After several years of using Basecamp as our in-house project management support tool we’ve recently been feeling that something’s missing somewhere. We surveyed more than a 100 different tools that are available out there and maybe it’s a sign of the times, but we found that there are now a lot of tools that seemed to be more about social collaboration as opposed to traditional Gantt charts with tasks, timelines and dependencies.

PM Software Comparison

That made us think. Is a project more about a set of people to whom we assign tasks, or is it more about a set of tasks to which we assign people?

We think that the right answer depends on two things:

• How mature and proactive your people are in terms of managing their own work schedules and their interactions with other team members.
• How firm a project’s work breakdown structure remains over the delivery life cycle. Does it need to be altered because the sequence and duration of certain tasks can’t completely be known in advance?

Style is a conscious act of breaking convention as much as adhering to it.

Choose what style you want to portray, a perfect gentleman or an outlaw. But live the image all through consistently in the story. If, in some pages your hero comes across as a suave James Bond and in the next page speaks like an outlaw, then you are bound to confuse the audience.

Just like the characters in a movie, companies too have an image that needs to be defined. Style guide does exactly that. It defines the character of your company. The tone, the usage, the color and the lines on your company website, all contribute to the brand. Most companies have a visual brand guideline, but not all companies adhere to an editorial Style guide. But those who do follow, have a distinct advantage over the rest.

We all receive wedding invites, by post, by courier, in person and even by email. A friend of mine recently invited me for his wedding. What’s new, you might ask. Well, somebody inviting me for a wedding is not new, but the wedding invite was an out-of-the-world card, from the e-world literally! The invitation was designed to look like the Facebook homepage.

I thoroughly appreciate his creativity for designing it in such a manner; after all, who wouldn’t know Facebook, right? Nobody would have ever seen a card like that, and his wedding will be remembered by a lot of people for a long time, all because of the invite. Most people who saw the card expressed a wow. Some were of the “oh c’mon, Facebook even in a wedding invite?” kind of opinion.

Creativity apart, are we getting so obsessed that we think of Facebook even in a wedding card? Inviting people on Facebook is one thing; designing a card like Facebook is a different thing altogether.

Next, the status updates might read like this:

XYZ updated status three minutes ago:
we exchanged wedding rings
12 comments, 20 likes
XYZ updated status two minutes ago:
wedding solemnized
24 comments, 50 likes
XYZ updated status one minute ago:
I just kissed the bride, or better still,
I am kissing her now!
108 comments, 254 likes

If this was the case, people would never bother to attend weddings and would happily sit elsewhere, hitting the like button for every update posted!

Recently, during a blog workshop, a PPT slide caught the attention of the audience. It was called, Go, KISS your Blog. Of Course, the title was inspired by the book, ‘Go, Kiss the World’ by Subroto of MindTree, for whom, I have great respect and admiration.

In the slide title, the anagram KISS stood out, but it did not represent the usual sentiment, of Keeping it Simple and Short. Instead it said, ‘Keep Improvising & Synchronize Serendipity’. The new definition evoked curiosity.  Later, a few queries poured into my mailbox. So, I would like to take this opportunity to describe what KISSing your blog, is all about.

Let’s say, you keep writing about Product Engineering (PE), people will eventually associate PE with you. Let’s assume you are writing consistently, about PE for a while, that when people search for ‘PE’ on Google, your name shows up! Your destiny has just taken a new turn. You have now become a brand. People have begun to connect with what you do, for who you are.

I will give you 3 reasons to believe that the poet and the CEO are very similar except they differ in the things they are looking at. Both use tools of imagination and intuition to look at things in a whole new perspective.

Think Tagore, think Tata. Both were fearless visionaries. One inspired generations to fight against the poverty of mind. The other created a wealth of opportunities through employment.

Consider the following:

1. Both the poet and the CEO have a very intense relationship with Time.

One figures time is immaterial while the other estimates every moment is time and material.