Undocumented Features » Tools

PM Tools You Can Use: Klok

Stacey Douglas — Wed, 21 May 2008 13:12:39 +0000

Lifehacker recently featured a new time/project tracking software named Klok. I gave it a brief test drive and found that it’s light weight and easy to use. The user interface is friendly, easy to use, drag-and-drop goodness, but you won’t find the wide variety of features in a true project management software. Depending on what you’re trying to do, though, this can be a great thing.

If you need a lightweight tracking software, give klok a try!

Like this post? Buy me a cup of coffee.

PM Tools You Can Use: Excel Gantt Charts

Stacey Douglas — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:10:00 +0000

The folks over at Lifehacker posted a new Excel Gantt Chart template a while back. For those without formal project management software or that don’t want to bother with it, or that want to construct a simplified Gantt chart for distribution, or any number of other things, this could be handy. Take a look!

Like this post? Buy me a cup of coffee.

PM Tools You Can Use: Roundup of Cool Things

Stacey Douglas — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:03:46 +0000

Over the past weeks I’ve run across several handy tools that you may be able to put to good use:

Zoho has added a free suite of People Management and Recruiting Tools

Anyclient provides a free, no-install FTP client through your web browser

Firebug, a terrific browser add-on for debugging software, has ported its tools to IE8

Enjoy!

Like this post? Buy me a cup of coffee.

PM Tools You Can Use: Instant Monitoring of Any Website

Stacey Douglas — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 23:46:39 +0000

Here’s a handy pair of tools for monitoring any website, brought to us indirectly via Lifehacker:

Dapper, which is a free web service that will monitor any website for you and produce an RSS feed noting changes to that site.

RSS not your thing? Add in Web-alerts, which will forward text messages of RSS updates to your phone or SMS device.

Or, if you like nice, traditional email, there’s RSSfwd, which sends rss feeds to you as email.

If you are doing research, keeping up with the competition, want everyone to get updates when you update your project site, or any number of other uses, you’ll find this is a handy set of tools to have.

Enjoy!

Like this post? Buy me a cup of coffee.

PM Tools: Transport Large Files with Pipebytes

Stacey Douglas — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 21:43:31 +0000

One of the biggest pains of intercompany projects is often file transport. You have a file- a presentation, software manual, whatever- that is big enough that you can’t send it via email due to file attachment size limits on your email server. You can’t IM it due to security policies. You can’t this, you can’t that… sooner or later, you end up pleading to someone in IT Operation to let you set up an FTP site somewhere, which you have to wait for to be set up, go through hoops to get everyone access to the FTP site… the list of pain around this goes on and on, and I bet you’ve all dealt with it.

If you are lucky enough that your company has adopted some tool to help you around this (Sharepoint and similar portal products can be a blessing), good for you, but if not, Pipebytes is a handy new service for you. It’s private and controlled, unlike most P2P solutions. It is an ad-driven service (the service shows youtube videos with embedded ads while you wait for your file to transfer), but if you need to send a large file quick and don’t have a solution handy, the price is quite worth it. Give it a try!

Like this post? Buy me a cup of coffee.

PMing on the cheap: 25 Online Alternatives to Desktop Apps

Stacey Douglas — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 02:34:40 +0000

Here’s a useful list of tools to help you complete your projects:

The most useful looking tools among these are wufoo (for building forms and surveys), app2you (for quick online apps), gliffy (for visio-style drawings), and splashup (for image editing). All of these in particular are tools that are somewhat expensive and not always onhand when you need them.

Try them out and enjoy!

Like this post? Buy me a cup of coffee.

PM Tools You Can Use: Top Microsoft Templates of the Year

Stacey Douglas — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 19:34:28 +0000

Microsoft Templates Gallery is a nice place to go to grab a document template and take a shortcut on pulling things together sometimes- except you have to sort through it all to find just the right template (which can take longer than just doing the doc yourself). Never fear though, Microsoft recently surfaced their best templates for you. Here’s Microsoft Office 2007′s Templates of the Year.

Like this post? Buy me a cup of coffee.

PMing on the cheap: Free online Project Management Software

Stacey Douglas — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 17:24:28 +0000

New web application Project2Manage is a free online project management tool. It has quite a few useful features, such as:

To-Do lists
Task assignment
Project Milestones (with dates assigned)
Messaging
RSS Feeds
Project Sharing among multiple users
Unlimited projects
Multiple permission levels for users
Collaborative writing tools

What it does not have is the ‘heavy’ PM tools, such as detailed project plan building with the gantt charts and whatnot. It also doesn’t have other heavy PM tools like budgetting and resource allocation. It also has ads, but they are no more intrusive than a typical blog’s ad service. If you are building a small, informal project, this looks to be a great, free tool. There are definitely times when a lightweight tool is exactly the right tool for the job. This is a handy, free alternative for just such times.

Like this post? Buy me a cup of coffee.

Your Visual Desktop…

Stacey Douglas — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 22:00:36 +0000

Lifehacker ran a really odd and intriguing idea recently: mounting folders on your wall, like you have on your computer desktop. While there’s some offices where this isn’t such a good idea, I love the concept if done right. Here’s some ideas as to how one might use it well:

For your personal GTD:

Get the paper that holds material you need to take action on off the piles on your desk, out of the file cabinets, out of the innards of your briefcase, and into a location where they are obvious. Set a goal to keep the paper cleared all the time- i.e., take it out of the folders, read it, take action on it, and file it away in the old file cabinet or throw it away as appropriate once you’ve completed the action.

For Your Project Room:

For the room you use for managing your project(s)- your office or war room, for example, you can use it to gather all documentation related to a specific task or set of tasks and make it readily visible and available.

For Your Command Center:

Whatever room you use as your “command center” (this is my office nowadays): You can pull all the paper together regarding your active projects and put them in an obvious, visible place. When you are prepping for a meeting, reviewing, or planning, you can pull down all the relevant paperwork and access it at once.

You can, of course, do all of these things in a dozen other ways. I like this because it’s new and different- the fact that it’s new and different will shake things up. Small changes in the workplace often can spark positive results just because you’ve changed people’s routines and gotten their attention. This is especially useful when people need to improve on fundamentals around the office. It’s hard to improve an existing habit, but changing the way people do an action creates the opportunity to form a new and improved habit.

In the long term, I think people might get “numb” to the system and treat it like any other; at this point, you may need to shake things up again. I may try this in my new office after we rearrange our office space in a few weeks.

How do you ‘shake things up’ in your offices to stimulate more action? Anyone have any stories to share? If not, why haven’t you tried it yet?

Like this post? Buy me a cup of coffee.

PM Tools You Can Use: The Lifehacker Suite

Stacey Douglas — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 02:17:00 +0000

I was reminded recently of a huge list of useful tools for the locationless, virtual office. Most of the tools are free to boot! Check out this list of tools used at GTD blogging giant Lifehacker.

Like this post? Buy me a cup of coffee.