Work by Remote

This may be a form of review on your project deployment. But it’s a good guide for those who are about to start a new project, too.

In every project, it’s really good to start and end with the same people or team. That way, all of you understands the project, what it entails, what the role of each member is.

You would want for example to have each team member participate in the following:

1. Initiation - Introduce the team to the project, its scope, roles and responsibilities, and deliverables.
2. Planning - Develop plans for creating the final deliverables.
3. Execution - Properly plan the work.
4. Control -Ensure that the project is progressing as planned, to account for any changes, and to make midcourse corrections that are needed to keep the project on schedule and within budget.
5. Closeout - deliverable is accepted by the customer of the project, and the project team documents what it learned that could be of value on the next project.

I got the tips above from an article on Baseline Mag. Read the rest of the article and find out how project managers can transform your business by building a process, tracking performance and helping you build best practices that work for your company.

It used to be that quality people would go, If it ain’t broke, then leave it as is. Not  anymore. If it ain’t broke, then improve it.

Just because your projects are all running and seemingly smoothly, it doesn’t mean  you can sit back and relax. At least not with website projects. Websites are probably the most vulnerable and volatile entity to handle. I sure often feel like  watching the shares on a stock market go up and down.

Like a stock market player who watches over his shares and be ready to buy and sell at the ring of the bell, I, too, have to watch out for spammers or hackers, information loading, server overload, etc. at every click of the mouse.

There is really a need to evaluate your projects at all times. You do not know on which page your user lands on your website, and so you have to make sure that every page is accessible and that it contains the relevant information.

Based on my experience, it pays to be evaluating your projects regularly so that you can feedback issues to your team promptly.

I’m sharing with you the ways of evaluating your projects (the word project here is interchangeable with website, as websites happen to be my projects).

1. Start with a plan every day. As a project manager, this is very crucial. You have to plan your day every day. Have a list of to-do for the day only. Breaking down your to-do’s per day makes it easier and definitely makes the tasks manageable.
2. Put criteria in your plan. The criteria will guide you on which aspect or part of the project will you be looking into for that day. Example: (a) check programmers’ progress - how far have they accomplished? (b) check on the shared Task List - is the programmer’s progress match that with the Task list? (c) check the project site - Is the homepage all in tact? Are the links working? Any content development issues from the Admin page?
3. Take down notes. More often, as you navigate through the site, a new idea comes to you. The idea can be about a new feature or content, a new page, a new app, a new layout, a new design, even a new project! Anything that improves the site’s usability.
4. Do your homework. Visit websites and bookmark those that you like. Study how they work and efficiently. Also, research about your projects. With your homework in hand, evaluate your site against the concepts and principles that you’ve gathered. Check out similar business models and try to adopt those that work for your project.
5. Do a group evaluation. Evaluate the project as a team, together. It’s also useful and more efficient, if you and your team do the evaluating together or simultaneously. Ideas are exchanged instantly, and you come up with fresh and often better ideas. Isn’t it that two heads are better than one?

This is Day #8 of 31DBBB