There are three common patterns to look for in a burndown chart. When progress stalls, the line becomes flat. When work is added, the line shoots up.  And sometimes, the rate of work slows and floats above an ideal trend line.

Let’s look at some baseline data, reflect on the meaning revealed by the charts and see where teams can improve.

The following burndown charts show how many task hours are left for the team. The goal is to drive the remaining work down to zero by the end of the time-box.

We’ll start with a graph of three iterations completed by one team in two weeks. Sprint three is still underway, which you can tell because the line for it is unfinished. But what happened in these other iterations? 

In sprint one, there is a catch-up pattern. The team stalled in its progress from days 8 to 11, and then made a push to finish.  As a result, the team signed up for fewer hours in sprint two. This is common, as teams plan for more work than they can get done at first to help them plan for the next sprint.

In sprint two, the team faced a different problem. A bubble of work formed at the beginning because the team didn’t plan the sprint process correctly and had to add work.

Both of those issues in the normal rate of work can confuse efforts to forecast the rate of progress based on the first few data points, allowing for improvements down the line. Instead of looking at the trend from the first day’s allocated work, for example, take the maximum amount of work anticipated and plot that from day one.

Ideally, the maximum amount of work will be accomplished on the first day. But in the case of “bubble” sprints where work is added mid-course, drawing a line from the sprint’s maximum workload as though it were known on day one will give a better presentation of the ideal trend line.

The next problem is a plateau every few days. The graph originally provided data for 14 days including weekends, not just the 10 working days in the sprint. It looks like the team is unproductive every few days, but it is simply a reflection that they took the weekend off.  Adjust the burndown chart, as I’ve done below, by accounting for added work and masking non-workdays and your team will have a clearer picture of its iteration’s progress.

What adjustments do you make to burndown charts to ensure an accurate depiction?

Binfire has one of the easiest to use and intuitive UI in the market. The user experience is fantastic and most people start using the software in less than 5 minutes of signing for an account. NO training is needed!

2-Not  just a to-do list!

Although creating tasks are as easy as creating to-do list in binfire, you can do a lot more with them. You can create tasks, break down big tasks to smaller tasks and break the subtasks yet to more subtasks. This is what is called WBS (work breakdown structure).

3-Interactive Gantt

You can view and manipulate your task graphically using interactive Gantt

4-Workspace

See and manage all your project s from one place. See the status of each project. Soon we will have burn down graph and more

5-Easy status reporting

If you use Scrum, you can use the daily status reporting page as daily scrum.

6-Dashboard

Have a view of what is happening in all your projects and who had done what

7-Store your project files

Each user has a private folder for storing private files. Each project has a folder for project files accessible to all project members with the right permissions

8-Attach files to tasks and comments

You can attach files to tasks and comments

9-Tags

Tag your files and tasks for easier search. Binfire uses elastic search to make finding anything in the application easier.

10-Object Starring to follow

If you want to follow any object in your project just star it.

11-Permissions

As project manager you can give permissions to project members for every page in the project

12-Dependencies

In complex projects you need more than a simple to-do list. There are lots of to-do list on the market with much hype about nothing. Dependencies let you design real project tasks.

13-Interactive whiteboard

You can use the interactive whiteboard to draw, write, paste images from project folder or anywhere on internet. All project members with the right permission can participate in the brainstorming.

14-Collaborative PDF markup

You can click on any PDF file in your project folder and start collaborating with you teammates. You can see who else has open the file and you everybody can draw, write or highlight the file and all changes are visible to all in real time.

15-Commenting

You can add comments to tasks and status report. You can attach files to comments. All comments are saved automatically.

Almost forgot one last thing, CUSTOMER SERVICE, Binfire offers the best customer care and service in the cloud. We strive to respond to any customer inquiry within an hour.

If you want to move tasks between levels, you need to use the move tool. To get there, on the right of the task that you want to move there is a drop down tool. Press it and one of the options in the drop down is move. Click on move tool and a window opens which lets you move the task to any level in the project.

What we are testing in our labs today includes moving tasks from one project to another, copy tasks from one project to another or in the proejct itself and drag tasks horizontally to change the task level.

Try binfire today, we are making the best online project management software.

Cheers,

David

Is there a corporate leader who doesn’t extol the virtues of innovation these days? Yet if innovation is so important, why do so many companies have so much trouble with it?

The reflexive response is that it is a human capital problem — that is, that most people just don’t have what it takes to successfully innovate. I reject that view. Academic research in fact shows that almost anyone can become a competent innovator (with sufficient practice). I’ve seen countless examples of ordinary individuals displaying the creativity, ingenuity, and perseverance of the world’s great innovators.

Those people can only be effective in the right context, but, ironically, many of the things leaders do to encourage innovation actually kill it. Look carefully at your company and you might spot one of four types of unintentional innovation assassins.

1. The Cowboy. Itching to create a corporate culture tolerant of creativity and innovation, the Cowboy says something along the lines of, “No boundaries! Just great ideas!” Of course, companies should continually evaluate and push their boundaries. But every company has a set of things it simply will not do. Saying innovation has no bounds when it does just leads people to waste time working on ideas that — honestly — have no hope of ever being commercialized.

Instead, consider issuing highly-focused challenges. For example, a few years ago Netflix offered a $1 million prize to any team that could improve the performance of the algorithms that determine which movies it should suggest to consumers by at least 10%. More than 250 teams rose to the challenge, and two actually exceeded the target. Focus is one of innovation’s best friends.

2. The Googlephile. Inspired by stories of how Google and 3M ask engineers to spend 15% of their time dreaming of new ideas, this executive asks everybody to spend a bit of time on innovation. Maybe carve off a half-day during the third Friday of the month for everyone to focus on innovation.This approach feels participatory and inclusive. But it rarely works, unless the company has sophisticated systems to select and nurture ideas. Too frequently these efforts lead to a long list of suggestions that never get implemented. Cynicism takes hold quickly, and more and more employees find excuses to miss Innovation Friday.

As an alternative, executives should ask a small number of people to spend a significant amount of time on innovation. Remember, most start-ups fail — even with entrepreneurs spending every minute of every day obsessively focusing on their business. One person spending all of his or her time on innovation often trumps 1,000 spending 10% of their time on it. The math doesn’t work — except for when it does.

3. The Astronaut. This executive invokes the United States’ ultimately successful effort to put a man on the moon by urging, “We need something big, people! What is our moon shot?” It’s great to think big, of course, but pushing for big ideas often leads to proposals with sink-the-company risk (remember Motorola’s Iridium?). That risk means that the idea must be carefully studied, and since it hasn’t been done before, it probably won’t withstand analytical scrutiny. The push-for-moon shots too often mean innovation efforts never even get to the launch pad.

Instead of shooting for the moon, executives should encourage what author Peter Sims calls “little bets.” Academics and entrepreneurs agree that the very best ideas emerge out of a process of trial-and-error experimentation. Hang up posters of Thomas Edison with his famous line, “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” Start sweating.

4. The Pirate. This swashbuckler says, “We don’t have a fixed budget for innovation — but we don’t need one. We find the money when we need it.” While that statement sounds entrepreneurial, it can make the innovator’s life a nightmare because it signals a lack of clear rules for obtaining resources.This often means endless meetings with a varying cast of stakeholders. No one quite says yes, and no one quite says no, either.

The best companies manage innovation in a disciplined manner. They have dedicated budgets for it, with clear rules for how to obtain funding. While many leaders think this kind of disciplined approach is anathema to innovation, it actually enables it. During a memorable discussion a few years ago, former Procter & Gamble CEO A.G. Lafley put it well (PDF)when describing his company’s innovation process: “The important thing about the process is that you follow it.”

The good news? Since unintentional innovation assassins are easy to identify, they are also easy to disarm. Constrain the Cowboy, bound the Googlephile, ground the Astronaut, and make the Pirate walk the plank — and watch innovation efforts soar.

Tip #1: Increase awareness of the challenges faced by team members from other cultures The first thing that anyone who works on a multicultural team can do is to become more aware of the challenges faced by team members from the non-dominant culture. This means appreciating the psychological challenges people like Jin can face in such settings. Increasing awareness also means learning to interpret behavior from outside of one’s own cultural perspective. For example, in Jin’s case, it might mean understanding that a lack of active, vocal participation in team meetings does not mean he is not a team player; rather, it likely means that he is simply trying to be the best team player he can be, but from a Chinese cultural perspective.

Tip #2: Make the team norms explicit It is rare for teams to explicitly discuss standards and expectations for effective communication within the team. However, it is critical to do so in a cross-cultural context because people bring such different and potentially conflicting standards to the team setting. Make the norms explicit and also recognize who on the team might be at risk for challenges in meeting these standards, based on their cultural upbringing, professional experience, and personality.

Tip #3: Work hard to create a psychologically safe and inclusive team environment Create an atmosphere within the team that is “psychologically safe.” Individuals like Jin can feel intense pressure and scrutiny in multicultural team settings, especially when other non-natives seem to be doing “just fine.” It’s critical therefore for members of the “dominant” culture to help bring struggling members along. This means working hard to create an inclusive and supportive atmosphere for all members of the team. Without such an atmosphere, teams can lose members like Jin who have a great deal to add, but who struggle with the language and cultural norms.

Tip #4: Dedicate time and resources to skill building Find a way to build and enhance your team members’ language and cultural skills. Many multinational teams in today’s business environment have a culture that is essentially Western, and a language that is English. This creates problems for individuals like Jin who lack the skills to be fully-participative members. Work hard to provide team members with opportunities to build their cultural language skills. This will pay dividends for the team, and also for individuals like Jin down the road as they transition to other teams and contexts. Put these conditions in place and you are well on your way to developing an effective and inclusive multicultural team. This

Originally was posted in HBR by by Andy Molinsky as part of the HBR Insight Center on The Secrets of Great Teams.

It is the emergence of the internet and its pandemic application in all spheres of society that spurred the resurgence of remote employment. More specifically, the integration of web solutions into all aspects of business operations eventually made Work From Home an efficient and viable prospect once again. Working from home has benefits for the worker, the employer and the society. The worker gains by avoiding commute every day, more flex time and ability to care for small children while working. The employers gain by not having to provide workspace, heat and other necessities plus workers which are happier and content. The society and environment gain by having less traffic on the roads and more fuel conversation and better environmental for all.
Fostering this transition is a website we have recently discovered called   XPLACE, which connects people working from home with potential employers anywhere in the world, and make working from home a relevant trade once more. These advances in collaborative web offerings have made remote work both cheaper and effective, and thus a much more viable means of work.
As global markets expand, more and more companies are eager to reach out to potential poll of talent whenever they are in the world. The classic solution (the one that had been the norm up until the late 20th century) has been to invest in expansion through development of headquarters in the targeted locales and reallocating employees (as well as hiring natives) to man these new business frontiers. Today, using web solutions like XPLACE, employers have more capacity to seek native talent in emerging or other targeted markets and manage them remotely with increasing ease and efficiency. No doubt, more and more workers and employers will use services like XPLACE to work from home.

Another feature lets you hide completed tasks  in the task page. This way you only see tasks which are still open. In addition, in the Gantt chart you can change the time scale from day to weeks or months. This enables you to view much more data on screen.

Give Binfire a try, it is the best project management and collaboration application you can find!

Happy Collaboration,

David

If you are working with a virtual team, give binfire a spin, you will be pleasantly surprised.

Best,

David Robins

As each company and project determines what is the best fit for them.   Some will require specialists and others will leverage generalists to lead the way.   Just look at Product Managers who have been able to lead the entire SDLC from market research, requirement definition to development onto product launch for years because they have the bigger picture in mind.  The need for PM’s to be more of a Product Owner that owns the definition and delivery of the solution will continue to emerge.

Ryan Martens, founder and CTO of Rally Software, says that 2010 will see a  “continued move of Project Management professionals from the role of Project Management to Release, Scrum or Product Management”  and with it the “continued evolution of the Program Management office (PMO) into a Scrum of Scrums office”.

PM’s that can step back to see the bigger picture by

• understanding the business – market and technology needs,
• being the liaison between the customer/business and the development team, and
• leading (not managing) the project team from concept/initiation to launch/close,

…they will be in great demand.

We are not saying that PMs or BAs are being replaced – these are just titles.  What will continue to happen is the redefinition of their roles on the team as Agile and Lean practices overtake the traditional ways of doing projects.

Leaders are needed – not more managers.

This article was originally written by Donna Reed in CM Crossroads

The traditional tool of Email is not fulfilling this need.  We see collaboration tools such as IM-ing, web conferencing, Wikis, Sharepoint, and other tools being used to help bridge the communication gap. Especially with mobile and virtual teams growing.

“The need to communicate will increase our reliance on social networks – both outside the business using tools such as Facebook, LinkedIN and Twitter, and inside the business using tools such as Sharepoint and Socialtext,” said Matt Heusser.

Jesse Fewell, from PMI Agile’s Community of Practice, adds,

“”Social media will become more of an expectation and less of a novelty.  From Twitter to blogging, more and more people will try using these tools, with mixed results”.

The need to communicate – as well as capturing that communication so it is accessible to team members that couldn’t make that meeting – is desperately needed & growing.   Social media tools will be leveraged individually to fill the communication gap…. until we see integrated collaboration tools start emerging in 2010.

This article was originally written by Donna Reed in CM Crossroads