New Webpage for the DAISHO-Software online

October 5th, 2007 by Carmen Schubert

Dear friends, colleagues, and loyal readers,

thanks to everyone who participated recently in our online-poll. The response has been overwhelming. We want to thank all participants who took time to have a look at our new website and provided us with constructive feedback. We really appreciate the effort and contribution. Thanks to your hints and great suggestions, we could improve our website to make it more appealing and comprehensible.

To all of you who can’t wait to try DAISHO – our new management software for goal-, time- and contact management: the beta-version is NOW available for you as a download on our website. The first version of DAISHO will be released soon. Until then, enjoy testing the beta-version.

Out of the numerouse participants, we have drawn the winner of our raffle. The winner of the engraved Japanese knife will be contacted within the next few days.

The DAISHO Blacksmith Team

--> Posted at October 5th, 2007

DAISHO – the swords of the modern Samurai

September 17th, 2007 by Carmen Schubert

Dear friends, colleagues, and loyal readers,

we are almost ready to release our new management software application – just a little bit fine tuning and then, we will “capture” the market. In connection with the product launch, we are setting up a new website. The aim here is to create a website that is appealing and comprehensible. Hereby, we are trying to stand out from rather technical-oriented websites for software; nevertheless, we want to communicate the benefits of the software. Now, a first version of the website is finished. We would like to have some feedback to see if we have achieved our goals. In addition, we also want to know where and how we can improve our website.

For this reason, we want to conduct an online poll. To answer the questions takes only 10 to 15 minutes. We would be pleased if you could take some time to participate in the poll.

It would be nice if you could answer the questions until Friday, the 28th of September 2007.

Link to our new website:
http://www.daishoblacksmith.com/index.php?id=72&L=1

Link to the online-questionnaire:

• English version

• German version

Thanks a lot for your support.
The DAISHO Blacksmith Team

--> Posted at September 17th, 2007

How to strengthen your personal network

September 4th, 2007 by Sandra Lenz

For being successful in your business life an excellent network makes things easier. As we already pointed out in “Identifying customers with social networking” knowing people is only a competitive advantage when people like you and trust your competence. Hand in hand with this goes that creating long-term relationships is very important as you can generate the best results for your business with them. Good reputation and trust are two reasons for this (see “How to get customer loyality through social networking“).
Rajesh Setty picks up this topic in his really interesting manifesto “Making the most of your time” on “Change this” as well as on his blog. Although the title might be a bit misleading as you would expect mainly notes about time management in general. Whereas you can find some very good thoughts about how to establish long-lasting, valuable contacts as well.

His answer of how to get people to like you and establish long-term contacts is pretty old: “Give first and then you get”. Or as others call

it more scientifically “the law of reciprocity”.

Here are some points to establish long-term relationship pointed out in the article:

• Create more opportunities for them as compared to the request you make
• Help people identify their strengths
• Introduce people in your network that are opportunities for each other

Especially the last point (introducing people with each other that are not yet personally connected) provides your contacts real value.
As doing this usually does not require much effort on your side, it is a highly effective practice. Whenever you talk to someone ask yourself “is there somebody in my network where it is beneficial for both of them to get to know each other”?

It’s simple. And it’s very effective.

--> Posted at September 4th, 2007

Two things to know about project management: “Managing risks and expectations”.

August 7th, 2007 by Klaus Wiedemann

In our recent series on project management, we covered a couple of aspects to consider when running a project.

In case you just don’t have the time to read through all of this, I would like to share a short cut with you. It is an advice I got from an experienced manager at Andersen Consulting when I was joining the firm in the early 90ies. And I found it invaluable since:

Project management is all about managing risks and expectations.

That’s it. Nothing more. This might sound surprisingly trivial. In fact, it’s not.

A project usually gets in trouble if it can not meet the expectations associated with it. Expectations about the timeline, budget or the final results. Expectations about required contributions from project members or outside ressources. Expectations about risks, difficulties or dependencies. About political support. Or the qualifications of team members.

Why is it important to actively manage expectations? Just think about the weather forecast: The forecast is for a mild spring day, sunny and warm. What do you get instead? – A snowstorm. And you did not bring a coat nor an umbrella. Of course, you are mad. If they would have announced the snowstorm, you would probably not like it either, but you could have prepared for it.

Now compare that with running a project. Nobody likes a project running late. But everybody hates the surprise to learn about it in the very last moment. What is a project causing running late or out of budget? Risks.

Risks are the other side of the equation. If you are aware of risks, you can plan for. And, even more important, you can communicate them early. In fact, you have to communicate them. “It is not unusual during this time of the year, that a snowstorm is coming out of the blue, so better bring an umbrella even if it looks sunny.”

Once you communicate risks, chances are that you get either support in avoiding the risks, or you can mitigate the potential impact of such a risk.

So, whenever you are about to start a project, even if you forgot everything else you ever heard about project management. Always remember this: Manage risks and expectations.

--> Posted at August 7th, 2007

Project Set Up as Critical Success Factor

August 3rd, 2007 by Carmen Schubert

While numerous articles and books have been published on how to run projects successfully, most of them focus on formal aspects of project management: How to make gant charts, manage the critical path and how to do proper project controlling. In our experience, it is important to know the theory, but during the practical application, we experienced project management theory to contribute only a smaller part to the success of a project. In our series, we try to shed some light on some of the more informal aspects of successfully running a project. Usually, it is said that running a project requires good coordination. Well, yeah!

However, there is no single best way to coordinate a project

Project Set Up

Project success is highly dependent on the project characteristics and initial set-up. The size and form of the project hereby plays an important role. It is a major difference if it is a new, innovative project or a “standard project” that has been done before, or if it is made up of 5 or 30 team members (actually, we do not cover here very large projects, but rather the majority of the projects. The larger a project gets, the more important formal project management gets).

Running a project where team members know each other saves time and effort of building relationships. Due to the fact that they have already worked together, the team works more efficiently. If the members of the project team have not worked together before, time has to be invested (and planned for!) to get to know each other and to form a team.

Whether team members work full-time or part-time in a project also effects (or restricts) coordination and as a consequence, the results of the project. It is much more difficult to organize meetings and coordinate activities if a team member only works three days a week on the project. The physical distance to other team members also has impacts on communication and coordination. If the team works together in one office, information, problems, findings and results can be shared more easily and quickly. Whereas if the team is separated (either through separated offices or locations), it takes longer to communicate with each other and therefore, also requires higher efforts to coordinate. More …

--> Posted at August 3rd, 2007