Teams | Collaboration | Customer Service | Project Management

October 2022

What Is A Pert Chart And How To Use It In Project Management

Busy project managers, some rescue is coming to you RIGHT NOW. Yes, you can use a PERT chart to help you manage your projects more efficiently – and set aPERT the wheat from the chaff in your project portfolio. Today, we will introduce you to PERT charts and show you how to use them effectively in project management. It’s easier – and more pleasant – than you think!

How to Organize Projects Efficiently: A Project Manager's Guide

The life of a project manager is challenging. Without the right set of tools, it becomes too difficult to manage and organize projects efficiently. A project manager has to handle multiple things simultaneously, managing teams, their tasks, and the project while keeping everything organized and running smoothly. That’s why we’ve put together this guide on how to organize projects efficiently as a project manager. These are not golden nuggets of wisdom that will change your life overnight.

Project tracker 101-How Setting up Realistic Goals toward Successful Task Completion Works?

People that are inspired by success evaluate not only what they want to achieve, but also strategies and implementation solutions to reach their goals. They are continuously thinking about potential barriers or blockages, where they may find assistance, and how they will feel if they succeed or fail to reach their goals. This project tracker guide will help you get started. Professional development is a constant cycle of setting goals, changing actions to achieve those goals, and assessing progress.

The Complete Guide to SAFe vs Agile for Project Managers

As a project manager, you must have heard about different project management methodologies like Scrum, Agile and SAFe. While each of these is designed to better the management process and improve overall performance, it is important to understand the differences between various methodologies. Once you get familiar with the core values and features of each methodology, you can make more accurate decisions when choosing one to apply to your business.

Effectively Using the Triple Constraint Triangle

Successful project managers juggle three core aspects of every project — cost, time, and scope — to move everyone toward the next big deadline. The triple constraintproject management triangle is a model that helps you visualize this process and make it a reality. Much like the three sides of a triangle, these three factors, also known as “constraints,” have to be balanced if you want to cultivate a successful project.

The many benefits of project management automation

When most professionals hear the term “project management,” the first thing that comes to mind isn’t exactly a great image. Pedantic planning meetings. A never-ending sea of task completion emails. The project manager stopping by (yes, again) to ask about task status, interrupting the person from actually working on the task. Before the project managers boycott us, we’re secretly on your side.

7 Best Marketing Project Management Software (User Validated)

Looking for the best marketing project management software? Welcome to the club. With diverse viewpoints and overwhelming (as well as contradictory) information available online, identifying the best project management software for marketing teams can be challenging. To make things easier for you, we have rounded up the 7 best marketing project management software you can consider in your pros and cons list, and make an informed choice. Let’s get going.

Top Help Desk Automation Ideas

Automations are rules you can set-up in your help desk system which perform actions on behalf of your team. Help desk automations are a necessary feature of a help desk system. They cut down on work, allowing your employees to focus on achieving more meaningful goals. Automations in OneDesk are particularly powerful, as they provide a method to manage moving parts, enable organization, and create an optimized workflow.

November Update: Charts and Role-Based Prices Scoro

We’re making this a November to remember by introducing two new power players to Scoro! Firstly, we are stepping up our data visualization game by adding bar charts to the detailed work report. Secondly, we have revamped the concept of roles in Scoro to better support role-based pricing, billing and collaboration options.

Remote Project Management: Managing Workflows for IT Projects

Is your remote work not flowing? Ok, we know, bad joke! We understand your struggle, and we know how important project management is for any business! Especially how crucial it is for companies with remote workers. When you’re working with a team of people who are spread out across different locations, it can be difficult to keep track of everyone’s progress and ensure that tasks are being completed on time. And that’s exactly why we are here!

7 project management trends that will always be in style

Project management trends are a big part of what you pay attention to as a successful project manager. There’s a lot on your plate, from resource management to data analysis and proving the ROI of your strategies. It can all become overwhelming pretty quickly. Thankfully, the latest project management trends provide solutions that help take a load off and increase your chances of success. Below, we discuss some of these trends and give tips for implementing them effectively.

9 Key Project Management Principles Every PM (Project Manager) Should Follow

While the term project management is pretty much self-explanatory and sounds relatively simple, the task is anything but so. Scratch the surface, and you will witness a flurry of high-octane activities requiring the project manager to don multiple hats throughout the project development journey. As such, they should be familiar with a few core project management principles to help them navigate and stay at the helm of all affairs.

10 Simple Strategies to Keep Your Remote Employees' Retention High

Remote working from anywhere has many benefits, but staying engaged and motivated can also be challenging when you’re not in an office setting. Finding ways to keep your remote employees happy and productive is essential, or they may become disengaged and start looking for other opportunities. We will discuss ten simple strategies that you can use to keep your remote employees engaged and loyal!

The 7 main styles of project management: Pros, cons, and tips

It’s tempting to think that only credentialed project managers with that dedicated job function need to worry about project management styles, but that isn’t the case. Planning and organizing are two of the four main functions of management, so people managers also need to know the right way to plan and manage projects, not just specialized project managers. With that in mind, let’s walk through an overview of the seven dominant project management methodologies.

How To Benefit from Asynchronous Communication as A Project Manager?

Remote work has pushed the boundaries of possibilities. Previously, interaction with colleagues outside the office was nonexistent, and team members communicated and collaborated in real time. The way the world has now transitioned to remote work opportunities, it called into question the legitimacy and efficacy of the remote work environment and whether it will be able to sustain a collaborative work environment or not.

The Hottest Black Friday SaaS Deals of 2022

Black Friday and Thanksgiving deals are the best time to grab the exact solution for your business that you have been eyeing for a while! However, being aware of the Thanksgiving deals and Black Friday deals are the key to not missing any exciting offers. We curated this list of the best deals that you just need to grab. Let’s get to it!

13 powerful digital marketing agency tools your team needs

Who’s the first person you call when you have a busted pipe? Maybe your dad. Maybe your spouse. Most likely a plumber. Imagine that plumber walking into your home without his toolkit. He gives you a charming grin, stands in the Superman pose, and tells you that everything will be okay. That’s not comforting to you because you know that the busted pipe won’t be fixed without his tools. Your digital marketing team can’t do their jobs effectively without the right tools.

Your Guide To Achieving Operational Excellence In Project Management

Project managers are under more pressure than ever to deliver operational excellence. There are many changes to get used to in the post-pandemic world. Profit margins are still fluctuating, employees are still figuring out new ways to work, and clients’ hazy futures make it difficult to predict the company’s finances. But after more than a year of turbulence, growth and profitability are more important than ever. Because of this, many people choose operational excellence.

Workforce Optimization - What Is It and Why Does It Matter?

You must have heard about the four-day working week in Iceland and Belgium and how rapidly other parts of the world are following suit. Strategies like these are an attempt at optimizing the workforce. The policy would not have worked if not for higher levels of productivity and reduced stress in the workplace. Because of the rapidly changing trends in the business world, the focus has shifted from quantity to quality.

The 5 Best Ways to Invest in Employees and Boost Their Performance

When it comes to business, one of the most important things you can do is to invest in employees. By doing so, you are helping them improve their skills and boosting their performance. Investing in employees, in turn, will help your company achieve its goals and objectives. We will discuss five ways to invest in your employees and see positive results!

How to work with freelancers: Benefits, challenges, tips

Running a business may have been your life’s dream. Being your own boss, making the decisions, and seeing your vision come to life is exciting and satisfying to say the least. However, properly growing a company can be challenging no matter how solid your product or service is. Maybe you need help with setting up the framework of fledgling departments, creating social posts for a major campaign, or meeting an unexpected client need.

How to Learn & Master Self Management Skills

In today’s world, every person who wants to occupy his niche in the world of professions, to build a career, needs leadership skills. They must learn communication skills, self management skills, team management skills, agile project management skills, etc. How to do it? Taking into account the needs of the time and the fact that management is an integral part of any field, it is necessary to develop one’s self-management skills and use them effectively at work.

The 10 Best Ways to Include Remote Employee Benefits

As a business owner, you know that remote employees can be a huge asset to your company. Remote workers allow you to expand your reach and grow your business without opening new offices. But what are the benefits of remote employees? And more importantly, what should you offer them to keep them happy and productive? This blog post will discuss ten great benefits you can offer your remote team!

The 4 Day Workweek Trending in the 21st Century

It’s fascinating to witness how the traditional 9-5 workweek is transforming into a routine more adapted to modern life, less rigid, and more approachable. It’s good that with advances in technology and changes in the way we live our lives, business owners and managers are looking for a new way to structure the work week. In this line of thought, the 4-day workweek is becoming an increasingly popular option as more and more companies are seeing the benefits of this flexible schedule.

Situational leadership: What is it, benefits, and more

If you’re a leader, you’ve hit a “leadership roadblock” at some point: Whether you’ve been in leadership for a long time or have just recently transitioned into a leadership role, leadership walls or roadblocks happen to everyone eventually. As one of the four key functions of management, leadership is an integral part of every manager’s job. Leading well requires finding new tactics and strategies to overcome even the most complex leadership challenges.

What's New in Asana | October 2022

Welcome to the October edition of What’s New in Asana! First, the new Desktop App icon lets you focus on your most important work. Click on the icon to see your priority tasks by due date or set a timer for protected blocks of do not disturb time. Next, report on how long it takes for tasks to move through stages of work. In Reporting, or from your project Dashboard, you can see how much time tasks have spent in each section of a project or how long they’ve been assigned a custom field value.

Managing remote teams: 5 things leaders should know + best practices

Remote work is growing at a rapid pace. According to the latest research from McKinsey & Company, 58% of the U.S. workforce has the opportunity to work from home at least one day a week, while 35% have the option five days a week. This data holds true across all industries and job types, including both “blue collar” and “white collar” jobs that traditionally required on-site work.

10 Skills Every Boss Needs to Run a Remote Company Successfully

There are many benefits to running a remote company, on one side, you have access to a larger talent pool, you can save on office costs, and employees are happier and more productive when they work from home. But remote companies also come with their own set of challenges. The biggest challenge is making sure that the remote team is managed effectively. So, what makes a good remote boss? And how can you lead a remote team effectively?

Want to amplify your organization's productivity? Remember these three words.

Want to improve productivity? Start measuring things. As a large-company executive, your remit is to solve complex problems that span the business while giving your department heads a shared roadmap. As such, three words matter more now than they have in some time: Measure. Review. Incentivize. With swaths of employees returning to the office, there’s a real opportunity for managers to activate “all-in” strategies for teams to contribute to company growth.

6 Considerations When Creating a Remote Team Workflow

Like any manager, you’ll know that creating a remote team workflow can go a long way in determining the effectiveness of your team and the projects they take on. If a remote team workflow is too lax and vaguely defined, projects will fall behind schedule, and success will be hard to measure. If it’s too strict and rigid, it can make workers inflexible and create rifts between teams and their managers.

The Basecamp Lineup: A bird's eye view

Brand new in Basecamp 4 is The Lineup — a great way to get a bird's eye view of all the projects that are currently in play. Know who's working on what, how much time has passed, and how much time is left. You'll also get to see projects that haven't started yet, and stuff that's recently finished. It's an especially wonderful, visual view for managers who need to stay on top of stuff without staying on top of people.

Top 7 Content Collaboration Tools To Use

The struggle of creating high-quality content is real. Leading content needs merging various ideas from many brains on content creation, evaluation, and delivery. Even if you are a content trooper, you need a clear approach to connect with other team members, document their activities, and offer a home for all the information they generate. This is where content collaboration, or the concept of handling all aspects of content creation and diffusion in one place, is helpful.

Weathering the looming recession-6 ways to keep your agency stable and profitable into the future

Whether we like it or not, a recession is brewing. You may wish you could bury your head in the sand and wait for it to pass, but the best thing you can do as an agency owner is to take deliberate action and create a plan to protect your business now. This way even if you can’t completely shelter your agency from the impact of a recession, you can stay profitable and avoid a total wipe-out.

How To Make Time Go By Faster For Increased Productivity?

We all can relate to the days at the office when time begins to slow down, and it feels like the day is becoming never-ending. Well, we all have been there. A lot of times, the workdays can feel stagnant. As if the entire course of time slows down and the air around you simply becomes confining. We know that you either keep looking at the clock or dreading this shift’s end. But wait, there actually is a way around it!

Project Onboarding for Remote Employees: Guide

Imagine working on a project without knowing where to start, how to set deadlines, which tools to use, and which tasks to assign. You don’t need to be a wizard to see the disaster coming: The project will sink before it gets a chance to sail. How to avoid it? Have a project onboarding strategy in place. Having a detailed project onboarding strategy is beneficial not only for your team but also for you.

5 Tips for Setting up a Successful Remote Company

Are you considering starting a company but don’t want to sacrifice your quality of life? Or maybe you’re already running a company but are looking for ways to make it more successful? If so, setting up a remote company might be the perfect solution. There are plenty of benefits to a remote company, and with the proper planning and preparation, your company can be just as successful as one based in an office. Here are five tips for setting up a successful remote company.

Insightful vs Time Doctor: Head-to-head comparison

The right time tracking software can turn your business around with enhanced productivity, workflow optimization, and powerful automation. Insightful and Time Doctor are examples of such robust productivity tracking tools. Both tools offer time tracking, productivity management, and reporting features to help transform your business. But which one is better? Find all the answers in this Time Doctor vs Insightful review.

Must-Read Books For Business Owners & Entrepreneurs: The Ultimate List

Books? Do people even read books? Yes, in fact, according to Publisher’s Weekly, print book sales have increased by more than 8.9% since the pandemic began in 2020! Therefore, if you’re a business owner or entrepreneur, books still are a great source of information and inspiration. In this blog post, we will share with you a list of must-read books for business owners and entrepreneurs. These books cover a variety of topics, from marketing to finance to leadership.

Work smarter, not harder: 15 tips for success

Wouldn’t it be great if we could be as productive as possible without causing burnout? We call it “working smarter, not harder.” Among many working professionals, working smart is a key to greater productivity. It can save you time and energy for the things that matter, like your life goals, personal growth and health, and relationships. The fact applies at work, too: Working smarter at the office keeps team members engaged and less overwhelmed.

Hive Alternatives: Top Project Management Tools To Consider

Looking for Hive alternatives, well, you are at the right place. We all know that Hive is an excellent platform for those looking for easy-to-use and robust project management software. Whether it’s hybrid workflows, task tracking, or anything in between, Hive has the features and functionality that users need to get their work done efficiently. However, there are other options available for those who might be looking for something different.

Here's What You Need To Know About Team Development Stages

Every team’s productivity is boosted by its commitment to growth and the ongoing efforts they are willing to make. In addition to the success in fulfilling the assigned goals, for teams to be highly accomplished, it is fundamental for them to understand the development process – as a team. It’s true that picking random people and developing them into high-functioning teams is quite challenging.

"Quiet quitting": just a Gen Z term for poor employee engagement?

It’s easy to discount quiet quitting as social media-inspired melodrama. A way for younger people to put their own stamp on an idea that attentive leaders have understood for many years: people who don’t feel valued or respected, don’t bring their whole selves to work. But the fact that the trend emerged from a generation of true digital natives — workers in their teens through to their late 20s — offers a new insight.

11 Best Daily Planners for A Productive Week

Good planning reaps good results, that’s a no-brainer, but how do you plan effectively? How can you make sure your planning will bear good results? How do you organize your plans? Well, here’s a little something you can do to make your planning more productive. Get a daily planner. You might already have a to-do list or sticky notes to keep tabs on your tasks, but daily planners are a class apart. These apps can simplify planning for you and make task management a walk in the park.

OneDesk - Availability & Resource Management

Learn how to set working hours, manage workload and resources in OneDesk. OneDesk combines Help Desk & Project Management software into a single application. OneDesk also includes customer-facing applications: real-time chat, customizable webforms, and a customer portal. These integrated applications allow you to serve your customers while conveniently working on your projects in one platform.

Best 7 Earned Value Management Software for Smart Teams

Earned Value Management or EVM platform is a set of tools that combine to offer a system for measuring project progress based on cost and budget. Every EVM software uses different tools to integrate with each other, and many different approaches are used to ensure everyone is utilizing the system’s benefits at best. EVM gives you the perfect solution with authentic information on your project’s progress.

Qualitative Risk Analysis for Beginner Level Project Managers

To deal with risks successfully, each project manager should develop and implement a risk management strategy, plan, and tools at the start of each project. Mostly, People are bad at assessing risk. They allow biases to influence their decisions or emotions to stymie decision-making processes. This is why project managers must understand how to analyze risk quickly, efficiently, and strategically for qualitative risk assessment.

How to maintain outstanding project leadership

In today’s project-driven business landscape, project managers are an indispensable part of completing projects successfully. But a closely related and equally important discipline receives much less attention: project leadership. Maybe it’s because one is a fairly standard job title and the other isn’t.

Sound the alarm: Would you even know if 'quiet quitting' was hurting your profits?

Quiet quitters don’t abandon ship. They don’t complain loudly. Instead these employees gently pull-back, and your business stops benefitting from their entire focus, energy and brilliance. For leaders, that should trigger alarm bells. But many carry on like nothing is amiss. The question isn’t whether you have people in your company that have stopped going ‘above and beyond’—inevitably, you do.

How to Ensure Your Business Offers a Healthy Work Environment: Creating a Positive and Safe Workplace

The word healthy, on its Latin root, means “whole“. A healthy workplace then is one where the employees can work together as a whole, being highly productive as a team while maintaining good interpersonal relationships. And you, as their employer, are responsible for creating a healthy and safe work environment for them. A healthy work environment includes ensuring that the workplace is free of hazards and that employees have the necessary tools and training to do their job safely.

Time Logs: What are they? And Why are They Important?

You’ve heard it said over and over again that time is money. The reason that’s such an often repeated cliche is that it’s actually true. The time you and your team spend on projects and various activities throughout the office correlates directly with your profits. And time logs are a perfect way to organize it. If you don’t know how much time something takes, you can’t accurately gauge how important the task is for your bottom line or how valuable your time is.

A Guide to Workload Management in OneDesk

Workload management involves getting a clear picture of who is available and when, in order to utilize your team’s full capacity and exceed goals. In OneDesk there are multiple ways to manage your team’s workload. You can determine how many tasks are assigned to someone, how much time they have available in a given period, the actual time or progress logged to work, and more.

Solving Business Challenges: How to Identify and Address Your Company's Problems

It was all fun and excitement when you first created your business, but at some point, things got a bit sidetracked, and now problems are piling up! Whether it’s a drop in sales, an issue with product quality, or something else entirely, business challenges are inevitable. All businesses have their own unique set of challenges that they must face. It’s how you identify and address those problems that determine your company’s success.