What do you do when everybody is using "the wrong tools"? Are you going to convince everyone to do it "your way"? Or are you going to tap into the existing information stream and improve the existing stream?

As the words in "Paradise By The Dashboard Lights":

"What is it gonna be, boy?"

Andrew Filev, CEO of Wrike.com, decided to tap into the existing information flows of projects. In the first part of my conversation with Andrew he explained how in today's projects you cannot enforce a rigid regime from the top-down, and you cannot let people just do as they please; if you do it purely bottom-up, you can have chaos because there is no alignment. You have to stimulate both to get "emerging structures".
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Craig Brown and I are conversing on project management, and in particular professional development. The conversations is across both our blogs.

Dear Craig,

This time I have to explain why I am blogging and why I am yelling "Projects are about humans. Deal with that!" It is the only way I can answer your question in your previous response about project management communities and industry organizations:

"Are you an outsider looking in? Are you an insider selling something?"
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Looking for the right project management software can be a pain. It is really important that you define upfront the goals you are trying to achieve with the introduction of the new software. If you have no budget available, you might want to check out my list of free Project Management software.

Photography by TheBusyBrain.

If you are considering buying a PM application, you can use sites like this for comparison and review.

If you are especially looking for construction project management software, SoftwareAdvice.com might come in handy. Houston Neal explains:
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A short while ago I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Maria Gajewski of Never The Same River Twice. You can read the entire interview on her blog. She asked me

Photography by Ron Almog.

• How I came to the conclusion that “Projects Are About Humans, Now Deal With That!”?
• Why it is this so important to have mental flexibility and what is one thing that you can do right now to increase our mental flexibility?
• How a project manager can help his or her team increase their resilience?
• What will be happening here at Project Shrink in the next few months?

… and more.

Hop over, read the interview, and while you are there, subscribe to this blog about personal and organizational change.

Whether you are managing an on site project or an offshore one, getting the best out of your team takes effort, planning and tact. More so with offshore projects because of the ‘X’ factor; so much is unknown to you when you step out of your own circle. The offshore team can be based anywhere in the world but it is usually the developing countries that are the most tempting. The biggest motivation behind offshore projects is financial, therefore strong. The challenge is to convert this motivation into a successfully supervised project and we have 25 rock solid tips just to achieve that;

1. The most basic thing you can do while managing an overseas project is to understand the culture of your offshore team. There are words and actions acceptable in your culture that may be extremely offensive to your workers. Similar is the sense of humor of different cultures; what is funny to you may be offensive to them and there is not worse way to lose respect in another's eyes than to appear as if you are laughing at him. Your job as the PM is to learn about the differences in culture, appreciate them and make sure you deal with your offshore team in a manner that does not offend them.
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Andrew Filev is the author of the Project Management 2.0 blog and CEO of Wrike. He has a very interesting view on Project Management, which he describes as Project Management 2.0. He also created an amazing PM Tool that supports his notion of Project Management 2.0: Wrike.

I had a great interview with him, which I will share with you in three parts over the next few weeks. This is part one in which he explains the concept of emerging structures and how this relates to Project Management.

Emerging Structure

Bas: "There are two terms you use when talking about Project Management 2.0 and Wrike: collective intelligence and emerging structure. With “collective intelligence” you make use of your entire organization. But could you clarify “emerging structure”?"

Andrew: "Sure. Let’s say there is a group of people working on something. You may have a top-down approach, when the manager or the head of the group implies structure. In the project management case, it’s most likely a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). The project manager spends some time at the beginning of the project and designs a WBS that will stay throughout the project. It will probably be extended a little bit, made more detailed, but there is little chance that the WBS will be changed dramatically. Because that is very hard to do, it would require the project manager to re-plan everything himself, and that’s a lot of hassle.

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