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martyschwan
Feb 11, 20222 min read
Three Things to Avoid in a Statement of Work
Statements of work are the industry standard contracting vehicle to describe the services that will be provided by a vendor to a...


martyschwan
Feb 9, 20222 min read
Three Keys to a Good Cutover Checklist
So you’ve gotten your project all the way through design, development and acceptance testing and are now ready to take it live. To do...


Brittany Fisher
Jan 18, 20222 min read
Essential Tech Investments for Freelancers and Entrepreneurs
Whether you run a small business or work for yourself as a freelancer, managing your day-to-day tasks can take a lot of time. There’s so...

martyschwan
Jan 17, 20222 min read
PSA Tool Review – Clarizen
As part of my ongoing series of professional services automation (PSA) tools review, I’d like to spend a little bit of time talking about...

martyschwan
Jan 12, 20222 min read
Tool Review – SpiraTest
SpiraTest by Inflectra is a great testing and requirements management tool. It can really help set your methodology apart from the others...


martyschwan
Jan 11, 20222 min read
Value of Requirements to Test Case Mapping
So often in COTS (commercial off the shelf) solution implementations we see customers and vendors at odds with fulfillment of...

martyschwan
Jan 10, 20222 min read
Building a Smartsheet Dashboard
I’ve posted in the past about how Smartsheet provides good dashboarding capabilities. Today I’m going to dive a little deeper in how to...


martyschwan
Jan 7, 20222 min read
Value of a SOW Review
Statement of Work (SOW) reviews are something that should be done at the outset of every project. Unfortunately, we don’t see enough of...


martyschwan
Jan 6, 20222 min read
Top Three Things to Include in a SOW
Statements of Work (SOW) are the typical contracting vehicle in a services-based industry. I’ve spent a good portion of my career either...

martyschwan
Jan 5, 20222 min read
Most Underrated Features of MS Project
MS Project is one of the premier tools out there for developing and managing project schedules. It is incredibly feature-rich and today I...


martyschwan
Jan 4, 20222 min read
Wearing Out Your Mental Transmission – The Cost of Switching Gears
With most workers who can work from home it seems that there is an increased factor of constant task switching. Being ‘accessible’ to...


martyschwan
Dec 22, 20212 min read
Presenting Your Methodology
Part of almost every sales presentation for your COTS or custom product will involve some manner of showing off how you plan to deliver...


martyschwan
Nov 26, 20212 min read
Meeting Management – Cost of Over-Inviting
We’ve all been there before – you need to call a meeting but aren’t sure where to draw the line at invitees. This post will focus on the...


martyschwan
Nov 25, 20212 min read
Structuring an Effective PMO – Providing Guidance
One of the most important jobs of a PMO is to provide guidance to the team of project managers in the organization. The PMO will (should)...

martyschwan
Nov 11, 20212 min read
Product Review – Smartsheet
Today I’d like to provide a review of one of the PSA (professional services automation) tools out there gaining some popularity in the...


The Cultural Nomad
Oct 27, 20212 min read
Proxemics Is Also a Cultural Preference
Suppose you’ve had the opportunity to travel to different places of the world, with various national cultures. In that case, you might...

martyschwan
Oct 24, 20212 min read
Product Review – Clarizen Capacity Planning
I’ve used a multitude of PSA (professional services automation) tools over the span of my career and feel compelled to give a review of...


martyschwan
Oct 22, 20212 min read
The Value of Focus Time
It’s been said many times that multi-tasking is simply not possible – our brains are not wired that way, which is true. We cannot...


martyschwan
Oct 21, 20212 min read
Structuring and Effective PMO Part 3 – Organizational Buy In
Your project management office (PMO) is not going to be very effective if you do not get organizational and executive buy in to what you...


martyschwan
Oct 15, 20212 min read
Structuring and Effective PMO Part 2 – Templates
Building a PMO is a very challenging yet rewarding task. In my last post I talked about the importance of methodology, not just from a...
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