Blog - Sarah M. Hoban: Recent Episodes
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Oftentimes when I review a product, I’m considering its capabilities from the perspective of an experienced project manager responsible for delivering defined initiatives from start to finish. In other words, my review is intended to help my readers—both seasoned and aspiring project managers—figure out whether a specific tool is worth their while.
This product review comes with a twist. Bonsai appeals to me both as a project manager AND as a freelancer looking for ways that I can more easily manage client and financial data. If you’re looking for an enterprise project management tool, Bonsai is probably not your best bet. It’ll help you up to a point but is not as well suited to the needs of a larger organization.
But, if you’re in the business of agency, freelance, or consulting work, Bonsai’s business management offerings in combination with its project management capabilities are downright impressive.
FeaturesWhen you first log into the app, Bonsai displays a dashboard summarizing your portfolio of ongoing projects, including profit & loss and time tracked against those projects. You can use the left navigation panel to toggle between project management, client management, and financial management views.
You can also access app settings from the dashboard, including the ability to add branding specific to your business. Additionally, in the settings menu, you can:
- manage integrations with other apps, ranging from Google Suite to Slack to Trello to QuickBooks to Calendly (plus many more)
- import prior client, project, or financial data to make it easier to get started in Bonsai
- export Bonsai data for use in another application.
Project ManagementProjects are the main organizing component for Bonsai. For each project, the overview page summarizes associated tasks, invoices and expenses, any relevant documents or links, plus an activity feed.
You can view projects in a board or list view. The board view is particularly helpful for visualizing a pipeline of upcoming work.
You can invite team members to each project and set available working hours and billable rate for the staff that will be contributing. This feature would have been great in my consulting days, even when I worked for a large firm. I can’t tell you how many different spreadsheets and internal tools I had to reference to access this type of data. Bonsai brings everything together in one place.
After you’ve created a project and assigned team members, you can also set a project budget. Bonsai lets you configure a notification to warn you when you’ve hit a certain percentage of your budget (another nice feature that would have been helpful in my consulting days!)
Within a project, you can see a list of ongoing tasks.
For each task, you can add a description and due date, assign a team member, reference any files, create subtasks, prioritize, add time estimates and actuals, and track dependencies. You can also customize possible task statuses based on your desired workflow.
Within the project management section of Bonsai, you can also access a tasks view from the left navigation panel. Within this view, you can see a list of tasks across projects and search and filter those tasks based on criteria you set. For example, you could choose to look at tasks upcoming this week or tasks associated with a specific client.
Bonsai also has the capability to create task templates so that you can standardize recurring tasks to be completed across projects. For example, you might generate a task template for building a website or crafting a 1000-word article.
When it comes time to execute the tasks you are planning, you can use Bonsai’s embedded time tracking function to log time spent against project tasks. If you’re like me and need to reduce distractions as much as possible while you’re working, both the mobile and desktop versions of Bonsai include this functionality, so you don’t have to stay logged into the website.
As you track your time, the project budget updates automatically, depending on whether you’ve marked a task as billable or non-billable.
The timesheets view lets you see time logged by team member over a time period that you specify. I also love that there is a resourcing view where you can note team member availability based on available capacity and any planned time off.
Finally, like any project management tool worth its salt, Bonsai comes equipped with a canned reports library that you can customize to your project data around metrics such as utilization, profitability, and project health.
Client ManagementIn addition to managing projects, you can use Bonsai to manage your client roster. When getting started, you have the option to import contacts from an existing client list that you maintain or to add contacts manually.
Once you’ve got your clients inputted, I was especially jazzed to see that you can use Bonsai to help manage lead generation. Specifically, you can embed a contact form on your website so that anyone who fills out the form gets added to your client list. That utility is so essential for a freelancer—this way, you can track clients from inception rather than having to keep track of a bunch of emails. I can’t wait to put this in practice 🌞
Bonsai also integrates with scheduling tools that let prospective clients book time with you. Those bookings also appear on your client list, in case you choose to manage leads that way.
The services library is another cool feature for freelancers. In this section, you can generate a set of templates for common services that you offer. For each service, you can add a title, description, price, price type (e.g., flat rate or hourly), and category (e.g., consulting or coaching.)
You can take content from the services library and drag and drop into the proposal builder to generate professional-looking, custom proposals for your customers. It’s so common to want to offer customized packages based on client preferences, but it can be time-consuming to continually make up one-off proposals. This feature takes out a lot of the manual labor, so you can focus more time on your business.
You can either keep the templates generic or customize with your business’s branding. I wish I had this feature available to me before I spent hours slaving over painstaking template creation in Microsoft Word.
Once you queue up the proposal, Bonsai generates an email to send to the customer that tracks proposal receipt and review. You can even add reminders to alert the client the day before the proposal expires. Using automation workflows, you can set up next actions after a proposal is accepted (e.g., scheduling an introductory meeting or sending an email.)
In the contracts section, you can sign and send agreements for countersignature. Like with proposals, you can also automate next actions post signature. The contract portal includes a secure link for clients to access documentation associated with the project, so you don’t have to resend items that might get lost in the shuffle.
Financial ManagementThis section of the product focuses on client billing. I like the option to set up recurring invoices for longer-term projects. Now, I’m using a separate to do list to remind myself to invoice during these projects. With Bonsai, I can set up recurring billing when I land a gig and go from there.
I’m also a big fan of Bonsai’s PayPal integration. IMO, PayPal’s invoicing portal is not the most user friendly, so I like the idea that I could bypass that entirely and work with Bonsai to generate and send invoices for services rendered. You can also set up reminders if your clients haven’t paid you within a specified window.
If you’ve got a business of a certain size with separate business accounts, you can use the QuickBooks integration to log and keep track of invoice payments.
Product PricingIn terms of pricing, Bonsai offers a couple different tiers based on business size and complexity.
The starter tier at $21/month may seem pricey if you’re just starting out. But, by the time you’re evaluating options like Bonsai, you’re likely at the point where your business is growing, and you’re looking to spend more time on the content of your business rather than business operations. So, it may be worth the investment.
I learned the hard way how to:
- Optimize lead gen
- Manage invoices and payment
- Create a professional and uniform look and feel when interacting with customers.
Bonsai helps you get that right, right away. As a freelancer and former consultant, I was impressed with Bonsai’s capabilities and value prop and would encourage you to give this tool a second look.
I’m continually curious to learn more about the enterprise project management software market 🤓 What products exist? How could they potentially revolutionize the way that teams do business without breaking the bank?
This time, I’m taking a look at Zoho Projects, the project management software solution associated with a much larger Chennai-based B2B software company called Zoho.
Product PhilosophyThe idea behind Zoho’s business software suite is to build a solution for any business problem that an organization might encounter. Zoho offers 50+ software applications ranging from customer support to finance to sales to HR, with the goal for a business to run itself entirely using Zoho.
Zoho’s project management solution, Zoho Projects, is a workhorse, offering a broad array of functionality to meet the needs of the company’s primarily mid-size and enterprise customers.
Even if you’re a smaller organization that is looking to get started with project management software, Zoho Projects could be a good fit if you either: 1) want to run other parts of your business on Zoho or 2) hope to scale your project management practices over time.
Let’s dive in to explore Zoho Projects’ features!
FeaturesPortfolio Dashboard. When you log into Zoho Projects, you’ll see a home page that includes a personalized dashboard summarizing the status of your portfolio. You’ll see which projects are active, including upcoming deadlines, ownership information, and cost and schedule performance.
Most importantly, you can customize the dashboard based on the information you would like to see. Clutch for controlling project managers who can’t stand clutter.
Home page with portfolio dashboard
Task Management. In addition to a higher-level project view, Zoho Projects lets you drill down into the detailed tasks that comprise each of your projects. Task view options include:
- A Gantt chart view that you can custom color code. While I’m not typically a Gantt chart fan, I like that this view lets you create and edit dependencies AND adjust the dependency type (although I’m still waiting to encounter a start-to-finish dependency IRL…)
You can also toggle the view to show the critical path only. And, even better—Zoho Projects gives you the option to set a baseline for your project timeline 🥰 Sounds simple, but it’s amazing how hard this is to find. * A Kanban view to visualize ongoing tasks. * A calendar view that helps you schedule tasks, events, and meetings.
Within the task management portion of the tool, you can also enter project milestones along with their supporting tasks and sub-tasks. You can filter within the tasks view to zero in on items that meet criteria you specify (e.g., task status.)
Finally, Zoho Projects includes built-in project templates and task lists so you don’t have to create these elements from scratch. If your clients insist that your project is special and your suggested template won’t cut the mustard, you can add custom fields.
Charts and Reports. Zoho Projects prides itself on being a report-heavy tool. The product includes multiple built-in reports that you can access via the portfolio dashboard or the left navigation panel.
Example of a custom task report
Some reports of interest include a timesheet report, a project status report, and an ability to view project tasks by assignee. You can also create custom reports (e.g., you can choose to see a report of outstanding bugs organized by severity.)
I am particularly pumped to see their version of a resource utilization chart, which visualizes how work is distributed across the team. I like that you can drag and drop from the chart view to redistribute work on the fly. Essential for scenario planning.
Resource utilization chart
You know your girl asked about accessibility as soon as I saw those reds and greens. Surprisingly, Zoho Projects hasn’t gotten many customer requests for this feature (yet), so accessibility enhancements remain in the discovery stage rather than on the immediate roadmap.
While Zoho Projects does offer integrations with most of your standard Google and Microsoft products, I wish there were more options for integration with advanced analytics tools to augment the product’s existing reporting capabilities.
If you’re operating within the Zoho ecosystem, however, you do have a bit more flexibility here (definitely a consideration if you’re in the early stages of shopping around for enterprise business software.)
Time Management. Zoho Projects offers a built-in time tracking feature. Users can add their time manually via timesheet entries. Another option is to use an automatic timer.
Using this feature is as simple as starting the timer once you start working on a task and then stopping it when you take a pause. The information flows directly into your timesheet. You can even set up an approval process to review time logs for your people. YES PLEASE.
Time tracking doesn’t do too much good if it doesn’t link to your budget. I was glad to see that Zoho Projects also offers budget tracking capabilities (again, sounds basic but is not universally available in other applications I’ve used.)
Within each project, the project manager can input the project budget based on estimated staff or project hours. You can integrate with Zoho Books and Zoho Invoice accounting software to pay your bills based on project-level data.
Team Collaboration. Zoho Projects offers a lot of team collaboration capabilities, with a stated goal of both reducing context switching and the need to invest in additional applications.
TBH, the amount of team collaboration capabilities felt a little haphazard, likely reflecting the early adoption of these features relative to Zoho Projects’ competitors.
The good news is that you’re hooked up with everything you could possibly want in terms of collaboration. The downside is it would be a cleaner user experience if these features integrated more tightly.
Team collaboration capabilities include:
- Built-in social feed so you can see updates on what’s going on with the projects you’re involved with
- The ability to add comments or file attachments to existing projects, tasks, or issues (i.e., bugs)
- A “discuss” tab that lets you send async messages regarding a specific project (both DMs and group chats.) You can also initiate video calls via Zoho Meeting (their version of video conferencing software) directly from the tab.
- A forum module to facilitate detailed discussions
- Pages, a wiki and document management repository. Pages integrates with Dropbox, Google Docs, and Zoho's version of document management software, Zoho Work Drive.
Automation. I’m a sucker for a good workflow builder that automates routine project management tasks. Zoho Projects’ blueprint feature lets you create custom flowcharts to build out the well-orchestrated process of your dreams.
Sample workflow builder
You can trigger custom actions based on updates to custom fields. For example, you can configure a workflow so that a certain team receives incoming high-priority tasks, followed by daily reminders until they complete the work.
Suddenly, you have more time to work on that strategy presentation instead of reminding your team to complete routine tasks.
User Administration. Although you can’t share links externally, you can export most of the views in Zoho Projects, including projects, milestones, tasks, issues, and timesheet logs, as either PDF, XLSX, or CSV files.
Additionally, you can export Gantt charts, calendars, project dashboards, and reports as PDFs—perfect for that executive presentation.
You can adjudicate user permissions in Zoho Projects for both internal and external users based on user profiles that you define. It’s a nice touch that even external users can receive custom permissions.
Product PricingZoho Projects offers three plan tiers, including a basic free plan for up to 3 users. They have a 10-day free trial for their premium and enterprise plans, which are $5 and $10 per user per month, respectively.
Zoho Projects pricing comparison
The enterprise plan offers additional project templates, external access permissions, and storage space relative to the premium plan. If you’re not sure which plan might be right for you, check out their detailed feature comparison for more information.
Even better is the cost comparison calculator that lets you see where Zoho Projects stacks up against competitors like Jira, Monday.com, and Asana.
I am pleased with what this product can do for you for the price point. Plus, their trial options give you some latitude to get started and test things out with minimal risk involved.
IFYKYK. For those not in the know, professional development units, or PDUs, are continuing education credits required to maintain Project Management Institute (PMI) certifications. The most common PMI certification is the Project Management Professional, or PMP, with 1 million plus certification holders worldwide.
In this post, we’ll review the requirements for earning PDUs towards your PMP and share some strategies for racking them up that in no way involve retaking your PMP exam—because you wouldn’t wish that pain on your worst enemy.
PDU RequirementsFirst, the basics. One PDU equals one hour of time spent on continuing education. For the PMP, you’ve got to earn 60 credits over a three-year cycle to be able to maintain your certification. Occasionally, PMI changes up the requirements for how to earn PDUs, so be sure to check the PMI website for the latest guidance. You can also download the Continuing Certification Requirement (CCR) Handbook for the fine print.
While 60 hours of continuing education over three years may not seem like a lot, it can be if you let the deadline sneak up on you. You do NOT want to have to cram 60 hours’ worth of training into one week. (Not that I know anyone who’s done that…)
PMI divides the 60 required hours into categories that each have a set of minimum requirements.
- Education - a minimum of 35 PDUs
- Giving Back to the Profession - a maximum of 25 PDUs.
This basically means that you don’t ever have to give back to the community if you don’t want to. The focus of the PDUs is on continuing education. But, that doesn’t mean you should skip this category entirely, if only because it offers some easy ways to collect PDUs. Read on to learn more!
Education PDUsWithin the education category, you need to earn at least 8 PDUs in each of the so-called “talent triangle” areas. Setting these minimums by area is PMI’s way of forcing you to learn about content that may not be in your preferred area of interest. It’s good for your continuing education but less convenient for earning PDUs.
Talent triangle categories include:
- Ways of working (these are skills purely related to the discipline of project management)
- Power skills (leadership)
- Business acumen (learning more about your industry.)
Options for building these skills include:
- Participating in a course or other training
- Attending events or meetups related to project management
- Consuming online or digital media
- Reading (that’s right, time spent reading this blog or my newsletter counts toward PDU requirements!)
- “Informal learning” sessions (e.g., mentoring or lunch and learns.)
Giving Back PDUsGiving back options include:
- Working as a practitioner (if you’re a practicing project manager, you can earn PDUs simply by doing your job!) You can only claim a maximum of 8 PDUs per renewal cycle in this category.
- Creating content or giving a presentation
- Sharing knowledge through mentoring
- Volunteering with PMI.
Your PDU Recertification StrategyOK, now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s get to the good stuff. What’s your plan for renewing your PMP?
Three Ways to Earn PDUs from Doing Your Day Job1. First things first—you’ll want to collect your max 8 PDUs for working as a practitioner. If you have a job as a program manager, then you can claim these credits and knock out this requirement right away. 8 down, 52 to go. 2. See if you can apply any required organizational training towards your education PDUs. Does your company require you to take manager training? Boom, leadership credits. What about vendor training on the program management software you use? Voila, technical skills.
Make sure to sign up for anything offered through work that can help you earn PDU credits. These courses are a win-win…they’re required for your job, and they’re required for your cert. Easy peasy. 3. Ditto if your company sponsors you to attend any conferences or other industry functions related to program management. You can claim the conference as education credits if the topics pertain to program management or to cultivating business acumen.
Pro tip: since many companies require a trip report to share learnings following a sponsored event, why not turn that trip report into a company presentation so you can earn giving back PDUs also? Win-win-win.
If steps 2 and 3 don’t apply to you, never fear. You’ve still got plenty of options for earning PDUs; it’ll simply require a little more planning. Read on for the skinny.
Additional Strategies for Earning PDUsFormal Training Options. Beyond annual required training, many workplaces also fund professional development opportunities to help employees further their skills. These programs can be formal, but they can also be informal and ad hoc, so even if your company doesn’t have such a program, be sure to check with your manager. You may be able to work something out.
If you have the opportunity to take employer-funded training, I’d recommend sitting down and booking a training course as part of your annual goal setting process. If the training covers the three legs of the PMI talent triangle, then you can do a two-day training course annually to get you within 10 PDUs of fulfilling your requirements (including your 8 hours claimed for working as a practitioner.)
2 days x 7 hours of daily training (minus 1 hour for lunch) = 14 hours of training
14 training hours x 3 years PDU renewal cycle = 42 PDUs
Additional pro tips for training:
- Schedule the training in advance so you can block the time off on your calendar
- Schedule it early enough in the year that, if something comes up, you can postpone it without throwing off your PDU plan
- Sign up with a colleague to make the training more fun.
If you’re looking for program management training suggestions, I’d recommend the Digital Project Manager or Louder than Ten.
Self-Paced Learning. If your company doesn’t offer training, you can’t spare the dedicated time block, or you’re convinced corporate training is too dull, design your own curriculum. This is where you can get creative with reading blog posts and articles, signing up for webinars, watching YouTube videos, or listening to podcasts.
Here is a sample of some of my favorite project management media to help you get started:
- The Digital Project Manager (browse the site for access to articles, a podcast, and mini-courses)
- Best Work Life blog, Float
- Coax magazine, Louder Than Ten
- Manage This podcast, Velociteach
- RescueTime blog
- Remote Work Prep blog
- Time & Attention podcast, Chris Bailey
- Async newsletter, Twist
- The Sunday Lunch Project Manager podcast.
Let me know in the comments if there are any other great project management resources that I’ve missed!
Ironically, I’ve had it on my list to review Toodledo, a to do list, for a long time. This is an OG productivity product in my toolkit, one I’ve used for many years and that came from an unexpected source—my mom. If you’re looking for a basic to do list without too many bells and whistles, read on. Toodledo may be for you.
Disclosure: This post includes affiliate links. At no additional cost to you, I earn a commission if you click the link and decide to make a purchase. I only recommend products I use and love.
When and How to Use a To Do ListMy challenge with a lot of to do list software programs—and part of the reason that I love Toodledo—is that most to do lists try to do too much. Why pretend to be fancy? It’s a list. There shouldn’t be a ton of requirements here. And, while to do lists are arguably not the best productivity tool (see the scientific reasons for why to do lists don’t work), I would contend that they remain useful for the right kind of tasks.
For example, the reason that I find Toodledo so effective is because of how I use it. In my case, I use the product to track “life” tasks that don’t take a ton of time to complete (i.e., they stand a reasonable chance of being crossed off at the end of the day.) This includes recurring tasks like reminding myself to pay bills, buy groceries, or schedule appointments.
I use a separate product to track creative ideas (Trello) and progress against my goals (OKRs.app.) If I used a to do list that blended life aspirations with daily chores, I would probably abandon the list in despair. The “little things” would move, but the big things would stay put day after day. I’d feel like a failure.
While Toodledo is a great to do list because it doesn’t try to do too much, it’s also great because it doesn’t do too little either. A lot of productivity minimalists will swear by tools like Evernote, Notion, or Simplenote—even the Notes app or Google Keep. But, those things don’t work for me. Being confronted with a blank screen burdens me with the feeling that I need to keep my to do list pretty.
It’s the same kind of behavior that used to compel me when I was a student to painstakingly rewrite to do lists once I had crossed off a lot of the items on there. The lack of neatness cluttered my mind. And, the act of rewriting served as a distraction from, you know, doing the things on the list.
In short, I need an app that doesn’t overdo it but also reminds me about what I’m doing in the first place. This is where Toodledo comes in.
Product PhilosophyIt’s a good time to write a review of Toodledo, as they are going through an effort to upgrade their web interface and their mobile app to make the product more robust, scalable, and reliable.
The leadership team is careful to mention that they don’t plan to make too many changes that would affect the user experience. As part of the dedicated, extremely loyal user base acknowledged in their marketing communications, I appreciate their recognition of the potential revolt that would ensue should they try to mess too much with a good thing.
Like the product itself, Toodledo’s product philosophy is simple. Toodledo offers a set of tools to increase productivity and organize your life.
FeaturesWhile I’ve been focused on the to do list (or tasks) part of Toodledo, the product includes a set of productivity tools that goes beyond your garden variety to do list. Beyond tasks (what you would consider a classic to do list), Toodledo also offers the ability to create notes, outlines, lists, and habits. You use the drop-down menu in the upper left corner of the screen to toggle between the different views.
Tasks. The “All Tasks” view shows you a comprehensive view of the tasks you’ve created, organized by date. You can see what’s assigned for today, tomorrow, the next 7 days, and then by month. You can also filter the view using the options on the left navigation panel to show tasks that have been recently added, completed, and modified.
Creating a new task is easy peasy. Click the “Add Task” button at the top of the screen. A blank task appears. You can enter the task name, assign it to a folder of your choosing, assign a due date, and then indicate whether the task is one-time or recurring.
How to add a new task in Toodledo
In addition to adjusting views via the left navigation panel, you can also filter tasks using the top navigation menu. For example, you can choose to display only the tasks that you’ve assigned to a specific folder.
How to filter tasks by folder in Toodledo
You can also choose to filter tasks by due date or to display them in a calendar view (note: the calendar isn’t terribly useful except as a gauge of capacity. It simply uses dots to indicate how many tasks you’ve assigned yourself per day.)
Notes. The notes section is similiar to the Notes app or Google Keep. In this section, you can create notes and add content free form. Once you’ve created a note, you have the option to edit the title, duplicate the note, or delete it entirely.
Outline. The outline section offers a value proposition similiar to that of mind mapping software, like Mindly. You can use the outline to structure content into a hierarchy. This is useful when you have an idea for a larger project that you want to break down into a series of more granular to do list items.
Lists. In the lists section, you can create customized lists using specific fields. You can either create a list from scratch or build one using a prepopulated template. Examples of built-in list templates include reading list, grocery list, packing list, and a food log. To give you an idea of how the custom fields work, the reading list template includes title, author, whether you’ve read the book, your rating, and the date you finished the book.
Habits. The habits section is, in a word, cool 🤓 It’s designed primarily for tracking daily habits, complete with a visual representation of a chain so you can see your streaks in action. What I like most about the habits section of Toodledo is that it visualizes your progress in multiple ways. Not only can you see the streak, but you can also see a weekly progress report, a calendar view of monthly progress, and a chart view front and center.
How to view habits in Toodledo
I’ve been sleeping on the Habits view of Toodledo, instead opting to use the Tasks view to track habits that I’m working to establish. Once I’ve successfully incorporated the habit into my daily routine and it becomes an afterthought, I cease to track it entirely. Switching to tracking these nascent habits in the Habits view might offer a more specialized way to keep abreast of the habits I’m trying to build.
The con to that approach is that I’d have to train my brain to toggle to the Habits view. Otherwise, out of sight is out of mind. Since I’m already trying to train my brain to perform the new habit, this might be too much. TBD.
Product PricingThe free Toodledo plan works well for me. I use it to track an unlimited number of recurring tasks across web and mobile. If you’re collaborating with someone else, it might be worth investing in the standard plan, which is super cheap ($3/month) and includes graphs, subtasks, integrations with third party apps, more capacity across views, and a longer task tracking history. Sign up using this link.
Pricing options for Toodledo
The Plus plan looks ideal for small businesses of up to five collaborators, offering a scheduler, the ability to add tasks via email (clutch), and file storage capabilities. Plus, you get priority support. If none of those plans work for you, contact Toodledo for more extensive business options. In the meantime, happy tracking!
In this post, I will explain what work blocking is, my work blocking origin strategy, why work blocking may be useful for you (in certain circumstances), and strategies you can use to maximize efficiency.
If you’re itching to join the Great Resignation before it’s too late, you’re probably finding yourself wondering what the heck employers even ask in an interview these days. Read on for best practices plus my list of the top 50 interview questions that program managers should prepare to answer.
Public service announcement: we’re halfway through the year (!), which means you’ve got about six months to dust off your goals and rightsize and refresh your OKRs for Q3. If you’re thinking about using a software solution for OKR management, WorkBoard is a potential option.
To prepare for our future, program managers need to educate a generation of executives who didn’t grow up in a waterfall world on the benefits of our role. This is where the pitch for program management comes in.
In this post, I’ll share some ideas for how you can structure remote work to set up your organization for success. TLDR; communication is critical.
This blog post will explain how to craft a 30-60-90 day plan as a way to align with your stakeholders on expected scope, measure outcomes, and stay accountable to your stated goals.
In a prior blog post on how to deal with a difficult sponsor, I mentioned that I had created a user manual. But, I did not explicitly address what a user manual is, why a user manual is beneficial, and how to create one. We’ll dive into these topics in this blog post.
What I originally envisioned as a 3-6 month vacation from the office would evolve into the default modus operandi for many knowledge workers, myself included, for nearly two years and counting. My thinking on remote work evolved and continues to evolve as I gain more experience. These are my learnings.
Asana’s tagline is to “work on big ideas, without the busywork.” How much latent productivity could you unlock if knowledge workers spent more time on their area of expertise rather than on the mechanics of managing and reporting on their personal workloads? This is where Asana seeks to add value.
Smartsheet bills itself as an enterprise collaboration platform that combines email, documents, calendar, file storage, and communication capabilities in one application. As I took Smartsheet for a test run, I was most struck by its versatility.
Time is Limited has a mission to measure organizations’ productivity data, with the goal of identifying inefficiencies that encourage leadership to make improvements. But how this does work exactly? What data do they measure? How do they safeguard employee data considering potential privacy concerns?
Being straightforward is especially critical when breaking bad news. This includes sharing that someone is leaving the team. Here are some tips for how to break the news of an employee departure.
Moqups sees its product as a solution to the ongoing challenges around requirements definition. In their view, creating good requirements is “more art than science.” Engaging a diverse swathe of people early in the process and continuing to question and refine initial hypotheses is key to generating the best possible set of requirements.
The consequences of cultivating a culture of transparency are that, sometimes, the things that come out of your employees’ mouths are going to strike you as ridiculous at best or downright insolent at worst. If you truly wish to practice radical candor with your employees, then you’re a hypocrite if you dish it out but can’t take it.
I recognize there are infinity articles on the Internet about self-care and how to structure your self-care habits to maximize productivity. But, I also get a lot of questions about how I manage to stay so on top of things, so I figured there’s nothing wrong with contributing my little footnote to the genre.
I have high standards for when you should have a meeting in the first place and how to run meetings effectively. I love Fellow’s mission to disseminate this knowledge to your colleagues by making it easy to create meeting agendas in a collaborative manner, record decisions, and track action items.
For the first five to ten years of your career, you should say yes. To everything. You should say yes so much that you’ll want to throw up from saying yes. Once you achieve a certain career threshold, you need to shift from saying yes to saying no. And, if you thought saying yes was hard, it’s nothing compared with the difficulty of saying no.
You know you’re ready for a promotion. But, somehow you don’t have the title. Short of being the first one online in the morning and the last one offline at night, how do you demonstrate your value to the business? I’d recommend pursuing a few specific actions to help demystify the promotion process.
Working with your team to measure progress against your OKRs can sometimes feel like pushing a boulder up a mountain. There’s got to be an easier way. Enter Ricotta, a Slack add-on for OKRs tracking.
When you become a manager, no one hands you a playbook telling you how to lead through a crisis. Like the rest of us, you just have to do it. Here are some principles that I adopted for my team and me this past year that have helped us navigate a challenging time.
CROOW is a project management software company that describes itself as being at the nexus of project management and business management. For this post, I had the opportunity not only to demo the product but also to speak with CROOW’s founder to learn about the origins of one of the new kids on the block in the PM software space.
As a proud millennial and child of the ‘90s, I distinctly remember the ubiquitous educational posters adorning the walls of my elementary and middle school imploring us to remember that “what is popular is not always right. What is right is not always popular.” What do you do when project stakeholders resist adopting effective program management practices?
I am constantly on the hunt for new productivity products, so I was looking forward to testing out Nirvana.Work, which bills itself as the world’s most powerful automated planning system. A lot of project management software can be convoluted, especially for young teams that are starting out. Nirvana.Work could be adapted for small-scale projects with relatively minimal effort.
Hive is productivity and collaboration software that is famously used by teams at world-class companies ranging from Google to Starbucks to Toyota to IBM. As a productivity and community building enthusiast, Hive was on my list of products to try.
After nearly 13 years as a technical program manager, I’ve learned that program managers and engineers are different people. And thank goodness for that—because our roles could not be more different. I’m generalizing of course—but, as a program manager, the idea of sitting at my desk for an entire day quietly working on a problem and interacting with no one fills me with nameless dread. Sure, it’s appealing when you consider how little time we have to ourselves and how our modern workforce is focused on speed of output, rather than quality of ideas. We even invented agile so we could ship ideas more quickly. We’re often working on a million things at once and doing bits and pieces of real work in between our meetings. But, that’s a topic for another day.
The point is that, while working quietly on a strategic project for 8 hours uninterrupted sounds intriguing in concept, I know after a day of that I’d be ready to throw up my hands in exhaustion. I want to engage with others. I want to get real eyes on the problem. Who cares if I think it’s good? Is it practical? Is it actionable? How can we get that good idea out there?
Role Differences Between Program Managers and EngineersAs a program manager, I’m accountable for project progress. I want to know where we are in the delivery cycle, forecast any pending roadblocks, and engage with people to ensure we remain on schedule and under budget. I want to work efficiently, and efficiency usually means speed. I want to talk to people to get more information—that’s way more appealing than reading it in some dry report in bits and pieces in between my many meetings.
Engineers simply want to be left alone. They want to do the work. They don’t want to talk about the process of doing work. And, especially if the program manager lacks technical understanding or is not good at their job (and therefore simply obsesses about mundane status updates instead of painting the big picture for the team), the engineers wind up getting annoyed.
The Problem with “In Progress”One of the key sources of tension between program managers and engineers revolves around the definition of “in progress.” The problem with “in progress” is that it doesn’t always provide enough information. “In progress” could mean that you opened an application and typed your first keystroke. It could also mean that the feature will be pushed to production in less than an hour. Ticket creation rarely provides this level of specificity. Unless program managers attend every standup, they don’t have insight into the true status of that “in progress” ticket. And, even if program managers are diligent about attending every meeting, those conversations represent “lost time” from an engineer’s perspective—time spent talking status instead of performing the work.
Attempting to obtain more detail on “in progress” could be construed as micromanaging, which does not cultivate the trust that is required to make a team successful. But what about those factors that are outside of your team’s control? For example, let’s say someone calls or Slacks an engineer asking for a “quick favor.” Your hard-working and conscientious team member wants to be helpful. Work ensues. If this happens once a day, then all right. It’s probably a wash. But what if it happens ten times a day? Or ten times an hour? Suddenly, your nice and helpful engineer is spending time on work that the program manager knows nothing about. Businesses expend a lot of effort to allocate people to the appropriate roles based on estimated level of effort. What if your level of effort is being skewed by a phenomemon of invisible work? In addition to the business impacts, this behavior also has ramifications on team morale. To address these “quick favors”, the team starts gradually working longer and longer hours to meet their deadlines and also accommodate these additional tasks that are not being forecast or planned effectively. How can the program manager help the engineer address this invisible work?
Potential Solutions For Tackling Invisible WorkOne potential technology solution for addressing this conundrum is a product called LinearB. LinearB correlates Jira issues with real-time Git activity so that program managers can dive into the details of what is being worked (without having to bother the engineer.) I like the concept of this product, which seeks to meet the needs of both program managers and engineers (which is no small feat.) In addition to alleviating the need for time-consuming status meetings and umpteen Slack messages, the product also helps to address the invisible work phenomenon by showing the number of Git branches that are unmatched with Jira tickets during the sprint. This helps the engineer quantify this formerly unquantifiable work and gives the program manager the tools needed to rightsize scope or staffing to address these requests.
If you’re skeptical about the utility of the tool, the LinearB team has even posted a set of “anti-FAQs” anticipating these concerns and helping you decide whether the product might be a good fit for your team. I love the honesty! Any concerns I had about how the data collected could be used for ill (i.e., micromanaging or even “spying” on employees) were alleviated after I consulted this page. LinearB did not design their services this way and, like most things, the power to effect change and improve people’s professional lives (not to mention the organization’s bottom line) likely outweighs any risks that could arise in execution. The team has even put in place guardrails to protect against this behavior.
If my organization used Git, I’d be eager to sign up and test out this tool. If you have feedback, or if you’ve used LinearB before, let me know your thoughts in the comments!
I wrote recently about the journey I took to secure my new role. For the outside observer, it may not have seemed like a transformation, because they weren’t aware of the work that went in behind the scenes to make it happen. There’s a great quote from Lionel Messi, a famous footballer, about how he worked for 17 years to get where he was—only to be called an overnight success. I like to consider that quote on those days when I feel like giving up on my personal OKRs. “Those days” can sometimes translate into most days, especially in an environment where it might seem like we have fewer distractions—and therefore fewer excuses—for failing to meet our goals.
But, that’s not what I want to write about in this post. What I want to write about instead is what happens after you complete the training, pass the test, and ace the interview. What happens when you land the role? The answer is that now you have to perform the role that you worked so hard to attain. This can be easier said than done.
Even if it’s your dream, no job is perfect. You’ll discover that you love some aspects of your role. You know you love it because you think about it when you’re not doing it—in a good way. You know you love it because you reach a flow state—i.e., the work is challenging, but not too challenging that it becomes an exercise in frustration.
While some aspects of your role may be pleasant, there will be other aspects that are just OK, and some that you actively dislike. As long as most of your job description falls into the “love” or “like” category, then you’ve got it pretty good in my book. For those parts that you dislike, there may be ways to minimize those activities and reshape your role to cater more to your strengths and interests.
When I started my new product operations role, I asked each leader that I met with about their vision for the top 2-3 things that I should accomplish within my first six months on the job. I got a variety of different answers. I recorded each of them and hung them up beside my desk so I could keep an eye on my progress. Then, I listened. A lot. I went to a ton of meetings, I asked a lot of questions, and I interviewed a lot of people to understand their perspectives.
I distilled the information I collected into a set of activities that the product operations lead should perform. I categorized that list based on their alignment with my career aspirations. Which ones were most important for me—a mid-career professional—to perform? Which would represent areas of growth for me? Similarly, which activities could be delegated to someone with less experience? I drew up a quick cost-benefit analysis and presented my proposal to leadership. I explained that I could perform the junior level set of activities with relative ease, but this meant that the more strategic activities (those things that I had personally deemed more interesting) would not get done. Alternatively, we could hire someone to perform those activities that I had already mastered—generating greater cost savings and efficiency and maximizing professional opportunities for both employees involved. My request was granted, and my team doubled within 90 days. Less than six months after I started, we’re getting ready to triple—thanks to meticulous tracking of activities and metrics and an appreciation for how to hire quality talent (a skill I prioritized learning earlier in my career using a similar method of optimization.)
On the good days, my work is easy, but everyone else thinks it’s hard. On the bad days, it can feel like banging your head against a wall—no one sees the beauty of what you’ve done, and your team is getting just a little tired of your obsession with OKRs. You wonder if you’ll ever be recognized for your efforts. But, you know that’s the downside of working in an operations role. You’re quietly shoring up the walls in preparation for a flood. When you’re doing it well, no news is good news.
Here’s to a quiet month ahead.
I recently started a new role…and it’s my best one yet. My job is to evaluate existing processes, make recommendations for improvement, and then implement those recommendations. I couldn’t dream up a better functional role if I tried. The role combines my love of project management with my aptitude for strategy with my affinity for tech products with my passion for productivity. Like most people when they are starting a new role, it took me a while to understand what they were asking me to do. Then, I stumbled upon this piece and realized that my current role is best described as “product operations.” I am project managing product managers.
Similarities Between Project Management and Product ManagementSeasoned product managers may dispute me, but most project managers I know, particularly those that have been working in the consulting space or on a smaller team, also have product management chops. Senior project management roles often involve developing a strategy or vision, engaging with your stakeholders to ground truth it, designing a solution that codifies that vision, tactically implementing the solution, and then using metrics you’ve designed to measure success.
Product management requires you to do the same thing—but for a product, rather than a program. Similar skillsets apply—among them leadership, communication, and the ability to understand the big picture in addition to managing the tactical details.
I found myself in the position of knowing that I could do a product manager job but having to prove it. As a strategy consultant, I had even served as a product manager in prior engagements. I still loved project management, but I wanted to diversify my skills to better position myself in a changing market.
Shifting from Project or Program Management to Product ManagementDeepening my product management skills required a lengthy process of discovery and a fair amount of hard work. Below are the steps I followed:
- Invested in a coach. I began working with a coach in 2019, with the initial goal of improving my leadership skills. For those who have the means, I cannot recommend coaching enough. Although costly, I was able to use company money to pay for this personalized attention to help achieve my professional goals. Let me stress that coaching is NOT easy! For the investment to be worthwhile, you must be willing to spend the time to adequately reflect and prepare for each session. Sometimes, I would leave sessions in tears, frustrated with my professional blockers or seemingly slow progress. But, ultimately, the process was rewarding. I learned a lot about myself, including my own personal blinders, and became a better leader as a result. As part of my journey of professional discovery, I recognized that my product management skills were not as sharp as they could be. I used the time with the coach to craft a plan for addressing that gap.
- Conducted a skills gap analysis. Once I had identified through discovery that product management was something I wanted to learn more about, I researched the skills that were required for the role. Then, I identified which of these skills were transferable based on my prior experiences in product and as a program manager. I realized that I possessed a lot of these skills already. For the ones that could be improved, I devised a plan to fill those gaps.
- Learned the vocabulary. One of the transferable skills I possessed was the ability to quickly get up to speed on a topic that may initially be unfamiliar. I had extensive experience with onboarding to new projects and not knowing what the hell was going on. I approached learning product management in the same way. I researched and subscribed to 24 product management blogs and read this content voraciously. When I came across a term that I didn’t recognize, I Googled it and added to a running list of definitions that I maintained in a Google Doc. Over time, it became easier to read the articles. I retired the Google Doc. I had officially absorbed the lingo.
- Created a training curriculum. I completed an introduction to product management course on Udemy to learn the bread and butter of what the role entailed. As I listened to the course, I created a running research notes file and identified and prioritized a list of tools that I wanted to add to my technology stack. Over the course of 2020, I took courses on UX Strategy, Jira, Confluence, Sketch, and MySQL. When the opportunity for my current product ops role appeared, I didn’t have practical experience with Jira—but my training credentials helped me land the position.
- Retooled my resume and LinkedIn profile. In addition to reframing my prior work experience in the language of product, I tapped into those parts of my resume that showed the entrepreneur in me. The initiative I had taken to hire a coach and quantify improvements in my leadership abilities, the extensive productivity research and talks I had given, and the website I had launched demonstrated that I knew how to lead as well as how to design and scale products. My website grew out of a desire to scale one-on-one coffee chats into a format that was palatable for a broader audience. In essence, I had launched a product. Now, I just needed to show it.
- Refreshed my portfolio. I redesigned and modernized my website in 2020 to make it more accessible to my readers’ diverse interests in product management and productivity as well asproject management. I mapped out a launch plan that included quantitative and qualitative data gathering efforts. I created user personas to imagine what my readers would want to see and used that information to target opportunities for improvement. The research I had done on product management helped prepare me for taking this exciting step to revamp my product offerings.
- Pursued opportunities for on-the-job training. I expressed my interest in working on business development efforts related to digital offerings to continue to expand my product vocabulary. I had started setting personal OKRs with the help of my coach and talked about it so much at work that it garnered the attention of my VP, who enlisted me to help him with a similar effort.
Landing the RoleWhen my most recent project unexpectedly ended over the summer, I was ready. The combination of on-the-job as well as external training, personal branding efforts, and my entrepreneurial side hustle made me a shoo-in for my current role. If I hadn’t done this legwork, I would have likely found myself in a familiar role, doing what I had done previously. It would have been enjoyable. I also would have been bored in six months.
Now that I have my coveted position, I’ve decided that I’ve reached a sufficient level of technical understanding for the time being. 2020 and its unintended solitary confinement was a good time for learning and discovery. I’d like to focus 2021 on growing my network and relationships in the product community. I’m excited to continue this journey with all of you as my readers!