ZCOPE Blog

The burndown chart is a graph that visualises the project‘s progress. This curve shows the project performance. The dark blue trend line shows the actual project course: if it lies directly on the light blue line, the project runs „normal“. If it‘s in the pink area, the performance is under quota, in the light blue area it‘s better than planned.

The figure beneath the graph states, how many percents the project is performing above/under the planned time. Thus discrepancies between plan and reality can be recognised early on and countermeasures can be taken.

ZCOPE doesn‘t have (yet) an explicit area for knowledge management but there are several possibilities how to organise knowledge.

At first let‘s talk about the „implicit“ information. Each description that will be added to tasks, task lists, milestones, dates and budgets might contain important knowledge. The same is valid for the journal – it shows what happened when (grouped by days, the single areas are marked by colours). Also the project templates hold know-how from previous projects.

The instruments most obviously suited for knowledge management are the document archive and the project blog. Documents may be updated at any time, the old versions will be kept (can be deleted as well of course). Blog entries may be edited and enhanced by the author, other team members can add comments.

In ZCOPE, documents are not only saved centrally but also in a versioned form. This means, that you can upload an updated version as an addition to already existing documents – the older version will be kept.

Thus e.g. design developments can be reproduced chronologically correct or different people can work consecutively on the same document.

Even if we support transparency in projects – there are things that should remain „among us“, therefore „internal“. All employees of the account owner automatically have the „internal“ status and thus more rights and access to more data.

But also people from outside of the company can get the „internal“ status, e.g. an agency on friendly terms, with which also confidential information will be shared. Due to the extended settings, certain things can remain within one company: in this case one simply deactivates the reading and writing rights of the corresponding area (e.g. time tracking).

What can be marked as „internal“?

• Tasks
• Dates
• Documents
• Blog entries (of course the corresponding comments are „internal“ as well)

Task lists cannot be „internal“ as there would be too many dependencies in the case of task moving between multiple lists.
Budgets are invisible for not-“internal“ team members by default (this can be changed redefining the extended settings).

The project manager can adjust the „internal“ settings. Only „internal“ project members can  mark elements as „internal“.

Not every team member should have access to all information resp. the right to write. E.g. trainees should be able to see tasks but shouldn‘t be authorised to create new ones: they get reading rights for this section but the writing rights will be deactivated.

Extended settings can be defined for the following areas:

• Tasks
• Time tracking
• Dates
• Budgets
• Documents
• Project blog

These settings can be determined for all project members, no matter if internal or not. The latter by default have fewer rights – this can be changed with the extended rights.

There are a lot of projects with a similar setup. To save time in the planning phase, we developed the project template feature.

As an example, I use the organisation of an event. There are several tasks that have to be done with every event:

• Location: Selection, bid solicitation, booking, fire authority inspection, etc.
• Entertainment programme (live music, all-round entertainer, etc.): Selection, bid solicitation, booking, etc.
• Catering: Selection, bid solicitation, booking, etc.
• Guest list: Listing, design, shipping, etc.
• Security
• Permissions
• Etc.

In the template you may define task lists, tasks, dates (milestones) and budgets as well as the responsible persons. If you notice something missing later on (e.g. the renting of parking lots) you may adapt the template at any time.

Now you start projects as always but are able to select a template under point 4.

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Not everyone‘s ZCOPE account is permanently opened. But still if, there are some things one doesn‘t get. So, if you wait for something special or want to get informed about all what‘s happening in the project, subscribe to the journal of the project (as RSS feed) in the project‘s overview.

If you have a paid account, you can subscribe to all projects as well and you won‘t miss anything in the future. That‘s also true for the subscription for dates. Go to the dashboard where you will find the following links:
Project updates: Subscribe
Subscribe to iCalendar

In ZCOPE, there are several possibilities how to prioritise task lists and tasks – independent from the set date. Here are some examples that we apply:

Task lists are positioned with descending importance via drag & drop. Within the lists, the tasks are positioned in the same way.

The single elements are tagged „important&urgent“, „urgent“, „important“ or „nice2have“ and worked off in this order.

A ZCOPE customer recently told me about her wish, I answered with a „partial SCRUM“-idea. She said there are days without urgent to do‘s and she‘s only doing tasks she feels in the mood for. These tasks should be planned on the evenings before or in the mornings of these days. I suggested to bundle tasks from different task lists: in lists that either are named after the date. Or she can assign the date as tag – in this case, the tasks may remain in their original list.

If you use the tagging option, the prioritisation works across projects as well: select „my tasks“ in the dashboard and click on the wished tag.

Some time ago, I asked some people what would be there wish to the project fairy and wrote a post about it: 25 wishes to the project fairy. Here are some interesting new wishes to the lovely little helper:

1 Stefan Kalteis, CEO, www.dealhamster.com, Austria
My wish is… that the project fairy keeps all administrative activities at bay.

2 Sigrid Hauer, CEO, Consulting4Quality – Blog Projektgeschichten, Germany
My wish is… that even stakeholders understand that good collaboration tools are essential to keep the communication up & running, but don‘t solve communication problems itself.

3 Christian Gaisberger, Developer, Dorner ASP AG, Switzerland
My wish is… that solutions will be searched for based on the experience of the single team members and nevertheless an authority takes the final decision. The right ones and at the right time!

4 Blundstone Osterberger, Engagement Director Europe, huge, US/UK/FR/SWE
My wish is… that everyone understands contingency when doing time, cost & material planning is there to account for unexpected turns a project takes, and not just to blow up budgets.

5 Marina Zubcic, Consultant, ICG Infora GmbH, Austria
My wish is… that people focus on developing and discussing solutions rather than explaining at length why they are behind schedule and how it sure isn’t their fault and that everyone shows up prepared.

6 Mark Buzinkay, CEO, Idea Lounge, Austria
My wish is… that the fairy turns into Herman Dune, gives everybody a good reason to smile and a sense of humour to work enthusiastically on the most boring tasks, because we know that there is more in life than this project.

7 Alexander Aberer, Senior Developer/Scrum-Master, LearnLift, Austria
My wish is… that client and project team don‘t talk past each other or don‘t address acute problems. They should talk fair and square and aks all questions so that they will be answered  to the utmost satisfaction of all involved parties.

8 Benjamin Spiss, Producer Gambling, Rabcat Computer Graphics GmbH, Austria
My wish is… serious effort estimations instead of tossing a random figure thus I won‘t be annoying any longer.

9 Andrea Hammer, Project coordination, Blog projektlotse, Germany
My wish is… that every sub-project has exactly the status given in the status report. All this should be visualised as dream sequence in a movie (my favourite director would be Hitchcock :-).

10 Jürgen Pansy, Board member, sms.at, Austria
My wish is… that she does us a disservice and clears all elephants out of the room – at least for the meetings.

11 Sebastian Heinzel, CEO, www.tripwolf.com, Austria
My wish is… that the project fairy speaks all the languages on this planet – if she‘s tiny enough, one could put her into the ear.

[Constance: A nice idea... must be from the famous book „The Hichthiker‘s Guide to Projects“ ;-)]

12 Tathagat Varma, Senior director business operations, Yahoo – Blog Manage Well, India
My wish is… that the project fairy takes care of all risks that I forgot to identify :)

13 Marlis Rumler, CEO, uboot.com, Austria
My wish is… that every member of the team, no matter what his job description is, gains the ability to look beyond his/her own nose, so solutions with foresight can be found quicker and easier.

14 Oliver Merz, Operations Manager, Venyon GmbH, Germany
My wish is… lesser meetings that are lengthened due to unnecessary information and discussions that should better be discussed in private.

15 Sebastian Manhart, CEO professional group, Wirtschaftskammer Vorarlberg, Austria
My wish is… the guarantee that all members of my project team -  no matter if internal or external – have all the necessary information about the current project status available.