New Feature: Agile Project Management 3

Posted by Roger Neel Fri, 05 Feb 2010 05:53:00 GMT

 Most of you on Mavenlink are not software developers - you come from many different industries with many different specialties. For those of you who aren’t familiar with building software, there’s a relatively new methodology called "agile" that many of us use to develop our products, including the team at Mavenlink. Our agile methods are what we use to prioritize our work and meet your requests, requirements, and feedback in a timely manner.

From the wikipedia entry:
"Agile methods generally promote a disciplined project management process that encourages frequent inspection and adaptation, a leadership philosophy that encourages teamwork, self-organization and accountability, a set of engineering best practices intended to allow for rapid delivery of high-quality software, and a business approach that aligns development with customer needs and company goals."
 
Substitute out the words "engineering", "software", and "development" with words like "client deliverables", "tasks", and "work" and you now understand Mavenlink’s approach to helping you manage your projects. We just finished building what we call the ‘Project Tracker’ into the workspace for you to manage any of your projects in an agile way. We feel this is the best approach to fostering teamwork, collaboration, and frequent adaption in what teams are working on. It also has the side benefit of making it far easier to manage each task & deliverable, keeping things clean, simple, and, most importantly, ON-TIME.
 
This feature has been out there for nearly a week and is already getting some great feedback from projects large and small. I think you’re going to love our PM tools as much as we do. Keep an eye out for an upcoming screencast, but in the meantime, give it a try.

New Feature: Multi-User Projects & Workspaces

Posted by Roger Neel Thu, 11 Jun 2009 01:15:00 GMT

It is my pleasure to introduce our latest major feature - multi-user projects and workspaces.  It was through some of the initial feedback of our community that we prioritized this feature and made it happen ahead of other things we have planned and we could not be happier with how that worked out.  As we have been testing it over the last few days, we realized that it really does take Mavenlink's workspace and project capability to the next level.  It brings Mavenlink in-line with how most of us work: in groups.

What does this mean for you?

When you post a project or engage as a Maven, you will have an opportunity to invite a colleague to the project to work with you.  Whether it's to collaborate on the project together or hand off to another resource within your company, we think you'll find it very useful to team up on projects.

We're going to be layering on roles/privileges over the next few weeks as we begin getting feedback from our community.  Please let us know either directly or through GetSatisfaction (feedback tab on the right) what you think!

The Client Perspective: Posting Projects 2

Posted by Sean Crafts Wed, 06 May 2009 21:45:00 GMT

As Projects begin to flow into the Mavenlink system, I wanted to share some initial first hand experiences and learnings from my first three Projects as a Client on Mavenlink.

  1. Posting Projects as a Client can be almost addicting. It will change the way you think about interacting with external professionals and how you get work done.

  2. Managing Projects within Mavenlink provides definition and visibility. I was able to keep tabs on my Projects and quickly share with other colleagues within Mavenlink how things were going, what my extended team was working on, and budgetary guidance for the effort. As Mavenlink roles out groups within the system in the near future, I will be able to provide direct visibility to the progress on my Posted projects with identified colleagues.

  3. Posting Projects in Mavenlink is extremely simple, but every ounce of thought put in to the Post will be rewarded in terms of attracting Mavens and speeding the engagement process.

  4. Don’t let pricing deter you. On two of my Projects, I needed help refining the appropriate budgetary guidance from the Maven population. Let the Mavens help you establish reasonable budgetary parameters once the Project is clarified and you have the ability to evaluate multiple proposals.

  5. Mavens will take advantage of the up front messaging and collaboration opportunities within the system to clarify Project details. Help them help you.

  6. Your level of responsiveness in the system is contagious. Just like in your offline relationships, actions speak louder than words. On two of my projects I made a conscientious effort to respond as quickly as possible, and noticed clearly that the Mavens were more responsive as a result. On a third project, I unintentionally dropped the ball and missed a message for nearly four days. You can imagine how hard it was to complain about my Maven’s lack of response for 24 hours.

  7. Years of email inertia is hard to overcome. Especially on the first couple of Projects, I had to focus on uploading documents instead of sending emails (see 8 below).

  8. Uploading documents and capturing the conversation with my Maven inside of Mavenlink pays dividends. Having all of the communication history, the agreed upon documentation, the interim deliverables and the final deliverables in one place came in handy. As Mavenlink expands the collaboration tools available to both Mavens and Clients, making it easier to never leave the site, this collection of information related to the engagement will become invaluable.

  9. Notifications and Messaging are key. As we worked through these initial projects, it became apparent that the ability of Mavens and Clients to interact outside of the workspace is important. You’ll continue to see features rolled out to extend and improve the Notifications and Messaging within Mavenlink.

  10. Payment within the Paypal system was quick and easy. Paying with Paypal is straightforward and instantaneous. Paying with a credit card is equally smooth as long as you have not exceeded your credit card payment maximum, as established by Paypal ($2000 during any 90 day period).

To Learn more about Mavenlink, please visit: www.mavenlink.com or on Twitter at twitter.com/mavenlink