Top Project Management Conferences of 2020

 

Project management conferences create an opportunity for project managers to learn new ideas about project management methodology and help to build networks with professional peers. Thus, certified project managers can acquire learning hours or units that are required to maintain their respective certificates by attending project management conferences.

Orangescrum team has collected some of the best project management conferences for 2020, so that our readers can schedule one that’s convenient in their datebooks.

Save the date and mark your calendars, whether analog or digital: here are the top project management conferences of 2020.

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Time Tracking in Orangescrum

 “Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.” - Jim Rohn.

Take a moment, think deeply about that statement. Almost all spend their lives searching for ways to earn surplus money, but hardly ever, we think about time and its importance, it’s a limited resource!

We all have the same time available that is, 24 hours per day. You can neither store time or borrow it, nor save for later use. You can only decide how to utilize or allocate it, spend it on activities of higherrather than lower values.

When you understand the importance of time, you will also understand the importance of managing your time. Time management is all about a game of choices-projects to pursue, tasks to complete, outcomes to deliver.

Why Time Tracking is important in Project Management?

Time tracking is extremely important to manage your operations profitably. If a team works on an hourly basis, time tracking helps in adjusting the rate of work. This way, your team can ensure fair payments for the quality and amount of work delivered.

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How to Use Kanban & Custom Status Workflow in Orangescrum

 

Gone are those days, when project management tools & Kanban boards were specific to IT and manufacturing industries only.It has turned into a fundamental need of all organizations. 

Be it, Healthcare, Marketing, Construction, Product development, engineering or professional services; Project management software is integral to their overall operations.

Charles Darwin once said -

“The most important factor in survival is neither intelligence nor strength but adaptability.”

Any species who can adapt itself according to the recent environmental changes can survive the longest. 

Similarly, an ideal project management tool should be industry agnostic that is; it should be flexible enough to adopt itself according to the workflow of any organization.

Hence, project management software must offer Custom Workflowsfor increased adaptability and ease of use. 

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5 Must Have Project Management Reports

Creating project management reports is second nature to project managers. 

Ever happened to stop by your project manager’s desk? I am sure you would have almost always found him battling with report generation.

And if you talk to one, you can hear them fussing over the number of revisions, data massaging, frequency and format changes for same datasets being requested over and over by different stakeholders.

The situation has improved to quite an extent but not at levels I would have personally liked.

Primarily because, 

• we are still caught up with too much “adminocracy”
• not using the project management & collaboration tools to their full extent
• sticking to conventional report formats
• losing focus over –“what’s actually needed” vs. “what all can I have in a report”

 “Ad hoc project management reports have been an acceptable part of a Project Manager’s KRA. It shouldn’t be. Period!”

The need is to rather identify the right set of reports that would benefit the project & meet expectations of all stakeholders involved.

“Smart thing would be to define these reports at the beginning of the project itself and get sign-off on them. With their desired frequency, of course!”

This would prevent distractions, last minute requests & efforts that would drive focus away from more impactful items on the to–dos.

So which project management reports must one choose for meaningful representation of critical success factors of a project?

The ones that come to my mind are:

• Executive Dashboards
• Project Overview
• Task Progress
• Time & Resource Management Report
• Bugs & Issues Report

 Read on……

Executive Dashboards

Project Sponsors and the Business are the most important stakeholders of all. Their reporting needs must be catered to in the most impactful manner possible. Truth is told:

One, they are the ones with their hands on the plug.

Two, keeping them engaged, preventing their anxiety is in the best interest of the project.

At the same time it is important to understand “them” and what is it that they look for in project management reports. Or the end of your status meeting would be something like this:

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How to do Effective Task Management in Orangescrum

Task Management is the vital part of Project Management. Effective task management leads to on-time & within budget project delivery. As a result we can achieve higher customer satisfaction and trust which fuels business growth.

Why Effective Task Management is a challenge?

  According to Wikipedia,

“Effective task management requires managing all aspects of a task, including its status, priority, time, human and financial resources assignments, recurrence, dependency, notifications and so on. These can be lumped together broadly into the basic activities of task management.”

When we say Task Management, it doesn’t mean only handling certain to do lists. We also need take care of major aspects such as resource allocation, time estimates, progress tracking and budget. Inconsistency of any one factor affects the entire task management process,causes delays in project delivery and affects business.

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How to create Project Plans in Orangescrum

Project Plans are an essential stepping stone towards building and delivering a successful project. 

Instead of quantity, the focus is on the qualitative objectives that will be achieved in a timely manner. 

Project plans are your blue prints that guide your project from concept, execution to delivery. They act as the radar to keep the team focused on the tasks at hand & stick to the project scope.

More importantly, project plan help with

• effective resource allocation
• better effort estimation
• well-defined task relationships
• clarity around key project objectives and or milestones
•  early identification of risks

An Ideal project management tool should be capable enough to make your work easier, save time by automating Project management processes & end to end task, time & resource tracking. 

Read the full article at Orangescrum Blog