Nick Matteucci - Virtual Teamwork with Real Results

Man vs. Machine - Who should set the overall status for the project?

nmatteucci@vcsonline.com — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 14:13:00 GMT

Since 1998 we have sold enterprise (and now SaaS) resource, portfolio, and project management software. One of the most popular features has always been our weekly project and program status reporting tool where the project manager can set the Red/Yellow/Green health status of schedule, scope, resources, budget, and overall project.

What is scary (to me) is that many of our customers want to “over-ride” the Red, Yellow, Green indicators and take health status reporting away from the project managers.

I agree with setting some threshold guidelines around the dimensions of resources, scope, budget, and schedule. I don't believe they should be cut and dry rules that automatically place the project status. Let me explain.

For example they look at our issue logs for aging issues, the number of scope change requests, the deliverables & tasks for late starts, milestone slippage, and resource availability to calculate the Red, Yellow, or Green status, regardless of the opinion of the PM.

Although some of this can be a good thing (like setting the project to Yellow automatically if no status report was entered in the last 2 weeks) overall I see this as a dangerous trend in project management.

I would much rather have a qualified and experienced project manager "tell" me the project is in Yellow then a computer calculating it and over-riding the project manager (and I am the guy advocating the software).

The software tools like ours keep a full account of the quantitative measures of the project and they are visible in the project dashboard. The status report should be the qualitative analysis of the project manager based on guidelines and experience. It is their "State of the Union" if you will and as good as our software is, I would much rather have an experienced human at the wheel of the project then a computer algorithm IMO.

Thanks for reading and let me know if any of you have any feedback or would like to argue that the status should be automatic. I would love to hear your thoughts!

Warm Regards,

Nick Matteucci, Co-Founder www.VCSonline.com
VPMi = Simple + Sensible + Supportable SaaS Project Management

Author: Nick Matteucci is a co-founder of VCSonline.com a SaaS web 2.0 project management software company headquartered in St. Louis Missouri. Mr. Matteucci is also an active board member and the Chief Technology Officer for the PMI ISSIG. When not obsessing over virtual project management best practices Mr. Matteucci enjoys spending time with his wife and three small children. He also enjoys travel, running, and all things automotive.

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Online Software to Replace Inhouse? Get Your Head out of the Cloud!

nmatteucci@vcsonline.com — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:02:00 GMT

These days many people are talking about Software as a Service (SaaS). Software as a Service (SaaS) is the concept of instead of buying a server, buying server software, configuring said software, and keeping up with maintenance you simply pay a software service provider a monthly fee to deliver the benefit of the software over the Internet.

The advantages of this approach are:

• No large capital outlay (servers, enterprise software)
• No resource management issues (training staff to install and support software)
• No footprint on existing hardware (no software to install on desktops and no storage issues)
• Pay as you go and only as you need (you only pay for the people using the software and there are no internal scaling issues)

Unfortunately, many SaaS offerings have unacceptable underlying hosting problems. They run on servers outside the datacenter, have little in the way of security, and are not setup to scale and perform to company expectations. It was so bad in the beginning that the industry changed its name from Application Service Provider (ASP) to Software as a Service (SaaS) to jump start the market again!

So onto the scene rushes Cloud Computing companies. Cloud Computing allows application writers to host their software on pre-established infrastructures. A Cloud can typically scale, support many applications on a variety of operating systems, and can absorb some of the peak loads.

So this is a great step forward for SaaS customers right? Allow application providers to team up with computing providers to deliver more robust solutions?

Not so fast.

Given the choice between application providers supplying their own servers and a Cloud Computing environment I would take a good Cloud every time it is hardly the panacea everyone is hoping for.

The first problem is who do you call for SaaS support when there is a Cloud when you have multiple service providers in the mix? When companies run into difficulties and problems, who do they call for support? Will the vendor have any pull with the Cloud Computing company? Probably not. Furthermore there is little flexibility in fine tuning a cloud. Many SaaS applications require diligent memory pool management, customized cache requirements, application business rules, and load balancing. In a Cloud environment Dr. Spock said it best “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” and tuning for maximum performance are impossible.

Next is the problem of security. When a vendor hosts their own infrastructure they can impose strict rules over who has access to the computers, login access, rights management, and logging. Vendors hosting their own infrastructure can fine tune the firewall settings, opt for higher encryption, and verify that strict access controls are in place. In the cloud company? Who knows when passwords reset, if they are strong, if the firewalls are properly managed, and from what countries do administrators have access?

Finally, there is the problem of performance. SaaS providers can’t guarantee performance as it is in the hands of the Cloud. Under what conditions does the Cloud company add computing power, more memory, and new companies? Many of these Cloud companies are little different then the application providers in trying to sign up as many people as possible in as little time as possible to survive. Ever sign up for a new Gym membership only to find the line at the treadmill 10 deep? Also, one of the greatest bottlenecks in Internet computing is bandwidth. Many of the clouds share hardware with multiple applications. Bandwidth can be purchased but what happens during peaks on multiple applications? It is a lot easier to scale CPU and Memory but the stress from all these applications can put enormous stress on the whole Cloud that is not so easily understood and alleviated since providers never know who they share resources with nor understand the peeks and needs of these other SaaS offerings.

So what is the answer? When looking at hosted / SaaS models you need to spend a lot of time understanding the security, backup plans, and contingency planning that company has in place. Ask the tough questions to all the scenarios and you will know the players from the posers. In my option the answer is to partner with the best datacenter operations professionals and deploy virtualization with cluster Computing so that SaaS providers have a purpose built architecture, maintain control over the hardware (without managing it), and can ensure optimal security and the throughput to match the application.

Here is our story. We are a 10 year old SaaS/Hosting Project and Portfolio Management (PPM). We are relatively small but we are world class in contingency, backup, and redundancy planning and are still BY FAR the least expensive solution among our competitors.

The key for us was focusing on our core. What we do best is provide SaaS resource and project management solutions. We don't build servers, manage network operating centers, build data centers, etc. We looked at the Cloud and saw more problems then solutions. So we looked for the top partners we could find.

We ended up traveling to a short list of datacenters and I am proud to say we found probably one of the top 3 in the country. We know because right in front of our cage is the cage for PayPal and right to the left of our cage is the cage for Bank Of America. We then enlisted Iron Mountain and off site mirroring to make sure we cover every contingency of man made and natural disasters. It wasn't cheap but now we have 24/7 monitoring of our servers with full sets of spares ready if anything even begins to fail (thank you Dell), back up datacenters, offsite storage, etc etc etc.

If we had tried to build our own datacenter, build our own processes from scratch, etc we would have had a much more expensive, less agile, and less capable backup and recovery model then we have. If we had gone into the Cloud we would have no way to ensure (or even know) the support, security, and performance of our SaaS offering.

Thanks for reading and let me know if any of you have any stories or feedback. I would love to post your examples too!

Warm Regards,

Nick Matteucci, Co-Founder www.VCSonline.com
VPMi = Simple + Sensible + Supportable SaaS Project Management

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When should your company use Software as a Service?

nmatteucci@vcsonline.com — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:03:00 GMT

Q: When should a company use software as a service (per user/per month with hosted hardware and software)?

A: Whenever possible.

True story. Yesterday in St. Louis we had terrible storms and a tornado warning for downtown (very rare here). I was in the middle of a demo and ended up huddled in an interior hallway with the CIO talking about this very subject while we waiting for whatever would happen.

It was hard for them (very old company) to make the transition to SaaS but he knows that they must. He explained that resources were limited and no one considered it a career path to support someone else's software. The support costs are very high as vendors have to travel on-site and the support is slow. Then there is the cost of the hardware, energy costs to run / cool the hardware, the operating system/db/supporting software, etc.

I explained to him that a small fraction of us SaaS providers really do have world class data center operations. We deploy top of the line servers in a top tier data center, have off-site backups, have a backup data-center, and even have 24/7 hot spares ready and waiting. I explained I started hosting the VPMi 5 years ago before it was SaaS and I did it because I needed to insure the best possible user experience. Since this is all we do we know how to size, scale, and tune our systems. It wasn't a business model so much as a way to have the best possible experience for users. The fact it saves US BOTH money is a plus.

In the end he really loves having a SaaS account. If something is wrong there is no finger pointing or wondering who is at fault and who is going to make it right. That alone is worth it for most CIOs.

Luckily the storm passed and he shook my hand and committed to moving forward with SaaS and VPMi. It was a great day for both of us and reminded me that the more things change (SaaS, Web 2.0, Collaboration) the more they stay the same (focus on the customer, understanding requirements, building the people/processes to support technology).

SaaS at its best is just a better way to satisfy the end users and insure the system runs at its full potential. Everything else is icing on the cake.

Thanks for reading and let me know if any of you have any stories or feedback. I would love to post your examples too!

Warm Regards,

Nick Matteucci, Co-Founder www.VCSonline.com
VPMi = Simple + Sensible + Supportable SaaS Project Management

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How to translate a project management job posting

nmatteucci@vcsonline.com — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 09:44:00 GMT

With the economy struggling and companies tightening their belts we are starting to see more and more resumes of good project managers on the street.

Having been in the project management web-based SaaS software field for 10 years this seems like the 2nd time we have been through these challenging economic times. The good news for our company is in down times our software sales actually increase as companies invest in systems to automate and replace people. The sad part is knowing that is taking place and good people will be looking for work.

Well since we have no control over the Federal Reserve the one thing I can offer is a way to decipher the job postings they find so they know the "truth in advertising" behind some of these companies.

NOTE: I literally lifted these off of the bathroom wall were many people post funny quotes and stories and am unable to attribute the original author. Whomever you are - thank you for your wisdom and the humor! Hope you like the project management liberties I took with your jokes!

Project Management Job listings translator

Job posting says:	What they really mean is:
Competitive Salary	We remain competitive by paying project managers less than our more successful competitors.
Join our fast-paced company	We have no time to train you or send you to PM conferences. Please introduce yourself to your project team members and co-workers as well.
Immediate opening	The project manager who used to have this project gave notice and left the company a month ago with no information on what they did or how they did it. We're just now running the ad.
Self-motivated	Project sponsors won't answer questions or provide requirements.
We offer great benefits	We'll allow you to fund your own 401(k) if you survive the 3 year project that got the last PM fired.
Seeking enthusiastic, fun, hard working, people	Looking for young project managers with no training, certification, or experience who won't mind our internship-level salaries.
Casual work atmosphere	We don't pay enough to expect that you'll dress up.
Dynamic environment	Your project team will be yanked from your project every 3 months or 3 weeks before a major deliverable (whichever happens first)
Fun work environment	Your project team members will be insulted if you don't go out and buy them drinks 3 nights a week.
A drug-free work environment.	We booze it up at company holiday parties and base bonuses on ability to hold one's liquor.
Must be deadline oriented	Your project will be four months behind schedule on your first day.
Some overtime required	Some overtime each night and some overtime each weekend will be required.
Requires team leadership skills	You'll have the responsibilities of your boss without the pay or respect.
Good communication skills.	Management communicates what they want from your projects in vague terms that are impossible to decipher, you listen, figure out what they want and do it under budget and ahead of schedule.

So now that you know how to decode a project management job posting so happy hunting and best of luck to all those looking for a new employer.

I hope this brings a smile to a few of you out there struggling during these uncertain times. Let me know if any of you have any "extras". I would love to post your examples too!

Virtually yours,
Nick Matteucci, MBA

Author: Nick Matteucci is a co-founder of VCSonline.com a SaaS web 2.0 project management software company headquartered in St. Louis Missouri. Mr. Matteucci is also an active board member and the Chief Technology Officer for the PMI ISSIG. When not obsessing over virtual project management best practices Mr. Matteucci enjoys spending time with his wife and three small children. He also enjoys travel, running, and all things automotive.

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The hardest and easiest part of starting a web-based project management business

nmatteucci@vcsonline.com — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 07:36:00 GMT

I was asked recently in a networking event to talk about the hardest and the easiest challenges we faced starting VCSonline.com 10 years ago this summer. The question caught me a little off guard and I starting thinking back to those early days (queue stereotypical harp music soap operas use!).

Back in 1998 I had a lot more hair up top and lot less wrinkles around my eyes. What we lacked in startup funding, customers, and employees we more then made up in hope, desire, and pure potential. There was no doubt we would set the world on fire. It was a magical time of creative ingenuity. The web-based software was an embarrassment by today's standards but back then anything data driven over the web that helped teams manage projects and report to management got 'ooos' and 'ahhhs'.

Fast forward 3 kids, 10 pounds, and 30,000 clients later to today. Finally (thank you God) things are really taking off. Our VPMi Express and Professional SaaS resource and project management software have seen a 300% increase in the last 6 months. We are having to schedule demos around the clock to meet the sales demand. I guess the old joke is true, it does take 10 years to be an overnight success!

Back to the present and the question at hand. What was the single hardest challenge (that seemed easy) and the single easiest challenge (that seemed hard). Lastly, if you had a time machine would you go back in time and warn yourself of the challenges you would face and the mistakes you would make?

Easiest thing that seemed hard

The #1 easiest was finding our first enterprise customer to believe in us and take a big chance on a startup. We were so scarred when we started that no one would hire us as "2 men and a truck" building project portfolio management software. We were working from our basement and making cold sales calls till 5PM and then working till 3AM on development EVERY DAY. We had no funding, no employees, and you could here my babies crying every now and then on conference calls. We were motivated by fear of failure as much as anything. Eventually we got through to an executive at BlueCross BlueShield who saw the passion and domain knowledge we had and it was contagious. They actually threw out the software we had at the time and paid us to model and develop it "right" using our knowledge and vision as cornerstones.

After the VPMi went live was asked them why they picked us. They admitted they were always complaining how expensive Microsoft, CA, SAP, HP, and some of our other competitors are and how bad the service often was. They had a vested interest to try new suppliers (at a lower cost) to stimulate alternatives in the marketplace. If they didn't invest in companies like ours they reasoned they have no room to complain about the price and service the large software houses provide.

Hardest thing that seemed easy

As for the "what was harder" that is easy to answer too. Nearly everything was harder then we originally estimated! When you start a new business you are by nature optimistic. You overstaff, over commit, and under estimate everything! Then you make up for your sins by working days, nights, and weekends to deliver.

On top of that you never say "no" to a potential customer, even when you know you are not a perfect fit. You end up making a lot of software changes and customizations to appease each customer and it hold you back from growth of your main product. The more a company can focus on what it does best, sell the vision you are reaching for (even if you don't have 100% in place today), and say "no" when you have no business getting involved you will actually reach your goals sooner! Ask me how I know...

What message would I sent back in a time machine to myself?

So the $20,000 question is, "if I could go back to the beginning and give myself some advice, what would I say?".

For me the answer was "nothing". I have made thousands of huge mistakes. I have delivered products I wish I could do over. I have said some things I later regretted. Yet in the end we always did our best to hire good people and incented them to deliver great service/products regardless of profit. We didn't sell out to the venture capitalists during the DotBomb and didn't sell out during the last merger years. We will never be the biggest SaaS project management solution, but for customers passionate about project management, we will be the best.

At the end of the day, we control our own destiny and have the best jobs on earth - helping companies big and small reach their full potential through project management solutions. I would hate to mess that up as I have learned 100x more from my many mistakes then the few times I got it right the first time!

I hope this inspires a few of you closet entrepreneurs out there to do the same some day. Let me know if any of this rings true from your experiences or if any of you have the itch to start your own company. I would love to hear your stories too.

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Cover your SaaS - Software as a Service Revolutionizing Projects

nmatteucci@vcsonline.com — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 01:02:00 GMT

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a relatively new concept in software delivery and one poised to change project management delivery in the immediate future. Instead of buying a server, buying server software, configuring said software, and keeping up with maintenance you simply pay a software service provider a monthly fee to deliver the benefit of the software over the Internet.

The advantages of this approach are:

No large capital outlay (servers, enterprise software)
No resource management issues (training staff to install and support software)
No footprint on existing hardware (no software to install on desktops and no storage issues)
Pay as you go and only as you need (you only pay for the people using the software and there are no internal scaling issues)

Personally, we are seeing more and more customers coming off failed large scale on-site implementations of enterprise project management (EPM) solutions. What used to cost companies hundreds of thousands of dollars up front is not a much more reasonable monthly fee. There are no long term commitments and if the solution isn't working the risks and costs can be mitigated quickly.

The CIOs we talk to tell us they experienced difficulties getting funding, setting up internally, and then culturally digesting these complex ERP-like solutions. When they finally pull the plug the vendor response seems to be "you didn't support the implementation", "you didn't buy enough consulting from us", and "it must be you as we are the leaders in (insert favorite analyst company here)".

The term I keep hearing around SaaS is "fair value for value" meaning CIOs are looking for reduced time to value, core features, in exchange for a reasonable amount of money.

I suspect with the economy stalling and budgets tightening, more and more CIOs will take a long look at SaaS for their mid-office needs and have the precedence of doing so with the explosion of SalesForce.com and other SaaS tools.

Ironically some day our children will ask "Dad, do you remember when people would install software on their own computers using disks?" I will think back on days like today and say, "Yes, but barely son. Those were dark times in IT best soon forgotten."

Want to hear more about SaaS and how it is changing the world of project and portfolio management? You can download this free podcast / audio presentation directly from the The PMO Podcast™ Featured Story: PPM Software as a Service, an interview with Greg Tilley, Manager of Business Development, VCSOnline.com

Virtually yours,
Nick Matteucci, MBA

Author: Nick Matteucci is a co-founder of VCSonline.com a web 2.0 project management software company headquartered in St. Louis Missouri. Mr. Matteucci is also an active board member and the Chief Technology Officer for the PMI ISSIG. When not obsessing over virtual project management best practices Mr. Matteucci enjoys spending time with his wife and three small children. He also enjoys travel, running, and all things automotive.

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I met with a Global 100 company CIO last week

nmatteucci@vcsonline.com — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 21:14:00 GMT

I met with a Global 100 company CIO last week and I think his comments were right on track with what other CIOs I have met with in 2007.

He said "I did the math and IT spent 1,000,000 hours on projects last year. The #1 thing we can do is to improve project productivity and insure consistency in our delivery".

Sure they have a new global sourcing strategy, an enormous effort to identify people by role (not title), and bleeding edge new technologies to absorb.

At the end of the day, it comes down to project management competencies, lifecycle/workflow optimization, enabling tools, and resource capacity planning.

These are consistent themes that all CIOs are facing regardless of whether you are a CIO in the Fortune 500 or the Fortune 5,000,000.

Sadly, the enterprise mid-office suites and ERP vendors keep stuffing more and more complex and unusable features into already bloated products to drive more upgrades that IT organizations won't use.

Until the mantra becomes simple, sensible, supportable IT and CIOs expand their technology partner search beyond Microsoft, their ERP (or worse what the analysts spoon feed them), I have little confidence that things will improve in this decade for many CIOs.

Virtually yours,
Nick Matteucci, MBA

Author: Nick Matteucci is a co-founder of VCSonline.com a web 2.0 project management software company headquartered in St. Louis Missouri. Mr. Matteucci is also an active board member and the Chief Technology Officer for the PMI ISSIG. When not obsessing over virtual project management best practices Mr. Matteucci enjoys spending time with his wife and three small children. He also enjoys travel, running, and all things automotive.

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What your project management software isn't telling you - can kill you!

nmatteucci@vcsonline.com — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 07:00:00 GMT

What your project management software isn't telling you - can kill you!

What's consuming 30% of your time that isn't even being tracked in your project management software?

I know you are probably thinking this is related to planning. People are always telling me how important project planning is ( and I don't disagree with them). Many top organizations spend a reasonable amount of time studying workplans, building methodologies, and standardizing on planning templates. Yet they report they are still regularly running over budget on their IT projects and can't figure out why?

The issue is issue management.

If every project in a company was fully understood and planned accordingly then we should be able to predict when (within a small margin) that project would complete. We would know when resources were needed, resources would become available, and would have a clear picture of project delivery. All would be perfect.

Yet we know it is far from perfect. Even well planned and predictable IT projects regularly overrun costs, schedules, and resources. Why? It is a lack of effective issue management that prevents the projects from completing per plan. These issues offshoot from the risks on the project and generate change requests, further complicating the project and are almost universally un-tracked in project management software.

I know what your thinking, "our super uber project management system does have issue management - doesn't it?".

Does it? Can your process and your software support effective issue management and allow your teams to:

Plan the resolution of an issue and staff it just like you would a deliverable or task?
Set an estimate to complete for each assignment and track it to actual timesheet entries?
Easily collaborate back and forth on the issue in the comments?
Attach documents to the issue?
Escalate the issue and have the system email the sponsor?
Search all past issues (knowledge management)?
Track metrics on average issue resolution time over months to see PMO improvements in issue management?
Quickly pull all issues by responsible organization or by client?

Having profiled thousands of online PM software accounts has shown that issue management represents 30% of the average total time spent on projects. If you are not tracking issues and changes separately on your timesheet this time is most likely getting pushed against various elements of your plan. This makes continuous process improvement impossible and provides an inadequate view of the project performance.

Organizations need to track and manage how well the team operated against the original plan and know how much time was spent dealing with issues (by type) as well as change requests. You might find that without issues your team operated exactly as planned but the issues and change requests between customers, stakeholders, suppliers, and partners prevented the project from completing on time.

"So can't we just type in issues into our task plan?" Yes and no. You don't want to force issues into your task plan unless you can easily filter them out in reporting and analysis. You need to know the team utilization on various activities and performance against them. I recommend you find a better PM solution or track issues in a separate "sub-project" plan so you can easily see the difference between issue time and planned time.

By using the same rigor and reporting for issue management as many organizations use for task and deliverable management you will have a much better insight into the types of issues and the times of resolution that are driving up costs and timelines. Furthermore, you will have a knowledge management system that can be utilized by future project managers that experience similar issues and thus can drive down their issue resolution times as well.

What are your stories of working with issues and the struggle to get issue management to the forefront of your PMOs? I would love to hear from you below!

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6 Questions For References When Purchasing Project Management Software

nmatteucci@vcsonline.com — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 08:52:00 GMT

You are so close to being able to provide your group a collaborative infrastructure for project management that you can almost taste it!

You have come to the conclusion that improved project management, resource management, and metrics are key to reducing overhead costs and improving revenue. You have created a prioritized list of benefits you need from project management software and you have contacted the vendors you are interested in while avoiding the 5 things you should never say to a project management software salesperson.

So many people quit at this point and pay dearly with their time, money, and reputation within their companies. Now is the time to ask for references and follow up with live customers. Most people don't realize the importance of getting this interview right.

Having been in the project management software business for nearly 10 years as a business owner and 4 years prior to that as a Ernst & Young Manager I can tell you the top 6 questions you need to ask the references of a project management software company:

Question	Company / Person / Title / Date	Response
1) Do you receive any form of compensation for being a reference?
2) Do you have any relationship with the vendor besides being a customer of the vendor?
3) What interactions did you have with the vendor before you purchased the system?
4) What percentage of the functionality that you planed to implement have you actually implemented?
5) Have you had any issues with the vendors performance and how did they resolve the issue?
6) How long did it take from when you started implementation to when the system was adding value?

1) Do you receive any form of compensation for being a reference?

This question is part of the probe to understand the true relationship between the reference and the vendor. Obviously, if they receive compensation for being a reference they must be heavily discounted if not dismissed all together.

2) Do you have any relationship with the vendor besides being a customer of the vendor?

You would be surprised how many of the references you will talk to are either Venture Capital (VC) companies, partners, or suppliers. It is important before you spend any time with a reference that you qualify and quantify their relationship with the vendor.

3) What interactions did you have with the vendor before you purchased the system?

This question attempts to determine how comprehensive their search was. Was it happenstance they found the vendor? Did they fall prey to a fast talking salesperson? Additionally, you are trying to determine if their needs going into the project management software selection process where the same as yours. Ideally, the reference has no relationship with the vendor, receives no compensation, and had similar needs to yours.

4) What percentage of the functionality that you planed to implement have you actually implemented?

This is an open ended question to determine the difference between planned and actual achievements. If they purchased a project portfolio management system and only implemented the timesheet functionality then there is a large disconnect between what they were sold and what they implemented.

5) Have you had any issues with the vendors performance and how did they resolve the issue?

This is a bit of a trick question. There will ALWAYS be issues when working with a project management software vendor over time. There will always be a difference of opinion on what was promised, implied, and delivered. They key is to see if the reference is being honest about such inevitable problems, to learn the scope of the problems, and most importantly how did they resolve the problems. A vendor trying to "make up revenue" after a particularly deep discount will ride their change management procedures to dramatically increase the solution price and blow your budget out of the water. A vendor that provides "good will" to resolve issues will be considered a partner and will be much easier to deal with as troubles arise.

6) How long did it take from when you started implementation to when the system was adding value?

Many of the references you talk to are happy with their solutions. However, the key to any implementation is time to value (when can you expect a return on your investments). This is a great "comparison" question if you are down to several vendors you are trying to decide among. If one company is happy but it took 12 month (or more) to receive value where another vendor's reference took 3 months to start returning value then you had better select the one with the shorter time to value less your implementation loose momentum and people forget why they wanted project management software in the first place.

What if the company is an online project management software vendor?

It is a little trickier if the needs are meager and you are considering an online project management software solution. In this case Google is your friend. I would start Google-ing the company's name and software solution followed by "problems", "bugs", "help" and other phrases the might turn up problems. Another source of information would be any public groups (Yahoo Groups and Google Groups being the most widely visited) as well as any company sponsored forums.

From these public sources there are contact opportunities through the software were you can get in touch with experienced users of the customer's software to better determine the customer satisfaction levels.

Other considerations?

One final thing you may wish to inquire about or research is if the company is controlled by Venture Capitalists (VCs). These companies often care little about solutions and are brought in to immediately maximize the profit via exit strategy. What that means is they "pump" the company with money, buzz, and marketing and then "dump" the company to the highest bidder in an attempt to make themselves rich. Software companies under the control of these forces typically are no longer run by internal management and are not likely to provide a long term partnering relationship vs. short term revenue and immediate profits. Furthermore, when these companies do sell often the software is scrapped, significantly changed, or the price is increased to recoup the costs of buying the company. Definitely something to be aware of as you look at potential suppliers.

This is my list based on my many years dedicated to this field. What is yours? What are your stories of working with vendors or references? I would love to hear from you.

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5 Things to Never Say to a Project Management Software Salesperson

nmatteucci@vcsonline.com — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 01:31:00 GMT

So your organization has decided it needs:

If you read my last blog you know before you call you need:

Prioritized requirements of what you need today
Prioritized requirements of what you might need tomorrow

Now you are ready to approach possible vendors and most will show you nothing of their solution or pricing without your name, social security number, and a copy of your diary.

But wait! Before you pick up the phone and start to engage project management software salespeople, you must know the 5 things you should NEVER say during your initial contacts. These mistakes can cost your company hundreds of thousands of dollars and you your career!

5 things you should never say to a project management software salesperson!

Make me a deal!
Just give me a demo
I just want to see the reports
Give me a list of your competitors
Send me some testimonials

1) Make me a deal

Many people would rank buying software from a salesperson somewhere between used car shopping and buying a mattress. Sadly, in many industries (including PM) the sales people are transitional, have little in depth knowledge of their industry, and are adept at high pressure tactics to "close the deal".

Now is NOT the time to talk money. You should do some research before hand to determine your budget and the relative cost of the systems you are interested in. Also, it is no deal if the software is implemented and fails, turning everyone off to future efforts to automate your processes. Focus on your requirements list and "lead with the need" and not the price.

2) Just give me a demo

One of the most important aspects of a project management software vendor is their ability to understand your unique requirements and paint a picture of a future using their tools with your processes to achieve your vision. This is a huge test of their ability to listen, digest, and recommend solutions that will meet your needs (and not just their commission needs).

By asking for a demo first without testing those listening skills you will loose:

Ability to assess the salesperson's experience
Walkthrough of your lifecycle process
Their ability to recommend best practices and enable new processes through the tools

If they can't listen to you and react to your needs during the sales process when you are an opportunity to them, imagine what will happen after the sale!

3) I just want to see the reports

This is probably the most common mistake I see. Many vendors spend a majority of their development cycles building flashy reports. They literally hypnotize customers with moving graphics, 3D images, and even sound!

While these reports have a lot of entertainment value, they completely hides two very important facts:

As a manager what exactly would I do differently or better based on that report
How much time and administration must my organization do in order to produce that report

A much better approach? Start with a list of management questions you want answered by a system - like:

What is the lifecycle of a project?
What is the business value of a portfolio?
What did people work on (utilization) and what are they projected (forecasted) to work on?
Are the right people (role-competency) working on the right projects (highest business value/priority)?
What is the supply of resources (by role and proficiency) and what is the demand on those resources (planned + actual projects)?
Show me the portfolio of a customers projects?
Show me the portfolio of an organization's projects they are responsible for?
Are we complying with our processes?
What are the key PM metrics and are we getting better or worse against them over time?
Compare the project budgets to the project status and work metrics? Where are the trouble spots?
Are we standardizing repetitive work?
Are we continuously improving process at the lowest possible level?

Once you have a prioritized list of management questions then the software vendor can show you how the system (1) collects necessary data and (2) how the reporting interacts with the user in a simple, sensible, and supportable fashion.

4) Give me a list of your competitors so I can compare solutions

This is one of my favorite questions I hear all the time! I am forthcoming and point the company to the Project Management Software listing on Wikipedia, but many companies will only tell you the competitors that are less functional, more expensive, or both. You can ask the question (to see who they think their competitors are) but you have to independently verify their lists or you may miss out on a better fit or lower cost alternative solution.

Also beware when large project management software vendors point you in the direction of large institutional research houses. These vendor rankings are basically "magic" in how much revenue they generate for the analysts! Often it is a status quo device to reward the richest companies that overcharge and under deliver, making up the difference in marketing dollars spent with the research houses.

Google, Wikipedia, and your PMI networks are your friend for finding reputable companies that should be on the short list of your potential project management software vendors.

5) Send me some testimonials

If you have a medium sized implementation (50+) you can't afford to take the vendor's word for how great their project management software is. Ask for several references you can talk to directly and make a reasonable list of questions so you won't get nervous or forget when on the phone.

Now to be fair to the vendor, you should have a high level of interest in that vendor so as not to waste the time. That does not mean you should tell the vendor you have selected them (or are at least down to the last 3 companies). These people are (hopefully) not compensated and are as busy as you are.

This is the most important time in the selection process as you have the opportunity to (1) network with another successful user, (2) gain months of insight into working with the vendor, and (3) learn of the pitfalls of implementation. You must plan your questions carefully!

In next week's blog I will give you the Top 6 Questions you Should Ask Project Management Software References when looking for a project portfolio management solution!

Virtually yours,

Nick Matteucci, MBA
ISSIG Chief Technology Officer

Author: Nick Matteucci is a co-founder of VCSonline.com a web 2.0 project management software company headquartered in St. Louis Missouri. Mr. Matteucci is also an active board member and the Chief Technology Officer for the PMI ISSIG. When not obsessing over virtual project management best practices Mr. Matteucci enjoys spending time with his wife and three small children. He also enjoys travel, running, and all things automotive.

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