What are Gantt charts and are they essential for project management?

Project management involves numerous operations being done simultaneously. It is like juggling a dozen balls and having to keep one’s eye on all of them. The challenge here is on how organizations can make sure that all processes are completed and quality output is delivered.

Two of the most important elements of project management are time and budget. A project needs to be completed within a given period and a pre-defined budget. If it does not meet the deadline, the budget may be depleted which may cause even more delays. Thankfully, numerous project management tools help organizations meet these crucial elements and track their projects. These include Trello, Basecamp, Monday.com, AceProject, and Asana, to name a few. To enhance their features for progress tracking, they use third-party integrations like Gantt charts.

What is a Gantt chart?

A Gantt chart is a tool used to provide a view of tasks that are displayed against time. It contains the course of a project, along with all the elements involved in it. It is […]

By |2020-01-21T14:55:05-05:00January 21, 2020|

Agile project management: 4 lessons learned this year

Project management may now be considered as one of the most popular and widely-practiced fields today. More organizations have become involved in handling projects while the number of software for project management continues to grow. Moreover, various project management methodologies have sprouted and among these is the Agile methodology.

What is Agile Methodology?

Project managers may be familiar with it but here is additional information for those who want to know more. The Agile methodology uses the iterative approach to delivering output throughout the life cycle of a project. This means that the project is broken into stages which are called sprints and the team collaborates with the stakeholders.

There are basically four main values of Agile which are:

  1. Putting more importance on the use of software than on documentation
  2. Working hand-in-hand with customers over negotiating a contract
  3. Being more open to change than sticking to a plan
  4. Choosing individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Lessons learned this year about Agile Methodology

The Agile […]

By |2020-01-21T14:50:28-05:00January 21, 2020|

Top 10 Best Hive Tutorials – Training and Courses

Hive is a project management tool that provides the solution for seamless collaboration for project management teams and individuals. Regardless of the business’ size, Hive makes it easier to complete tasks and deliver quality project outputs. It was designed by its creators, John Furneaux and Eric Typaldos, to be suitable for all businesses across various industries. Hive allows teams to use it as a tool for centralized communication through its native chat and email integration. Moreover, it offers various project layouts wherein users can easily switch between them for easier organization. They can choose among the calendar, Gantt chart, Kanban board, and table for their convenience.

The Top 10 Tutorials

Hive is a project management tool that combines the capabilities of other software to become the go-to software for collaboration. It is easy to use but there are various tutorials that help users make the most of its features. Here are the top 10 Hive tutorials that are worth reading and watching.

1. Edureka

By |2020-01-21T14:15:20-05:00January 21, 2020|

Top 10 Best Todoist Tutorials – Training and Courses

Todoist is the top to-do software in the market today, helping project management teams stay at the top of the competition. Many organizations choose it for its myriad of great features that promote productivity and team efficiency. Todoist automates many processes which users would otherwise have to do manually for long periods of time. It helps users organize their tasks, create schedules, and set deadlines. Todoist is even better because it is a freemium app that also offers a premium plan which provides more features and capabilities. With Todoist, teams are more efficient and productive and are able to deliver outputs that exceed expectations.

The Top 10 Tutorials

Todoist has numerous features that make it a great online tool for project management. Among the best capabilities is allowing its users to track their projects and getting their work organized. With this, teams can focus on more important tasks from their to-do list without missing anything important. Like other software, there are tons of tutorials online that can be […]

By |2020-01-21T11:38:37-05:00January 21, 2020|

Do you need a certification to be a project manager?

Project management is a steadily growing field wherein numerous teams and organizations manage workflow and various projects. Project managers are at the top of these projects and are responsible for overseeing the members, clients, and projects. These team leaders need to have the right knowledge, experience, and qualifications to do their job. They have a variety of duties which include creating and implementing budgets, managing staff and team resources, coordinating tasks and their assignees, and understanding the technological needs of every assignment, among others.

Because of the uniqueness of the job and the demand for project managers, many of them have opted to reinforce the existing skills and knowledge they have by getting certified. Various universities are already offering certification courses these days both online and onsite. There are undergraduate and graduate courses for project managers; some of which can be completed in two years or less. Depending on the target of the course, these courses may focus on leadership, risk management, communications, budgeting, technology, negotiations, and performance […]

By |2020-01-01T15:30:51-05:00January 1, 2020|

What are the skills a good project management should have?

Project management is a job that may not be as popular as most other jobs are. If young kids are asked about what they want to become when they grow up, project managers may not be among the top answers. In fact, not a lot of people know much about the industry and the people who do it. There are so many misconceptions about it which is why it is necessary to set the record straight and define and describe project management.

What is project management?

In order to define project management, it is first necessary to define the word ‘project’. A project has a distinct start date and end date which makes it temporary. However, it is unique because it is not a routine operation but involves a set of operations aimed to accomplish a specific goal. Moreover, a project can involve various people who come from various departments who are brought together to work on a common task.

Examples of projects are the construction of a building, development […]

By |2019-12-20T07:03:21-05:00December 20, 2019|

What are the differences between a project manager and a product manager?

The competition among businesses is getting tougher by the day. Apart from the pressure to stay at the top, they also have to continue to work within their budget. This is oftentimes the reason why many employees work multiple roles. Being a skilled and competent worker can be one of the reasons. However, most often than not, their employers had no choice but to stretch their roles as a resource utilization strategy.

Among the positions that a single person usually holds at the same time are Project Manager and Product Manager. The two sound really similar and are both managerial positions, so it may seem like it is a sound decision. Unfortunately, the opposite is almost always true. To be able to understand this better, a closer and more detailed look at these two job titles is necessary.

Project vs. Product

The words that have to be defined first are project and product.

A project is a one-time endeavour that has a definite start date and end date. It is usually […]

By |2019-12-20T04:07:26-05:00December 20, 2019|

Simpletivity – A YouTube Channel Review

Channel Overview

The Simpletivity YouTube Channel is owned and managed by Scott Friesen who is an advocate of productivity. He helps people become more productive and efficient in the midst of their busy schedules by speaking and training various groups. Moreover, he also does Trello consulting to teams who want to master using this productivity software. And when he is not doing that, he uses the Simpletivity YouTube Channel to provide helpful videos on technology apps, productivity tips, and time management ideas. The channel is beneficial to business owners, entrepreneurs, and professionals who want to be more productive and get the most out of their day. Simpletivity has been creating videos on YouTube since August 17, 2015, and has more than 5 million views.

Description of Videos

The Simpletivity YouTube Channel has more than 200 videos that cover virtually all topics under the sun in relation to productivity. The topics range from serious project management issues and using Pm software to tricks in starting one’s day right. There […]

By |2019-12-13T04:19:19-05:00December 13, 2019|

Best Apps to Keep your Remote Team Connected

Project management is a fast-growing industry that involves the work and cooperation of people from everywhere. Because of this, the remote work set-up has grown more popular where teams are composed of people from all over the world. Though team members and their project managers are separated by thousands of miles, they are still able to collaborate and deliver quality output.

What is a remote team?

A remote team is also called a virtual team which is composed of a small number of people whose skills complement each other. From the term itself, they are not located in a commonplace but are distributed in different places. This team works on common projects and has aimed to deliver quality output in a timely manner.

More specifically, a remote team’s members are not co-located but they work directly for their manager who makes sure they deliver defined work.

In order for remote teams to succeed, they need to overcome the challenges of distance and time difference. The manager needs to be sure that […]

By |2019-12-12T04:17:06-05:00December 12, 2019|

Top podcasts about project management

The world’s technology is fast-growing and ever-changing. Gone are the days of antenna TV after it was replaced by cable and satellite. Today, fewer people watch TV as they instead go to YouTube and other online streaming sites. Even the radio is out and in came the podcast.

The podcast is also commonly known as ‘on-demand internet radio talks’ and was coined by combining the words ‘pod’ and ‘broadcast’. Pod means the portable device called the iPod and broadcast means something similar to a radio broadcast. Podcasts are audio recordings of a host and a guest speaker conversing with each other. It could also be a monologue of a single person sharing his thoughts on a particular subject or topic. The topics are so varied that it can be about anything from marketing and business to yoga, travel, and project management.

Podcasts about project management have been around for quite some time now and offer insightful tips for succeeding in the industry. These are especially important to project managers […]

By |2019-12-11T05:30:42-05:00December 11, 2019|
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