I was asked a few weeks ago to write a short article for CEO Today Magazine. It was published this past week in their Online edition. The article is about a topic I speak on often: How to do more with the same resources you have and focuses on identifying and quantifying the time resources spend that are not productive for the company nor favored by the employee. An example might be how often people…
My company, HMS Software, just released a brand new version of our keystone product, TimeControl. That’s great news of course and you can read all about it at HMS at: www.timecontrol.com/features/latest but what went into this development and release has our company thinking about development quite differently and so this post is more about how software development philosophies are evolving. It’s certainly a watershed moment for us. TimeControl has been a browser-based product since 1999…
All in one thinking is built into our industry Many years ago I wrote several articles about the differences in choosing an all in one Finance system vs best of breed functionality. My focus was mostly about project management, but the concept can carry across many systems. The notion of all-in-one corporate systems became popular in the 90s. Large integrated systems like SAP or Oracle Financials were able to point to multi-function systems which included…
At my firm, HMS Software, we were delighted to launch the latest new version of TimeControl this week. TimeControl 7 was released on Monday and there’s no one happier about that than I am. I’m excited about the new release but it sparks a conversation in my firm and with people in my industry about how often should clients go between software versions. There’s several aspects to the conversation. What is a “new version”? The…
I tend to look at someone’s decisions or the actions they’ve taken and wonder “What was the world they were looking at that would have had those actions and those decision seem like the exact right thing to do?” Now I know that not everyone thinks like me and thank goodness that’s true but for me in a business or project management context, asking that question of myself can become quite important. You’ll see the results…
We’ve just published a new free webinar based on seminars that have been given many times in different venues around North America. Panning for Gold by Data Mining your Project Tracking data is approximately 60 minutes long and covers how to data mine enteprise project and enterprise timesheet data to improve efficiency. The webinar includes real life examples from some of our HMS Software clients in how they were able to data mine their project timesheet…
We get calls at our office reasonably often that start like this: “We need a project management system,” the caller asks. “What kind of project management system do you need?” we reply. “You know,” the caller says somewhat frustrated at our questions, “the kind of system that manages projects.” There are, of course many different kinds of project management systems. Given that we spend so much of our life at HMS in the enterprise timesheet…
On a regular basis around HMS we get specifications from clients of what they’d like to have our TimeControl timesheet do for them. It’s a necessary part of the evaluation process for a client to find the right type of timesheet for their particular business challenge. The problem is that the language that the specifications are put in are rarely those of business. Most often the specifications are made in terms of features as in “the…
Years ago I wrote an article about how project management required tracking not just planning. It was a time when many organizations used the terms project management and project planning synonymously. In fact many of what we referred to at the time as project management software systems were, in fact Critical Path Methodology calculators which were all about the planned schedule and very little about the actual progress. It’s almost 15 years later but it…
For those interested, there are lots of ways to keep up with my writing and other content and activities I am up to. LinkedIn Are we connected on LinkedIn? We should be. Go to www.linkedin.com/in/cvandersluis and tell me that you found the link on the EPMGuidance blog and I will add you right away. Twitter Yes, I maintain a twitter feed. Two in fact. MY HMS / TimeControl Twitter is at @HMS_TimeControl and my personal…
