Posted by godzhesas on 22 December, 2007 00:28

Starting on project management? Then you have come to the right place. You will find a lot of tips, best practices, project management tools reviews and much more in our blog. Now, the first thing you need to do is to sign up for a FREE Comindwork account. Next, without any doubt, you need to some theoretical background. I am not going to tell what project management is and what it is not, soon you will find that out by yourself. In this post I would like to introduce you to the main project management methodologies. Please keep in mind that my focus is on IT projects management.

It is important to distinguish that different methodologies are focusing on different elements:
• CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) - management is built around PROCESS (i.e. Transformation is the core and entities it uses are secondary)
• PMBOK (provides the fundamentals of project management as they apply to a wide range of projects) - is also built mostly around processes (i.e. its 9 bodies of knowledge are organized around 9 major processes, although usually each process is dedicated to management of 1 important object like "Management of cost", "Communication management", ”Risk Management” etc. )
• RUP - actually in the middle - i.e. entities (RUP: artefacts) and transformations (RUP: Activities organized into disciplines) are balanced. And roles are pretty well refined and described.
• XP - management is built mostly around entities (i.e. focus on Time, Cost, Scope, Quality). Processes are incremental and iterative, we can also say it’s "every-day-work".

You can see the main focus points of every methodology in the table provided below:

Aspect	CMMI	PMBOK	RUP	XP
LIFECYLE(activity)	PLAN: Estimate Build Plan (formal paper) Obtain Commitments (Human-related) CONTROL Monitoring against Plan Corrective Actions when required	Initiating processes Planning Executing Controlling Finalizing	Project Start Manage Iteration/Project Plan next Iteration Project Closure	Manage Iteration Plan (partial) next Iteration (moving works further, descopings etc.)
ENTITIES	Like in RUP but more heavier (for example "Life-cycle model" etc.)	Manage 4 parameters: Expense: Cost and Time Result: Scope and Quality Manage other issues: People and communication Freelancers (subcontractors) Risk	Work orders Issues Risks Plan Assessment	4 Parameters: Cost Time Scope Quality

As you can see they all have a lot in common, but at the same time they are very different, so choose carefully, because when something will go wrong in the project, or not the way you planned (and I can assure you that it is very likely to happen), it will not be the best time to think about your management methods, so do your homework ;) and come back for more!

  Posted by pas on 20 December, 2007 07:17

We're getting better every day.
Now we've got usability specialist and new designer, so we perform a lot of UI changes these days.
My job is to make your work easier, every day.
And I invite you to explore great possibilities that occur today, in your communication with partners and co-workers.
Let's stay creative, and throw away things that don't work.
Things we've changed in new release are:

• Status Notifications are sent daily, for you not to forget of your tasks
• Team management is simplified
• Milestones are easier to access and manage
• Open Blog now has RSS feed

And thanks for your great feedback on Comindwork.
We really appreciate it.

Keep talking!

  Posted by andrew on 18 December, 2007 17:58

Today when I reviewed the newest release of Comindwork with tons of features and widgets I suddenly recollected the times when we didn't have anything for knowledge work collaboration.

Well, I really can not imagine how we would work without any project management system today. I perfectly remember the times (although it was 5 years agooo) when the main tool was just Outlook and its folders with mess of unsorted emails, issues, suggestions, lost decisions and missed milestones.

I think the core needs of the project team didn't change over last 5 years, although most of today's project management systems provide much more than really desired. Here is my list of TOP-5 most demanding features for online project management:

• #5: Project blog - without this power of informal communication your project is just dead. This is excellent source for inspiration and place for sharing opinions and news in distributed team.
• #4: Email notifications, RSS - you should ensure that every team member is aware about the latest project changes and events. The information should be shared immediately and target people should have 100% guarantee not to miss any critical comments to their tasks or project requirements and schedule.
• #3: Bird view dashboard - "1-minute-dashboard to jump into the project context" - ability to review project state and progress during just 1 minute. This is critical for making immediate project decisions or making scheduled project audit.
• #2: Project wiki and tagging - the powerful "knowledge shaping". When we write requirements - we use wiki. We like co-editing wiki-documents as that is simple and powerful way to prepare really mature documentation, help-topics or tips for beginners.
• #1: And the 1st prize is... Case (issue) tracking - our biggest challenge was to handle hundreds of small issues which must be tracked until closure and 100% never ignored. In such a situation we create a new case and give the flag to the person who is responsible to resolve the issue. In 2007 year every team player resolved over 200-300 of such cases.

This was the 1st wave of features for Comindwork and we managed to establish basic management discipline and culture in our team. After that the main task was to make our knowledge work truly effective. I'll post my "TOP-5 knowledge work features" shortly!

Take care and have a great collaboration!
Sign up for Comindwork and let me know your opinion!

  Posted by godzhesas on 14 December, 2007 18:03

Once more I’d like to point out that our project management software is completely FREE with all the features available for you, no hidden fees, no trials, the only limitation there is – number of team members is limited to 5 in the free account. So once again check out our project management features roadmap and decide, I can guarantee you won’t be disappointed!

P.s. We are improving our support services, soon we will add a new tour, RSS feed for our blog, Frequently Asked Questions section collected from user experiences. A series of project management tutorials will be released (how to get the most of Comindwork managing projects) and much more. Your feedbacks are always welcome!.

  Posted by akvepas on 10 December, 2007 20:26

Well, this actually does not concern Comindwork Development, but.. And we had a great party on Friday. You can check out some photos in my Picasa Gallery.
What I think about when looking at the photos, and what empowers me now: ' It's good thing to work with alive people '. The most important.

We wish you prosperity and success in.. umm.. our new year :)
Thanks for staying with us!

  Posted by akvepas on 10 December, 2007 19:31

Good start!
We've started localized Comindwork to run in Russian.
Now it's available at comindwork.ru, and all your projects may appear in localized interface.
We believe it's valuable to be as close to customers as possible. If you and your team are russian-speaking, so why not switch to native language?

Keep talking!
Stay in touch :)

  Posted by andrew on 05 December, 2007 03:35

This is the first public post on our Comindwork vision. We cultivated this vision from 1999 year. In December 1999 (yes, 8 years ago!) we first made a commercial web site for client. BTW this site is still online - I invite you to check this :-)

Since that time we went through dot-com era, were the best on eLance, developed hundreds of dot-coms for clients, participated in dozens outsourcing initiatives. All 8 years we were building our own way to make knowledge products and provide knowledge services. I think we used all the possible alternatives for knowledge work during these years. We started from MS Outlook and MS Project in 2000 year, used ClearQuest, custom systems, then Basecamp, Salesforce, Kayako, Jira, various wikis, ticketing etc. We customized many products, tried to integrate those to work together, were frustrated from copy-pasting information, duplicating task lists, reports, loosing time on searching info somewhere...

We are now proud to open Comindwork to the public. Right now it is "just" a web system able to integrate different systems in one place. You may use wiki, blogs, ticketing, tasks, search, file storage, milestones, project budgets in one system and under one roof.

However our ambitions go much further and we are now working to make Rich UI to access all that variety of features, make them easy to learn and easy to use every day. Another goal is to implement our best practices in the shape of Comindwork tools and templates.

We want your feedback on how you see the ideal tool for knowledge workers team. More specifically - what you think is the most important for such sort of systems (and what is missing in other).

Thank you!