Tuesday, 28 March 2017

Why Orangescrum Templates save your Time & Increases Productivity


Business need productivity. The more productive your team better the chances of your business being successful.
In today’s age of Unicorns we see companies with minimal workforce making a global impact and establish themselves as the market leaders.
The question surely becomes – HOW??!! And this “HOW” is a mix of technical acumen, the business idea and most importantly “Work SMART, Make SMART!”
Unicorns know how to save time, produce right and deliver fast as not many of them can boast of having the luxury of all required resources.
Everything matters to them – their time, the funding, their team and the resources they have.
To obtain optimal utilization of these resources they choose automation where possible and are in constant search of ways to eliminate redundant work.
Last time I have discussed how you can automate your tasks instead of creating the same every time. This time I will discuss about how you should use templates (task template & project template) to save your productive time.
First of all, why you should use it & why it is beneficial for you?
When you’re working on large or multiple projects, certain tasks/projects get repeated.
Let’s say you’re working on content marketing. Definitely you know which type/category of article works for you. While assigning the task to your colleague, you must have mentioned the points to cover in his/her article.
The same thing you may need to assign to different colleagues for different projects. This decreases your productivity as you’re repeating the same task again & again.
Instead of repeating tasks, you can create a simple template which can be used when you will create the same task. This is where eliminating waste comes in handy!
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Monday, 27 March 2017

A Buyer’s Guide for Project Collaboration Tool



It’s difficult to organize and manage projects or share information, when you have employees spread over different locations.
In the free global market, an increasing number of companies, small businesses or large enterprises, are using collaborative software tools to be more efficient, productive, and competitive.
With the right collaboration tools…You could be getting 20-25% more out of your knowledge workers        (Source: McKinsey Global Institute)
Using collaboration software is the way to go to stay at the Top in your field, which offers solution to streamlining your top business processes.
This makes organizing workloads as well as team collaboration faster and more efficient compared to accessing tools scattered either across the web, personal computers, or the company’s network.
Good collaboration software solutions also help integrate productivity apps into your workflows.
This article traverses through a decision making framework for selecting software as well as a list of criteria to help the business owner navigate through the myriad choices available today.

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Wednesday, 22 March 2017

Orangescrum Learning Series: #7 why it’s Time you Track Time


Whether its personal life or business or project management, time management comes first in our mind.
Most of us sometimes feel we have too much work to do but not enough time to accomplish all the tasks.

We blame lack of time for our poor finances, stress and poor relationships etc. This is due to our failure of Time Management.

Tuesday, 21 March 2017

How to Make an Effective Project Management Plan


For project managers, a successful outcome is always preceded by a well-prepared project management plan. There’s no second opinion about it.

After all it’s a roadmap that guides the entire team from start to finish. A lot of effort is put into planning that roadmap. So here’re a few things that will help you prepare a better Project Management Plan.


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Monday, 20 March 2017

Conquer the Biggest Challenges of Project Management in IT



Managing a project in IT is way more complex than it seems. The more you go deep into it, the complex it gets. From hardware & software development to networks & data management.


Hence, unlike the Project Managers of other fields… IT Project Managers face a lot of challenges that are unique to their domain. And interestingly, majority of those challenges are non-technical, but managerial.

Saturday, 18 March 2017

Why Project Management isn’t fun anymore?



Remember the good old but fun days of Project Work in school? What happened to those activities with bunch of students helping each other and working cohesively to complete the task at hand?

Where did we lose them? We weren’t taught this and neither were we like that!

The energy, the passion, the competitive spirit, the unadulterated spirit to help each other succeed and excitement of success have been replaced with stress, work overload, disparate communication, lack of transparency & partnerships. Even worse unsatisfactory results and delays at maximum times! .

Tuesday, 14 March 2017

Freelancing Made Easier with Orangescrum

Freelancing has come a long way from being a temporary trend to the global phenomenon that it has now become. The younger gen that had been craving for freedom, flexibility & mobility in work, are now thriving with options. 

With rapid advancements in technology & infrastructure, it’s now pretty easy to setup your own private workplace from the comfort of your den.

5 years back, who would have thought that a designer sitting from the Bahamas can also work for someone from the Canadian alps. That barrier has long been broken now, for the good.

Freelancing is pretty much a win-win scenario for both parties, if done professionally. But when the parties are sitting oceans apart, you can’t totally avoid the chances of a few miss-communications. 

Whether it’s a language barrier or the difference in time-zones… you always need to be on your toes. And things can get real serious if you’re dealing with a whole bunch of clients across the globe. Everyone has different deadlines, time-zones. 

That’s when you need a simple but efficient Project Collaboration tool to take care of some of the management stuff, so that you focus on what you do best.

Orangescrum, is a just the kind of Project Collaboration tool for you if you’re really serious about your freelancing work. It comes with two editions: cloud (with a monthly subscription fee, suiting everyone’s needs) & community (it’s open source, & it’s free with a bunch of available add-ons).

It really makes business so easy. You can add your clients into your projects and let them know about the status, timeline, updates in real time. If you’re a team of freelancers, Orangescrum works even better with resource allocation being one of its highlight features. 


Project Management Trends to Watch Out for in 2017


Project management has always been an ever changing domain. From simple pen n papers to sophisticated software, it really has come a long way.
One BIG reason for its ever changing nature is the ever changing work culture across industries & advancement in technology. As people’s expectations, needs and business practices evolve, it’s only fair for smarter project management tools to come up.

So, let’s talk about a few things which I believe will become BIG this year, in the field of Project Management. 

Automation

Simple & recurring tasks such as timesheet fill ups & daily updates are tedious & boring. 

Hence, the focus has now shifted towards introducing automation into all this. Pre-scheduled reminders, status alerts etc are now a reality. 

Few companies are even one step ahead by adding bots into play, for product/service/website launches, initial stages of customer handling etc. Expect this to go BIG this year. 

Remote Workstations

Even though this has got nothing to do with technology, remote working culture will become even more popular with time.

A research shows that employees who spend some part of their time working remotely, are more engaged with their jobs. And being engaged results in much more productivity than otherwise.

Working remotely requires pro-activeness & self motivation to do your work effectively, without being asked. And off late, folks are loving that freedom. Nobody likes the ‘watch-over-my-shoulder’ approach anymore.

Hence, remote working culture will show no signs of slowing down in near future.  

Collaboration

It’s a well documented fact that, more the collaboration… better are the results. And it’s not a surprise that everyone has been giving increased focus on multi-user collaboration, when it comes to handling projects. 

This trend is set to become even bigger this year with wider adaptations across industries. There’s so much more you can achieve with a group of people working together for a common cause. 

AI (Artificial Intelligence)

Like everything else, AI is set to make BIG inroads into the world of Project Management this year. It’s just inevitable, like it or not.

At times when users get overwhelmed with the huge amount of data a project management tool gives out, AI will be like a breath of fresh air. 

Friday, 10 March 2017

Orangescrum once Again Ranked in Top 10 Project Management Software


Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success” Henry Ford

Orangescrum features again in the “Top 10 Free and Open Source Project Management Software” for 2017 by Capterra.

For our new readers, “Orangescrum is a simple Project management & Collaboration tool that brings all your teams on a single platform. It facilitates quick task management, time tracking & end to end project planning. You can use it for Any Industry, Any Team, Any Size, Any Time& Anywhere!”

Orangescrum simplifies the process of project management for our organization with its power collaboration tools. We couldn’t be happier with Orangescrum!
Jamie Smith
Director of Marketing Automation

“We’re honored to be ranked in the Top 10 Project Management Software for the third consecutive year. We value & recognize the contribution of our strong and vocal user community for their continuous feedback, suggestions, sincere engagement & support” said Priyank Agarwal, Chief Product Manager, Orangescrum.

We have consistently brought intuitive and helpful features- Gantt chart, Resource Availability, Timer, In-App chat, Mobile App for Open Source and Cloud users. 

Extended transparency and real-time visibility to multiple project(s) stats helps high performing teams to accomplish more with helpful features such as – Kanban View, Gantt Chart, Task Status Group, Project Template, Recurring tasks, In-App Chat, Time Log, Resource Management (availability, utilization & leave planning), Invoicing.

You can also integrate both SaaS and On-Premise editions with Google Drive & Dropbox.

Orangescrum launched the Mobile App (iOS & Android) for its On-premise users in Sep,2016 & the app for Cloud users will be available soon. 

The Open Source basic version is free & customizable and the Premium features for open source is available as add-ons & their prices are pay once for life single instance installation license. At the same time the cloud edition pricing starts with $9/month for 10 users

Also with the $69/month plan, you can invite unlimited users to your Orangescrum in the cloud.