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EMAIL MANAGEMENT
My top five project management tools
By Michelle LaBrosse
People often ask me what are the most critical project management tools? Sometimes, they are looking for a magical piece of software that solves all project management issues. The reality is that the tools are only as good as the people and process behind them. Here are my top five tools based on 20 years of experience as not only a project manager, but also an entrepreneur who runs a virtual company.
1. Blackberry
While this one may seem obvious, I lead with it because there's a lot of talk about whether PDAs increase productivity or not. The answer on that is clear to me -- yes!
I'm on the road constantly and every day my Blackberry allows me to stay in touch with my project teams, make decisions and ensure that the projects keep going. They (or their equivalent) are invaluable for any business. When one email message keeps a project moving, the Blackberry earns its stripes. I also expect my team to use their Blackberries in the same way. When they are traveling, it's their responsibility to be responsive and keep their projects on track.
"Email is like the coffee of business. It's communication caffeine."
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2. Email with internal guidelines
Email is like the coffee of business. It's communication caffeine. It keeps us going for hours and sometimes feels like we are absorbing communication intravenously. It's hard to imagine project management without email because communication is so critical to the success of any project.
However, there is one caveat: email can become a time drain when it's not managed effectively. It's important to create email guidelines in your organization. Let people know that you don't want them to write short stories with no plot. For example, action items should be included at the beginning of the email.
As they say in journalism, don't bury the lead. Make sure that what's most important is in the first paragraph. Depending on the culture of your organization, develop email rules that ensure that the communication is saving time -- not wasting it.
3. Wiki
Good project management is about collaboration and communication. We use a wiki, an online collaborative workspace. There are many implementations of wiki software -- and most are both open source and free. Our wiki is a central hub for our work, where we coordinate our projects and processes.
We started this for the marketing group to reduce our email and to better capture the various marketing initiatives and decisions. Within one week, it was adopted by all the other people in the company: IT projects, facilities management to coordinate facility work, accounting to coordinate budgeting with the different parts of the business, course development to keep track of course upgrades.
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