Software September continues with a look at iPad applications for business.

Last year, I got an iPad. I didn’t choose to buy one: it was the Computer Weekly IT Blog Awards prize. I wasn’t expecting to win it, and I’d only ever seen one before. The people with me that evening were ecstatic at the prize. I hadn’t even got a bag to carry it home in. I spent the journey home wondering what an iPad was really for.

Ten days later, No Starch Press offered me a copy of My New iPad by Wallace Wang. Suddenly everything was clear. I have lived with my iPad for nearly a year now…and I love it.

The book that explained the iPad

My business colleagues are sometimes sceptical. I travelled overseas for work recently and I took my iPad as well as a laptop. Yes, it’s another device to carry around. But I can read on the plane. I can write blog posts at the airport. I can write a project management book review without having to carry the book or a pad and pen. I haven’t tried getting my boarding pass on it, but it works on a colleague’s iPhone so I don’t see why it shouldn’t work on an iPad.

That’s all great, but how good is it for office work? I talked to Wallace to find out what else I could do with my iPad.

Business apps to get you started

One of the difficulties of using the iPad for business is that the office environment is often Windows based. You can read Word documents on the iPad, but there can be interoperability issues. “One of the most interesting apps I’ve seen is Parallels Mobile,” says Wallace Wang. “This app is free and connects over the Internet to your Macintosh. Parallels lets you run multiple operating systems so it’s possible to run Windows on your Mac and then Windows remotely from your Mac using your iPad.”

Wallace points out that many things you can do via your PC are also possible via the iPad. “Another interesting business app for the iPad is GoToMeeting,” he says. “It’s another free app that lets you attend webinars.”

If you use Kanban or make use of sticky notes for project planning, try iCardSort. The Lite version is free. “iCardSort mimics a desktop where you can place index cards,” says Wallace. You can type notes and colour code them. Now you can slide these notes around to arrange them by position or colour on the screen.” They do appear rather small, and it isn’t the same visual impact as a team Kanban board, but for personal projects and individual planning and note taking this is a good application.

Organising sticky notes with iCard Lite

Doing what you do on a PC

“My personal favourite business productivity app is Pages,” says Wallace. “It is similar to the Pages word processor on the Mac. By using Pages and the virtual keyboard on the iPad, I can type complete documents just like using an ordinary computer.” Pages is the application I use for my documents. I used to use the Notepad, but I like Pages more.

I am also using Keynote, which is a version of the Keynote presentation tool (the equivalent to Microsoft PowerPoint) for Mac. The iPad version has been reworked to make it suitable for use on the iPad screen without a mouse. The controls take some getting used to, but the slideshows you can create are fantastic. I have also bought an iPad-to-projector cable so I can broadcast directly from my iPad during meetings.

And of course you can get email and websites. Google has just recently changed the default setting so that the Google homepage on the iPad reverts to the mobile version of the website – not a good choice in my opinion, but I am researching ways around it.

Learning

Sysop, a training firm which runs ITIL courses, provides pre-course work and training manuals pre-loaded on to an iPad which is yours to keep. I haven’t seen any project management training companies doing this yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this doesn’t happen in the future.

You can annotate training manuals with your comments. You can add bookmarks to your favourite pages. You can complete worksheets and exercises on it. You can carry it around far more easily than a big fat folder. The only downside is that I doubt they will let you take it into the exam room, so it wouldn’t be any good as a solution for PRINCE2 Practitioner exams.

I’m not an early adopter of technology, but I have come to love and rely on my iPad. I’m sure with time I’ll find even more business uses for it but for now I can say that it has revolutionised the way I travel for work. What are your experiences of using an iPad at work?

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Jovia Nierenberg

Jovia Nierenberg is Chief Operating Officer at Experience in Software. That’s the company behind the new project management tool Webplanner. She’s only 23. I asked her about her life as a COO, what’s next for Webplanner and her advice for young women wanting to work in project management.

Jovia, how did you end up being COO at 23?

My father founded Experience in Software (EIS) in 1983. Shortly after finishing college, I began work at the company doing some basic bookkeeping. Just a few months later, my dad got sick and could run the business less and less.

We were at a pivotal turning point with the beginning of Webplanner’s development, which I was product managing. Given my father’s health complications and my experience working at the company, it made sense for me to assume more responsibility and become COO of the company. I’ve really enjoyed streamlining EIS’s business processes and learning how to run a company.

So what does your role involve?

At a small company we all wear many hats. I do everything from defining company procedures and operations to product-managing Webplanner to checking the mail. I also manage other employees, do Webplanner customer support (someone else does Project KickStart customer support), design the user interface of Webplanner, manage company finances, and various tasks that do not fit into anyone else’s job description.

Wow, that’s a varied job. Tell us about what role you play in the development of Webplanner.

Webplanner development is probably the most fun part of my job. When we have new features and pages, I draw the initial user interface sketches and work with our primary developer to turn the sketches into reality. I focus primarily on product intuitiveness; whenever a user has trouble understanding how to do something, I go back and see if that functionality can be made easier to use.

I manage the development team and communicate with customers about bugs they’ve found and changes they’d like to see. Whenever I use any web app or other piece of software, I’m thinking about how we can make Webplanner better. I record ideas and cool things I see in the world in an Evernote account.

Much of my process has been inspired by Steven Johnson’s book, Where Good Ideas Come From. I’m very interested in how people think and plan and how we can develop Webplanner (and future applications) to help people innovate.

Webplanner screenshot

It sounds like you’ve got a lot of good ideas for the product. How is the development of Webplanner going and what’s next for the tool?

Very well!!! Our beta testing group has doubled in size in the month of May and is continuing to grow. Our last big hurdle before release is getting our billing system set up. Once Webplanner is on the market, we plan to go mobile with an iPhone/iPad app and an Android app.

There are also many updates in the works, including improved multi-project functionality and better integration with other software like MS Project and salesforce.com. We will, of course, continue to incorporate the feature requests we get from our users too.

First Project KickStart, now Webplanner. Why do you enjoy working with project management tools?

I am fascinated by how people think and tools that can help people accomplish their dreams. Project management software helps people turn their ideas into reality and I find that very exciting.

What advice do you have for young women who want to go into project management or software development?

No dream is too big. Passion and good planning are equally important when it comes to accomplishing your goals.

Read books that feature success stories. I recently enjoyed Behind the Cloud by Marc Benioff. Read blogs and forums that interest you. Develop a network of people to bounce ideas off of. Go to local tech events and introduce yourself to people. It’s been my experience that if you’re warm and friendly, people are eager to help you when you’re starting out. I’ve gotten great advice this way.

There are also many organizations dedicated to helping female entrepreneurs. For instance, in the San Francisco Bay Area (where our office is located), there is  Women 2.0, who we met at a SF New Tech event. Wherever you’re located, I recommend finding resources like that and taking advantage of what they offer.

I also want to put in a plug that at Experience in Software, we’re always looking for bright young women interns who are interested in getting into project management or who would one day like to start their own companies.

Thanks, Jovia!

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“The role of director of user experience is pretty new,” says Steve Ballard, who has taken on this position at project management software company @task. “In consumer software it’s not so new. The product has to sell itself so the focus is on products that are useful.” The difference with software you use at work is that these products tend to have a sales force to sell, support and explain them. The shift towards focusing on user experience for workplace software, Ballard explains, is because users expect the same from their office tools as they do from the software they use at home. “People are expecting software to be useful,” he says.

Useful software

@task firmly believes in producing useful software. This year members of the @task team went out and practically lived with customers in their offices to find out how the software was used. What they found out became the driving force behind the latest version of their project management tool.

Before they hit the offices, the @task guys interviewed each other internally to find out who they thought the users were. Then they set out to confirm or disprove their theories with visits to 20 companies across the U.S. “We talked to people with different roles,” Ballard explains. “We talked to team members, project managers and executives, so about 60 people. We tried to live with the people a little bit – it’s kind of anthropology.”

The visitors sat with users at their desks to understand how project management software is used in practice. The Chief Technology Officer, software engineers, product managers and usability experts took turns in attending, with Ballard going along for all the visits to provide consistency. The team took trips to big companies, small companies and various different industries from financial services to pharmaceutical and manufacturing. “We thought we would see unique challenges across different industries, but we didn’t,” Ballard says. “They all struggle with the same things. We now realise that if we can make Chris happy we can make all end users happy.”

Designing for pretend people

“Chris” is a fictional person, the archetypal project management software user. Ballard explains that it is easier to design for one person than for a disparate group. “We created user personas – fictional people,” he says. The @task team built up profiles for 3 fictional users: Chris, a project team member and software end user, Jen, a project manager and Mark, a project executive. “Nobody focused on the team member for obvious reasons,” says Ballard. “The software buyer is not the main user on a daily basis. Chris is critical to the success of @task software in any organisation.”

The @task site visits uncovered the fact that most project managers force (shock, horror!) their users to input data into a project management software tool. Stream, the new version of the @task software, tries to get away from the need to do that. “Our approach with Stream is understanding Chris’s goals, and to give him something that helps him be responsible and have control over his work. This solves the adoption problem, which is an issue for all software,” Ballard explains. The big problem for project managers, he says, is coping with ‘garbage in, garbage out’. Project managers find it hard to trust the outputs from software when they have questions about the quality of the data. Stream addresses this by aiming to empower the end user through allowing them to commit to their own dates. “If we can meet Chris’s goals, we can get data into the system for the project managers,” Ballard adds.

Usability in action

“Some customers got it,” says Ballard, although he confesses it was easier to sit with customers than with non-customers. The @task usability task force did go to sit with companies who do not use their software, so they could be sure they weren’t just “designing software in a lab.” Ballard feels the experience was very useful. “We wanted to understand the whole thing holistically,” he says. “We wanted to observe the day-to-day. In the end, they understood what it was all for – which was more than just the ‘how’ of using project management software.”

They have plans to make further developments to @task focusing on Jen, the project manager persona, and Ballard believes there is scope for improvement in how project managers use and interact with software tools. “By continuing to use this process it will allow us to make some really great innovations,” says Ballard. Project managers, watch this space. There could be something revolutionary brewing in the @task software labs. After, of course, they go out and research the design with Jen in mind.

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Does your company have a set of policies for working online?  For all that I advocate using social media tools at work to improve productivity, you have to do it in a controlled and secure way.  The e-Policy Handbook: Rules and Best Practices to Safely Manage Your Company’s E-Mail, Blogs, Social Networking, and Other Internet Communication Tools by Nancy Flynn is a one-stop shop for everything you need to develop clear policies about online working.  Whether you are developing policies at a corporate level or wanting to cover yourself on a particular project by building e-policies into your team charter, this is a comprehensive guide.

Flynn is the founder and executive director of the ePolicy Institute, which carries out regular research into how companies use – and how employees abuse – electronic forms of communication.  For example, 35% of employees use instant messaging at work, but half of them have downloaded free tools from the internet.  In many cases, their employers don’t even know the software is in use.  Project managers could easily get caught in the middle:  project communications are being carried out over instant messaging, which is not archived, not secure and yet can still be a legally-binding form of communicating with suppliers.  A contract agreed over IM is still a contract.

Some of the statistics and behaviour described in this book are surprising:  84% of employers who fired employees for internet misuse did so because the employee was viewing, downloading or uploading obscene or inappropriate material.  Who are these employees who think they can get away with behaving like that at work?  Obviously there are plenty of people out there who feel that their company PCs are provided partly for their own ‘entertainment’.  A clear policy on what is and isn’t acceptable should cut down on this behaviour and make it easier for managers to get rid of employees who break the rules.

Unless you are tasked with writing a suite of e-policies, reading the book from cover to cover is a bit of a chore.  However, it’s the kind of book you would have on the shelf to dip into as and when you adapt a new technology, or when you want to make sure you have all your bases covered.  As you launch your project wiki, wave this book at HR and make sure their employee induction program covers acceptable use, and ask them to update the policies accordingly.  All project managers should have a view as to how their projects affect corporate policies, and be able to advise when those policies are found wanting.

There are sample electronic business communication policies at the back of the book, plus a great dos and don’ts section in Appendix B.  A lot of what Flinn suggests sounds like overkill, until you realise that people genuinely do need a steer as to what is acceptable use for email, blogs, social networking tools and so on.  Have a look at your company policies.  Do they provide clarity about how you can use instant messaging and email?  If not, someone at your organisation needs a copy of this.

Buy on Amazon.co.uk
Buy on Amazon.com

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Curt Finch, CEO of Journyx, Inc., has put all his wisdom about time tracking into a book called All Your Money Won’t Another Minute Buy: Valuing Time as a Business Resource.  It’s not that long and it’s quick to read and while I wouldn’t rate it as one of the top business books I have read this year it did change my perspective on time tracking, which I think is the point, and rather took me by surprise.

The first section talks about the tracking time and how this impacts project risk.  The next bit then looks at SOX and DCAA compliance, neither of which are relevant to the organisation I work in.  The third section considers the build or buy decision for time tracking tools and how to select a product and working with vendors.  This is a well-written bit that doesn’t flog Journyx products, so don’t worry about the whole thing being a big sales pitch.  Finally the book looks at software as a service and the future of web tools.

The reason I say I wouldn’t put it top of my list is that it is very US focussed, and a lot of the concepts – tiddly amounts of holiday, compliance – are not relevant over here.  For a US reader I expect their experience of this book would be very different.

The best bit for me of this book was the first section, and while the content on compliance and regulation wasn’t relevant to me I could at least see how this linked into the premise of the book.  The final section about web tools was more of a struggle.  There are four chapters that don’t seem to tie into time tracking at all – they are about the benefits of using web-based software and how this can provide opportunities for reuse, lower cost of entry and so on.  All useful and interesting information, but not pertaining to tracking time. In the prologue, Finch writes:

Section Four looks to the future in terms of technology and where we are going.  It’s important to consider because it affects all that we do as businesses,  including tracking our time.

I felt that he could have made that sentiment clearer as I was working my way through Section Four as I certainly missed the point.

So, my revelation.  I’m not a big fan of timesheets (if you listen to my webinar on managing money on projects you’ll hear more about this), as I have never worked for a company that used them effectively.  But after reading Finch’s book I had a discussion with my team and we’re going to do a couple of months of time tracking to see how we get on.  Amazing.  I never thought I’d be advocating filling in timesheets, so for all its flaws, Finch’s book works – I do value time as a business resource!

You can buy the book here or wait until Wednesday when I’ll be telling you how to win a copy.

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