Scrum: no more need for a planning tool?
These days Scrum has become essential for software development. Scrum is a successful method, and it has fundamentally changed organizing projects. Scrum does not employ any traditional ways of budgeting planning or reporting on project progress. So will a planning tool offer added value within Scrum projects? In this blog, we are going to find out.
Implementing scheduling software, process or system driven?
Timewax will talk about the decisions that you need to make in order to successfully implement your planning software. Part 3: Process or system driven implementation. The final decision you have to make is deciding how the system and the organization (the processes) will be aligned with each other. This often manifest itself as a strong ambition to improve the processes, countered by the major pressure of being expected to deliver something on the short term.
Big bang or phased implementation of a planning tool?
Timewax explains in a number of blogs on what you should make a decision to implement your planning software successfully. Part 2: Big bang or phased implementation? It applies here too: you have a small business and you just want to improve the planning process, then you should rather opt for a ‘Big bang’ approach. With multiple departments as well as processes for time recording and invoicing, this way is less obvious.
Central or decentralized implementation of planning software?
You have opted for new project & resource planning software. Now is the time for implementation. Just a matter of doing, right? Or maybe you should reconsider the approach? I will explain in a number of blogs what you have to make a decision on to make the implementation successful. Part 1: the central or decentralised implementation of your planning software.
Selecting planning software – 3 essential steps
You are looking for planning software to better schedule the time in the business, so to save time. But you do want to find the correct planning software. And that takes time. Mark de Jong of Timewax, as a former software selection consultant knows like no other how this process can be performed best - in three clear steps:
Is your organization getting better in planning?
Logically you would say so. You always get more insight and experience in the scheduling process, and you build on that. But how do you that? For example, higher productivity would not necessarily imply that you became better in planning. In this blog, we describe how you can measure the planning performance of your organization.
2 Killer KPIs for forecasting in projects
There are, of course, numerous ways to analyse your projects. Budget vs. actual, planning vs. actual, spending variances based on percentage completed, and so on. And all are valuable, but only aimed at looking at the past.
Planning in a shrinking organization
If the demand and/or turnover drops, structurally, we speak of shrinkage. In a shrinking organization you need to get a grip on the biggest expenditure, namely the employment of employees. We explain our vision on shrinking below, from the perspective of employee planning through innovative plans.
On autopsy after the end of a project (gold mining)
The start of many projects receives much attention. It is celebrated, installed, kicked-off, etc. In this article, I want to write a few tips about a stepchild in project management and that is the retrospective after the end of a project. The art & science of reflection is often an unpracticed area of management. That is a real shame because there is often so much gold to be found in terms of lessons for the future.
50% safety margins in project planning can go
According to the Critical Chain Project Management method, fifty percent of the built-in safety margins in project planning can go. It is a waste of time. So by taking this out, we can carry out projects in three-quarters of the time. That is a time saving of 25 percent. To achieve this, the method uses Buffer Management technology.