Podcast episode 050: wrike and pm 2.0
Today we talk with Andrew Filev. Andrew has been managing software teams since 2001 with the help of new-generation collaboration and management applications. His best practices are based on implementation of Enterprise 2.0 software in project management. Now Andrew is an expert in project management, a successful software entrepreneur and the CEO at Wrike.com, online project management software.
Andrew is also the author of some influential project management articles, including works for Cutter IT Journal, Web 2.0 Journal and Agile Journal. Andrew is often invited to speak at conferences, symposiums and seminars. Andrew has given speeches on new trends in project management and on implementing Enterprise 2.0 strategies. He spoke at such events as the PMI Silicon Valley Tools and Techniques Forum, Office 2.0 Conference, Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Project Management Symposium and others. Andrew’s ideas about improving traditional project management are reflected in his popular Project Management 2.0 blog (http://www.wrike.com/projectmanagement).
In today’s episode we find out more about Wrike and what Project Management 2.0 is all about. Plus we are giving away some more freebies!
Project Management 2.0
So, what is the difference between traditional project management and Project Management 2.0. Traditional project management is focused on the project manager being the center of the team’s communication hub. It places the manager in the center of the project work, as they need to collect all the information from team members, process it, and then communicate to various project stakeholders, including upper management. Project planning can especially be hard and time consuming since all the project information is concentrated only around a single person — the project manager. This contributes significantly to what a project manager spends 90% of their time doing – communicating.
New-generation project management tools make it possible to create a collaborative team space, and everyone involved in the project is able to contribute to the project work in this space. Project planning and communication is distributed around the whole team, and each team member has the full information on the project. Project progress is visible to everyone on the team. The project manager’s role is transformed from the traditional taskmaster to become a project visionary as they focus more on the right direction for the project development. The new-generation tools take away part of the typical traditional burden of project management and allows the project manager to focus more on leading the project team.
With Project Management 2.0 collective team insight and collaboration driving a project, people and businesses are accomplishing much more than when they did with traditional project management information funneling. With Project Management 2.0, the project management of a project is built around the work, rather than the work being forced to conform to a particular project management system. Collective intelligence systems, such as wikis, mashups, and dekis have allowed teams to share information more easily.
Now, New-generation technologies have brought collective intelligence into the project management process. and open the way to another successful practice, emergent structures, where the one-to-many approach of conventional Work Breakdown Structures (WBS) is replaced by a many-to-many approach of work package delivery.
Together, these powerful principles determine key differences between Project Management 2.0 and traditional project management:
- Bottom-up planning is utilized much more often and much more efficiently
- Tools help to communicate and reduce unnecessary burden
- Instead of using one work-breakdown structure that is designed before the project is started, multiple structures might be applied and they can evolve on the way.
Wrike
Wrike does a lot of routine work for you. It reminds your employees about overdue tasks, composes individual schedules for them. Neat Gantt Charts are automatically built from your emails by Wrike’s Intelligent Email Engine™. When it comes to planning and managing, Wrike’s Flexible Structures™ is the best solution. They enable you to apply several work-breakdown structures to the same project and easily merge different views into a bigger picture. You can share those views with different teams, build project schedule bottom-up and easily evolve the plan over time.
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- Wrike’s Intelligent Email Engine™ builds you a timeline from tasks that you email. Once you send an email with wrike@wrike.com in the CC field, the task is added to the project plan and appears on a timeline in Wrike.
- A timeline is one of the main instruments of a project manager. It allows you to plan projects more effectively and gives a better view of the project status. It focuses your attention on overdue tasks and critical project parts.
- Wrike’s timeline does even more. It gives you exactly the perspective you need. It nicely merges separate project parts into a bigger picture. Depending on your needs, you can browse a timeline for one employee or for your whole organization. You can drill down into the details or get an overview for a series of projects.
- Wrike saves you time on planning and rescheduling your projects. Thanks to the drag-and-drop feature, you can reschedule tasks right on a timeline. Wrike automatically communicates changes in the project plan to your team, doing one more routine job for you.
Overall use of these techniques help to increase productivity in many teams, especially in the cases, when either project plans need to change often, or team members are not located in one office building, or project manager is involved in several project teams simultaneously.
There are applications that bring Project management 2.0 practices to enterprises. Some of these project management tools, besides collaboration, may offer functions like reports, Gantt charts and overdue notifications. These features follow the progress of projects and increase project work productivity.
Free Product Giveaway!
I want to thank Andrew Filev for being on the show and I want to also remind you that Andrew is giving away 1 free annual subscription to Wrike and 20 additional 20% off discounts to the first pm411.org listeners that contact him at sales@team.wrike.com with pm411.org in the subject line. So be sure to enter right away to win either a free annual subscription or one of the 20 discounted subscriptions.[ad]