Business Courses

PRINCE2 Goes from Strength to Strength

Like it or loath it, PRINCE2 is here to stay.

Since being re-launched in 1996 PRINCE2 has gone from strength to strength, becoming the UK de-facto standard for project management. Originally branded for the management of IT projects, the second version brought PRINCE away from IT into the general project management arena.

The UK is the main user of the methodology, which was developed originally by the UK Government for use in the public sector thirteen years ago. Since then it has been adopted by the private sector and is now starting to spread beyond these shores. Countries in which PRINCE2 is becoming established include the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Spain, South Africa, Australia, India and even the United States.

With organisations realising the importance of project management, its perhaps not so surprising that in the UK around 250 people a day are taking the PRINCE2 Foundation and Practitioner exams. This may also be attributed to the fact that it is easier to adopt an existing project management methodology than to create your own, with all the cost and time that involves. Estimates in Project Manager Today magazine (August 2002) say that the cost of developing a project management methodology is between £100.000 and £250.000

The good news for business is that it has never been easier to learn PRINCE2 and become certified with a whole host of APM Group accredited training companies to choose from. The best way to learn PRINCE2 is by attending one of the many accredited public courses being run throughout the UK.

The APM Group is an internationally recognised provider of qualifications in PRINCE2. The schemes supporting the methodology have gain recognition by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS). This is the first time a qualification scheme aimed at Project Management Professionals has achieved this recognition.

UKAS is the sole accreditation body recognised by the British Government, against internationally recognised standards, organisations that provide certification, testing, inspection and calibration services.

The APM Group have approved 22 accredited training organisations that have successfully steered nearly 8000 candidates through their PRINCE2 practitioner's examination. At present UKAS accreditation is restricted to the PRINCE2 programmes in the UK, there are plans to introduce it to APM Groups activities in Australia and The Netherlands.

At Project Smart, we are asked about PRINCE2 more than any other methodology. Most people have only heard good things and often wonder what its shortcomings are. It's not easy to criticise PRINCE2 but sometimes it can be seen as bureaucratic. This is usually before people realise how easy it is to tailor to their particular needs. As with any other methodology, you should use the bits that work for you and discard the rest. Don't be too religious in trying to follow the method to the letter.

In recent Gartner Group research, they found that, "over the next 3 years project management will become one of the top five major strategic issues that most managers will have to address to be successful," so things have never looked so good for PRINCE2 and its like.

Peter Krischel, President of Krischel Group believes, "PRINCE2 is eventually going to become the spider in the web that will link up with all the other so called project management methods and PRINCE2 will become THE standard to be used by ISO quality management for quality control of project environments."

One thing is certain, like it or loath it, PRINCE2 is here to stay.

Private Companies Weigh Employee Stock Options

Q: I understand that Entrex has brought public market standards and disciplines to the private market. What does this mean for my employees and the possibility of stock ownership or options?

- Al Davenport, business owner, Pompano Beach, Fla.

A: This is a great opportunity to show your employees the value they bring to your company. Just imagine if employees could actually see quantifiable gains and losses in the value of the company through their efforts.

Public companies have the advantage of being able to option employees with shares that have quantifiable value. Now, by following the standards for public company disclosures and reporting, private companies and their shareholders can measure performance against established benchmarks.

As a company owner, you have the choice of providing limited distribution of company data or offering wide access to the community of alternative investors. In either case, by participating in the private company market, you provide employees the means of having a tangible quarterly valuation of their stock and ultimately, the possibility of liquidating their shares.

You didn't mention whether you have an actual employee stock ownership plan program, or if you have limited distribution of stock to key employees. While ESOPs may provide liquidity for the founding shareholder, new owner/employees have generally fewer liquidity options, because they have limited exposure to the financial community.

The private equity market provides a vehicle for companies to gain exposure, allowing their stock to trade freely among alternative investors. By simply following industry-accepted valuation principles, owners, optioned employees and external investors can acquire shares, track share value and know their liquidity options.

Product Idea: Add On To An Existing Product

Recently I had a conversation with Andi Sikumbang, the person who owns and manages templateplazza.com.

He gave me some information which I want to share it with you. He made me aware of how to make money from open source project like joomla.org.

As you might be aware, joomla is one of the most successful open source software on the web and it’s written with php and most of the webmasters are familiar with it.

So now the question in your mind must be -how can we make money from successful software?

Let me first tell you on how Andi Sikumbang earns over $2000 from his website selling joomla templates.

The site makes it’s money through membership subscription.

He offers yearly membership template for only $35. This is amazing because he started his collection with only 5 templates and it sold very well. He now has 9 templates and still keeps attracting new members.

Did you get an idea? If you are able to fulfill a demand of the market, then even you have little to offer, people will come and take it. The most important point here is that you may have little but that little should be of high quality.

Now let’s look at how to start a software business based on joomla project as successfully demonstrated by Templateplazza.com.

There is an add on software for joomla which is called ‘extension’. In other words it’s a plug-in system where you will need the main software (joomla) to run it.

At the joomla website (http://extensions.joomla.org/), you’ll see a huge collection of extentions developed by some individual or a company. Most of them are free. Our purpose is to make money. So use the advance search option to look for commercial extentions.

I found about 60 commercial software based on joomla. The price varies, ranging from tens to hundreds of dollars.

This is a good business idea and the main advantage is that you do not need to build community, they and their community will be happy to promote your software.

This way you already are a step ahead and need to concentrate only on developing the product.

Profitability - Pricing Strategies To Make Money

At a meeting the other day, a marketing consultant opened her talk by asking the group, "What are you worth?" She went on to discuss all the different ways we minimize our worth or discount our value in desperate attempts to close the sale. After all the pitfalls of pricing and selling were laid out, she closed the talk by asking again, "What are you worth?" The responses around the room were very entertaining as people began to realize or give themselves permission to adjust their prices to make a profit!

As a wakeup call for your own business, I want to give you some options to consider ensuring your pricing delivers the profitability you deserve.

1. Educate your customers. When prospects approach you or calls/emails you for an estimate/quote, this is a buying signal. They are telling you they are ready to buy and willing to spend money to purchase your expertise. - Provide superior service and they won't look elsewhere and won't blink at your price. Excellence is priceless.

2. Many prospects perceive value and price as equal. A lower price can actually hurt your credibility and sales because they associate the best quality products and services with premium pricing. Listen to your customers. - Do some competitive research and be sure you are not shorting yourself.

3. Periodically calculate your profit margin to be sure what you charge, after expenses and overhead, pays you a good living. Covering expenses, overhead and payroll is not enough.

4. Periodically do the numbers to be sure that the actual cost/hour and price/hour give you the necessary profit margin. Your daily rate may sound reasonable. But if you bill for 7 or 8 hours and put in 12 -14 hours, you may actually be paying yourself less than your lowliest employee or intern.

5. There are ways to keep your prices fixed to maintain value and yet be flexible. Add the flexibility by designing different bundles of services or different packages of hours/month or hours/project to be contracted.

6. Set your fees just a bit above what you feel comfortable asking for. Then, bump them up incrementally until clients complain or you stop getting reorders.

7. When asked, be upfront about your prices, and then zip it. Do not apologize for your prices, defend your prices, or justify how you derived the price.

8. Yes, there are strategic times when negotiating a price is in your best interest. For example: a unique packaging of services for a new type of client, or the pilot or beta testing of a new product or program.

9. If you still think your initial consultation/sales presentation with a client should be for free, set some boundaries and expectations and clearly state the value and your investment in preparing for that initial consultation. Another way to approach this is to charge for the initial consultation at your full rate and if they purchase your product or service, that fee gets applied to the final invoice payment.

10. If you close the sale and get paid on that one sale but provide value-added services of following up in a number of ways, are you losing money from the opportunity costs? Maybe you can charge a small premium to provide stellar customer service. Clients will value it more if they have to pay for it.

You have to appreciate what you are worth before your clients will. Decide what you are worth in the marketplace. Be sure your fee or rate has a profitability factor built in. You are worth it.

Profitability - Pricing Strategies To Make Money

Project Management - Dealing With Information Overload

You probably are aware by now how critical project management is for your bottom line. Organizations all over are tuning in to the effect of project management to meet it's defects in the face of astronomical demands posed by the digital age.

Right now professionals are required to perpetually learn the bleeding edge project management techniques including perhaps pursuing the project management professional status or PMP for short.

This identification involves a rigorous examination process as well as grueling course of study. Experience levels within the actual field of project management itself is also critical to attain this coveted status. Once a professional has arrived at it, he or she must retake certification updates it every now and then in order to be able to continue to use that designation.

This certification was created by the Project Management Institute which is considered the world's leading authoritative organization when it comes to the occupation of project management.

So as a current or future PMP, how does one keep up-to-date with such a vast array of references that's available and growing (beyond the internet, intranet, and proprietary knowledge)? One thing you can do is use RSS readers to organize and keep up to date with your favorite blogs and news feeds which allows you to keep up to date with the entire industry within a glance.

The nice thing about reading blogs from various project management and PMP certified pros is that you will get an insiders view into various cultures, industries, and corporate policies as it relates to the application of the Project Management body of knowledge.

Be sure to join local networking clubs within your area to pick the brains of some of the thought leaders and executives who are focused on this stringent subject. This is one of the best ways to stay ahead and learn tricks of the trade that will literally save you hundreds upon hundreds of hours of time through learning by way of trial and error.

Project Management - Design and Development Projects

There’s no getting away from it, design and development projects are a nightmare to manage successfully, particularly the development of software. Nonetheless, in these days of customers requiring ever increasing functionality and ever more sophisticated technology, they are sometimes necessary.

Your company almost certainly has procedures in place such as Make or Buy (do you design/build the item yourselves or do you sub-contract) and Design to Cost (you’ve estimated how much it will cost, now make sure that it doesn’t run over budget. The Make/Buy procedure should have been used when compiling the bid and the advantages and disadvantages in terms of capability, price, programme and risk between procuring from internal or external sources analysed. The availability of required technology should have been ascertained.

The Design to Cost process should also have been part of the programme from its inception through the bidding stage but it too should be reviewed at this stage. If a significant cost/risk reduction can be achieved by changing your approach, it may well pay dividends in the end.

There are a number of things to consider in respect to design. Firstly, you don’t have to design from scratch. It may be that there are two pieces of electronics out there already which will do the job that your project wants and all they need is a piece of software or hardware to make them talk to each other. That is far preferable to designing the whole piece of kit from square one and far less risky. Make sure that your engineering fraternity know this. Bear in mind that, since you compiled your bid and did the initial technical assessment, technology may have moved on and something which didn’t exist then may well be on the market now. It’s worth a little time and effort to review your design decision and confirm that it’s still a valid one.

Rule number one for the Project Manager is that he must never forget that engineers are just that. They love to tinker and play, they love to solve technical problems and they will almost certainly be unaware of how long it’s taking or how much it’s costing. As the Project Manager, you will have to keep a firm eye on what they’re doing as even your Technical Lead may get carried away with the excitement of an emerging new technology.

If you really must design hardware, or heaven forbid, software, make sure that plenty of checks and tests are built into your plan along the way. It’s very easy to fall behind time on a design and development job.

Another important point is to liaise with your customer all along the way. There’s no point finishing a stunningly clever design only to have your customer tell you that he forgot to say way back that your electronic gizmo needs to be operational in temperatures of 100 degrees Centigrade.

In a nutshell, don’t reinvent the wheel, keep things as simple as possible and get customer approval as you go along. Above all, as the Project Manager, the ultimate responsibility is yours, so don’t sit back and just let the techies get on with it - manage them. This should ensure the smooth running of your design project.

Project Management: Performance Metrics Matter

A study has shown that many project managers do not sufficiently keep track of the performance metrics of their teams. This results in consistent cost overruns, going over schedule, failing to meet expectations in quality, and seeking new employment elsewhere. Think about it, what are you managing really if you don’t even know the metrics? Is management merely a process of simply checking off to do lists for you? It shouldn’t be. Here’s why.

In order for management to make decisions, data is critical. Data shows helps you define your benchmarks, and also define forecasts for improving upon baselines for continued company expansion and growth. Things such as Total Quality Management, Improvement Teams, Standards and Measurement departments, Process Management, Quality Circles, Six Sigma, etc are not just buzz words people. Pick a system for measuring and quantifying your data and quickly measure the lifeline of your project vis a vis your overall goals. Find out where your bottlenecks are, find out where the cost overruns are taking place, and quickly identify why your Widget sales are declining before it becomes an irreversible money draining problem. This allows you then to take action whether hiring an operations consultant to integrate processes, or in the decision to release staff in certain non-critical areas.

Metrics need to be constantly monitored and measured. Charts, graphs, and summary data need to be reviewed on a regular time table whether it’s weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis. From then you can then navigate your business or department towards a profitable plateau. Failure to comply with these very basic performance metrics analysis could result in flushing valuable time, money, employee morale, and reputation down the proverbial toilet if these things are ignored in your project or managerial role.

A rule of thumb is that ANY system in place for measuring performance metrics is better than having none at all. If you are in a dynamic environment and already have 2 or 3 projects in the air, then feel free to gradually introduce these factors based on your industry line.

Project Management - The Plans

When you put the bid together, one of your most important pieces of documentation was the Project Management Plan. This document will be your bible from now on, in particular the programme plan, which will take the form of a bar chart or similar and which you will probably want to pin onto the wall of your office. This will show you the state of the project at a glance, including all the important dates and milestones, especially payment milestones. If your plan was formulated using detailed activities for each milestone, you will need to check with the milestone owners that these are still valid. If you didn’t use detailed activities, you might want to start now. I firmly believe that the secret of successful Project Management is attention to detail. In a complex project, it is all too easy to lose track of some seemingly insignificant little job or item which turns out to be vital to the conclusion of a milestone. Get your team to think of every tiny little thing that they will need, especially for the early milestones and make sure that the plan is always up to date.

One of your early milestones will almost certainly be to formally issue all your other documents as well as the Project Management Plan, as these will have been at draft issue only for the bid. This means organising the review and signing off by senior personnel of your Quality Plan, Development Plan (if any), Sub-Contract Management Plan and Configuration Management Plan, to name but a few. These will then require delivery to and acceptance by, your customer.

Your Risk Management Plan is another priority and will also need constant update and review. Make sure that your Risk Manager checks with all risk owners that they haven’t any new information which may affect the handling of an early risk. For example, say one of your risks was that one of your software engineers would only be available to you part time because Project X was approaching a crucial milestone and might need extra resources. Your Technical Lead now tells you that Project X has achieved that milestone with no problems and won’t need your software engineer. You can now knock that risk off your list, you don’t need to worry about it any more and you won’t need to put the fall back or mitigation plans in place. Risk Management is a complex subject so we won’t delve into it further here, suffice to say, it is crucial to good project management.

Lastly, on the subject of plans, make sure that your Procurement Manager is monitoring the plans needed from your sub-contractors, if any. These may be stand-alone plans for complex sub-contracts or may just be a contributory paragraph to some of your project plans. Either way, they still need to be delivered in time for project management review and inclusion in the delivery of your document package to your customer.

Praise Matters

In working with businesses and organizations of all kinds, I hear the same concerns everyday:

How do we increase productivity?

How do we improve Customer service?

How do we keep people actively engaged in their work and with others on their team?

How do we reduce turnover?

How do we improve safety?

Even if you aren’t thinking about or concerned about every one of those questions, I’m sure at least one of them has kept you up at night in the past.

As leaders we think about these things because they impact the success of the organization. As coaches we think about how to impact these things day-to-day, person-by-person.

As a coach, someone helping people improve their performance for the benefit of both the individual and the organization, there are typically two types of feedback that you could provide on their performance at anytime. Constructive feedback (sometimes called criticism) and positive feedback (which I will call praise).

Forgetting the words for a minute, these two types of information are important to anyone trying to do anything better. We need to know what we aren’t doing quite right, so we can adjust, and we need to know what we are doing well, so we can replicate that. Makes sense doesn’t it?

Now, let’s look at the words. I looked up criticism in my thesaurus and here is what I found:

“1. censure, faultfinding, disapproval, condemnation, disparagement 2. a judgment, evaluation, appraisal, analysis, assessment, estimation, valuation, 2 b critique, review, commentary.

I also looked up the word praise, and found:

“v. 1 acclaim, laud, applaud, pay tribute to, compliment, commend, eulogize, extol, honor, sing the praises of, pay homage to, endorse…”

Now, think about these two lists of synonyms. Granted, not all of them make sense in a business context, but ask yourself these questions:

· Which of these things have I received more of in my professional life?

· Which of them motivates and inspires me to strive for greater achievement and higher performance?

And now with your coach’s hat on, think about these questions:

· Which of these things do I share more often?

· Which will help me most inspire and motivate others to reach their potential?

If you are like me and most everyone I’ve ever discussed this with, you have received more negative, “constructive” feedback than positive, encouraging feedback at work. And you believe that with more encouragement or praise you might have been more successful quicker.

The point in two words?

Praise matters.

Want some more proof?

According to a Gallup survey outlined in the book, How Full is Your Bucket? 61% of American workers received no praise at work last year. 61%! And the #1 reason people leave their jobs is because the feel unappreciated.

It is undeniably true. You can prove it from your personal experiences and from the hard data. Praise matters. And it is vastly underused as a coaching tool by most people most of the time.

As you finish reading this and walk away from your desk and begin interacting with people (whether you coach them or not), keep these things in mind:

· Everyone needs recognition and reassurance. Hopefully the exercise and the data above confirm this fact for you.

· Praise gives us pride in our jobs. Given a choice, would you rather have people who take pride in their work, or not?

· Praise generates enthusiasm and commitment. Committed people can work miracles, so it pays to build commitment.

· Praise builds loyalty. What are the real and hidden costs of employee turnover?

· Praise prevents people from feeling taken for granted. When people feel taken for granted they are less committed and loyal, aren’t they?

· Praise motivates us to “go the extra mile.” The extra mile is often where we find satisfied customers, higher returns and more.

· Praise improves our relationships. Would you like to have better relationships with those you lead, coach and work with?

· Praise takes hardly any time and costs nothing. There are few things in life that can produce such great returns for such a small investment.

Get that praise tool out of your toolbox. Dust it off and allow it to become shiny with use. It is an easy tool to use. It is a fun tool to use. You might even want to take it out of your mental toolbox and lay it on top of your desk so you remember to use it more often.

If you want answers to the questions at the beginning of this article, start with praise, because praise matters.

Project Management - You Give Me The Feature Creeps

The caliber of the project management you have merged into your job or department can mean the difference between holding out and flighing high in a very no holds barred industry that you serve. It's very crucial to understand the evolution of a project management lifecycle and avoid skirting or skipping important upfront issues from the outset.

It's also very important to understand the concept of not over analyzing a problem or being paralyzed to a point where further action is not being carried out. A dreadful opponent to you in this case would be "Feature Creep" where individuals from the department keep changing their minds on requirements or have new ideas on better ones.

Beware of feature creep as it will rear it's ugly head at every step of every stage you encounter of your project. Things such as that, as well as losing focus on the core objectives will typically result in project failure because a core component or stage of the project is not able to move forward.

Leadership in this examples is utterly critical in order to prevent mishaps, and total project disasters from happening. These usually are not only a waste of time, resources, but a major drain on employee morale and faith in the leadership of the entire organization.

It's critcally important to phrase a communication strategy before the project begins. Make sure to sit down with the clients and constituencies during a set agenda and with set goals as well as a decided upon methodology to capture and organize requirements from everyone who has a stake in the project you are working on. Otherwise they will call you up every five minutes and give you new requirements or ask you to alter existing ones.

Needless to say, this is not a very productive use of your time nor is it of theirs. A solid big picture view of all the project needs has to be looked at before moving forward with the actual implementation. This due diligence will take up a bit more time in the beginning but will save lots of time, money, headaches, and potentially broken relationships down the line.

Project Management Software: What It Can Provide

Project management software is a software program that is designed to allow you to manage all aspects of your project needs effectively. There are various types of this software available but most will allow for complete management from the beginning through completion. Here are some of the things that you can expect to get out of the project management software that you choose.

• It is able to be purchased to include scheduling and communication needs.
• It will provide for you such things as resource allocation, collaboration software, and documentations software as well.
• It has the ability of working on some of the most complex of projects and the simplest.

There are several types of project management software. It can be a desktop application. It is also possible for it to be a web-based software solution to allow access from remote locations as needed. It can be a personal setup allowing only a few to access it or it can be a collaborative set up which would allow for several more people to access it. It can also be integrated to allow for the most availability and use.

These project management software solutions can work for various types of organizations. They can be purchased in set situations or they can be customized for your specific needs. You’ll find that they can provide excellent ability when customized for the business’s particular uses.

There are various reasons why this software application can work for you. You’ll find so much selection in them that there is sure to be something that can better organize your project no matter how large or small. Even better, you’ll find all of your options available to you right here on the web. Comparing features and specifics about each type of software solution will lead to the best overall choice. This is simple to do online.

Project Management - You Give Me The Feature Creeps

Project Management Success with the Top 7 Best Practices

Managing a project can be daunting. Whether planning your wedding, developing a new website or building your dream house by the sea, you need to employ project management techniques to help you succeed. I'll summarise the top 7 best practices at the heart of good project management which can help you to achieve project success.

Define the scope and objectives

Firstly, understand the project objectives. Suppose your boss asks you to organise a blood donor campaign, is the objective to get as much blood donated as possible? Or, is it to raise the local company profile? Deciding the real objectives will help you plan the project.

Scope defines the boundary of the project. Is the organisation of transport to take staff to the blood bank within scope? Or, should staff make their own way there? Deciding what's in or out of scope will determine the amount of work which needs performing.

Understand who the stakeholders are, what they expect to be delivered and enlist their support. Once you've defined the scope and objectives, get the stakeholders to review and agree to them.

Define the deliverables

You must define what will be delivered by the project. If your project is an advertising campaign for a new chocolate bar, then one deliverable might be the artwork for an advertisement. So, decide what tangible things will be delivered and document them in enough detail to enable someone else to produce them correctly and effectively.

Key stakeholders must review the definition of deliverables and must agree they accurately reflect what must be delivered.

Project planning

Planning requires that the project manager decides which people, resources and budget are required to complete the project.

You must define what activities are required to produce the deliverables using techniques such as Work Breakdown Structures. You must estimate the time and effort required for each activity, dependencies between activities and decide a realistic schedule to complete them. Involve the project team in estimating how long activities will take. Set milestones which indicate critical dates during the project. Write this into the project plan. Get the key stakeholders to review and agree to the plan.

Communication

Project plans are useless unless they've been communicated effectively to the project team. Every team member needs to know their responsibilities. I once worked on a project where the project manager sat in his office surrounded by huge paper schedules. The problem was, nobody on his team knew what the tasks and milestones were because he hadn't shared the plan with them. The project hit all kinds of problems with people doing activities which they deemed important rather than doing the activities assigned by the project manager.

Tracking and reporting project progress

Once your project is underway you must monitor and compare the actual progress with the planned progress. You will need progress reports from project team members. You should record variations between the actual and planned cost, schedule and scope. You should report variations to your manager and key stakeholders and take corrective actions if variations get too large.

You can adjust the plan in many ways to get the project back on track but you will always end up juggling cost, scope and schedule. If the project manager changes one of these, then one or both of the other elements will inevitably need changing. It is juggling these three elements - known as the project triangle - that typically causes a project manager the most headaches!

Change management

Stakeholders often change their mind about what must be delivered. Sometimes the business environment changes after the project starts, so assumptions made at the beginning of the project may no longer be valid. This often means the scope or deliverables of the project need changing. If a project manager accepted all changes into the project, the project would inevitably go over budget, be late and might never be completed.

By managing changes, the project manager can make decisions about whether or not to incorporate the changes immediately or in the future, or to reject them. This increases the chances of project success because the project manager controls how the changes are incorporated, can allocate resources accordingly and can plan when and how the changes are made. Not managing changes effectively is often a reason why projects fail.

Risk management

Risks are events which can adversely affect the successful outcome of the project. I've worked on projects where risks have included: staff lacking the technical skills to perform the work, hardware not being delivered on time, the control room at risk of flooding and many others. Risks will vary for each project but the main risks to a project must be identified as soon as possible. Plans must be made to avoid the risk, or, if the risk cannot be avoided, to mitigate the risk to lessen its impact if it occurs. This is known as risk management.

You don't manage all risks because there could be too many and not all risks have the same impact. So, identify all risks, estimate the likelihood of each risk occurring (1 = not likely, 2 = maybe likely, 3 = very likely). Estimate its impact on the project (1 - low, 2 - medium, 3 - high), then multiply the two numbers together to give the risk factor. High risk factors indicate the severest risks. Manage the ten with the highest risk factors. Constantly review risks and lookout for new ones since they have a habit of occurring at any moment.

Not managing risks effectively is a common reason why projects fail.

Summary

Following these best practices cannot guarantee a successful project but they will provide a better chance of success. Disregarding these best practices will almost certainly lead to project failure.

Project Planning: A Step by Step Guide

The key to a successful project is in the planning. Creating a project plan is the first thing you should do when undertaking any kind of project.

Often project planning is ignored in favour of getting on with the work. However, many people fail to realise the value of a project plan in saving time, money and many problems.

This article looks at a simple practical approach to project planning. On completion of this guide you should have a sound project planning approach that you can use for future projects.

Step 1 Project Goals

A project is successful when the needs of the stakeholders have been met. A stakeholder is anybody directly or indirectly impacted by the project.

As a first step it is important to identify the stakeholders in your project. It is not always easy to identify the stakeholders of a project, particularly those impacted indirectly. Examples of stakeholders are:

* The project sponsor
* The customer who receives the deliverables
* The users of the project outputs
* The project manager and project team

Once you understand who the stakeholders are, the next step is to establish their needs. The best way to do this is by conducting stakeholder interviews. Take time during the interviews to draw out the true needs that create real benefits. Often stakeholders will talk about needs that aren't relevant and don't deliver benefits. These can be recorded and set as a low priority.

The next step once you have conducted all the interviews and have a comprehensive list of needs is to prioritise them. From the prioritised list create a set of goals that can be easily measured. A technique for doing this is to review them against the SMART principle. This way it will be easy to know when a goal has been achieved.

Once you have established a clear set of goals they should be recorded in the project plan. It can be useful to also include the needs and expectations of your stakeholders.

This is the most difficult part of the planning process completed. It's time to move on and look at the project deliverables.

Step 2 Project Deliverables

Using the goals you have defined in step 1, create a list of things the project needs to deliver in order to meet those goals. Specify when and how each item must be delivered.

Add the deliverables to the project plan with an estimated delivery date. More accurate delivery dates will be established during the scheduling phase, which is next.

Step 3 Project Schedule

Create a list of tasks that need to be carried out for each deliverable identified in step 2. For each task identify the following:

* The amount of effort (hours or days) required to complete the task
* The resource who will carryout the task

Once you have established the amount of effort for each task, you can workout the effort required for each deliverable and an accurate delivery date. Update your deliverables section with the more accurate delivery dates.

At this point in the planning you could choose to use a software package such as Microsoft Project to create your project schedule. Alternatively use one of the many free templates available. Input all of the deliverables, tasks, durations and the resources who will complete each task.

A common problem discovered at this point is when a project has an imposed delivery deadline from the sponsor that is not realistic based on your estimates. If you discover that this is the case you must contact the sponsor immediately. The options you have in this situation are:

* Renegotiate the deadline (project delay)
* Employ additional resources (increased cost)
* Reduce the scope of the project (less delivered)

Use the project schedule to justify pursuing one of these options.

Step 4 Supporting Plans

This section deals with plans you should create as part of the planning process. These can be included directly in the plan.

Human Resource Plan

Identify by name the individuals and organisations with a leading role in the project. For each describe their roles and responsibilities on the project.

Next, describe the number and type of people needed to carryout the project. For each resource detail start dates, estimated duration and the method you will use for obtaining them.

Create a single sheet containing this information.

Communications Plan

Create a document showing who needs to be kept informed about the project and how they will receive the information. The most common mechanism is a weekly/monthly progress report, describing how the project is performing, milestones achieved and work planned for the next period.

Risk Management Plan

Risk management is an important part of project management. Although often overlooked, it is important to identify as many risks to your project as possible and be prepared if something bad happens.

Here are some examples of common project risks:

* Time and cost estimates too optimistic
* Customer review and feedback cycle too slow
* Unexpected budget cuts
* Unclear roles and responsibilities
* Stakeholder input is not sought or their needs are not properly understood
* Stakeholders changing requirements after the project has started
* Stakeholders adding new requirements after the project has started
* Poor communication resulting in misunderstandings, quality problems and rework
* Lack of resource commitment

Risks can be tracked using a simple risk log. Add each risk you have identified to your risk log and write down what you will do in the event it occurs and what you will do to prevent it from occurring. Review your risk log on a regular basis adding new risks as they occur during the life of the project. Remember, when risks are ignored they don't go away.

Congratulations. Having followed all the steps above you should have a good project plan. Remember to update your plan as the project progresses and measure progress against the plan.

Protect Your Business Card Investment

Business cards can cost upwards of $200 for a set of 1000 nicely printed cards. That price can be quickly increased with special shapes, rounded corners, raised foil lettering, metal or plastic cards and various other exciting new features.

With an expensive product comes the need to protect your investment. That is where a business card case comes into play. Business card cases are usually metal cases that protect your business cards from the daily wear and tear of being in your pocket, in your car, or in your briefcase.

Business card cases come in one size, slightly larger than a business card and they usually snap shut. Most cases can hold between 25 and 50 regular sized business cards. Without a business card case, your business cards risk getting damaged on a regular basis.

If you are paying a considerable amount of money for your business cards, it only makes sense to protect them. Business card cases can be as inexpensive as $15 and can range up to $100 for a custom engraved business card case.

If you spent $200 on 1000 business cards, and that business card case saves your from trashing 100 cards per year, it has paid for itself after only a few months. However, a good business card case will last you a few years. I have had mine for 4 years now, it is a little worn down, but still serves its original purpose.

Business card cases can also be used a selling tool. You can have them custom engraved, so they can make a great business gift to a potential client. You could have this prospects name engraved on the business card case and send him a note that says, "Thank you for considering using our company for your computer networking needs".

This gesture could be the tipping point for that prospect and close the deal.

Business card cases not only protect your business cards, but they also save you money by not having to buy business cards as often!

Psychological Training

Why Train?

Simple really: training improves skills, techniques, knowledge and attitude whatever an individual's role within an organisation. Ongoing staff training and development is crucial if you want to improve business performance and meet your targets.

Without a well-trained, skilled team your business won't grow and prosper. But there are a number of initiatives to ensure your staff have the right knowledge and experience required.

When a company develops a learning culture, staff feel motivated to participate in it, resulting in an improvement in individual and collective performance. Morale will be raised, problems solved, efficiency improved and goals attained all because of the practical ability, confidence and motivation that effective training builds.

There is, however, a bewildering array of training events and self-taught training materials. Some of these events and materials may be inappropriate as they do not fulfil the skill and information needs of your staff. Some courses may be legally inaccurate, as they do not contain up-to date information on important relevant educational legislation of which staff need to be aware.

Ensuring that staff develop as educators, team members and individuals increases their sense of worth within your organisation, reducing staff turnover rates. Providing appropriate and ongoing training assists in maintaining the high quality of their work and output.

Psychological Training

Have you ever wondered what makes top performers excel time after time? The answer is they are not only highly competent; they are also psychologically fit.

These people have learnt to become - and stay – focused, resilient, confident and committed. This means they have that extra drive to perform in today’s highly demanding world of work. Psychological fitness, like physical fitness, can be learnt. It sits at the heart of a suite of programmes, each of which provides practical and sustainable tools to develop and enhance psychological fitness.

Together with complementary skills and knowledge, they provide the drivers for action in a wide range of contexts. In association with the Human Dimension, Phoenix are able to provide all your staff with the practical tools to perform at a higher level by enhancing their psychological fitness. Its application is extremely varied but recent workshops have been centred around Leadership, Change Management, Team Development, Tackling Absenteeism and Stress.

Putting Professionalism back in Management Consulting

I have seen many changes in my forty years as a professional management consultant, particularly in the business change and management improvement practices. My specialty is applying information technology for the benefit of the business. In the 1960s and 1970s, we developed information systems from the ground up to satisfy user requirements. It was clear that users could not envisage how IT could really benefit the business. So much of our value was in helping users define and understand the main results the business had to produce and then in designing the full man-machine solution to produce better results. We did not implement the system, we implemented the methods and procedures to improve results using the system.

Then in the 1980s, things began to change. Application packages quickly replaced custom development. This lowered the cost of a quality system, but it also created a gap between the system and the business.

Since he no longer developed the system, the professional, who understood the business, had to dig deep to understand the functionality of the package to apply the advanced features that enabled the business to improve. The professional who understood the package did not understand the business and saw his role as explaining use of system.

For consultants, employing the application package to improve the business was difficult and risky. The risk had to be contained, so the approach became system implementation to convert a defined portion of the existing business over the new system.

So consultants chased the new business opportunity in packaged system implementation. It started with the big audit consultants, whose approach to consulting tended to parallel the approach to auditing--use junior staff to follow methodologies and produce deliverables.

Consulting firms developed methodologies for system planning, system evaluation and acquisition, and system implementation. The methods were executed by junior consultants, who no longer needed the analytical capabilities and business knowledge of past professionals.

Methodologies began to spread to other facets of consulting like strategic planning, etc. In the 1990’s a new wave came in business process re-engineering, producing new business transformation methodologies. These methodologies concentrated on the business, but avoided IT, since business change could be executed quickly, and IT change was notoriously slow. This created a gap the other way between the business and the system.

Then integrated applications systems were relabeled as ERP systems and proclaimed to employ industry “best practices” that would automatically solve the problem. Many consultants supported a particular ERP package implementation, so then system planning and system evaluation and acquisition methodologies favored that package to bring in the enormous implementation revenues.

But, ERP system implementation employed the same implementation methodologies that concentrated on conversion of existing data, business rules, and practices. Employing industry best practices required strong user effort beyond what the consultants provided.

In recent years, there have been exposes of the problems with management consulting. Books have been written about the bad practice that also developed within management consulting firms.

Much of the professionalism has gone out of management consulting. What do we have to do the bring professionalism back into consulting, particularly for business change and management improvement consulting.
This is one of the issues we have been discussing at the Business Change Forum, in order to define problems with conventional methods and discover breakthroughs in enterprise management.

We need to employ a new management consulting model that requires change by both the enterprise employing consultants and the management consultants and consulting firms. The enterprise must have the capability to manage its own development and manage the achievement of benefits. The consultants must get away from employing rote methodologies, and return to professionalism to work in partnership with the enterprise.

The new consulting model involves the following elements on the part of the enterprise:

o Structure the enterprise to define and manage precisely what the enterprise must do to be successful

o Structure enterprise capital to manage all capital utilized to produce enterprise success

o Install a professional capability to manage enterprise investments and development programs

The new consulting model involves the following on the part of consultants:

o Help the enterprise understand and plan the value to be created by change and improvement to provide the return on the investment

o Work with the enterprise in partnership to create precisely-defined value

o Provide proven professionals with analytical capabilities and specialty experience

o Leverage the enterprise teams to produce enterprise products and improvements. Do not do anything that the enterprise can do itself

o Work with the enterprise through to utilization of improvements for benefit and return on investment

o Do not implement information systems, implement the improved process that incorporates the system

o Do not provide consultant deliverables for review. All documents are accepted enterprise knowledge and records. There is one consultant deliverable, shared enterprise success

Management consultants need the new model to eliminate the old problems and risk in gaining benefit from business change and management improvement. Only when we have a way for the enterprise and their consultants to work together in partnership for measured success, will we have a way for consultants to return to the professionalism of old.

Quality Management: Organizational Needs

Any business out there can benefit from quality management. Whether you are producing thumb tacks or if you are producing IT equipment, there is little doubt that they need to be of the highest levels of quality. Yet, as your business grows, you will find it farther and father difficult to manage quality management. Because it is so very important, though, you need to find a way to make sure it is dead on.

What solutions are out there?

You know that you need quality management but finding the most effective way to get it may seem difficult. The good news is that there are a large number of options that can help you. From organizations that specialize in quality management to software programs that you can use. You can invest in having your staff and managerial levels of employees trained more efficiently to produce the desired results as well. So, there are options out there to help just about any organization get the quality management that they need.

What good will it do?

Do you ever get the feeling that you are investing dollar after dollar into your business whether it is through marketing or improving efficiency and somehow you still need something more? It could be that your product is not the same inside and out. If you deliver to your customer 100% the same product time and time again, they will know that they can rely on you and they’ll keep coming back. It takes time, yes. It takes money as well. But, quality management is a benefit to you many times over.

Investing in quality management in one form or another is an excellent way to get the products and services that you produce to the consumers in a manner in which they will be thrilled about. It will provide you with the help that you need to take your business to the next level as well. Considerations in quality management should be made.

Quick Guide: Using Team Roles

It's obvious that, for a team to work effectively, it needs to include all the skills required for the job in hand. What may not be so obvious, but also key to excellent performance, is that the team uses a variety of team-focused strengths. Meredith Belbin, amongst others, identified a set of team roles which are important. So here are the top ten tips for ensuring that your team functions well:

1. Be creative. The team needs to be innovative in solving problems, identifying improvements, challenging the status quo.

2. Find resources. Rarely, if ever, will the team have everything they need among themselves. They will need to look elsewhere for resources, information, support and guidance.

3. Co-ordinate. Team working requires the integration of a variety of skills, tasks and information, so decide about goals, roles and methods to use.

4. Drive for success. There will be times when the team will need to just get their heads down and push hard towards their goals.

5. Evaluate. Analyse new ideas objectively, ensuring that decisions are appropriate.

6. Tend. Team members should provide a support network for one another, helping each other resolve disputes and promoting harmony.

7. Plan. It's one thing having ideas, quite another turning them into a coherent way forward.

8. Check. The job isn't finished until all the i's are dotted and all the t's crossed. Attention to detail is vital to delivering quality.

9. Recognize our strengths. To some extent, we all bring to the team many of the above eight strengths. It is important to know which team members are the strongest in which, so enabling the team to plug any gaps eg by encouraging somebody to apply a lesser strength to a greater extent, or scheduling use of a missing strength as a regular agenda item for team meetings.

10. Ensure the strengths are valued and used. It's no good having the strengths if, when someone tries to use them, the rest of the team shout them down. The team need to agree how they will ensure that each strength is valued, and commit to listen to one another when they propose applications of those strengths.

Quick Quiz - Measure Your Meeting Mastery

Here’s an easy quiz to check the health of your meetings.

1) Who leads your meetings? -- a) No one, b) Whoever has the loudest voice, c) A facilitator

2) What happens to the ideas in your meetings? -- a) If we had to think of ideas, it would be work, b) We make fun of them, c) A scribe writes them on a chart pad

3) Are results obtained in your meetings? -- a) We eat all the donuts, b) And we drink all of the coffee, c) Yes!

4) Do your meetings have an agenda? -- a) Is that some kind of cabinet?, b) I saw one once in an article, c) Yes!

5) Who attends your meetings? -- a) We have bleachers to hold spectators, b) The entire staff plus any homeless people in the neighborhood, c) Only those who can contribute

6) How long are your meetings? -- a) I’ll let you know when this one ends, b) All day, c) An hour or less

7) During a meeting do you: -- a) Break a foam cup into bits, b) Prepare for the next meeting, c) Focus on the topic

8) How soon after the meeting do you issue minutes? -- a) If you think I want to publicize how much time we wasted, you’re nuts, b) Within a few months or so, c) As soon as possible, if not faster

9) While someone is speaking, do you: -- a) Wonder about the strength of plastic foams, b) Plan a way to change the subject, c) Listen empathetically

10) What structured activities do you use in your meetings? -- a) We sit on chairs, b) Everyone leaves at the same time, c) Process tools designed to gather information, make decisions, and manage participation.

Score: subtract five points for every (a), mark a zero for every (b), and add five points for every (c).

If your total is:

* Negative: Go to your boss and ask to be fired

* Zero to 20: Stay home

* 25 to 35: Attend a workshop

* 40 to 50: Congratulations

Quick Tip - Do Your Meetings Have a Complete Agenda?

Most agendas for a meeting look like this.

* Budget

* Payroll

* Staff

* Sales

* Zvoufzxtn

Some people tell me, "That's a perfectly good agenda. I know what all of those things mean, except, uh, 'Zvoufzxtn'." The point is, Zvoufzxtn means as much to you as the other terms mean to the other participants. For example, does budget mean increase the budget? Plan a budget? Report on the budget? Reduce the budget? Complain about the budget? Make fun of the budget? Or zvoufzxtn the budget?

An agenda like the one above could launch a meeting that considers all of the possibilities mentioned above. Instead, you may have wanted to reallocate funds from one department to another.

A proper agenda specifies everything that the participants need to know to make the meeting effective. It should contain:

Goal: A clear description of the results expected by the end of the meeting, such as a decision, agreement, or solution.

Outcome: The reason (or benefit) for achieving the goal.

Activities: A detailed list of the activities that will be used in the meeting. This should be so complete that someone else could use it to lead your meeting.

Logistics: Everything that the participants need to know to contribute to an effective meeting. This can include directions to the meeting room, instructions on how to prepare, and a list of things to bring.

A complete agenda will help you hold effective meetings.

Quick Tip - Effective Meetings Earn a Profit

Most people treat meetings as a free resource that can be used to deal with any issue. As a result, huge amounts of time and money are wasted on trivia.

A meeting is a business activity (not a social event) and should be designed to earn a profit. Here’s how.

Once you’ve prepared the goals for your meetings, use the following analysis to plan the agenda.

1) Calculate the cost of the meeting by multiplying the number of participants (N), their labor rate (R), and the length of the meeting (t). Then add all other expenses (E), including travel, materials, refreshments, room rental, and other expenses.

Cost = N * R * t + E

2) Estimate the value of the results expected from the meeting.

For some issues this step will be easy. Resolving a manufacturing inefficiency, for example, could save thousands of dollars. Or developing an effective strategic plan could earn millions.

This step becomes difficult for less tangible results, such as exchanging information in staff meetings or making some policy decisions. In those cases, estimate the value by comparing outcomes with their potential costs. For example, does it make sense to spend ten thousand dollars on exchanging information in a staff meeting or is five hundred dollars more appropriate?

3) Determine the return on your investment (ROI) by comparing value versus cost.

ROI = Value - Cost

If this analysis predicts a loss, either revise the meeting’s scope or cancel it. After all, a meeting, like any project, must earn a profit.

In addition, a profitable meeting will be an effective meeting.

Quick Tip - How to Set a Goal for Your Meeting

Goals are critically important for the success of a meeting. You must know what you want so you can ask for it. And the participants need to know what you want so they can help you get it. Without goals, a meeting becomes a journey without a destination.

Unfortunately, many meetings are called without goals. So, you hear people start meetings by saying, "Well, what do you want to talk about?" This is similar to walking into a factory and asking, "Well, what do you want to make?" You could end up with anything from ant farms to xylophones.

Thus, your first step is to write out a statement of the results that you want to have by the end of the meeting. I want to emphasize that you must write out the goals for the meeting. This forces you to define exactly what you want. Certainly, if you’re unable to express your goals on paper, you can expect to have difficultly explaining what you want to the attendees.

Writing goals also provides important benefits. It allows you to consider, explore, and discard possibilities. And then you can show the goals to others to obtain their comments and suggestions.

Asking for help preparing goals is especially useful when working on complex or controversial issues. Now you can 1) use their comments to refine the goals, 2) win support for your goals by including others in their development, 3) gain information on issues related to the goals, 4) uncover issues that may conflict with the goals, and 5) develop strategies for achieving the goals.

Once you complete the goals for your meeting, put them on the agenda. That helps everyone focus on your purpose for the meeting. And it significantly increases your chances of ending with the results that you wanted.

Quick Tip - How to Set SMART Goals for Your Meeting

The first step in planning an agenda is to identify the goals for the meeting. Properly done, goals have five S M A R T characteristics. They are:

> Specific.

The goal must tell exactly what will be accomplished. For example: During the next hour we will develop a strategy to increase market share by 10%. This states exactly what the group will work on. Vague goals can cause you to lose control of the meeting.

> Measurable.

This helps you determine if the goal has been completed. It can be stated as a number (5 ideas, 10% gain, one decision) or as an achievement (Did we write a strategy or not?).

> Achievable.

Goals must be realistic for the resources and time available. For example, most groups could identify twenty ways to reduce the budget in a fifteen minute meeting. On the other hand, it is unlikely that a group could develop a comprehensive marketing plan in 30 minutes.

> Relevant.

To be meaningful, a goal has to relate to the overall mission of your business. Otherwise, you may be wasting time. Challenge each goal with the question, “What happens without it?” If your answer is “nothing,” cancel the meeting.

> Time.

Specifying a deadline (e.g., by noon) or a rate (e.g., 3 per hour) moves activity toward completing the task and provides a criteria to measure progress. Of course, you want to select realistic times.

As a final check, make sure your goals are so clear that someone else could use them to run your meeting.

Quickbooks Tips

QuickBooks is a great accounting program for home-based businesses to track their income and expenses. It is easy to learn and simple to use. It has a great Help file. You do not need an accounting background to be able to generate reports such as a Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet needed for tax preparation and managing your business. I have listed a few key points to consider when using QuickBooks.

Cash or Accrual Basis of Accounting? The first step in setting up your company in QuickBooks is to determine if you will track income and expenses on the “Cash Basis” or “Accrual” basis. Most small businesses operate on the cash basis of accounting. What this means is you record your expenses when you write the check or charge your credit card, and you record your sales or income when you take the money to the bank and deposit it into your account. This is the easiest way to account for your transactions. Some businesses are required by the IRS to report on the accrual basis. This normally pertains to large publicly traded companies and/or some manufacturing entities. On the accrual basis, you record income at the time of sale, not at the time you receive payment. You also enter expenses when you receive the bill, not when you pay it. The choice is yours on which basis to use. QuickBooks supports both accounting methods.

Simplify the Chart of Accounts!! The most important list in your accounting system is your Chart of Accounts. You track your flow of money through this list of accounts which includes where your income comes from, where you put it, what your expenses are for, and what you use to pay them. QuickBooks’ EasyStep Interview walks you through setting up your accounts. The system also offers sample business templates that already have accounts set up for you. You can later delete or add any accounts that were initially setup in this interview to make it match your income and expenses better. Keep your chart of accounts SIMPLE! Too many accounts result in messy reports that are hard to read and analyze. Also, use descriptions for your account id’s, not numbers. If you assign account numbers for each account, you will have to memorize the numbers for fast data entry. It is much easier to type in the name of the account when entering transactions. This is a key timesaver!

Utilize Reports QuickBooks has many reports you can run for daily management of your business. The most widely used reports are the Profit & Loss statement and Balance Sheet. The Profit and Loss statement is simply your sales minus your expenses over a period of time. When you choose to display a report such as the Profit and Loss statement, you are able to drill down from each account to obtain the source of the amount in the report. For example, you see that your Travel Expense account has a balance of $1,000.00. You want to see whom you paid for Travel for the month, so you can place your cursor over the Travel Expense amount and double click to obtain a report that will show you the detail of transactions that make up the $1,000.00 spent. You can then further drill down to view the actual check written. The Balance Sheet report shows you your Assets, Liabilities and Equity of your business. Assets include what you have and what people owe you money, such as your bank account balance, inventory owned, accounts receivable, and fixed assets such as equipment and furniture. Liabilities include what your company owes to other people or your company debts. Examples include unpaid bills, money you owe on credit cards, loans, and sales tax you owe. Equity is the net worth of your company: equity = assets – liabilities. Other reports include detailed and summary sales reports, sales tax reports, inventory reports, vendor reports, sales tax reports, payroll reports, and many more.

Create a Professional Image QuickBooks also has other features that allow you to customize forms such as invoices, statements, and purchase orders you want to send to your customers and vendors. It will allow you to generate mailing labels and email messages to your existing customers and vendors that are setup in QuickBooks. You can also print checks on preprinted business forms.

Online banking is available with QuickBooks, which enables you to pay your bills electronically and reconcile your bank accounts monthly. This is essential to make sure you capture all business deductions to minimize your end of year tax liability.

Keep it Separate! You should not track personal finances, investments, and details not specifically related to your business in your QuickBooks company file. Mixing of personal and business funds makes tax preparation harder and more expensive in some cases if using an accountant or tax preparation service.

An accounting degree is not required to enter daily and weekly tasks in QuickBooks. QuickBooks is an easy to use accounting software program that allows business owners to manage their business more profitably.

Business Quotes

Quotes About Bad Meetings

Long pointless meetings are useful in that they keep incompetent people from interfering with those who are working.

Bad meetings are a cultural malady that senior executives pass on to new employees.

An employee who needs permission to buy a box of paperclips can spend tens of thousands of dollars worth of employee time on bad meetings.

Many people attempt to save time by Not planning. This false short cut guarantees that everyone will spend more time later.

Unstructured spontaneity leads to serendipity, which (in business) leads to bankruptcy.

Meetings are a magnetic opiate that keep people from the tasks they were hired to perform.

The main activity in many meetings consists of simple chit chat. If it's an important meeting, then this becomes sincere chit chat.

A meeting without an agenda is like a journey without a map.

A teleconference without an agenda is like a journey without a map, in the dark.

Most meetings are social street lamps that attract the unproductive moths in an organization.

People fail to prepare an agenda for two reasons. They think they’re saving time and they don’t know what to put in it.

Expecting a meeting to produce results without an agenda is like expecting the Easter Bunny to leave eggs on your doorstep.

Bad meetings waste a fortune. My surveys show that companies waste almost 20% of their payroll on bad meetings.

Rack Up the Value

The way you set things up can pay off greatly

As an inside sales representative for a major material handling company, half of the phone calls I receive start the same way: “I’m looking for racking.” It’s a promising start, but it’s usually followed by, “I’m not sure how much I need,” “I don’t know what kind I need” or “I am new to this.”

I could be hundreds or even thousands of miles away from these potential customers and their problems, but with the help of faxes, email, the Internet and digital cameras, we are usually able to share enough information to develop a proposed layout and a request for quotation.

People new to the warehouse or purchasing start out knowing that they have product sitting on the floor taking up space needing to utilize their vertical space better. After all, they are not just paying for square footage; they are heating, cooling and maintaining a three-dimensional space. Even more importantly, that vertical space is a wasted asset that could be used to store needed inventory and can free up floor space for more productive uses.

What else do you need to know? In just a few minutes, you can gather all the information you need before calling your sales representative. This includes:

The length, width and height of a single pallet that has product on it.
The weight of the pallet with product.
The clear height on the warehouse – that is, the actual usable inside height of the warehouse at its lowest and highest points.
Your forklift’s specifications, especially dimensions and lifting capacity.
The length of the rows of racking you wish to create.
The number of pallets you wish to store.
Decide whether you want used, renewed or new material.

Drive in for More Space

Let’s start with the last one first. Face it, racking is racking. It rarely becomes obsolete because of new technology. If your needs can be met by quality refurbished racking, you will save money. However, in order to be certain that your needs will be met, make certain you trust your supplier and the refurbishing process they employ.

Most material handling vendors that deal in used and renewed equipment have finely tuned their methods of pricing in order to give you a quote based on the information listed above. Let’s use drive-in racking as an example.

Drive-In racking is a type of “last in, first out” (LIFO) racking meaning product is loaded as far back in the rack as it will go. When unloading, the nearest available pallet is selected from the same side, as opposed to a FIFO (first in, first out) system where you usually load the product from the rear. In FIFO applications, product either flows to the forward of first position on a conveyor or it will be driven through the system.

Drive-in systems are widely used throughout the warehouse industry in places that have large volumes of pallets to store and seek an affordable, dense pattern. If you have a warehouse with clear floor space, high ceilings and hundreds of pallets to store on a tight budget, the choice is simple. Instead of creating a maze of rows and aisles, as you would with standard selective pallet racking, you create one large grid with access on a single side to drive in.

Keep in mind that the space savings are not the only benefit you will realize, although an estimated 80-85% space utilization can be achieved. Another factor in calculating your return on investment (ROI) is the potential savings in labor, equipment, product damage and operating costs.

Even so, gaining 50% more capacity to store your loads in an existing space can be very attractive when you consider the cost of additional warehouse space. Instead of figuring out which direction you are going to grow and how big an addition you will need for your building, you will instead think of the things that you can do with the space left over after consolidating.

Advantages of a Clean Floor

After doing away with selective pallet racking and consolidating into one easy to access area, you will soon realize the rest. You will instantly notice that you are no longer driving down aisles to find product, turning corners and dodging the pallets that have been left on the floor, obstructing your path. Another noticeable difference is that there are fewer upright frames that can be damaged. Once you turn into the drive-in system past the front uprights, your forklift is between a set of drive-in rails on which the pallets rest (except the bottom one). The product is further protected if the system is designed to allow only pallet loads that are confined to the size of the pallet. Systems designed for product overhang are still able to provide a certain level of protection.

Usually, the forklift that operated within the structure will be the same unit that loads and unloads freight from a truck. The distance traveled by the forklift decreases per pallet retrieved or stored, reducing wear and tear on the unit. The ability to access the pallets faster and safer means that you can also increase your rate of picking per man hour, again increasing your ROI.

Another way to save your company money by using drive-in racking is to double-stack your pallet loads on the bottom level. This will increase the maneuverability of the forklifts and will systematically reduce loading and retrieval time by carrying two pallets at once. This can only be done where identical SKU’s are stored and cubed loads of the same items are forecasted for shipment. Pallet loads must be stable and free standing while you double-stack them, without causing damage to the product. The total combined weight of the double stack must not be more than what the forklift is able to handle.

These are just a few of the things you can think about before calling your sales representative. Other issues will come up before you make your purchasing decision, but a little planning can save a lot of time.

Rate Your Meetings to Predict Your Business

Most leaders want to improve their business. After all, these improvements lead to increased profits through greater productivity and efficiency.

Sometimes clues to important improvements lay hidden in events that everyone takes for granted.

For example, how well do you score on the following quiz about your meetings?

<dt>* How much time do you spend in meetings?
<dd>0% - - | - - 25% - - | - - 50% - - | - - 75% - - | - - 100%

<dt>* How productive are your meetings?
<dd>0% (terrible) - - | - - 25% - - | - - 50% - - | - - 75% - - | - - 100% (effective)

<dt>* What do meetings cost your business?

* How much do meetings earn for your business?

* What would you work on if you spent less time in meetings?

My surveys show that (on average) people spend 40% of their time in meetings that they rate 50% effective. That translates to wasting 20% of their time in meetings.

This is equivalent to spending a full day each week doing nothing. It also represents a monstrous lost opportunity because that day could be spent working on things that make money for the business.

But most executives dismiss meetings as just another business activity. They say, "It’s okay, I’ve learned to live with it."

In fact however, fixing their meetings represents the most significant improvement that they could make on their business. Call if you want to improve your meetings.

Reading Trade Shows Report

Have you wondered how people work out the viability of major trade shows? How they calculate what is feasible and what is not? When it is feasible and when it is not? This is where Trade Show Reports enter the equation.

These reports are written by data analysts who forecast the future growth of the market. The information contained in the reports allows for the individualized planning of trade shows that anticipate the needs of invitees.

What information belongs in a Trade Show Report? Let us look at the following points:

Management associations coordinates (phone and address)
Location for trade shows and dates
Statistics of the show – how many square feet, how many stalls/booths, how many companies are expected
What industry segment(s) took part
Ranking of the events and shows separately and comparatively
Total market size estimate
Benchmarks
Forecasts of market vis-à-vis high ranking products

Data corresponding to the above points will be collected with the help of questionnaires, interviews, and personal discussions. The correct interpretation of data can create a report which will serve as a guide for successfully organizing the next trade show(s).

There are many other trade show reports which cover other aspects, such as:

Analysis of key industries
Possibility of the industry to hire
Whether revenue from exhibitions will rise or fall in the current year
Global, national and regional major growth strategies
Is the cyberspace killing the tradeshows – how much does it matter
Will investment be high in the current year
What growth percentage is expected in the presented this year

Trade show reports are mostly used as guides. But many times they are also used as a follow-up measure as well. There are reports which look particularly at the profile of the customers and try to organize the data captured to draw an accurate picture of the return on investment from the past trade shows, as well as forecast the future trends.

The trade shows reports are invaluable tools to understand how customer behavior, market growth, or recession rates indicate the industries which will grow best, and the demand of products.

Realism vs. Optimism in the Business Plan & Restaurant Business Plan Software Considerations

The most important function of a business plan is to create interest among investors so that they write a check. In achieving this goal, business plan writers are often challenged by determining the proper level of optimism in their plan. That is, they must create a compelling story to investors while maintaining credibility.

Optimism shows investors that a company is confident about the market opportunity, its ability to execute on the opportunity, etc. Over-optimism, however, leads investors to believe that the management team does not fully understand the opportunity or the tough road ahead. As such, business plans must be sure to limit over-optimism and show investors they are realistic and credible.

Realism, the opposite of over-optimism, should be used in business plans to portray sobriety and credibility to investors. Realism should manifest itself in management team bios that tell the actual accomplishments of managers, rather than fluff. It should manifest itself in credible market forecasts and sober assumptions of the company’s growth.

While business plans must excite investors so they take action, if they are too optimistic, investors will discount their merit. Conversely, if they are too sober, investors may not feel they will get an adequate return on their investment. As such, business plans should present a compelling, optimistic picture, but continuously refer to hard facts and realistic assumptions to build credibility and genuine excitement
Restaurant Business Plan Software Considerations

Whether you are an entrepreneur looking to start your first restaurant, or you have been working in the service industry for a long time, restaurant business plan software can help you create a streamlined business plan that will improve your chances of funding. Here are few things to keep in mind when comparing various packages.

Your needs - Various business plan software packages are geared toward different sizes of restaurant business and different levels of funding needs. Make sure the software does what you need it to do. Don’t go overboard on a program that offers more than you need.

Feedback - Make sure to get in touch with other people who have used the software before and get their feedback. The more reputable restaurant business plan software vendors will provide testimonials and contact information of previous customers. Make sure to compare. Keep an eye out for positive comments about ease of use.

If you have been in the restaurant business already, you probably have a number of contacts you can network with for information. Ask other restaurant owners you trust if there was a software program they used or have heard good things about. Word of mouth recommendations can often provide valuable leads.

Support – Make certain your software vendor offers full support for their programs. Many top vendors offer 24/7 online and toll free support for their programs. When weighing benefits, this is an important factor to take into consideration. You want to be assured you can get the software to work.

Cost – Once you’ve narrowed your choices down by the above benefits, it is time to consider costs. Check different vendors, as there can often be a large difference in prices between vendors for the same title. Make certain to factor in shipping and handling costs and delivery time of your restaurant business plan software when comparing prices.

Once you’ve chosen and installed your software, it’s time to get to work creating the business plan for your restaurant. If you have any trouble, be sure to get in touch with the vendor’s support as soon as possible. Good luck with your new business venture

Business Courses

Pages

PRINCE2 Goes from Strength to Strength

Private Companies Weigh Employee Stock Options

Product Idea: Add On To An Existing Product

Profitability - Pricing Strategies To Make Money

Profitability - Pricing Strategies To Make Money

Project Management - Dealing With Information Overload

Project Management - Design and Development Projects

Project Management: Performance Metrics Matter

Project Management - The Plans

Praise Matters

Project Management - You Give Me The Feature Creeps

Project Management Software: What It Can Provide

Project Management - You Give Me The Feature Creeps

Project Management Success with the Top 7 Best Practices

Project Planning: A Step by Step Guide

Protect Your Business Card Investment

Psychological Training

Putting Professionalism back in Management Consulting

Quality Management: Organizational Needs

Quick Guide: Using Team Roles

Quick Quiz - Measure Your Meeting Mastery

Quick Tip - Do Your Meetings Have a Complete Agenda?

Quick Tip - Effective Meetings Earn a Profit

Quick Tip - How to Set a Goal for Your Meeting

Quick Tip - How to Set SMART Goals for Your Meeting

Quickbooks Tips

Business Quotes

Quotes About Bad Meetings

Rack Up the Value

Rate Your Meetings to Predict Your Business

Reading Trade Shows Report

Realism vs. Optimism in the Business Plan & Restaurant Business Plan Software Considerations

friendly Sites