The deadline is looming and some co-workers are "hard at work" burning the remaining allotted hours on very slight modifications. Those type of changes that only they would notice while other people are waiting on the perfectionists to finish as they bottleneck the whole process.

Was the project done well? It depends on who you ask as people measure their work differently as they complete it to their satisfaction.

It's a question we hear all the time. By far, the greatest drain on project timelines involves ramp-up, discovery, interpretation, assumptions, corrections, and resetting the goals as the time for full execution dwindles. People engaging other people via some third party medium like software is the real challenge.

What if the vague planning process was pinpointed with precise checklists that were broken down to team members so everyone has clear expectations and only posts information in relevant areas?

To learn more about the book go to 42 Rules for Successful Collaboration

TECHNOLOGY
Using Collaboration Technology to Improve Communication

Too often project management and collaboration companies will focus on the amount of time it takes to assign, respond, accept or decline and complete a task within a project with email responses. When you breakdown the total amount of time spent in meetings, planning, questions, roadblocks, bottlenecks, scope creep and assumptions, managers will find that the productivity gains can be realized in the communication or human interaction rather than a overly complicated, feature-rich, software application.

As millions of people compose a new email each day, they pause briefly at the subject line to try to summarize the content for retrieval later or worse yet, they leave it blank. As the back and forth reply threads continue, the subject rarely matches the ending content or conclusions that are reached causing further confusion later. PlanDone keeps the comments neatly tabbed under the original task subject page so that any relevant discussion can be referred to later without a search for the subject of the original email thought.

You have seen these people are all around us (and may be one yourself) - they are not present in the physical world, but rather are doing that cell phone pacing, teetering march while looking down with a pivot/spin move on the corner or worse yet, cutting us off in traffic while connected somewhere else. You can look straight into their eyes, and they will not see you. Some expect some sort of nodding praise that their multi-tasking is a sign of productivity. Next time, ask them what they are working on simultaneously right now.

1. Divide and Conquer - Break large projects down into small pieces to delegate and share. PlanDone has three hierarchical levels - Project, Task, Action Step. The devil is in the details, and the real, detailed work gets done at the step level as opposed to the high project level. PlanDone will help staff know exactly what is next to do by assigning them action steps and giving them the ability to share it with co-workers if they get overwhelmed.

If you have seen the TV show, "The Office," you might identify with some of the dysfunctional working environments and staff members. It's funny because it's true that people are strange.

A lot of companies will claim that their collaboration solution is a magic pill that will transform the office into a productive, happy place. Well, we won't say that because PlanDone is not for everyone.

Most Project Management tools have estimates built into the process for metric tracking later to gauge estimates vs. actual progress or theory vs. reality project planning. Too often in the planning stage, the project planners are different team members than the task executors. When implementation is to begin, there is a hand off to a team lead or project manager to delegate, track and hold task members accountable for their guesses on work estimates that are nearly universally incorrect based on two factors - 1.

Unlike other products, PlanDone’s focus is on completing projects and bringing clarity and accountability to project planning in a whole new way. Headquartered in Petaluma, California, Please welcome Founder and CEO, AJ Wacaser, and CTO, Mark Riedesel.

Quick question: How many people here have ever had a project that was overdue?
More appropriately, How many people are late right NOW?

The main reason projects are overdue is the lack of clear, concise communication.