Over the past couple of decades, advances in technology have significantly changed the way businesses are run. As a positive result, employees have increased their productivity as they are able to do more with their available time. On the other hand, with the various ways of receiving data now, an enormous amount has been and is currently being collected which has exponentially increased the time required to manage it. Putting an effective document management system in place has become crucial to ensure successful business operations. Employees must understand how and where to store important files and project information to keep business running smoothly.

Now with Deltek Project Information Management (PIM), formally known as Union Square, firms have a powerful tool for document management that integrates with Deltek Vision. Here are some core capabilities that support best practices for document management.

Proper User Access and Permissions

Deltek PIM provides firms the power to assign the proper permissions and restrictions to protect your firm’s data. Documents include everything from your finished products to confidential HR records. Without a comprehensive policy and system in place, everything can be at risk.

Deltek PIM offers a solution to document access restrictions in the form of defined user access and permission controls. Role-based security allows your IT department to create user groups with pre-set access rights. This ensures that entry-level HR employees are in a different access group than the HR manager and have no access to documentation in other departments unless permitted to do so. Here are some security levels that are included:

At the department level – All rights (system, group and user) are assigned by department
At the systems level – Set global permissions that apply to all groups within a department
At the group level – The most efficient way to manage security because you only need to set up security permissions once for multiple users
At the user level – Set permissions for individual users
At the project level – set permissions separately for each project and document type within the project

Create and Maintain a Consistent Naming Convention

Consistent naming conventions are critical, especially in the Architectural and Engineering Industry. If not followed, having standards in place is useless. Deltek PIM ensures consistent file names by preventing users from creating their own file names independently.

Although pre-defined terminology is a great feature, your company also has the option to customize the naming scheme to suit your conventions and even include date stamps that make chronological file searches possible.

Use the Central Template Library in Deltek PIM

The template library allows firms to maintain a set of company standard templates that are version managed, controlled and accessible by operational staff. This ensures consistent formatting of documents regardless of which staff member creates the document. A key thing to remember when creating a new document is everyone has to have access to those templates to ensure compliance with company standards. Additionally, templates in Deltek PIM automatically include the metadata for the document type and key information with limited access to changing this information.

Keep a Document Audit Trail

With all of the liability concerns, document auditing is a critical feature for all document management systems. The audit trail must be able to account for each version of the file, who created it, and who downloaded the document. In addition, Deltek PIM keeps all deleted documents in a separate location, ensuring no critical data is ever completely lost. Furthermore, based on the requirements of your state and/or areas of work, the audit trail will remain intact for the required term.

Use Proper Version control

Deltek PIM provides a project-wide document numbering system to prevent duplicate document numbers within the same project. It also provides a consistent revision coding system and sequential coding of revisions for the life of the documents. Even more, an automated tracking of who is responsible for each version and who has reviewed it allows for complete insight into the version history of documents.

Eliminate Duplicate Documents

Aside from taking up storage space, duplicate files make searching for what you need significantly more time consuming. Keith Pickavance in his work, Delay & Disruption in Construction Contracts notes “It’s not uncommon for a large project to produce millions of pages of documents, of which only 5,000 are critical.” A system that automatically finds and eliminates duplicate documents becomes more and more important as the project size increases.

With email communication, often there are many copies of the same email. Each copy could be filed by a different staff member into a different location. A system that locates and deletes those duplicates while tagging the primary email with proper metadata for searching can considerably decrease duplications and increase the ease of search-ability.

Keep Project Management and Document Management in Sync with Deltek PIM

The core benefit of Deltek PIM is the integration of the project opportunity and project management that creates a link with everything from document management to contacts. The central hub for creating an opportunity is in Deltek Vision, and being able link it to a specific project allows for everything related to the project to be stored and viewed in one location. By clicking on a contact, you can easily see the projects they’re associated with and what actions they have. This convenient access allows employees to quickly find and view critical project documents to allow them to do more!

For project-based firms, measuring current firm performance is the most significant indicator of future firm performance. Furthermore, by using trend data, firms can forecast cost and schedule variances in the early stage of a project. A preferred method by project managers to factor this trend data is the earned value management technique.

Using Earned Value Management

Earned value management allows firms to evaluate cost and schedule variances in both dollars and percentages on projects. These factors are derived by considering planned value, actual cost and earned value over time.

A common way of looking at earned value is by using both the financial percent complete job to date (JTD) and the estimate too complete (ETC) by using the formula, JTD/(JTD + ETC) and the project managers reported physical percent complete. These two factors when equated provide a quick and easy comparison. For example, the financial percent complete on construction documents may be at 75% when the reported percent complete on construction documents is 50%. There are several possible explanations for these variances, such as:

There were many revisions that were client driven and not in scope
The complexity of the work was under estimated
We have just been very inefficient

Keep in mind, there are a number of other scenarios that can also explain these factors as well.

Factoring Earned Value Management

Getting the information above is actually simple. It requires holding project managers to a high level of accountability. Project managers need to evaluate the amount of hours budgeted, hours burned (JTD), and the effort required to finish the scope of work (ETC).

As a result, this will produce the financial percent complete. Project managers then need to record where the project is from a physical percent complete, which should tie to progress on the project schedule.

Much like a crossover episode of two TV shows, this is where EVM crosses over with a previous blog about FASB 606. EVM will ultimately meet the requirements that in turn will keep the accounting team compliant with FASB 606.

Enter Deltek Vision

The Resource Planning module in Deltek Vision addresses EVM by:

Allowing the financial percent complete to be calculated
Providing a physical percent complete plan in the form of an EV%
A default report in the Resource Planning module known as the Earned Value Chart, which represents the S Curve

By maintaining a project plan in the Resource Planning module, firms can be successful in developing a project report that shows cost and schedule variances in both the dollars and percent (CV, SV, CPI and SPI). If your firm has a benchmark or standard range, you can then compare the actual to that standard to identify anomalies in your projects performance.

The title of this blog is, “Why Your Firm Should Use Earned Value Management” and the answers are:

It’s an industry standard and proven method for project management and project accounting
It’s a common language among project managers across industries
It provides quick visibility into a projects performance
It brings firms closer to compliance with FASB 606

Learn more about Michael Kessler and his more than 30 years of experience of working in and around project-based accounting here.

Document management in the AEC Industry is more critical than most. Union Square can help your firm integrate all relevant data, allowing you to spend less time organizing and more time executing projects. Union Square enables your firm to store and access critical firm-wide and project information, including documents, financial information, drawings, images, and emails in one central repository. As a result, your firm has the ability to:

Ensure team members are working on the most up-to-date files
Eliminate inconsistent file structures or displaced files
Keep drawings, correspondence, submittals and more in one central location
Log incoming documents from any source
Provide auto-matching suggestions to improve the quality of records
Document register that gives you all the answers you might need about the state of the project from anywhere

Email

Email easily represents the greatest volume of documents and must be managed effectively or your firm will be left with an expensive archive full of duplicates, difficult if not impossible to retrieve information, and significantly slowing down your ability to send critical information to your clients. Union Square will ensure no email can ever be lost and there are no duplicates by allowing your firm to:

Save emails from Outlook in just two clicks
Save just one copy of an email and avoid duplication of email storage
Store all project correspondence and attachments centrally and permanently
Strip attachments from email and log appropriately

Document Management

Union Square, combined with Deltek, now offers truly the most integrated platform in the world, reducing operational risk and increasing efficiency.

Other solutions simply are not complete and cannot provide adequate risk reduction and efficiencies. With the varying documents involved in the AEC Industry, basic document sharing provided by SharePoint does not offer a construction issuing system and has no integration with industry design packages. Custom development can be costly and virtually impossible to manage and keep up with future upgrades. A DMS overlay doesn’t provide true risk reduction and access to emails, client reports or company finance all in one location. Union Square will do all of the above and more:

Documents, emails, finance, and design files all cross-referenced for rapid retrieval
Detailed document audit and full history
Documents stored in their native file formats
Cache services keep documents local to each office to give a single virtual office across the company without compromising performance

An interactive drawing register provides version control, including:

Links that allow the issuing of process control and distribution of drawings throughout their lifecycle
Read and write access that provides version control to users based on security permissions

External File Sharing

The exponential growth in file sizes has made sharing drawing packages a time consuming exercise which lacks company transparency. Manually uploading files to a client extranet or third party file sharing location is slow and requires keeping both an internal and external record of the documents.

Union Square’s design register, issue sheets, document packages and official company records are all exemplar quality and ISO 9001 compliant, fully automated and recorded. The system is unimpeded by file size limits, and documents can be shared internally and externally from the same location with specific user rights for read and write access of only the files or folders chosen. No more worrying about setting up dated FTP sites or emailing large files. Everyone is finally on the same page with one version of the truth.

Contract Administration

Contracts should be easily traceable to reduce the risk of costly legal disputes. All emails, queries, questions and responses are all legally admissible in court. By bringing together the contract communications with the Document Management System, your firm has better visibility of project issues before they arise. Union Square provides enhanced foresight and project management, mitigates risk, and enables your firm to offer detailed status updates to your clients.

Remember, just because you may be required to use someone else’s external system on some projects, these are your client’s records and not your own! You own internal records will be necessary in any legal dispute.

Revit Integration

Union Square has developed a bridge to integrate with Revit. With the industry’s move towards BIM (Building Information Modelling), the way information is exchanged with clients and project partners has to change. Information sharing can sometimes include everything from the native model or IFC file, COBie file to traditional 2D formats like PDF, DWG, DDWF, DWFX and DGN.

Together with the Union Square drawing control system, the Revit integration will help your firm realize significant efficiency gains and see improvements in quality of output and practice-wide consistency with document production through to distribution. Included in the Revit integration is:

Bi-directional drawing register
Revision and versions management
Document issuing and rendition management
Hard copy batch print control

With Union Square, your firm will finally have synchronized model sheet information with a live drawing register and the ability to monitor approval/issue status at the click of a button.

More Mobility with Union Square

No more clipboards! With on-site mobile technology, Union Square automates the process of site data capture, task management and reporting. You can finally achieve a bulletproof audit trail and strengthen your position in contract disputes. With Union Square you will have also have access to Mobile Custom Forms which you can customize to comply with quality assurance processes and integrate your site processes.

Full Sail Partners and Planifi announced their recently formed strategic partnership. This alliance brings together Full Sail Partners’ world-class consulting services with Planifi’s industry-leading resource planning software “Project Analyzer” to provide architecture and engineering firms with a better way to manage their resources.

Project Analyzer is a visual resource planning software that enables project managers to quickly schedule, budget and staff projects. This graphic project management tool empowers firms to improve project planning by focusing on predictable and profitable delivery.

“We are excited to introduce Project Analyzer to our clients,” said Scott Seal, Full Sail Partners’ Vice President of Consulting. “We believe that Project Analyzer aligns with our core principals of helping professional services firms improve their business processes. Our clients will benefit from the increased visibility needed to make informed decisions around firm staffing, performance and revenue forecasts.”

Additionally, Michael Kessler, Principal Consultant at Full Sail Partners who successfully helps firms implement and utilize resource planning said, "I am looking forward to offering a powerful new planning solution to our customers. The reporting capabilities of Project Analyzer have been on my clients’ wish list for years."

This partnership will focus on enabling architecture and engineering firms to center their business on the project performance analytics that support better decision making by project managers and firm executives.

“This is a big day for Planifi,” said Tom Vandervort, Planifi founder. “This partnership will enable a whole new group of architecture and engineering firms to choose Planifi for their resource planning needs. Customers will benefit from the ability to select the solution that best works for them, all guided by Full Sail Partners’ expertise. Planifi customers will also benefit; as we are now able to offer enhanced consulting capabilities and solutions to our customers through Full Sail Partners.”

As a fan of zombie movies, you can probably guess that The Walking Dead is one of my favorite shows. If you’ve never watched it before, it’s a series that follows a group of survivors as they learn to adapt in a world overrun by zombies. Now, I’m going to let you in on a secret – don’t become attached to any of the main characters, because they are more than likely going to die. It’s the unfortunate reality for any zombie themed flick. Although your firm isn’t facing a zombie apocalypse, they do face several threats that can affect profit margins on fixed fee projects. Let’s find out if any of these classic zombie types are lurking in your fixed fee projects.

The Runner Zombie

Runner zombies are always sprinting after survivors, and often only injure the victim as they frantically run to attack another survivor. You can probably identify these frightening zombies and know how hard it is to avoid them.

These are clients with awesome project opportunities, but they rush to send out multiple request for proposals (RFPs) in a relatively short amount of time. As a result, each RFP contains incomplete plans and poorly explained specifications that go unnoticed until the project has launched. These overlooked mistakes often result in change orders and unpaid work time as these zombies take bites out of your profit.

The Surprise Zombie

The surprise zombies hide in the shadows and pop out periodically throughout the movie or show for quick surprise attacks on the survivors. They appear randomly in order to keep the audience on the edge of their seat. In a project management scenario, this zombie type may sound like subcontractors who love to surprise you and keep you on the edge of your seat.

The fact is, your firm develops project proposals and budgets based on the estimates provided by the subcontractors. But far too often, these estimates contain errors due to omissions and incorrect assumptions. Now the overlooked permit fee or low estimate on a materials allowance increases the budget and eats away at your profit.

The Exploding Zombie

All of a sudden, boom! It’s the loud explosion of a zombie exploding, or was that the cost of the materials pricing for your project skyrocketing? The cost of materials changes and we all understand this, however the supplier is supposed to be the expert.

Some RFPs are for projects that start right away and in other cases, some RFPs are for projects that won’t start for over a year. Even more, project durations can be as short as a month to multiple years. Knowing what the materials are going to cost at the time of the project and throughout the project lifecycle is essential to making a profit. Not being able to predict these changes can cause your materials costs to explode.

The Crawler Zombie

Crawler zombies are more of a nuisance and like to cause disruptions to the survivors as they escape to safety. These zombies are the slow movers and the problem with them is they lurk everywhere, from within your own firm to the subcontracted help.

Every project plan is susceptible to these slow movers who can’t complete a task within the designated time period. Consequently, another task can’t start until the crawler zombie finally completes their task. This sets off a chain reaction of delays that eventually affects the entire project timeline.

The Spitter Zombie

This is a total different type of zombie than the others. What makes them unique is their ability to attack from medium to long range with their toxic spit. Since they attack their unsuspecting victims from afar, the survivors must rely on their reflexes to survive. You might not see the spitter zombie often and that’s with good reason. The spitter zombie in your project is the micro-managing client who doesn’t have a pulse on the project since they are not on site.

These clients present two types of threats to the project. Firstly, these types of clients might be slow to respond to approvals and requests since they are not on site and easy to find. Secondly, they inject slight modifications to the plan without understanding the real effects of those changes. Working with off-site clients isn’t always horrifying, as long you’re able to react fast to minimize the damage to your profit, and keep an open and effective line of communication with the client.

Protecting Your Profit

Like the survivors in The Walking Dead, you can never let your guard down when taking on a fixed fee project. Protecting your profit starts during the proposal process and doesn’t end until the project is complete. Every project faces several threats to the bottom line, but learning to adapt to changes can increase your firm’s survival chances if you should ever encounter an apocalypse or in your case, a daunting project.

Project Planning Blog Graphic Congratulations! Your firm just won the largest project in its history and it’s time to celebrate, or is it? Unfortunately, winning the big project doesn’t guarantee success and big profits. For project-based firms, project management is synonymous with profit management, but many projects start in the red making it nearly impossible to make a profit. Here’s a look at some common pitfalls project-based firms face before they ever start a project.

Accurate Job Costing

If you have been on a proposal team, you know the feeling of relief that overcomes you once you finally submit the proposal. Weeks of working long hours reading and writing exhilarating technical content and attending meeting after meeting. All this work and time exhausted by several people when in reality, your final price is the biggest factor in winning. But, can your firm deliver the project on the proposed budget?

Accurate job costing requires accurate information, and most firms believe they have the right systems for their business model. Excel sheets and the time clock work, but these systems don’t communicate very well. Even more, consider the unreported overhead time to reconcile these systems and the mistakes made during this process.

“If it works, don’t fix it” doesn’t always apply, and information in more than one system doesn’t work when trying to maximize profit. When it comes to job costing, you already have to worry about inaccurate estimates from suppliers. These are costs you can’t control, so be sure to take control of your internal cost monitoring to create profitable bids you can deliver.

Establishing Key Performance Indicators

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are various quantifiable measurements used for determining the success of the project. The KPIs establish a guide to the project and are used as the basis for critical decision-making. More importantly, not executing on a specific KPI can affect the project’s profitability for your firm and your client’s satisfaction.

Here’s where some project-based firms struggle. In many cases, several of the KPIs are destined for failure before the project starts. The problem is that defining KPIs is truly challenging and your clients usually lack experience with the process. All too often, this results in KPIs that are unrealistic and unmeasurable.

Establishing realistic KPIs is the first step to managing the profit of a project. As the project manager, it’s in your best interest to have a strong role in creating the KPIs. Good project KPIs have values that can be accurately measured and clearly reported on. Further, they need to be understood and agreed to by all parties. To learn more about project KPIs, click here.

Risk Management

Projects are full of unforeseen obstacles and predicting these is not always possible, but this doesn’t mean your firm can’t minimize the impacts. They just need to have a formal risk management strategy. Although this might be a time consuming process, it’s a necessary process required to protect your profit.

A study by Info-Tech Research Group found that organizations with a formal risk management strategy are more than half as likely to have project management success than those with a reactive approach. To put it another way, having a risk management strategy before the project gets started is critical to the project’s success and profitability.

A risk management strategy starts with identifying common risks such as unrealistic schedules and requirements that fail to align with the strategy of the project. Once these risks are identified, evaluate the impact each risk will have on the project. From there, make a contingency plan that has a pre-planned response to the unexpected event.

Become a Profit Manager

Don’t start your next project in the red. Project management starts with project planning, and not having the right systems and processes in place can hinder the success of the project. If your firm is falling into any of these pitfalls, consider the changes that you can make to become an effective profit manager.

American Football Positions2 It’s finally fall again and you know what that means, the leaves are changing color and the temperature is dropping, but most importantly - football is back and the wait for our favorite teams to take the field is finally over. Nevertheless, what does football and resource planning have to do with each other? Simple, coaches are like project managers, their resources are the players, and the project is the season. So what we can learn from football coaches to become more effective project managers?

Monday Morning Quarterbacking

A good coach always reflects on each game to identify plays that worked and plays that need work, and of the players, who played well and who under performed. They spend hours watching videos of the previous game to develop a plan to overcome shortfalls. Successful coaches know planning forward cannot occur until they’ve planned backwards.

Smart resource planning starts with planning backwards. Like football coaches, project managers need to think back on the previous week and evaluate their performance. This is a time when you ask yourself how efficient was your previous plan?

Let’s say you planned a task to take 20 hours and it was really done in 10 hours. Is this a result of a great resource or an over-estimated work duration? Identifying what went well and what didn’t go so well allows for continuous improvement throughout the project lifecycle. As a result, project managers can make cost saving decisions and improve resource utilization.

Have the Right Playbook

The playbook is the lynchpin to a winning team in football. A team can have all the best players, but without a plan, they can’t play as a team. Even more, the teams they play each week change and players get injured. To build the right playbook, the coach needs to know what to expect from the other team and which players they have available.

So who are your injured reserve resources and who do you have available?

Let’s start with your injured reserve. These resources are allocated to non-billable work such as marketing and business development or out on PTO. These resources don’t have 100% availability and this needs to be taken into account when developing your playbook. Therefore, non-billable work needs to be aggressively maintained when resource planning to make sure resources are not over utilized.

Now think about your shared resources. Are other project managers keeping their project plans up-to-date so you know which shared resources are available? Shared resources availability may change throughout the lifecycle of a project and it may change several times. As a result, they often become over utilized. A shared resource’s time has to be updated regularly to ensure project plans across the organization stay on track.

Be Prepared to Call an Audible

The playbook is complete and now it’s game day. Everything is going as planned and the plays called by the coach are unstoppable. Then all of a sudden, the opposing team changes their formation on the line. The coach then instructs the quarterback to call an audible.

Like the coach's playbook, your plan needs to be flexible. Being blindsided by unforeseen circumstances in project management should be anticipated. Don’t let dependent tasks get disrupted and destroy your plan. By adding contingencies to dependent tasks, you can avoid major disruptions to your project plan and be ready to call an audible.

Earning the Gatorade Shower!

Every week, coaches are revamping and tweaking their plans. They evaluate their bench and design plays based on their available players and their individual skills. Constantly trying to improve and continue to win all in hopes that their resource planning throughout the season earns them the championship and they receive the coveted Gatorade shower.

I don’t know of a single Professional Service firm without a formal contract management process. Firms spend significant dollars purchasing contract templates and some even retain legal counsel for review. Everyone knows that the contract is an important document in any project undertaking.

Nevertheless, those same firms often begin work without getting the document signed!

Does the importance of the document cease once work has begun? Of course not. But what happens is that the production machine must and does begin before the administration machine can catch up. The contract seems to be subjugated to more pressing needs and the team begins operating on ‘Good Faith’.

External stakeholders have a vested interest in the firm’s contract habits. Professional Liability Insurance applications have at least a few questions relating to whether or not a contract is required, how much work is performed without a contract, and so on. Even the bank wants to know about the status of firm’s contracts and the processes employed. Banks analyze aging or large Accounts Receivable (AR) and next ask about the project’s contracts status. Both want to assess the risk inherent in providing their products to the firm.

It’s All About the Risk

Business is risky. There is no way to eliminate it, only to reduce. Written contracts certainly mitigate risks. Signed ones reduce it further.

Having a signed contract doesn’t guarantee against litigation. There are always competing interpretations of the language after the fact. Better contracts decrease collection time and reduce disputes.

Not having a signed contract does not mean that the firm will not be paid. As long as it is clear that money was to be exchanged for services, there will be some value exchanged. However, the firm might have to perform more work than intended for the stated amount. Additionally, it might mean considerable expense or time attempting to get those dollars.

The truth is, all Professional Services firms have a tendency to do some work without a contract. How much, how often, and with whom is important information that should be assembled and available for review by stakeholders to stay informed about the risks of the firm.

Leveraging the Deltek Vision Contract Management Feature

The Contract Management feature included in Deltek Vision’s Finance Core is one such tool that can be used to assist in accumulating information on this risk factor in the firm. The tool and system are designed specifically with project-based firms in mind. Let’s take a look at how this feature can help:

Track It

Deltek Vision Contract Management allows users to track multiple contract documents, their origination and approval dates, status, and fees requested per document. Because the information is entered on each project, it makes a variety of reports and workflows available allowing for efficient and integrated contract tracking. Optionally, information can be extended neatly into the Project’s Work Breakdown Structure which will allow users to easily see which documents created and amended the fee on each level.

Identify It

By using the Contract Management area of the Project Info Center, users can add the information to reports already in use. Both the Project Summary and Office Earnings allow the Contract Management fields to be selected as columns to appear along-side the existing data on firm reports. Contract statistical data can also be used as a filter on other reports.

Manage It

Integrating project contract information into Deltek Vision allows users to employ the powerful workflow engine in the software. Vision Workflows enables Contract Management users to automate the reporting and informing process around Contracts.

Consider these workflows:

Notify Project Manager and/or Principal when a contract has been marked as Approved
Remind a user of special handling when a contract exceeding $XXX,XXX has been created
Update a column on the Project record when a contract record has been inserted

Use It

Deltek Vision Contract Management users can leverage the information about contract status in other organizational processes. The Contract Management fields are available as filters on any project-based report. This allows the contract status to become a part of the firm’s management process.

Consider using Contract Management data and filters in these activities:

Client Management – Create a Project List report for active projects and sorted by Client. Include Contract creation date and status as columns to get the most from the client check-in call.
Collections Management – Create a scheduled report for outstanding AR where contract documents are in ‘Pending’ status. Create an AR alert for projects with certain contract status’.
Employee Management – Use the Optional Sales Credit feature to measure employees’ participation on specific contract documents. Use in reviews or statistical reporting.

Know the Risk and Accept It

None of us live in a perfect world where a single project meeting hasn’t been had until the contract is signed. However, our focus should turn to understanding and measuring the risk that will be taken on. Firm management should be well informed of the status of the firm’s contracts and have the necessary information on hand should they need to intervene. To support this, contract tracking and management should be integrated with the projects to which they relate. Your Vision software is already well equipped to assist you in the mechanics.

To get started today you can:

Review our technical webinar on the Contract Management feature
Enter a test contract or two to understand how the feature works

Later you can:

Identify how your current process can improve with automation, integration and reporting
Backfill existing contract data
Contact a Full Sail Partners consultant for more advanced training to customize menus, write workflows and complex reports.

Project KPIs Becoming a champion of project management is as easy as solving a puzzle. The puzzle is rather complex and requires specialized training with a very specific kind of expertise, but a puzzle nonetheless. So what does it mean to be a project based firm? What do project managers do? What do project KPI’s have to do with project management? As with all puzzles, the best way to solve is to take the puzzle apart, piece by piece, and decode it.

Puzzle One: Am I a project based firm?

Interestingly, business theorists debate as to what determines “a project based firm”. There is not a hard-and-fast rule for defining whether or not you’re project based and would need the services of a project manager. So let’s just stick with the basics. The most obvious way to decide is if you have a business model where you perform “projects,” “jobs,” or “services” for external clients. Ultimately, you are offering your expertise – NOT your goods – to an external customer.

The Project Management Institute says that a project “is a temporary group activity designed to produce a unique product, service or result like building a bridge, relief after a natural disaster or expansion of sales into a new market.” Examples of project based companies include:

Management Consulting Firms
Architecture, Engineering or Construction Companies
System Integrators
Advertising Agencies

If you’re goods oriented (you sell software or insurance) or operationally oriented (i.e. you manage clients’ IT structure), you are not naturally a project based firm. We could expand our definition by looking at your business organizational structure – project based firms tend to organize around their projects or jobs. In a non-project based firm, “a business may include separate departments for manufacturing, accounting, marketing, and human resources because the organization is based around functions, not projects, …” (Miranda Morley, Demand Media, “What Is the Difference Between Project Based & Non-Project Based Organizations?”)

Puzzle Two: Am I a Project Manager?

Most of us have a general understanding of project management, but we can go to the Project Management Institute (pmi.org) for a good definition – “project management is the application of knowledge, skills and techniques to execute projects effectively and efficiently. It’s a strategic competency for organizations, enabling them to tie project results to business goals – and thus, better compete in their markets. Project Managers Initiate, Plan, Execute, Monitor and Control, and Close their projects.”

Many would argue that there is more to being a Project Manager. I would argue that communication and follow-up are key areas required to be a successful Project Manager. However, the basics of being a project manager revolve around the delivery of a project.

Puzzle Three: What are Project KPI’s for Project Management?

KPI’s are Key Performance Indicators and they are quantifiable, measurable indicators of goal attainment. They are the very backbone as to what makes projects succeed or fail – which is directly tied, in your project based firm, to your company’s success or failure. When given a new project, Project Managers create KPI’s to:

Initiate the project and its deliverables
Plan project details
Execute those details
Monitor and control each step in the project
Close the project upon completion of the deliverable and the project post-mortem

Some subject examples of project management KPI’s are adherence/deviation of budgets, milestones, and task times. Here are some sample KPI’s that might be part of a project plan:

Determine percent of rework attributable to requirements definitions.
Conclude deviation of planned ROI
Establish cost of managing processes

For more information on writing project KPI’s, refer to “KPIs | Writing, Establishing, and Measuring" by Full Sail Partners, Inc.

Bonus Round…

Although joining a game show is potentially a quick way to make some money, it’s the savvy business owner who aligns his project based firm with project KPI’s. This alignment helps ensure the firm’s bottom line is replete with positive cash flow and employees who are happy, because they know their jobs and how to be professionally successful. No, we shouldn’t rely on a game show host to guide us to riches, but we can depend on consultants at Full Sail Partners to help guide us to metrics that matter. And don’t worry about buying a vowel, just turn over your mouse to this webinar and see how achievable all your goals are.

In the last 200 years we’ve developed a variety of methods for communicating with one another. We’ve taken the journey from individual letters delivered by horse to instant mass communication. How can things get any more social than that? Deltek Kona, that's how!

Being ‘social’ involves more than just communicating and working together. Merriam-Webster defines social as “relating to or involving activities in which people spend time talking to each other or doing enjoyable things with each other”.

The key phrases “talking to” and “doing enjoyable things with” only seem to reference something outside of the workplace. In the 1980s, the focus was on output and productivity. In the decades that followed, we labored to attain the ever elusive ‘work-life balance’. In the new millennium, we strive toward contributing fully in our work and personal lives without restrictions of time and space. We want to enjoy ALL of our life.

get more social, deltek kona Deltek Kona, released in spring 2012, combines all that we know about working together with the best methods of communication. It presents that blend to us allowing us to talk to each other AND do enjoyable things with each other across our work and personal lives. Guided by the principles of confluence, immersion, accessibility, and digestibility; the innovators at Deltek Kona have found a way to leverage the best of all the communication tools developed in the past 50 centuries (not a typo: we still draw on walls to convey our thoughts) to help us interact in a more social and enjoyable way today.

How does Deltek Kona help us get more social?

Use Deltek Kona to Create a Hometown

Kona is organized around context specific spaces or groups. Each space is formed with a level of focus appropriate for its purpose. There are no limits to the number of spaces an individual can belong to or the number of members in any one space. Each space landing page is the “hometown” for the group allowing members to participate in and view interactions that are taking place. Over time, users begin to become acquainted with each other’s concerns, thought processes, and involvements.

Enhancing Personal Interaction

Individual users may have more than one group in common across work and personal interests. Knowing more about what you have in common with others allows you to get more social with them as individuals. The ability to create and store one-on-one conversations with people in your Kona network allows users continuity and privacy even when time and distance are barriers to traditional communication methods.

There are times when we are having a conversation in a group but need to direct our comments to a particular person. Deltek Kona incorporates “@mention” functionality to expand the personal contact in the context specific discussion. Nothing encourages us to communicate more than feeling like we are being listened to and understood.

Eliminating Polarization

Deltek Kona was built to be free. Users can enhance their organizational experience with an upgraded account. Regardless of the type of account, the experience and interaction is the same. This removes the barriers of participation across all members of the group and continues the social experience as no one is barred from participation because they must pay. This allows us to use Kona for all sorts of purposes, from family reunions, to political organizations, to multi-firm business projects.

Deltek Kona further removes barriers by elimination of platform dependencies. The Kona software works the same on any operating system and internet browser. The accessibility extends to the mobile platform where users continue to get more social from wherever they are and whenever they want to.

Increasing Personal choice

One of the favored features of the Deltek Kona product is its flexibility with the individual users’ need to digest information and connect on in his or her own time. From the moment one opens the Kona product, it is clear which items take priority. A user can access a conversation with 20 unviewed in-line comments and get a clear picture within minutes. This is the first step in creating an enjoyable social experience when working with a group.

Because the Kona team recognizes that email has its merits, they’ve enabled the individual to decide how much or little Kona activity is transferred to email. The possibilities to limit but not eliminate are almost endless for the individual user. Being able to choose which groups to get more social with enhances the interactions that are wanted.

With much of our productivity arising from collaborative efforts conducted across vast geographic spaces, we meet and interact with more people than ever. The Deltek Kona tool allows us to stay informed and control the inflow of information leading to a more relaxed experience. When we remove unnecessary stressors, we naturally take time to get more social and find common ground with those around us. Sign-up for Deltek Kona today and join the 21^st Century’s answer to communicating, socializing, and getting things done.

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