This is the third post in our series on Successfully Implementing Project Management Software.

You can get a package that ticks all the boxes but if the users don't love it, they won't use it. Similarly another great way to get people to dig their feet in is to make a decision for them. Lets face it most Project Management staff have been waiting for years to get their hands on some good project management software. A great way to turn them against the project is to force something on them, particualualy when another part of the business made the decision. Its critical to get people involved in the decision making process. If they don't buy in there is no project management software package on earth they will commit to using properly.

Make a short list then let the end users try each one. Get them to setup a project, forecast and schedule each other onto it. Watch them use it and pretty soon the right software will be obvious. 

The right software will be easy, intuitive and get the job down quickly. 

This is the first post in our series on Successfully Implementing Project Management Software.

The simple problem with software purchasing decisions these days is people make it harder than it needs to be. The "correct" way to pick an application for your business is a long and academic one. You do analysis, determine weighted requirements, then go to market looking for alternatives which you compare with your requirements. This may not be for everyone, particularly for those with smaller businesses looking to fulfill minimal requirements. If you know your not going to do it the hard way and just want some quick pointers please read on....

Step 1.  Pick something simple

The process for successfully implementing project management software is different for each organisation. It comes down to what is right for the culture and complexity of the business. My advise would be figure out exactly what you need and pick the simplest tool for the job. You need something that will make your job easier rather than simple increase your data entry. It's very difficult to get people to add things to their work load so don't expect people will rush to use your new package if the tool requires alot of effort to produce results people don't already need.

In my experience this is the number one cause of failer, lets face it if you install something simple and get 100% of people to enthusiastically use it then you have suceeded. If you install something which promises to control every aspect of your business and only a couple of staff seriously use it then your've failed.

Systems have to be seen to help, not add workload. 

This weeks quick tip follows our last release to tell you how to use some of the new functionality to edit or create new tasks without leaving the calendar view.

When you create a new project you start with just one task and a bar which represents the project. To create tasks for this project left click on the projects name (to the left of the calendar) or right click the bar.

The Edit Task Details popup below will open and you will be able to edit the details for the project. Click the 'Sub Task' icon and you will be able to add as many tasks to the project as you need to. You can do this again later for any of these new tasks to create more Sub Task (child task) levels.

We've been busy this year working on many requested enhancements which combined make Team Effect easier for those just getting started.  Our focus with this release was about improving the experience for new users and introducing a much-requested "Dashboard" to summarise all your projects.

Dashboard

The major piece of new functionality in this release is a new start screen (or dashboard) that pulls together a summary of your projects.

Highlights include...

1. One click access to quick start help guides and one click to create new projects.
2. One click access to all of the projects you are working on. 
3. Summary of all tasks, schedules and actions for the current week across all projects.
4. Summary headlines of this blog.
5. Create Projects and setup new People in one click.

Get Started Faster

The new dashboard gets you creating and planning a new project straight away.  Enter nothing more than a name for your project and click Go.  Now you're straight into the new project's schedule ready to break it down into tasks and sub-tasks

Task Management

Many people didn't realize that you can create tasks/sub tasks directly in the schedule by right clicking the bars.  In this release our goal was to make this functionality easier and more obvious.

You can now edit task details by simply clicking on the task names or the task bars (as well as right-clicking on the bar representing the task as well).

More tasks can be created directly from the task details panel - this makes it easy to setup a detailed project without ever leaving the schedule screen.

We have also added links so you can jump into and back from the task screen if you want to do any bulk editing or change the task order.

Help

We have refined the help articles and and made them more accessible.  Two new "getting started" guides are accessible straight from the dashboard.

Since our Beta trial period began in May this year we've had a very encouraging response from the user community and we've learnt a lot from all your feedback. Throughout that time we've been working hard to make Team Effect easier and more enjoyable to use.

This month sees both the rollout of a new version which is the culmination of a lot of that feedback, and the end of the Beta period itself. It's been quite a journey and we're excited to tell you about what's in store next.

Our recent user survey highlighted that your primary use of Team Effect is to plan and then share your project, so the enhancements introduced now and in the next release are all aimed at improving the usability of Team Effect for these functions.

This update will also see the introduction of our pricing plans. Team Effect starts at a humble €10/month for your first 4 Active* projects and allows you to share your projects with as many people as you like.
(* Hidden, Closed and Deleted projects are not considered to be Active)

Pricing & Plans

** Loyalty money-back offer **

Improvements in Version 1.0

1. Moving a Task

Moving a task with a person scheduled on it is much easier now. Simply drag and drop - no more task locks or SlipTask.

When you release the task bar you will be given the option to move all its sub-tasks by the same time period, or to leave them where they are.

Couldn't be easier, could it?

2. Easier Calendar micro-adjustments

We received feedback that making micro-adjustments to your schedule became difficult when the project was large or the time scale was not in view.

Our solution was to add these nifty little flags to indicate which day you are about to drop the bar on. It makes it easy to move a Task to start on a specific day, even in week mode.

You can also click (and hold) on the bar to see quickly where the bar starts and ends. Useful when the ends of the bar are out of sight.

3. No more annoying Schedule mouseover popups!

We heard from a lot of people how annoying those Schedule mouseover popups were, so we replaced them with a status panel along the bottom of the schedule.

4. Improved: EasyAdd new Person

There is an easy way to schedule a new person onto a task. You don't need to leave the project's Schedule to do it. You can create a new person from the Finder when you go to assign a person to the task.

This feature was already in place, but we've made improvements to it so that it is more accessible for a wider group of users.

5. EasyAdd new Role

Just like adding a new Person it is just as easy to add a new Role when scheduling work.

6. Easier navigation - My Actions, Project Progress

We've redesigned the 'My Schedule' tab. It was cluttered and we noticed that the secondary tabs on it were not frequented by most users, so we split them out. You will now find the My Actions and Project Progress pages on the main menu.

7. Easier to create an Action

Click on the day in the Schedule to create and Action for that day. An annoying bug in the person and project pickers has been fixed.

8. Improvements made to prevent Javascript errors; increase AJAX responsiveness

All the Javascript errors you might have encountered were all logged in our systems and analysed by the development team. We've chased all the bugs down and swatted them.

9. Compatability with more browsers

We've worked hard to improve all the known comaptability problems with the various web browsers. Certain aspects of Team Effect looked horrid in Google's chrome browser (our new recommended browser), and there were also some Javascript issues cropping up in Internet Explorer 6 and 7.

We are not finished by any means. In the new year we will be working harder than ever to improve Team Effect to make your project management run more smoothely.

All of the team here at Team Effect look forward to helping you in whatever way we can.

Congratulations to Ian Wild (Sheffield, Great Britain), you've won a US$150 Amazon voucher for participating in the Team Effect survey!!

Many thanks to the many other people who shared their thoughts by participating in the survey, we appreciate your time and the many considered comments.

We received valuable feedback from everyone who participated and we are now looking at how we can most effectively address the concerns and features that are most important to our users in the new year.

Plug: Analysing all those responses would take up the rest of the year if it weren't for the amazing power of the survey software we used. This was our biggest ever survey and we owe a lot of thanks to our talented marketing intern Virginia Owen who helped up design the questions, and the folks over at Qualtrics for their brilliant survey software. We highly recommend Qualtrics!

"Have you considered surveying all your customers to get to know them better?" asked Virginia, our recently acquired marketing intern.

"Only every single day!" we replied. So we immediately put her in charge of designing a scientific survey to gleen some valuable feedback out of our beta customers.

Commencing today we have invited all our active beta trial customers to give up 5 minutes of their precious time to share their thoughts and answer some questions that will help us understand them better. To sweeten the deal we're putting up a random prize of a US$150 gift certificate for use at either Amazon store or iTunes music store!

How cool is that?!

The winner will be drawn on the 28th November 2008 and notified by email, and also here on the website.

We estimate that probably 1 in 4 emails we send to our customers end up in spam filters. That's right, a quarter! At least.

Spam filters are a nuisance for us because the "semi intelligent" spam filters built into all the popular email clients and ISPs use rules to detect potential spam and those same rules often decide that our legitimate emails to our customers are also spam.
The most annoying is when customers say they never received their Password Reset emails, only to find that it was trapped in their spam filter.

Our technical team are constantly working hard to improve upon that, but in this day and age we're fighting a battle with constantly shifting rules of engagement.

We've made some major improvements in the last 2 weeks by adopting SPF, so it will be interesting to see how much of an improvement that makes.

In the meanwhile the best advice we can give you is to add the domain teameffect.com to your address book and/or junk-filter's white list.

Peace out.