Project Manager…it has a nice ring doesn’t it?  A lot of people don’t realize how involved project management really is.  In the web development  world, you are the sole form of communication between the client and your web products team; you are responsible for making sure the client’s vision is properly interpreted from normal forms of communication into the language of your technobabble speaking colleagues. To be frank, you had better get it right or you are going to make a lot of people unhappy (and be the cause of many late nights for your entire team).  Sometimes this pressure can be stressful, but there are 5 applications that can make your job so much easier… You’ll wonder how you ever did it without them.

…Let’s take a look!

Jing Screencasts

In early years of project management, we often spent hours writing up lengthy documents with screenshots and explanations to the web development team for Amedia Creative Quality Assurance reports.  Talk about a time waster!  Using Jing makes AQA work simple… and it’s easy on the brain.  With Jing, we record a “screencast” of a browser as we discover errors and simply speak the problem into the microphone or use red directional arrows.  With one click, Jing uploads our audio/visual presentation onto their online database, providing us a link that we can copy and paste to our web development or web design team.  When our team visits the link, they are presented a video of my screen with my voice over.

Teamviewer

This is another free program that may exponentially improve quality of life as a project manager. In web development, odds are someone is always going to spot a bug or have a recurring issue that you just cant replicate.  Teamviewer is a program that is easy to install and gives users the ability to share and control screens.  It’s quicker than setting up a gotomeeting, but its just as effective.  Teamviewer is also helpful if you’re like me and have a computer-illiterate mother who calls you every week like a free tech support line; it really keeps your blood pressure down.

Spaces (Mac)

Spaces is Mac only (comes bundled with OSX), although it’s hopefully only a matter of time before Microsoft comes out with an exact clone of this application for Windows (like their “Windows Stores” which are basically Mac stores with the products swapped out).  Spaces gives the user the ability to have up to 16 separate desktops and it is compatible with multiple screens. Bring your cursor to a user-determined corner of the screen and you’re given an overall view of all 16 desktops (with multiple monitors) with the ability to drag and drop applications anywhere.  Combine this with the four-finger swipe on new Macbooks and the functionality is mind-boggling!

I prefer to multitask effectively by putting a different project in a different “space”.  I can effortlessly switch between projects and I never feel cluttered or overwhelmed as I do when I work in Windows 7.

Stickies (Mac) or Sticky Notes (PC)

Stickies! These things are great.  I’ve read a few articles showing people using post-it notes to keep track of various tasks they need to complete throughout the day.  Some say there is no substitute for the ol’ fashioned pen and paper, but I dare to challenge that…  Throughout the day we are bombarded with minor web design and web management related tasks that need to get done, but they just don’t quite take priority over what we are doing .  Thanks to Stickies, we can organize all my notes in one place and just delete them as we knock them out.  I often use Spaces in conjunction with Stickies by dedicating one desktop entirely to notes.

Microsoft Project (PC)

This program is incredibly useful for senior management and client communication.  Every web design and web development project gets its own burn down chart, which is used internally to track the progress of a project and the workload of each of my team members.  If a deadline is missed or a delay is suffered, we can see the effect it will have on the entire project by pushing back the delivery date of that task; the whole chart automatically adjusts and presents new deadlines.  When a client asks for a time estimate for new development, we often cook up a quick project plan to illustrate not only what our projected deadlines are, but also what they entail.  These charts eliminate a lot of questions and allow our web production team to spot potential problems before they occur.

That about sums it up.  The use of these apps has really improved Amedia’s overall productivity, management skills, and ability to communicate effectively.  I hope you will find them as useful as we did.  Thanks for checking in at Amedia Creative.

On Saturday, January 30, 2010 · No Comments »