Author Archives: John Tripp

Social Project Management Vision Growing at #IBMConnect

Here at #IBMConnect 2016, the vision for social project management is growing. Companies who have made investments in enterprise social platforms see that their key value generating activities – namely projects – need to be integrated with that platform. Disconnected Microsoft Project Server environments create silos of collaboration, silos of connection, silos of activity.

ProjExec changes this – instead of silos, projects are integrated into the social fabric of the organization. Key resources for projects can be identified seamlessly, project documentation is version controlled, and can be directly associated with project tasks, issues, and changes. Simply, project management becomes part of the ocean of social interaction within the organization, instead of a land of 10,000 lakes (sorry Minnesota, you know we love you 🙂 ).

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Catch the vision for Social Project Management that Trilog Group has been promoting for more than a decade. Technology and platforms have now caught up with the vision, and companies are reaping the benefits. Yours can too.

Back in Orlando – Make Every Moment Count

Today marks the kick off of #IBMConnect 2016 (i.e., IBM ConnectEd, i.e., Lotusphere). I’m glad to be back, even though the Hilton (as nice as it is) feels so foreign. This year’s tag line is “Make Every Moment Count”. This lends itself to imagery of taking action, moving quickly from one achievement to another, and getting things done (whether personally or professionally). IBM Connections’ promise is exactly that – to make every moment count, by linking together the members of an organization and its partner ecosystem into a community that has the available information and communication infrastructure available to make make decisions and mobilize forces for action.

For all of its focus on delivering services, IBM Connections is something that IBM makes that seems to work rather well – when companies can achieve high levels of use of the product. How is this done? Hopefully we’ll hear interesting cases this week of how companies are doing it, but I believe that it still comes down to getting business processes embedded into the platform first, which build organic additional engagement in the platform. If people don’t have a reason to access the platform to get their job done, if users’ incentives are not aligned with platform use, then little value will be attained from platform adoption – no matter how much publicity and “coolness” companies try to wrap around it.

Which brings me to ProjExec. Trilog has been embedded in the IBM social software stack for almost 20 years, first with Flowbuilder, then XSP, and now, for over a decade with ProjExec. ProjExec embeds the business process of project management into the social fabric of IBM Connections – allowing companies to achieve social project management. Social project management is fully social, and fully project management. All of your rigorous project management requirements are included, but made social through tight integration with the IBM Connections platform. Task late? Start a discussion about the task – right from the Gantt chart? Issue pop out of nowhere? Workflow the triage and resolution through your team – with every discussion, every file, every comment, every hour charged, preserved and linked to the associated project tasks. Every team member can see what’s going on, and bring skills to bear – even if the project manager doesn’t know that they have the skills.

So, ProjExec helps you to make every moment count. Check it out at Booth 335 at #IBMConnect 2016. See you there!

ProjExec 6.2.1 – with support for IBM Connections 5.5 and Verse ships!

ProjExec 6.2.1 shipped in Q4,  and is now generally available. This release adds support for IBM Connections 5.5, as well as the IBM Verse Theme.

ProjExec continues to be the only social project management that leverages companies’ IBM Connections investment. ProjExec integrates natively with IBM Connections on Premises, as well as on the IBM Smart Cloud for Social Business.

For more information, contact sales@triloggroup.com!

Come see Trilog Group at IBM Connect 2016!

Trilog Group will be presenting at the IBM Connect conference January 31 – February 3. 2016.

See ProjExec, the social project management solution that has supported true web-based socially enabled project planning and execution for more than a decade. Our “ahead of our time” vision is confirmed in Peter Taylor’s new book “The Social Project Manager“, which we will be giving away (multiple times) as a drawing during the conference.

BIG news – We will be previewing ProjExec 7, with a brand new and fresh web social gantt experience.

Come see us, see ProjExec, and enter the drawing for Peter’s book, and for other special super-cool prizes!

Peter Taylor’s the Social Project Manager book confirms Trilog Group’s vision

Peter Taylor (a.k.a. The Lazy PM) has a new book out, entitled “The Social Project Manager” is ready to be ordered at amazon.com.  In this book, for which Trilog Group contributed a chapter, Peter articulates his core definition of social project management:

“Social project management is based upon the philosophy that, in order to be successful, most projects need the structure of a project plan together with suitable governance but with the value-add of the associated emergent collaboration and coordination tools and techniques.”

This is the same vision that Trilog Group has articulated for years, and has delivered through ProjExec. We highly recommend the book as a way to understand the value and vision of social project management!

For more information about ProjExec, or to get a free trial, click here!

ProjExec 6.1 is Here!

ProjExec 6.1 is here! It is a major upgrade to ProjExec 6.0, and includes a large number of fixes and enhancements, but the major changes relate to performance and resource management.

Download here (Must be registered as a user on the site)

Performance Optimizations

We have completed a major reengineering of some of the back end database design of ProjExec, which has resulted in performance increases of 2 to 10 times in the following system components:

  • Project Wall
  • Project Health Indicators
  • Personal Views
  • Resource Allocation Charts
  • Gantt Chart Loading and Saving
  • Project Portfolios
  • Timesheets
  • Reports

Resource Management Improvements include…

  1. You can now specify a resource pool in the Gantt resource editor on a project to allow inheritance of cost and resource calendars from the resource pool. This enables centralization of costs and resource calendar management.
  2. A resource pool drop down has been added to the Find Resource dialog, which enables the project manager to compare resource pool resource availability.
  3. New Site Calendar – allows for corporate holidays and other non-working days to be applied globally to all projects in a site.

and many more (check the release notes when posted)

Again, this is a MAJOR update to ProjExec, and we encourage all customers to upgrade soon. You won’t be disappointed!

Near Montreal? Like to go to Montreal? You’re invited!

IBM and Trilog Group Seminar on Social Project Management on April 8, 2015 in Montreal

Project teams today have enormous pressure to overachieve but face significant obstacles that prevent them from being as efficient as they could be.  Team members constantly change and become more and more virtual across geographical boundaries.  Project requirements often shift but delivery schedules and budgets rarely expand.  It is increasingly difficult to disseminate information through the clutter of data in many repositories.  It is nearly impossible to keep stakeholders and team members informed in a timely fashion.  As a result, managing projects is increasing in complexity and even with best practices and communication techniques, the dilemma remains:  there is too much administrative work that negatively impacts project tasks, time, budget, and team morale.

To alleviate these issues, IBM in partnership with Trilog Group invites you to a seminar on the benefits of Social Project Management.  We will discuss how to increase the agility of your teams by imbedding social tools into your project management process; and empowering your team to be fully engaged by integrating project management tools with the best of breed of social tools in the cloud. The following benefits can be realized by project or program managers:

    • Increase employee, partner, customer and stakeholder participation and engagement in your project
    • Rapidly deliver an engaging user experience to your team
    • Significantly reduce project coordination and administration and minimize clutter
    • Bring the project experience where people work today i.e. accessible through mobile devices for speed of execution
    • Zero in on important connections that are instrumental to your project success
    • Deliver your project faster by driving critical information to your team
    • Maintain up-to-date information, in one place, to bring new team members up to speed quickly
    • Eliminate up front operating costs to get started

Location:
IBM Canada Ltd.
1360, boul. René-Lévesque West, 11th floor,
Montreal, QC, H3G 2W6

Date and Time:
Wednesday April 8, 2015
Arrival and registration: 12:30PM
Seminar Start time: 1PM
Seminar End time: 3PM
No charge.

Guest Speaker:
Alex Homsi, President and CEO of Trilog Group
Seminar delivered in English with interactions in English and French

Registration:
Registration is mandatory. Seats are limited. Register by clicking on the following link:https://events.na.collabserv.com/register.php?id=fb394352fb&l=en-US

 

Trilog Group is the Champagne Sponsor of Social Connections 8 in Boston!

Come to Social Connections 8 in Boston, on April 16th & 17th, 2015 in Boston!

Trilog Group is the Champagne Sponsor of the conference, and will have a booth where we will be presenting ProjExec and Darwino. Alex Homsi, CEO of Trilog Group, and Phillip Riand, CTO of Trilog Group, will be presenting the talk: “Extend the value of IBM Connections with Social Project Management and Social Business Apps”.

In this talk, Alex will help you discover whether you are you deriving all the business value from your IBM Connections investment. While there is certainly value in ad hoc social collaboration and content sharing, organizations should ensure that the use of the social environment is aligned with your business priorities. Alex & Phil will present the business case for extending Connections with Social Business apps and how customers are leveraging its award-winning Social Project Management add-on, ProjExec, to increase operational efficiency. They will then present ProjExec 7 and ProjExec Mobile based on the new Darwino application development platform for IBM Connections that has recently won the App throwdown at IBM ConnectED 2015. They will also talk about how Darwino can be used to extend the value of IBM Connections further with your own custom Social Business apps, targeting web and mobile users.