to manage

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Business collaboration definition: it is a regular (officially regulated and coordinated) process of mutual work-related interrelations between:

independent business entities;
units or members of one organization;
stakeholders of a business endeavor;
members of one workgroup;

A character of specific type of collaboration can vary from direct physical interactions at working operations, to informational support, coaching and guiding.

Enterprise collaboration definition: collaboration at enterprises is governed by functional needs, rational grounds, internal regulations, and local corporate culture. This kind of collaboration is sub-divided into several possible kinds, including the following ones:

Vertical collaboration definition: “manager-employees” model of collaboration meaning that a superior executive collaborates with lower subordinated managerial levels (usually it is about leading and governing the working processes, controlling and verification the working results).
Horizontal collaboration definition: “employee-employee” model when peer employees collaborate at their common (shared) working tasks, so it may take place for example within one department, team, etc.
Lateral collaboration definition: the rare practice (irregular) of working collaboration between cross-functional executives whose positions reside at different managerial lines and areas.

VIP Task Manager is a client-server program that allows establishing collaborative relations at workflow and tasks.

To perform collaborative tasks – do the following:

start your project planning software;
set a suitable layout of task groups to represent the project;
prioritize your tasks and define how to lead your group through them;
plan and schedule tasks and project arrangements in terms of target dates, costs, time, etc;
assign tasks to doers and control their productivity in real-time;

Task Training Guide

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Task management trainings can be arranged to educate personnel of organizations seeking for new ways to improve productivity of their employees, as far as not all people are taught to approach their workflows wisely enough to save business time and support their success. Such task based trainings are called to teach the staff members the following skills:

Planning their tasks and efforts on daily basis;
Prioritizing activities according to governing goals;
Using agenda management tools: notebooks, calendars, software, etc;
Task concentration trainings to avoid time-wasters and multitasking;

Task oriented trainings can be performed by specially employed business consultants (aka coaches, trainers). These task training guides can explain the conceptions of effective task management to your team, will help you to build up a system of keeping time and task management on track during the business activity, etc, but while this refers to principles, you still need a practical instrument to manage tasks in your company. This need can be easily satisfied with a help of VIP Task Manager that is a teamwork solution to plan, assign, track and prioritize your tasks.

To plan and analyze teamwork at tasks – do the following:

start your project management software;
set a suitable project management layout of tasks categories;
prioritize your project tasks;
plan and schedule tasks in terms of their costs, time, etc;
assign tasks to employees;
control performance parameters;

What is Schedule Estimate

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Schedule Estimation is an indispensable activity performed on the project planning phase. By this activity we aim to give a maximally accurate appraisal to the project timeline. Schedule estimate is to be well-elaborated, realistic and feasible as it gives a ground for setting up expectations on a date of obtaining the project�s results and deliverables. These expectations (along with certain allowance of delay) are to be officially documented in the project�s contract and signed by its stakeholders as the project�s due date which the project performers should be committed to.

Inaccurate estimation can lead to violating of these timeframes, and this issue can entail penalties applied against the project�s performers. Schedule estimating is composed from putting in order and estimating durations of the smaller schedule elements, such as activities or tasks. In order to make a proper project schedule estimation you need to have a set of certain items at your hands (availability of all these items will maximize accuracy of estimate):

Detailed outlook and a well-designed conception of work involved into the project;
Work breakdown structure (WBS);
Complete and systematized register of the actions to be done ;
The Critical Path of the project ;
Profound appraisal and opinions from concerned professionals and experts;
Previous experience on similar type of work performed in the past;
Assessment of risks which are forecasted to arise (for every task involved into the project);
Capacity and productivity of equipment and manpower available to the project;

What a Team Leader does?

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Today, the conception of new leadership is on a roll again. The main reason for this is seeking for more flexible, productive, innovative and profound methods in team management. There is no a single answer for question like “what a team leader should do?” as a conception of team leader nevertheless varies from industry to industry, but we can try to create an average image of modern team leaders through describing this role’s duties, functions and objectives.

Team Leader Functions:

Communicate team status, task accomplishment, and workflow dynamics to upper management;
Coordinate team’s self-organized efforts, external and internal contacts, and logistics;
Ensure deliverables are prepared to satisfy the project’s requirements, costs and schedule;
Ongoing teambuilding, facilitate decision-making, promote teamwork, etc;

Team Leader Duties:

Coach and guide employees on their tasks;
Motivate, inspire and support team members to reach excellence;
Manage interpersonal contacts to resolve and facilitate any conflicts;
Help the team to focus on right track and avoid false directions;
Encourage creativity, rational innovations and self-improvement;
Preside different meetings to assist on gaining win-win agreements;
Securing project’s scope and ideology from creeping;
Maintain healthy group environment, dynamics and effective collaborative pattern;

Team Leader Objectives:

Principles of teamwork are kept secured until the results of the project are at hands;
The team members have the necessary education & training to effectively work;
Incoming issues, conflicts and dysfunctional behaviors are being eliminated within the shortest terms;
Accomplishments and exceptional performance are fairly recognized and encouraged;

This is just a part of team leader key responsibilities. Executive who wishes to become a good team leader should do a lot of self-educating work to cultivate appropriate approaches. There are special software products that can help such a person in carrying out his/her leadership. For example, VIP Task Manager is designed to manage time and tasks of the team.

To lead the project team – do the following:

start your project planning software;
set a suitable layout of task groups and fill them with tasks to lead the team through;
prioritize team tasks and add instructions on how to perform them;
schedule tasks & project teambuilding arrangements in terms of costs, time, etc;
assign tasks to performers and supervise execution in real-time regime;

What are Process Requirements?

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Process requirements refer to a documented statement of needs a business organization intends to satisfy by identifying methodologies, approaches and techniques to be applied to producing a certain outcome (product or service) that materializes or realizes the initially stated needs. Process requirements establish rules and standards for planning and performing activities (workflows, processes, procedures, tasks).

Determining requirements for a process means stepping through the following sequence of tasks:

Gathering � the first task is to determine and collect initial needs and expectations of customers.
Analyzing � the second task is to review gathered data and ensure it is clear, complete, unambiguous, and consistent.
Recording � the final task is to create a requirements specification document and submit it to customers for validation.

In terms of project management, process requirements refer to one of the four types of project requirements. Along with business, product and resource requirements, process requirements serve as a foundation for eliciting, analyzing, specifying and validating needs and expectations of project stakeholders.

What is Schedule Overload?

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0100

Schedule overload is a time management term used to describe a situation when too many tasks and events are added to a given schedule so a person(s) responsible for that schedule can no more do the job timely and efficiently with the same intensity and resources available. Such a situation means there�s imbalance or unreasonableness in the number or extent of tasks and events put on the schedule.

When a schedule is overloaded the entire work effort to which it relates (for example, a project, business process, etc.) gets under risk of failure. Inefficient time management practice is the key reason for schedule overload. Here are other possible reasons:

Inefficient planning (when available human and time resources are inadequate allocated to tasks and events).
Poor communication (when planners and performers cannot efficiently exchange information with each other).
Lack of time and human resources (when a scheduled task cannot be done because there�re insufficient resources).

The problem of schedule overload can be successfully solved by taking the following preventive actions:

Avoid scheduling parallel or simultaneous tasks to be performed by one person at a time.
Set clear dependencies for scheduled activities.
Use priorities to define execution order.
Make preliminary assessments to determine an estimated amount of time and resources required to do scheduled activities.