Sometimes people think and do things very differently and we are some those people, differently Coz we work remotely, the craziest thing is our CEO/PM runs all operations like development, marketing, and sales from silicon valley. Oh, whats crazy in it? Running an onsite team itself is pain in a butt if you are doing it remotely and hire some people with inexperience then, of course, your pain increase by 10x. But we are able to develop this agile project management tool which does performance analytics on top of project management which indeed is quite unique As a software development company, its no secret that we have also suffered Coz of scope creep,day in day out. It maybe Coz of sudden feature implementation by overrunning ongoing sprint, or miscommunication between PM and development team.Remember we work remotely. Just last January itself, we had one scope creep of the ongoing sprint, our development team supposed to clean up some UI issues but the marketing team wanted this publishing tool in our too taskera for publishing content. Anyway, its a different story. According to PMI 52% of the projects completed in the past 12 months experienced some sort of scope creep. This project may have suffered financial loss too. Furthermore, dissatisfaction among the team member may drive to death march! Of course, nobody like scope creep and its frustrating. But we figured it out one thing if the delays or todo list or idle resource were identified, tracked and notified to managers and its team in real-time(We call it, Project tracker /Stack Of Exceptions). Then scope change could be prevented. And we did dodged scope change in 5 out of 3 times, saved a lot of time and money!Scope creep prevention toolThis our scope creep prevention and lets see how it works. We have been using from past 9 months and its very effective in ditching scope changeProject trackerThis is how it looks for managers, you can see all the tasks which as to get it done, delays, blocked and manager your idle resource(resource management). For team members, instead of looking at all the todo list, we thought lets show any task/issues which they have to worry about next!Every startup has a different story, sometimes they could possibly found a solution. And this our story, we believe in share knowledge for better good. Thank you for listing to us! Thank you for listing to us!Please do comment and share your story about scope creep.

Send the next guy in,said Annie Wilkes on the intercom from the interview room. Do we have one more guy? Asked Tom. Yes. He is the last candidate and his name is Paul Milano replied Annie. The door opened and Mr.Paul Milano, a stout person in his mid-40s, walked in. Having worked in 3 different companies, handled agile software development and used several project management tools in his 20+ years of experience as a project manager was now facing the interview panelMr.Tom Powers, the director of IT along with Ms.Annie Wilkes, the human resources manager were on the last lap of the interviewing process. They were interviewing Mr.Paul Milano for the position of the Project Manager. Tom Powers had crossed his 50th birthday, was tall, handsome but was little bald with grey hairs, natural with his age. He was a shrewd and intelligent person. Ms. Annie Wilkes was in her mid-30s and was very observant and clever manager of the company. As a Project Manager, what would be your and your team’s ideal workplace be like? Mr. Tom asked Paul with a teasing smile on his face.This was an unexpected job interview question for Paul. Even though this imagination had passed his mind earlier on how his workplace should be, he had not given a serious thought to it. Now, after this question was posed, he was confused with whether they are testing him, trying to corner him or pushing him into a trap?However, the question was to be answered. A good cubicle, comfortable chair, Air Conditioning, good ambiance, high-speed laptop, was never the sufficient aspects of an ideal workplace for him. Paul took a deep breath, decided to be bold and honest, looked into Tom’s eyes and replied “I expect Flexible time, easy dress code, freedom of expression, no micromanagement, Hassle-free Time offs, permissions or leaves, pressure-free environment, frequent get together to keep a good rapport in the team, and good motivational plans for the team.”“Aren’t you asking too much? What would be the company’s risk to allow the above relaxations or expectations? And why should we do it?” Tom asked again. “My responsibility is to getting things done and increase profit” Paul Said “ I don’t know what it would cost to the company, but I am sure that this is going to increase employee engagement in turn impacts team productivity and profit for the company. I believe that, with this type of work environment, the team responsibility goes up, and so does their motivation level and team sprit. Each team member will be responsible enough to take the ownership of his/her assigned task. All we need is a good task manager and tracking tool, preferably the one with the above aspects embedded in the tracking tool itself. This makes my team competent and in turn, my team will make the product competent." “Mr. Paul, If you are hired, how much time would you take to show us the result?” Tom asked.“I am confident of doing it in 6 months” replied Paul “OK. Thank you Mr. Paul” Tom concluded the interview and said, “We will get back to you soon”. Both Tom and Annie watched Paul leave the room. Then Tom turned to Annie and asked her what was her opinion on that days interview. “Among the four candidates we interviewed today, Paul is promising” Tom said “He is an experienced person, pretty confident on his thoughts and knows what he is talking” Annie replied by just nodding her head, but she was in confusion.Tom could observe the confusion in Annie’s face and said “Come let us go and have a cup of coffee in the cafeteria and discuss on it” and they walked towards the cafeteria. The Confusion : Every recruiter will have a confusion on the way how people get hired, which is a mystery. How one can rate or assess the qualities, skills or expertise of a person that are required for a particular job interview in a span of 30 to 40 minutes. On what parameters does the recruiters know he/she is a good fit for any job?

After AmazonGo opening their doors for customers to the Cashier-free automated grocery store premises at Seattle on a trial basis, it is predicted and evident enough that America is also going to lose around 900 000 cashier jobs in grocery stores and malls.Again loss of jobs due to technology, jobs eliminated by technology or call it jobs lost to automation.

Harvard Business Review found that 54% of a project managers time is taken up with administrative duties of the project which are repetitive in nature.It includes determining the scope, budget, ground-level work like determining work schedules and ensuring releases at right time. But the risk in a project management is always probabilistic and the human mind, to the best of its abilities, is not enough for risk management of the complex problems. So, as a project manager, I sometimes get distracted by huge multitasking and not able to focus on actual activities in the project. According to Paul Atchley , multitasking can drop the efficiency of task by 40% and it as long-term memory and creativity losses . The 2 ways advance algothrims / AI that assist project managers are In identifying, picking and scheduling those tasks/issues which are of high priority or requires an immediate addressing (like immediate releases which are due) from backlog. In predicting the best of outcomes in projects, such as, the planned start-and-end date of various phases, completion rate of the team, and on time product delivery.For example, Kono.ai are able to manage schedules for project managers, essentially acting as an AI assistant or bot manager which can take away the time-consuming administration tasks from the project manager. It allows the PM and his team members to automate communications, send alert deadlines, track expenses, and determine and/or assign as to who is undertaking certain tasks.As a project manager, I see that the AI will do more good in running projects and teams. By AI we can achieve better predictions and optimization in project management as never before. Having said that, one cannot ignore human superiority in creative thinking. Key today is project managers should collaborate with AI for better results.

We all agree that effective and transparent communication is the key to success in an organization. Office setup = Work + Physical presence. Remote Setup = Work + Effective & transparent communication.Note that, in the above formulas, if the ‘physical presence’ is replaced with ‘effective & transparent Communication’, then Office setup = Remote setup. In other words, your communication should be so effective and transparent, that the physical absence of that person is not a concern at all.If your working company is one of the companies that allow remote work, then you should know (at least try to know) about the following.What does it mean to work remotely, Benefits of working remotely,Best places to work remotely,How many time zones are there on earth,What is a remote workforce,Working remotely pros and cons,How to access anywhere,How remote work companies are managed etc., I, as a Project Manager in a startup company, have this challenge to manage an office team and a Remote team. We realized that an extra effort is needed with the remote team to achieve this equality.We realized that, never ever make assumptions about a person's identity. Ask questions and try to understand who the person really is. Also, let your team-mates get to know who you are, by sharing acceptable personal information. Don't limit your conversation to professional topics.The intentional communication with empathy, builds a relationship between the human beings who have thoughts, feelings and personal interests; they are not two 'work resources' who are playing the role of 'team members' for the project. Always opt for a video call instead of a telephone call.Clearly define feedback mechanisms, high levels of daily contacts, and use of communication tools to create face-to-face exchanges. Since people (team members) operate from different part of the world and in different time zones, it is necessary to schedule a system to optimize person-to-person contact.Validate the team members when they do or say something good. It is very important to demarcate clear boundaries between 'work-time' and 'home-time'. It is important to establish a culture of trust in people.You have to fill the gaps with 'trust'. What we mean is you should trust that your team members are doing what they say they are doing.Treating people like professional adults and giving them the trust and flexibility (to be present at work and at home), results in increased productivity. After all, the whole idea for you is to be a good Project Manager churning out better productivity and results. Good Luck to you.

We are excited to listen to people like David Green when they talk about how people analytics will reshape the organization. We passionately believe that measuring employee productivity in real-time is a huge game changer. Especially, if this measurement is done by an algorithm. No more annual appraisals and employees will be more engaged to perform better. Oh and by the way, little things (sarcasm) called discrimination and bias, are neutralized too. In fact we would go a step further, we believe just like the world of Wall Street traders was taken over by the Quants, the people analytics folks will take over the corporation.