guest blogger, Project Management Scheduling, Project Management Software

Project Management vs. Task Management Software: What to Choose?

Increase productivity. Save time. Get organized.

Both task and project management software share these three goals. To make that happen, they both offer features for collaboration, coordination, status-tracking and planning. On the surface, they often look similar, but despite these similarities, there are certain differences in the company’s needs that they address.

So how do you decide which one is best for you? Just check out our short comparison below and pick the type of tool that suits you best!

Task Management Software

Task management tools, by and large, are about organizing, assigning and prioritizing ongoing activities. These tasks may or may not have deadlines, and they don’t involve complex scheduling. For example, a journalist handling multiple articles can see each of them as a task and then cross them off as they are completed.

Task management software can help to keep employees focused on priority tasks and make juggling multiple responsibilities less overwhelming, as they can more easily decide what to work on next. All the workers need to do is work down the prioritized task list.

Task management software may be a good match if:

Your goal is to better prioritize your tasks and your team’s tasks.
You need a place to track an individual’s or group’s “to do” list.
Your tasks are not dependent on each other.

Project Management Software

Project management tools are more about scheduling, setting deadlines and tracking progress on a bigger scale. Sure, you still have individual tasks, but when those tasks are part of a larger project, you need to complete them in a particular sequence. This sequence of tasks is heading toward defined milestones, marking the completion of the project’s major stages or the whole project.

So while an individual journalist might go with task management to make sure he turns his articles in on time, the managing editor needs to think about how the deadlines for those articles affect the deadlines for the department editor to proof the article, the photographer to shoot images to accompany the piece, the layout editor to plan where the article will fit and the printer to produce the final magazine. And the sequence of all their actions eventually leads to the big milestone, i.e., the publication of the monthly issue.

Some of these tasks may be worked on concurrently (the photographer and layout editor can do their jobs before the department editor delivers the final draft), but others are dependent on the previous task’s completion to move ahead (the printer can’t do his job until everything else is complete).

Project management software helps you to see these dependencies more clearly and set milestones that a project (or its phase) is heading toward. By monitoring the progress every step of the way, you can plan ahead more accurately and carefully manage your team’s resources.

Project management software may be the best way to organize work for your company if:

Your goal is to better schedule and monitor the overall progress of projects with defined due dates.
You’re managing the workload of multiple people performing different tasks for the same project.
Your tasks are dependent on each other.

What’s Right for Your Company?

If you’re just working on a few tasks, you might think that task management software is all you’ll ever need, but you never know what the future will bring. Maybe those tasks will evolve into a connected project. And while those who use project management software may be more concerned with the bigger picture, they still need to keep an eye on the details and progress of separate tasks.

That’s why choosing an all-in-one tool that incorporates the best of task and project management features can be the most efficient (and scalable!) solution for a company that wants to manage its work more efficiently and, therefore, achieve more!

guest blogger, Job Hunting, LinkedIn, Networking

7 Tips on Using LinkedIn to Land Your Dream Job

Guest Blogger Leave a comment

As a professional social network, LinkedIn has transformed the way business professionals communicate, interact and network. It has also completely changed the recruitment and employment process, shifting the practice online with virtual connections taking the place of networking events.

With graduate employment prospects at an all-time low and an oversaturated and a hugely competitive job market, workers are looking at other means for boosting their job prospects. LinkedIn has become a highly valuable tool for both employers and potential employees.

Here are some simple tips on how to harness the unique power of LinkedIn to get you the best chance of landing your dream job.

Grow Your Network

They say when it comes to the marketplace it’s about who you know not what you know and whilst that may still be true, LinkedIn has made networking and getting to know people easier than it ever has been before. Your entire professional contact book can be managed and controlled online via LinkedIn. Maximise your reach across the business world by building up as large a network as possible. Link up with all your co-workers and friends and then join in discussions through groups, answer questions and generally interact with as many as people as possible. Mine the contacts of every new connection you make to further extend your contact list.

Optimise your Profile

Your profile is your virtual first impression and acts as your online business card. It needs to be as slick and professional as possible. There is no point having hundreds of connections to an outdated or misinformed profile. Optimise your profile to make yourself easy to find using keywords in your job title and bio. Provide clear points of contact and be clear about who you are, what you do and what you are looking for out of LinkedIn.

Boost Visibility

Now you have a perfectly optimised and highly attractive profile as well as a sizable bank of connections; you need to boost your visibility across the network. Stay front of mind with all your contacts by posting regular status updates, participating in conversations across LinkedIn groups and utilising the question and answer tool. Seek opportunities where you can show off your detailed knowledge and expertise in relevant fields.

Be Clear About What You Want

LinkedIn can be used in a variety of ways by a range of people seeking different results. Be clear from the beginning about what you wish to use LinkedIn for. In this case if you are looking for job opportunities, make sure you are connecting with people in your fields of interest. Follow companies that are in your area and connect with people already doing your dream job. How did they get to where they are now? What route did they have to take? Is this something you can follow?

Be Professional

Possibly the most important tip to using LinkedIn, particularly when job hunting, is to remain strictly professional at all times. LinkedIn is not Facebook or Twitter but a business network for professionals. Maintain a professional decorum in your communications. Personalise messages and adhere to the general practices and etiquette of the site. If you get an invitation to connect from someone you don’t know don’t just ignore them, start up a conversation and take their details, as you would at any networking event or conference in the past.

Seek out the best opportunities

Don’t just sit back and assume that job opportunities will appear now you have a strong connection list and an optimised profile. Take the initiative and find what you want first. Search for opportunities at companies and within sectors which interest you. Reach out to HR managers at companies which are advertising or you are keen to work with. You might find you have much in common (including some mutual connections).

Get Recommendations

There is nothing more credible to your job search than professionally endorsed skills and experience from relevant experts. Endorsements and recommendations from co-workers, managers or clients instantly boosts the credibility of your profile and shows potential employers clear evidence of the qualities you have and can offer.

Now go and land that dream job you’ve always wanted!

Ross Moffat is a freelance writer for Education Consultancy Beattie Communications, who has been writing professionally for over 2 years.

Book review, Project Management Books

Book Review – One Project Too Many for APM Project Magazine

Nicola Caswell-Thorp Leave a comment

Book Review – One Project Too Many for APM Project Magazine March 2013

Another book review by Nicola at The CV Righter appears in March’s edition of the APM Project Magazine – here is the full review:

Book Review

Book Title: One Project Too Many

Authors Name: Geoff Reiss & Geoff Leigh

Publisher: Project Manager Today Publications

List Price: £7.99

ISBN: 1-900391-12-0

Introduction to the Book

This book is split into two sections – the first covers a newly appointed CEO to a supermarket chain, it is written in a novel format as opposed to a text book and talks through the discovery of the business current project portfolio. It is quickly ascertained that there are a lot of project which have no control and even no budgetary monitoring. Some of the projects benefits counter attack each other which leads the CEO to bring in an outside source to speak with the board and gain some buy-in to make significant changes without stepping on too many toes.The story continues with the consultant being employed at the company as a more cost effective move and then the business managers begin a new learning curve. As the book progresses it talks through structuring programmes of work and how to effectively put together a project team and using methods derived from OGC. The second half of the book runs through what is called “Anna’s files” – these are various pieces of documentation used throughout the first section of the book and run into further detail about the need and function of them.

Overview of Book’s Structure

The book is structured into two sections and nine chapters – the chapters are the first section of the book and the last section is not chaptered.

Highlights

The book is written in a real life situation format which is a refreshing change from the usual text book clinical approach. Steering clear of the formal approach and combining the novel style with case studies lends to a more relaxed but easily more informative read – often faced with stuffy text I can start to bore of the repetitive and sometimes obvious, skipping sections just to be able to keep myself awake and actually drive something useful and unique. This book is engaging and amusing too, putting the methods into practice and actually demonstrating how it can or might not work really helps the reader get a grasp of the realities of managing projects rather than pure theory.I particularly like the part where it is suggested that some projects should be closed – the response being that they have already poured money into them, but it is quickly established that the benefits would no longer be realised. Something which a great deal of organisations and project managers need to embrace – the emphasis, quite rightly was refocused on what they hope to achieve rather than just carrying on for the sake of it. The second section which addresses the files introduced throughout the process such as structuring and PIDs etc gives a deeper insight into why they are required and again because they are referring to the scenario in the first section they are easy to understand and contextualise.

Shortfalls

There wasn’t a great deal missing at all – in fact it reads really clearly and as such is difficult to put down; however some of the additional text which makes the book more novel like did begin to get a little boring and could have been reduced as the book progressed.

Who might benefit from the Book

Everyone will benefit from this book, whether you think you don’t need to know anymore about how to manage projects (this is covered in the book) to the beginner who may find the PM terminology a little hard to grasp initially as the book really gets to the roots of what, why, where, how.

Conclusion

This book appears to be aimed at those new to project management – however once you read it you may recognise some behaviours from your own business in there, especially as they originally thought they were doing really well. They were making money so what was the problem? It quickly transpired that the business was losing a lot of money on projects, but addressed this in a step by step manner – something all businesses could learn from. Therefore I believe it is relevant to all levels of experience and is certainly a step away from all the other books out there.If you have a list of books to read, this should be on it. It is something which can be read on the tube and is certainly one I would recommend for reference libraries in the office. Taking a fresh approach to a case study and giving that extra background really adds to reinforcing the need for structure in programmes and projects, even the very experienced will learn something, especially on the softer skills side of things.

CV Tips, CV Writing, PMO CV, Project management CV, project management resume

Tweaking your CV for project management jobs

Nicola Caswell-Thorp Leave a comment

If you have a good, strong CV then you are in a great position to apply for new roles – however there is such a solid emphasis placed on matching candidates up for jobs with a requirement of 90%+ ticking of boxes. As your CV shouldn’t exceed 3 pages, it can be difficult to be able to place all your experience in there. This is where tweaking comes in, now it is not about drawing out a tiny fraction of your experience for a role which is predominantly looking for someone with a clear focus on something. For example if the role is a project manager for implementation of desk top rolls outs and your core experience is new product development but you have a small amount of exposure in a previous life to desk top roll outs. As clearly there are people with the right experience level who can fit the bill.

Tweaking is about highlighting specific areas deemed as most important to the hiring manager – such as stringent reporting, you may have covered this lightly in your CV but if it is listed high up in the job description then this skill is clearly an area which the employer deems are very important to that role – therefore you should look to draw out detail about your reporting in your CV. Looking at what kind of reports you generate, who you present them to, how often, and in what format these take.

Choosing the right combination to create the best picture

Achievements are another area which can be tweaked for applications, again focussing on particular examples which may be relevant to the position – this is where you can be a little clever too. By researching a business (this only tends to work for direct employer roles as recruiters aren’t keen to divulge enough information on businesses to be able to know who they are) and looking at what else they are doing such as major change, and incorporating an achievement relevant to their change. Although not directly relevant to the role you are applying for it can highlight your exposure to specific scenarios which the business is currently undergoing. If the project management function is undergoing changes such as new structures or implementing a PMO then you may have some exposure to working with PMOs / heads of projects to support implementation. Something which you haven’t necessarily covered in your CV as you are focusing on delivery – it’s these little extra pieces of information which can really set you apart from your peers and put you in a shortlist for interview.

Always scrutinise the job description / advert and see where the emphasis lays with competencies; they are usually in order of importance. Make sure you read through the list of requirements and can tick the boxes, then put your CV next to the description and make sure your CV have the required emphasis on each competency. Clear communication is the order of the day and let’s face it – that is the key to effective project management, demonstrating what you say you are good at from the first point in the application process will stand you in good stead.

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