No, Working from Home Is Not Remote Work…Here’s Why

For many existing in a standard, office-based work environment, “working from home” can often seem completely interchangeable with “remote work” but the truth is that the two terms are actually very far from being synonymous. As technology changes and planning and working with teams without any physical contact becomes more common, the entire dynamic of...

Product Release: What’s New in Tasktop Integration Hub 19.1

A new release of Tasktop Integration Hub, 19.1, is available today, including support for Jira Cloud API changes related to GDPR, a new connector for XebiaLabs XL Release, and features that make it easy to move project routings between integrations and provide one final update to twinless artifacts. Below are the release highlights. For full details...

Start Viewing Your IT Department as a Strategic Partner to the Organization

The following content is taken from the whitepaper, “Portfolio-Driven Performance: The 7 Process Areas That Drive IT and Business Results,” written by Jerry Manas. To make it more easily accessible to you, we are giving it everlasting life here on the blog. We’ve discussed how portfolio-driven performance improves project delivery, how and why you must...

Six Techniques to Keep Teams Focused

Focus isn’t just the absence of distraction. It’s an immersive state in which meaningful work simply flows. Organizations that truly want to get stuff done will do everything they can to empower their teams to reach this state. Here’s six ways your businesses can stay focused on focus. Have a plan Meditation is all about...

How to Host Meaningful Meetings for Non-Managers

Getting the heads of different teams together to get updates on project progress and the state of play for each team is an important and relatively straightforward element of project management that is often made easier by the fact that everyone is speaking the same “management” language of KPIs, milestones and deliverables. Knowing how to...

Technology: The Key to Resolving Product Portfolio Challenges

In our last piece, we explained how top performers leveraged consistent and effective product portfolio management processes to ensure continued industry leadership. In this, our sixth installment of our eight part series, “The Complexity of Managing Smarter, More Connected Products,” we explore the notion of leveraging technology to resolve product portfolio challenges. Review the previous...

Introducing the Value Stream Architect

To enable your teams to build great software, start by identifying and empowering your Value Stream Architect. The Age of Software is not only creating new markets and disruptors in existing markets; it’s also expanding existing roles within organizations. In this post, I’ll describe what I see as one of the most important new roles...

Crowdsourced Innovation: How Enterprises Generate Explosive Employee Engagement

According to Gallup’s 2017 State of the Global Workplace Report, a staggering 85% of employees are disengaged at work. In other words, the vast majority of the employees in Gallup’s research are not emotionally connected with their day-to-day work or company. The result? A whopping $7 trillion in lost productivity, turnover, poor customer experience, absenteeism,...

How Risk Management is Crucial to Project Management

The following content is based on the whitepaper, “Bigger Than a Breadbox: 10 Tips for Better Project Estimates, Part 2,” written by Jerry Manas. For your reading convenience, we’ve decided to give it everlasting life here on the blog. It is impossible to talk about project management without talking about risk. After all, projects are,...

Remember Value Stream Mapping?

Editor’s note “Scenius stands for the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. It is the communal form of the concept of the genius.” —Brian Eno Following the release of our CEO Mik’s book Project to Product in November 2018, we have been blown away by the response from the IT industry and beyond. As...