Your All-In-One Web Based Project Management Tool

Even the best managers can get carried away in the excitement of landing a new client or getting the go-ahead to begin a new project. From signing contracts to salary spikes to picking your team, the early days of project management are fun but also crucial to developing your overall strategy. After your initial burst of big idea brainstorming, it’s time to settle down and begin planning out all the little details that will hold your project together and create an effective, profitable finished product or service. Here are five smart tips for planning out your next project and ensuring that you’re successful in the end.

1. Create a team. The team you assemble for your project should mesh well together personally and professionally. You don’t need to be friends out of work, but your abilities and ways of thinking should complement each other so that everyone’s strengths are brought out during the process of putting together the project. Pick individuals who are competent and deadline-oriented, and who are comfortable answering to you as well as working with others in the group.
2. Set short- and long-term goals. It’s vital to the success of your project to have a long-term goal that outlines what you want your finished product to look like and how you market it. It’s also important, however, to set smaller, short-term goals or “tasks” to keep you on track and monitor progress in our online project management tool. These goals can be generated in the form of deadlines or milestones and also help to ease your mind once you’re able to cross things off your list.
3. Test out your project in stages. Rather than waiting until the end to test out the effectiveness of your project, give your product or system little tests along the way. This method will help you more accurately identify problems or gaps in your strategy.
4. Stay organized. Set up a filing system, spreadsheets, charts or another organization system that will help you stay motivated and accountable for each of your decisions.
5. Communicate. Keep your clients, supervisors and team members updated with any problems, new ideas and progressions regarding the end result. Communication inspires efficiency and leaves little room for avoidable mistakes.

You’re next project should be a satisfying, invigorating experience, but remember to stay organized, set up a responsible, communicative team, and set goals for yourself to stay on track and finish your project to your client’s liking.

(This post was contributed by Caitlin Smith, who writes about the associates degree programs. She too welcomes your feedback at CaitlinSmith1117@gmail.com)

Here are nine ways to be a successful and effective project manager:

1. Be a Leader and a Manager: This is the ability to direct your group of people towards achieving the final goal. Leaders communicate a defined and organized vision to motivate others, which managers must also do. A good project manager will constantly switch from a leader to a manager as necessary.

2. Be a Team Builder: Successful projects are delivered by successful teams and successful teams have skillful team leaders. As a leader, you must set the tone for the team and create professional camaraderie between your team members. Because projects often have people working with different functional expertise, it is up to the project manager to lead them through the various team development phases to the point where they perform as a team.

Let’s take this Dilbert cartoon for an example:

He is not a good Team Builder or a Team Leader and, as you can see, his team is not exactly productive. (Okay, the comic was mostly for a laugh.)

3. Be a Problem Solver: As a project manager, you’ll have to put your detective skills to the test. A project manager must find the source and solution to many types of group work related issues, such as:

• interpersonal problems
• internal sources
• external sources
• technical sources
• management sources
• communication
• opinions or perceptions
• and many more!

Being a problem solver is all about analyzing possible alternatives and determining the best course of action.

4. Be a Negotiator and an Influencer: Work together with other people with the intention of coming to a fair joint agreement. Learn to judge, sacrifice and compromise without threatening the overall project and final goal.

Influence is getting events to happen by convincing your team that your way is the better way, even if it’s not what they want. In short, influential power is the ability to get people to do things they would not do otherwise.

5. Be an Excellent Communicator: Being a communicator means recognizing that it’s a two-way street. As a project manager you will have to deal with both written (in documents and through technology) and oral communications. A good way of summarizing this is: all communication on your project should be clear and complete.

6. Be a Good Organizer: Let’s just think of the aspects you will need to organize: documentation, contracts, reports, meetings, tasks, reviews, requirements and completion.

It’s almost impossible to stay organized without having time management tools- so add this to your list- get an online project management tool, such as SantexQ, that will help with organizing tasks. Features like client/contacts info, calendar, time clock and other organizational tools help clarify communication and stay on track.

7. Be Aware that Planning Should Become Second Nature to You: There are known and logical steps in creating plans. As a project manager you will certainly own the Project Plan and are responsible for thinking it out and executing it.

8. Be Able to Setup and Manage Budgets: At the heart of this skill is estimating, particularly cost estimates. The project manager will need certain knowledge of financial techniques and systems along with accounting principles.

Part of the Project Plan will be the Spend Plan. This will show the planned spending against a time-scale. The PM will want to get involved in purchasing, quoting, reconciling invoices, time sheets, labor costs, etc.

The project manager then needs to establish what has actually happened and forecast the expected final costs. In many cases, accounting and project management tools will help significantly.

9. Be On Top of Your Reports: Characterize your information and watch your progress along the way. Make sure your team is on the right track and on time. Find software that allows you to watch and run reports on a myriad of subjects for your development team and prove your progress to meet your final goal.

These are all very valuable skills, but are certainly not an exhaustive list. What do you think? Are there any any skills you would add to the PM Be-attitudes?

For more information on free project management software visit: www.santexq.com/

While The Q is an all-in-one online project management tool, one of its strongest features is task tracking. Simplicity and organization are essential for task tracking, and The Q’s setup takes the hassle out of it.

To enter time for any given task, all you need to do is go to the Tasks tab. Click on the task you’re working on and you will be shown the task details, including a description of the task, team members assigned to it, and how much time has been allotted for that particular task.

Click on “Add time to this task” and a box will come up with fields for you to enter how much time you spent working on the task and a short description of what you did during that time. Click “Save Details” and you’re good to go.

(Click for bigger view!)

The information you just entered will appear in the Task History section for that task, and it will appear in any related reports you generate from the Reports tab.

This simple way of recording time is helpful not only for project managers, but also for businesses that work with billable hours. The fact that SantexQ is an online project management tool is  extremely convenient in that it helps keep everyone constantly updated with the project’s status.

Happy Friday! We’ve got some good news. SantexQ v 3.0 is in the works and it is going to include a billing and invoice feature. The feature will not be available in the free version, but can easily be added for a low monthly payment.

The billing feature will be fully integrated into The Q and will include invoice options under the Projects, Task and Reports tabs. The added feature will be very user-friendly with intuitive links that allow you to compile billable tasks (tasks can be marked as non-billable, if desired) into one invoice overview for each project. Time budgets can also be established so users can keep track of whether they are over the number of hours allotted for a particular project.

Completed invoices can be sent through email, as a PDF or simply printed out. All billing data is saved in your company’s SantexQ database and is searchable. As with other user settings, Super Administrators can choose which users will have access to the billing options.

This new feature will greatly increase the usability of The Q and we are excited about it’s official release in the very near future. If you have any questions feel free to leave us a comment here on the blog!

For more information on online project management tools visit: www.santexq.com/

In our last article, we posted a list of free business Web applications that can be used to make your office life a little bit easier. We really liked the idea behind Empressr and decided to use it to make a presentation of our own. Check it out below:

Now you know all about the SantexQ online project management tool. Yippee!

For more information on free online project management tools visit: www.santexq.com/

If you thought the SantexQ blog was only going to be about project management software, prepare to be shocked and amazed: it’s not! Project management is more than just clicking away on your SantexQ dashboard, so we have decided to include to a few articles on helpful project management tips. For our first PM tips blog, we’ll be discussing effective project management. Ready, set, go!

Project managers. You either love ‘em or hate ‘em.

Maybe you just hate ‘em. No one likes being told what to do, and that’s basically what a project manager does. So, if you want to be a good project manager, all you have to know is how to tell people what to do, but make them feel like you’re not telling them what to do, and get amazing results with the least amount of friction. Piece of cake, right? Right.

To help you along the way, we have compiled a list of ways to become a more effective and, dare we say, amicable project manager. Effective project management may be a simple concept – be organized, be a good communicator, etc. – but there is more intricacy to each of these key concepts.

Avoid micromanagement

This seems like a no-brainer but, as a project manager, it can be difficult to not be informed of every detail. Give your employees some credit. In most cases, they know how to do their job, and checking in on them every time they blink will actually be less productive since they are constantly annoyed or worried that you’re there, watching…waiting…

Communicate effectively with employees

You don’t want to micromanage, but you do want to keep an open flow of communication between you and your employees. Have your casual weekly status update meetings, encourage people to come to you with questions and concerns and do your best to make your team members feel comfortable around you. If you are polite and respectful to your employees, they will respect you in return, which will facilitate a positive working relationship. Note that being polite and respectful doesn’t mean being a pushover.

Engage in team building

Reward achievements, provide feedback, recognize strengths and provide challenges. If your team members feel like their hard work makes a difference, they will be more likely to continue working hard.

Understand the roles of your team members

This means more than just knowing their job title and the bullet point list of their duties. If you know the basics about their area of expertise, you can easily discuss the project with them and better solve problems.

Manage customer expectations

Open communication with your customers and clients is a big part of effective project management. Make sure you know exactly what your client envisions, and make sure your client knows exactly what you can and cannot do with their project. Be realistic about it.

A few other points of advice for the aspiring star project manager:

• Set priorities

• Have a positive attitude

• Be confident in your managing skills

• Be honest

And last but not least, use an online project management tool, such as – we can’t pass up this opportunity – SantexQ! Seriously though, it is near impossible to deny that project management software helps you stay organized. With collaboration software, not only is everyone better informed about the projects they are working on, but you (the uber effective project manager) can see, in words, what is being done, when and by whom – all without having to pester anyone or keep a ton of documents on file. In any case, The Q is free project management software, so try it out and see what it can do for yourself.

Sign up at www.santexq.com, then feel free to come back to The Q blog and give us some feedback. We welcome your comments and continually strive to make SantexQ the best online project management tool out there.

Here’s a quick guide on how to get started with the SantexQ online project management tool. It’s simple and straightforward, easy and helpful, everything you ever wanted and more! Just follow these easy steps:

1. Click on “People,” then click on “Add a team member” to create customized user accounts for your staff. You can go through and add all the members of your staff, or you can simply add however many team members you need for this particular task. You can add more later.

2. Click on “Create a task.” Use the form to quickly add a client, project name, task name and task description.

Example:

Client: YourCompany, Inc. (if a task is for your own company, you would put your company name as the client)

Project Title: General Office Upkeep

Task: Buy Paper

Task Description: buy paper for office

3. At the bottom of the same form, you can choose members to assign to the task so they can record the amount of time they spend on the task. Tasks with set dues dates will show up on the task list of each associated member.

Now you can add tasks to this project willy nilly.

That’s it! The Q’s simplicity is a key element to effective project management. With The Q, project managers can easily see who is working on what, and the amount of time team members are spending on each task.

The Q is expecting a lot of positive changes in the near future and we want to make sure all our current and prospective users are very much in the know. This blog will be a primary source for info on new features, tips on how to effectively use the Q, troubleshooting, FAQs and maybe even some fun facts on project management (do those exist?)

If you’re reading this blog and it happens to be the first time you’ve ever heard of Santex Q, you probably need a short, sweet explanation. Simply put, SantexQ, or “The Q” as we like to call it, is an online project management tool. It can be used to manage your business’ time reporting, task managing and billing needs all through a completely web-based application.

If you want to know more, you can head on over to our main site, SantexQ.com, for a nifty breakdown of all the main features and for directions on how to sign-up.

For more information on online project management tools visit: www.santexq.com/