What is Project Management?

What is Project Management?

Project management involves processes, methods, knowledge, skills and experience to achieve the project objectives. A project is planned objectives, which could be defined in terms of outputs, outcomes or benefits. A project is usually assigned in a range of time to complete and the time depends on the strategy and its nature such as the types of product, timescale and budget.
 Project Management

Photo by Domenico Loia on Unsplash

 

Every project is different, so the project professional is require to have a lot of specific skills including technical, people management and business consciousness.

 

There are 4 main components for most of projects:

 

– Scope: size of the project

– Time: duration/time frame

– Cost: budget and expense

– Quality: tool and manpower

 

Furthermore, Integration, Procurement, Human resources, Communications, Risk management and Stakeholder management are key components to define a successful project.

 

5 Steps for a Project Management process:

 

– Initiating: the first phase to measure and examine its benefit for the organization

– Planning: after evaluating, make the team discussion, budget and expenses estimation, tasks and activities are the next actions.

– Executing: tasks assigned, communicate and update the process

– Monitoring: review and monitor every step/process to avoid the loopholes or missing plots.

– Closing: when the finished project delivers to customers.

 

Every project management has different levels at times. Some of them are even more complicating, but applying 5 cycles above facilitates the manager in order to manage the project effectively. Therefore, the online project management tool can be a reasonable methodology to perfectly complete the projects. Despite a wide range of available tools in the advancement in technology, UpDiagram is one of the options that give you a permit to manage projects judiciously.

Jargon when using UpDiagram

When using UpDiagram, there are some Jargons you need to understand so that you can easily set up your project. This article will show all the Jargon that you may use to for your project or even explain for your member.
 

 

Photo by Raphael Schaller on Unsplash

 

All project when using UpDiagram

All the project you create or are added by others will show on your Home Page.

 

New project when using UpDiagram

That jargon mean: “Where you can create your project and using”

 

Dashboard 

Where you can see when clicking on the project. In there, you can set the description so that all member can understand the project name, team member, date and more task.

 

Package 

In your project, there will be more packages you need to create. The number of packages is up to the task you need for your project. In each package, you can create more tickets. Each ticket represents one task you need to accomplish.

 

Setting 

  • General

In general, you add information for your package such as Avatar, project name, Client, Description

 

  • Packages

You can Active, Archive and delete your package in there.

 

  • Team

The team is the team member you can add to the package.

 

  • Custom Fields

Custom Field, which is one of the most important features to help users manage their project effectively, is to add more personal/optional features.

 

Also, data types are available to diversify

– Text

– Number

– Date

– Attachments

– List

– Checkbox

– Computation

– Person

– Timeline

– Checklists

 

  • Custom Views

Define your view page with your purpose. Generally, Custom Views is suitable for Board View.

 

  • Archived

To activate or archive you Project. To make sure you do not delete the wrong project, You have to archive your project before deleting it.

 

  • Integration

Data migration from the existing tools to UpDiagram.com is very simple by using import feature and public APIs. This feature is to help you connect with other apps to import data in need.

How to use UpDiagram?

After understanding UpDiagram Jargon, now you can easily start to play with us. This post will show you every single step to create and manage a project.

 

Sign up

This is the first step for every first action to start with any web app. Currently, UpDiagram requests to sign up throughout your email or connect with google account.

 

Signup

Create and archive a project

To create a project, you need to specify how your project structure will be to correctly apply the right custom fields.

 

For example, you need to create a project to manage employees based on their positions. You select Add project and create from scratch. You can then name the project “HR Management”.

 

Create project from scratch

 

Besides creating an empty project, you can also select Create from project templates, but this article only guides creating from an empty project.

Then, you create a Package (A package is often referred to as gathering related items/tasks into the same group. A project may have one or more packages if needed). In this case, you can create multiple packages such as Software Engineering, Marketing and Sales, Design and etc for the “HR Management” project. In each Package, there will be many tasks, each of which represents the profile of each employees (for the current case).

 

In this step, you can create multiple packages at the same time. For the above example, each Package will correspond to a human resource department, and the tasks will correspond to the profile of the staff. Therefore, you can create multiple packages at the same time for this case and can display work packages simultaneously to manage instead of tracking each package.

 

To select Show all packages, go to “Setting” and “Packages” to manage. Click on the icon as shown in the image to adjust the default Package. You will then have the option to display all packages.

Custom Fields

Next, what to do is to set up the Custom Fields to display and manage the data better. You can view the settings in detail here or watch the instruction video.

Archive and Delete

For Projects, the deletion and restoration of the Project is an important element of management. , we provide 2 forms of archiving and deleting Projects.

 

To delete the project completely, you must “Archive” the project first to ensure you are doing on the right project. In case of a mistake, it is still possible to unarchive.

Once completed, your Project will be moved to the Archive section and you can delete or restore it later.

The templates can optimize your work

Why should we use project management templates?

Project management (PM) tool is the software that supports users to create and manage their projects online. Instead of using the traditional method such as paperwork and etc. In the modern technology era, the templates for PM have become popular increasingly. As its convenience, there is no reason to stop taking advantage of those to save time and effort and help the supervisor stay away from mix-ups. A decent template should be versatile to various project types.

Spare time

The project management templates are valuable when doing enormous activities is a result of the time spared in building up a task plan starting with no outside help. There is no purpose for a supervisor to create a project over and over again. In fact, there are some tools supporting to create projects from scratch. But it takes time to set up every single thing from an empty project.

 

Templates

In spite of the fact that it may require time to locate the correct format or layouts when they are discovered the venture of time is a once and just speculation. An undertaking chief will see the worth added to the administration procedure. Rather than being made up for the lost time in the administrative work and arranging. A director can just fill in structures as required and spotlight on getting the undertaking conveyed.

Reduce cost

Currently, It is not difficult to find free templates on the Internet. Apparently, there must be more actions from the director to make the templates appropriate to the real case of the project. However, This technique keeps away from the high costs related to outside specialists building up the documentation process.

Decline Mistakes

Following a format when arranging a large scale of the project minimizes mistakes and forgotten steps. An undertaking administrator can see where missteps or skipped steps. This permits modifying the arrangement in like manner before the dynamic period of the task starts.

Can be customized

An ideal template should be an alternative for different types or size of the projects. In other words, there is no one-size-fits-all template, because of the wide range of work fields. However, the project manager can customize the format of templates to be appropriate to the present tasks and guarantee that all members understand and finish their tasks on time.

 

The templates can optimize your work
The templates can optimize your work but It does not mean all of them are good and there is no one-size-fits-all template. Therefore, the role of manager to convert the raw template into the practical and valuable project has been essential. Understanding why PM templates are valuable when doing enormous projects enables the manager to keep up the extension and complexities requested by huge activities. Let’s use project management templates.

 

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Custom Fields and How to use it?

Custom Fields (column) which is one of the most important features to help users manage their project effectively, is to add more personal/optional features. In fact, Custom Fields can be considered as the types of the column to help you define the value of each for individual purpose.
 

 

To set up the custom fields, you can access the “Setting” and choose “Custom Fields”. Then, you can play with it on your own.

 

Moreover, you can customize the field type at the same type. When you create new “Field” (column), you can select the Field Type below. Currently, we support 10 types so that you can diversify your data.

 

– Text: where you can add simple text for descriptions

– Number: is to add numeral data

– Date: show the specific time of your items/tasks

– Attachments: insert files, image attached

– List: create multiple selections on one column of data (can be customized One or More Choices at the same time)

– Checkbox: quick mark on tasks

– Computation: support calculation based on your formula

– Person: empower/assign tasks to members

– Timeline: show the progress of task, including started date and end date

– Checklists: create detailed tasks of each item

*note: Timeline is the feature to help you keep track and estimate the progress. It is very important to follow up the whole tasks and understand where you are thanks to the timeline. To create the timeline, click on the Custom Fields and choose Fields Types – timeline. Then, you can set up the schedule for each item

 

Custom Fields

UpDiagram for Startup 4.0

Startup 4.0 has become a popular trend and the motivation for young enterprises to participate in the success rate, In the digital world. Startup 4.0 is well-known due to its low cost for investment, fast implementation, and effective measurement.
Startup 4.0

However, there are a modest number of Startup 4.0 that can take advantage of opportunities to achieve success. To become the ultimate winner, startup enterprises need to be well-prepared to maximize the benefits of technology in the 4.0 era. In addition to the developed countries. Vietnam and other countries, which have competitive advantages of telecommunication infrastructure and advanced technologies, have one step to be close to success.

Individual Expenditure Template

Individual Expenditure Template

UpDiagram, an online project management software, is developed not only to optimize the productivity for large-scale enterprises. But also to mitigate risks and management efforts for startups. For beginners, it takes time, effort, human resources, and experts to ensure the effectiveness in management, maintenance, and innovation of the business organization. This is the reason why UpDiagram is here to make things simple. So, How does UpDiagram work to facilitate the startups’ work?

Define your business and projects structure

UpDiagram’s hierarchy designed under the general structure to simplify the management process. It is also friendly with all newbies who have learned how to manage a project or their work. This hierarchy can be flexible to restructure for different cases and purposes to always adapt to the changes of the business management process. Defining the structure to manage the project can help startups. Their teams easily get used to and follow up on the progress better.

Seamless collaboration for Startup 4.0

When your teams can follow the general progress of work together, every member can actively contribute their thoughts. In addition, they can communicate with all members while using UpDiagram. Because they have onboarding chat and other communication apps integration. Users can leave their comments on every single task to contribute their ideas to members. The due date or all activities are arranged to notify and make all teams collaborate.

Daily summary notification

Daily summary notification

In-app and email notification for Startup 4.0

To keep every activity live-updated, UpDiagram provides in-app and an email notifications to members who take part in the projects. This notification feature can customize to appropriate for a startup.

Variety of custom fields

Custom Field

In addition, a variety of custom fields will be suitable for a wide range of business types and industries. This use to highlight, prioritize, add text and images, or calculate the information and data. No matter what your startup’s industry is. UpDiagram could be the alternative and flexible option to well organize all work and tasks.

Multiple views and perspectives

The multiple work views include Grid, Calendar, Kanban, Mindmap, and Timeline. Facilitate enterprises to manage their work in different perspectives for purposes. It can customize suitable field mapping and role views to define the most suitable display for each team in projects.

Integration with apps

Slack Integration - UpDiagram

Slack Integration – UpDiagram

UpDiagram also allows users to integrate their favorite apps so that they can manage and track whole things in one place. As a startup, you may need many apps with specific functions for different purposes. Now, you have an option to customize and integrate all into one place and what your startups need to do is to guarantee productivity and success.

Those mentioned above are some of the primary features that a project management tool can provide to users. In contrast, there are more particular and personal features based on startups and enterprise requests. Thus, there is no limit for UpDiagram to continually learn and evolve systems and features from users’ requests and feedback in the future.

As the consecutive innovation and competition in the era of industry 4.0, startups have a lot of opportunities to take advantage of advanced technologies to outstanding themselves in their market. However, it is also a challenge if the startups cannot exploit the full use of the technologies or have no clear organizational structure and business plan. UpDiagram is not only a project management tool, but it is also an alternative and flexible tool for startups and enterprises to manage their work with multiple industries.

Enjoy the Benefits of Partnering with UpDiagram

The UpDiagram Partner Program offers benefits which are selected for our strategic partnership. You can experience all the benefits when you have applied for an associated program and get approved. In fact, this would be our honor to have a partnership with you to generate more value and benefit for you and for your customers or even your communities.
 Benefits of Partnering with UpDiagram

As UpDiagram develop to be appropriate for every single industry, so there is no limit to whom could be our partnership, as long as you would like to bring the best value from our product to your communities.

 

The Benefits of Partnering with UpDiagram

Satisfy your customers

 

Provide your customers a 3-free-month of the UpDiagram Pro package when they sign up through your referral link/redemption code. As the result, we also provide full-service support and online training class to instruct your customers.

As a partner, we support you with the solutions including project templates on specific industries you are in to manage tasks and satisfy relevant requirements. 

 

Boost sales

 

UpDiagram builds the marketing and sale activities to increase traffic and sales for both sides. So, we can generate more partnership events to elevate your offering to better solve customer problems.

 

Loyalty

 

Our product improves your customer satisfaction and loyalty through awards referral activities. Not only you, but your customer also gets more value than they expect.

 

Competitive advantage

 

Additional value for your customers brings them a better reason to make a final decision to choose your business.

 

Experience the privilege from UpDiagram

Experience the privilege from UpDiagram

As a partner, you can experience our high-level and advanced features and innovation. You can join our seminars and share Partnership strategies, Benefits, and new suggestions to build a sustainable relationship and mutual development.

 

Apply now

It is now easy to join the UpDiagram Partner Program. Just click “contact us” and leave your email and message “Partnership Program”, because our team will contact and suggest a suitable program based on your specific industry and your needs.
export Excel

Should we manage project by Excel?

Excel, an office suite of the Microsoft Office ecosystem, is a calculation application with spreadsheets and functions that support fast and accurate data calculation. Because of the variety and flexibility, Excel is often used for different purposes, from managing general lists (such as daily tasks) to making spreadsheets with advanced functions (such as accounting reports). There are even training classes to help train users to use Excel.

 

As the result of its versatility and suitability for many fields, Excel is applied in areas such as:

– Pedagogy: list of students, examination, ….

– Accounting: Income and expenditure tables, financial statements…

– Administration: Track employee attendance, manage assets and stationery…

– Personnel: List of personnel, payroll, bonus for employees…

– Information technology: Managing Agile, Waterfall, …

Read more: What is Agile methodology?

 

Benefits of using Excel

 

– The cost of using Excel is attractive to Startups and SMEs (small and medium enterprises). The cost to use Excel is usually quite low or even free with a few tricks.

 

– Excel is considered quite versatile and easy to use because of its popularity and accessibility. Anyone who has gone through Level 1 or Level 2 in school has been taught the basics of Excel. At the same time, Excel is suitable for management from text information, images, to calculating data, tracking progress, etc.

 

– Easily find tutorials or management templates available in the communities.

 

Difficulty using Excel

 

– In spite of the ease of use, Excel does not have the ability to interact, integrate, or automate. When editing or needing to be transfer data, auto-notify or assign members, additional steps will be required. This can interfere with the management process.

 

– It takes time and skill to set up a complete project template. For complex projects that need task management, delegation, Timeline, Gantt chart,…

 

– The functions and interfaces are not quite user-friendly and meet the needs of specific senior management.

 

– Kanban is a fairly common view in Agile projects, but it is not really effective on Excel. Basic Excel is designed with Spreadsheet format.

 

Excel in real projects – manage project by Excel

 

Generally, IT project management will often need to use Table and Gantt chart management styles. With Excel, you can completely set up from an empty sheet for the purpose of managing a project in the form of a Gantt chart. However, you can also search and use available Gantt chart templates such as Ganttexcel.com.

 

Source: templateguider.com

 

However, as mentioned above, designing a complete project on Excel will take a lot of time and effort, including projects to manage tasks and delegate permissions. For budget-related projects, finance will also require a lot of installation and editing operations for a complete project.

 

Source: engineeringmanagement.com

Project management platform – manage project by Excel

 

Project management platforms are developed for specific project management purposes. Because they develop specifically for that purpose, often the interface and functions of this software are quite user-friendly and have specific functions for effective and optimizing project management. It would be great if you could manage everything and perform multiple tasks in a single application.

 

Not all apps will be the same and fully functional. However, each application will have special functions and is the strength of each brand. In other words, it is always beneficial to use a specialized tool for a certain purpose.

 

Specifically, a project management app helps you:

 

– Easily integrates with a variety of tools. No app is absolutely perfect. So the integrated applications will complement and complete each other. Thereby, it will help users conveniently manage multiple tasks on the same interface.

 

– Collaboration enhance by automating and digitizing operations to keep members informed and up to date with real-time project updates.

 

– Easily manage personnel and assign specific rights to members. As a result, each member will have different roles and rights. The project information will protect but still get help from other departments.

 

– The interface is friendly and suitable for the management mechanism and needs. Users will not have to spend time setting up for different purposes such as creating Gantt charts, timelines or mindmaps. Indeed, applications will always support available management functions and formats to help people quickly use and apply immediately.

 

– Reasonable costs for each business purpose. There will always different paid plans to meet different needs. Therefore, you will have to worry too much about the price.

 

Currently, on the market, there are many project management tools such as Asana, Jira, Assembla, Trello,… However, UpDiagram, an alternative application can completely meet the needs of project management. Even understanding the needs and Agile trends of the Scrum team, UpDiagram provides the most user-friendly and convenient interface.

 

With UpDiagram you can:

 

– Provide different views such as Kanban, Grid, Calendar or Mindmap. Thanks to that, users can use it for many different projects.

 

– Configuration data and custom formatting without too much work.

 

– Allows users to quickly convert and import existing projects from Excel, Assemble, Trello and other applications without worrying about the process of residence.

 

– Integration with a variety of applications for different purposes makes project and work management more complete and effective.

 

– Suitable for use on computers, phones and other devices. Thereby, leaders can understand the work situation no matter where they are or so on.

 

– Expenses and special incentive packages to support businesses during the epidemic season. Also, with the basics of claim management, UpDiagram offers a free lifetime plan.

 

Read more: Top 5 effective project management platforms

 

Shortly, Excel or project management applications have outstanding features and meet different needs of users. Depending on your habits and specific needs, you can make the decision to use and experience the product to maximize working efficiency. On the UpDiagram side, we aim to provide not only products but also the most suitable solutions for the needs of users. Thereby, improving user experience and efficiency will be the joy and motivation to help UpDiagram continue to develop and bring the best values ​​to customers. Do not hesitate to contact us for free consulting and get more benefits information.

Scrum and Agile basics you should know

To manage a project well, people often use different management models, or processes, such as “Waterfall”, “Lean”, “6 sigmas”… in which there are many management processes. Traditional management has stopped working for some businesses. The problem is because there are more and more changes in projects, such as customer needs, special requirements for each project, or other issues… and traditional methods don’t help businesses catch up with customer trends, affecting the development of the plan.
Therefore, Scrum and Agile are applied to solve the outstanding difficulties and changing needs in the projects of enterprises.

1. Basics of Agile

Essentially understood as a management manifesto, and arguably more flexible than older management methods, Agile allows management teams to transcend the traditional sequential model and Get more done in a shorter amount of time. Essentially the Agile methodology described consists of 12 important principles that talk about communication, collaboration, the importance of software, and openness to change in the project.

 

And with 4 core values:

  1. Personalization and engagement through processes and tools
  2. The software works better than documents overall
  3. Cooperate with customers in contract negotiation
  4. Willingness to respond to innovation rather than always following a plan

 

Sources: hoangsyquy.blogspot.com

 

12 keys important principles: 12 principles divided into 4 groups, each group has a different meaning. The principles divided into 4 groups, each group has a different meaning. 

 1. Agile principles of customer satisfaction
-Early and continuous delivery of valuable software
-Welcome changing requirements, even late in development 
-Deliver working software frequently 

 2. Agile principles of quality
-Working software is the primary measure of progress
-Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely
-Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility

 3. Agile principles of teamwork
-Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project
-Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done
-The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation
-The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams

4. Agile principles of project management
-Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount of work not done–is essential
-At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly

Not only that, but Agile also has principles that businesses should prioritize to satisfy customers with their products. Examples are repeatability, increment, adaptation, process management, communication, value-based development.

 

2. What is Scrum?

Since it is an Agile software development process, it follows the principles of Agile. Scrum is a project management framework that is very widely applied, from simple projects to those with very complex requirements or even those that require a fixed time frame. Scrum transcends the traditional Waterfall model thanks to the following three roles: product owner, production team, development team. The deliverables of the project are divided into different phases, and it is called a Sprint, with the task of facilitating changes, tailoring solutions, and delivering the best results.

 

 

Scrum also owns a concept called Scrum Event, there are 5 events in the Scrum process: Sprint, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retrospective. With these events, Scrum helps to reduce unnecessary meetings, shorten the time for unnecessary debates and discussions. Events will terminate if the event’s objective is complete.

 

3. Correlation between Scrum and Agile

As mentioned above, because Scrum is developed based on Agile, it will have the same goal. In short, Scrum is a type of method and is within the Agile framework. Both are optimization of the value created for the customer through different stages. Despite their similarities, the two have distinct differences.

 

If Scrum has its characteristics such as: is a working model based on the basic principles of Agile, when implementing different projects, there is no need to change the process or organization, .. Agile is considered as a methodology with many principles, it may be necessary to change the process or organization when implementing different projects,…

 

Scrum is more popular than Agile, because Scrum is flexible, like how it can shorten projects, or for the development team to make unlimited changes based on customer requirements. Not only that, but Scrum also allows innovation and creativity to help the project reduce many risks, unexpected problems, increase productivity, and efficiency can also increase continuously.

 

4. Is it difficult to use tools to exploit Scrum and Agile?

In the 4.0 era, technology will be what holds a decisive role in the success or failure of businesses. The application of scientific and technological advances to enterprises, especially in project management. It will make a big difference in competitiveness compared to other enterprises in the market. UpDiagram’s templates like business, project management, marketing, etc. Are suggestions that you should try to exploit Scrum and Agile methods. Like other management methods or processes, Scrum and Agile have their distinct advantages and disadvantages.

 

But to apply Scrum and Agile effectively is not too difficult. If we know how to use a tool with core values ​​(transparency, inspection, adaptability), track members clearly, connect people in the project. Then UpDiagram is a tool that satisfies those needs that condition. How to apply UpDiagram to exploit Scrum and Agile.

 

Contact support@updiagram.com for assistance. We are with you every step of the way.