Posts by Lionel Valdellon

Productivity 5 min read

4 Vital Career Lessons from "Calgary's Worst Driver" [Video]

People at our Mountain View office were recently fascinated by a trending YouTube video showing what is allegedly "Calgary's Worst Driver" taking a painful four and a half minutes to pull out of a pretty standard parking spot. It's a video that leaves you with more questions than answers. BUT! What you see on the video isn't merely an incompetent driver trying to worm his or her way out of a tough spot. What you see is an enlightened guru with vital lessons to teach us about life, career, and the pursuit of efficient productivity. Read on: Lesson 1: Plan Before You Do. The driver kept at it for over four minutes, trying different patterns, each one more complicated than the next. We can't help but think the entire debacle could have been avoided if the driver had taken some time to think things through. Perhaps even stopping completely to step out of the vehicle and judge how close the surrounding cars were situated. When you get into a tough spot in your career, Nike's tagline won't always work; "just doing it" won't lead to success without first thinking things through a little. What are the repercussions of your actions? Which resources will you need to access? Even better, plan out your entire year in advance. Lesson 2: It's Okay to Ask for Help. If you are no expert at your task at hand — whether it's driving in snow, programming code, or writing a blog post — it is incumbent upon you to seek assistance. If you don't, you could cause serious damage to your surroundings and innocent bystanders. Humble yourself, grasshopper. Ask for advice. For example, talk to subject matter experts in a LinkedIn group. You're more likely to get out of a tough spot when you have input from those more skilled or more experienced than you. In the end, succeeding with help will hurt your pride far less than failing alone. Lesson 3: If It's Not Fun Anymore, It May Be Time To Walk. While perseverance is critical in the pursuit of your passions, failure to improve may be a sign that your heart just isn't in it. Our CEO Andrew Filev recently told a story about a time he had a heart-to-heart with a struggling software engineer only to discover the employee was reevaluating his career path — he wasn't enjoying it and it was leading to his substandard work. In the case of "Calgary's Worst Driver," their struggle is probably a sign for them to move on. It may be time for the driver to invest in a bus pass. Lesson 4: Admit Your Mistakes. Everyone messes up sooner or later. The difference between moving on with your dignity intact and going infamously viral is how well you handle the situation. If "Calgary's Worst Driver" had stopped their car and left a note after dinging that red car, we probably never would have seen this video. Similarly, if you make a mistake and miss a vital deadline, man (or woman) up and admit it. Then ensure it doesn't happen again. It's a small world, and your reputation as someone who dodges responsibility will follow you. If Karma doesn't find you, the internet definitely will. Some of life's lessons can only be learned the hard way. If you haven't seen the video yet, it's time to sit through 4 of the most painful minutes of your life: Hindsight is 20/20, so it's important that we keep looking back to catch those learning moments. If you have any embarrassing stories that taught you a great lesson, please share them in the comments — even anonymously! It's important to pass on your newfound expertise and prevent other poor souls from making the same mistakes.

Productivity 3 min read

Does Being More Rational Help You Be More Productive? (Work Management Roundup)

Welcome back to the weekly Work Management Roundup. This Monday, the US celebrated the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose contribution to the civil rights movement helped America rise to greater heights. In this roundup, we link to an internal memo sent by Slack's CEO regarding Dr. King's importance. We also feature a curious movement in Silicon Valley that is teaching people how to live a more fully-analyzed life thanks to rationality principles. Plus, more articles on how to work smarter and get things done on time. The Happiness Code (The New York Times Magazine): Lengthy but fascinating read on a movement toward cold, hard rationality in Silicon Valley, thanks to workshops offered by the Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR). The goal: bring the emotional side of the brain into harmony with the intellectual side and in the process, become more productive and conscious of why you make certain decisions. 4 HR Priorities You Need to Focus on This New Year (Entrepreneur): Via a survey conducted last December, business leaders and consultants report their top HR priorities for 2016. How I Got $248,000 in Pre-orders Before I Even Had a Product (Medium): CEO and entrepreneur Mitchell Harper shares his strategy for building a large audience of potential customers — and it will cost you $0. Email Zero is Easier than Inbox Zero (Cal Newport's Study Hacks): Before you spend serious money hiring an assistant to sort and answer the emails in your inbox, first sit down and figure out if you need all that email in the first place. (Also: time to rethink snail mail.) Holding Off on High Fidelity (Medium): When you sketch out ideas using low fidelity tools like paper and markers, you can ideate much more quickly, provoke the right questions, and collaborate early and often with stakeholders. And it doesn't matter whether you're designing a logo, or building a lead generation process. A photo posted by Wrike (@wriketeam) on Sep 22, 2015 at 6:24pm PDT More Work Management Reads Think About This: A Reflection on Martin Luther King Jr. by Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield (Medium) Lifelong Learning (Farnam Street) How To Prioritize Projects Across Teams (PM Tips) 25 Daily Rituals Of History’s Most Successful…And What You Can Learn From Them (Medium) Go Try This: The Ultimate List: 70+ Best Tools For Skyrocketing Business Growth In 2016 (LeadChat) 9 Ways to Bring More Traffic to Every Blog Post (The Next Web) Seven Useful Microsoft Excel Features You May Not Be Using - Infographic (Lifehacker) Want to Be an Outstanding Leader? Keep a Journal (HBR) Browse The Work Management Roundup on Flipboard If you use Flipboard on your mobile device, then you can check out these links (and more) via The Work Management Roundup magazine. View my Flipboard Magazine.

News 3 min read

Find Tasks Quickly, Right from the Dashboard

For many of you, the dashboard is the main staging ground where you track the most important tasks. And even if you prefer accessing your tasks by navigating to folders, the dashboard is still the first place you see when you log into Wrike. When things are moving fast, you need a quick access to particular task right from your starting point. And that's what this new feature brings. Now you can simply input the keywords and run a search right from the dashboard view. Wrike will then look through task and folder titles, task descriptions, even comments to present you with the closest-matching results. There are still several ways to search for a particular task in the system. You can click on the account name in your folder pane, choose "show descendants" and then search through the entire account. Or you can navigate to the precise folder where the task is located. But when you need to get to a task on the fly, searching from the dashboard is the way to go. The new feature truly brings search functionality to every corner of Wrike. And it speeds up your workflow, so you can get things done more efficiently!

Project Management 7 min read

What Gilmore Girls Can Teach You About Project Stakeholder Management

Gilmore Girls is a feel-good, American TV show known for its rapid-fire dialogue. And yet its revival on Netflix can teach us valuable lessons in project stakeholder management. Grab a cup of coffee and read on.

Productivity 3 min read

New Year's Resolutions from Thought Leaders (Work Management Roundup)

Welcome back to the weekly Work Management Roundup, where we collect different links to articles that should help you do your work more efficiently and inspire you to new levels of excellence. Since this is our first for the new year, we'd like to take a look at the various new year's resolutions of thought leaders across the world. Read on! Sheryl Sandberg: Write the Joyful Moments (Time): Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg says her new year's resolution is one that has already been helping her cope with losing her husband this past year — namely, to write down three joyful moments each day. Richard Branson: List Your Goals! (Virgin): Richard Branson shares a tip for anyone wanting to stick to their resolutions: write it down, and keep a list. He enumerates 10 steps to creating a list that you can stick to. Cal Newport: Cultivate a Deep Work Habit (Study Hacks): Cal Newport lives his resolution every day of his life. His resolution (and the topic for his latest book) is: commit time during your day for deep work. This is distraction-free time that allows you to work on cognitively demanding tasks. Not the shallow busywork of ticking off to-do items, but rather, the type of creative problem solving that builds real value. Gary Vaynerchuk: Improve How You Work (Gary Vaynerchuk): Gary Vee suggests you commit to these four new year's resolutions to further your career (at the very least, they'll make you a much more pleasant coworker), namely: become a deep practitioner in something, audit your 7PM to 2AM, practice self-awareness, and eliminate complaining. Forget About Setting Goals, Focus on Systems (James Clear): Productivity author James Clear says you shouldn't commit to a goal; rather, commit to a system or a process that allows you to track results. Read why this works better than simply listing goals. David Allen: Practice Better Email (David Allen): And from the headquarters of GTD (Getting Things Done), comes this resolution which should be a staple for any organization: get better at email communications. Read the link for 5 tips on maximizing your emails, especially for globally dispersed teams. Friedrich Nietzsche: Say Yes! (Brain Pickings): Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche shares a glorious new year's resolution from his journal entry of 1882: be a yea-sayer and a beautifier of life. More Work Management Reads Think About This: 12 Apps You'll See at the Office More in 2016 (Inc) A Fresh Look at the Number, Effectiveness, and Cost of Meetings in the US (Lucid Meetings) 5 Reasons Why A Social Media Content Calendar Is Important For Your Business (Hootsuite) 8 Habits of People Who Always Have Great Ideas (Fast Company) Go Try This: The Ultimate Guide to Becoming Your Best Self: Build your Daily Routine by Optimizing Your Mind, Body and Spirit (Buffer) How to Finally Start Working Out (Even If You Hate It) (Lifehacker) 10 Habits to Adopt Now to Be Better at Your Job in 2016 (Fast Company) Browse The Work Management Roundup on Flipboard If you use Flipboard on your mobile device, then you can check out these links via The Work Management Roundup magazine. View my Flipboard Magazine.

Project Management 3 min read

Managing Complex Schedules with Recurrent Tasks

When it comes to managing deadlines, many teams struggle to balance between keeping to up-to-date priorities and meeting strict, non-negotiable deadlines in time. Wrike makes accurate planning possible in many ways. There are tasks with and without due dates, prioritizing, milestones, and dependencies. Today we want to share a helpful tip that a customer shared with us regarding managing strict and changing deadlines with the help of recurrent tasks and milestones. Scheduling Challenges at RPBA Ricardo da Palma Borges & Associados (RPBA) is a Portugal-based law firm that knows a lot about managing complex schedules. In their projects, they deal with two types of deadlines: those imposed by clients on consulting or planning projects and those imposed by courts and other public entities on litigation. While the former may change in the course of the project, the latter are strictly non-negotiable milestones. “It is sometimes impossible to keep to prior schedules when the default term for any tax litigation development is 10 straight days. We have to constantly adjust previous deadlines in view of more pressing matters,” shares Ricardo da Palma Borges, a partner and specialist lawyer at RPBA. Unique Solution Using Recurrent Tasks The team found a unique way to deal with this challenge in Wrike. Any time there are legal proceedings, they create a recurrent task with two occurrences. The first occurrence is a strict immovable milestone, typically used for court hearings or deadlines for filing documents. The second occurrence is merely a task with a prior due date that is used to adjust the project schedule internally in order to achieve interim goals. The team seamlessly collaborates on the case in the first task occurrence and reschedules it according to their current priorities, while the milestone always remains at the same place. This way, the timeline always reflects an up-to-date schedule with both interim and strict deadlines during law firm hours, and team members can quickly evaluate if they’re on track to meet them. If you face the same deadline challenge in your industry, what about trying this tip for planning your tasks? Let us know if it works well for your team or if you want to share another best practice with our community!

Project Management 5 min read

5 New Year’s Resolutions for Project Managers

If you need some resolution inspiration for yourself, we've saved you the effort of Googling. Here are five New Year's resolutions that every project manager should consider for 2018

Project Management 5 min read

What's Changing on the PMP Examination This November 2015?

UPDATE: The PMP exam update has been postponed till January 11th, 2016 to allow all examinees adequate time to prepare for the change. See the full announcement on the PMI website. Those aspiring to get their Project Management Professional (PMP) certification, take note: there will be changes to the PMP examination which will go into effect this November 2015. So if you're studying for the PMP exam with older material (i.e. the Exam Content Outline dated August 2011), you have until November 1st to use those materials and take the exam. After that date, the new PMP exam will be instated and you'll have to upgrade to the new Exam Content Outline (dated June 2015). Why is the PMP Exam Changing? The PMP exam is being updated because the role of the project manager continues to evolve. The exam is meant to reflect current practices. In fact, PMP certification exams are updated every three to five years to ensure they stay relevant for project managers. To update exams, a Role Delineation Study (RDS) is undertaken to examine the role of of the project manager and distill it down to key competency areas, such as domains, tasks, knowledge, and skills. The research done in the RDS is then validated by the larger PM community. In order to maintain certification as a PMP, you'll need a specific number of Professional Development Units (PDU). 60 PDUs are required over the course of three years, which can be earned by attending events, or accomplishing courses. What Was Updated? Here's a quick rundown: Overall, there are minor changes to terminology and language within many tasks. While the essence of these tasks remains the same, the language has been modified to fit current practice in the industry. A few tasks were removed from the prior version of the Exam Content Outline. Because they were dropped, the new PMP exam will not include related questions. The 5 domain areas remain the same, but there are shifts in how each area is weighted, meaning a corresponding change in the number of questions pertaining to each domain. For example: Domain 3 "Executing" has increased to 31%; this means there will be more questions on domain 3 than the previous version of the exam. The biggest change is the introduction of eight new tasks to the Exam Content Outline. See the chart below. Domain 1 has three new tasks (Task 2, 7 and 8), Domain 2 has one new task (Task 13), Domain 3 has two new tasks (Task 6 and 7), and Domain 4 has two new tasks (Task 6 and 7). To view all the changes in detail, see the latest Exam Content Outline (June 2015). Why Were These Changes Made? 1. To Focus More on Business Benefits & Benefits Realization There is an increased focus on business benefits, strategy, and benefits realization. This is because project managers are now being brought in at the earliest stages of projects when benefits analysis is conducted. Today's PMs often need ensure that the project focuses on business benefits rather than just delivering on time. 2. To Ensure Lessons are Learned Throughout the Project Lifecycle Another topic with added emphasis is lessons learned. Traditionally, PMs only discuss lessons learned during the initiation phase (lessons learned from past projects) and then again during the closing phase (lessons learned on this project). The focus is now on gleaning lessons learned throughout the entire project lifecycle. 3. To Reflect Who Really Creates the Project Charter The consensus now is that it's typically NOT the project manager who is solely responsible for creating the project charter. Instead, it's the sponsor or customer who creates and approves the project charter, while the PM acts as a contributor to its development and informs team members and other stakeholders about its contents. Parts of the exam were changed to reflect this shift. 4. To Underscore the Importance of Stakeholder Relationships Everyone now agrees that project managers build two-way relationships with stakeholders, instead of simply sending one-way communications and updates. The exam changes now place a greater emphasis on managing and engaging stakeholder relationships to effectively complete a project. What These Changes Mean Overall for the PMP Exam Expect to see 25% of the exam content cover new topic areas from those 8 added tasks. Also, expect a large percentage of the rest of the exam questions to be new and updated. Some things are not changing. The eligibility requirements remain the same: every PMP candidate needs to have 4,500 to 7,500 hours of experience in leading and managing projects, and should also have a total of 35 hours of formal project management education. The overall structure also remains the same. The PMP exam will still be made up of 200 multiple choice, scenario-based questions. How Are These Changes Affecting You? Are you taking the PMP exam soon? We'd like to hear how these changes are affecting your exam preparations. Are you already a PMP? What do you think of these changes? Drop us a comment below.

News 3 min read

2014 Wrike Year in Review

It's often said that to successfully head into the future, you need to know, claim, and celebrate your past. And with the new year upon us, now is the perfect time to look back on the year that was and see the entire awesome journey that we've all taken together.

Collaboration 5 min read

Where Collaboration is Heading in 2015: Top 4 Trends to Watch

With 2015 just around the corner, it's time to take a look at the growing collaboration trends that will affect the way you work with your team this coming year. While some are merely logical extensions of ongoing trends, a few may surprise you. 1. More Collaboration via Mobile/BYOD With mobile devices out-shipping desktop units four-to-one, one thing is clear: mobile is king. And it isn't just about units sold, it's also about work behavior on these devices. For example: 47% of all email is now being opened on a mobile device rather than on a desktop email client (based on 251 million opens tracked by Litmus). This doesn't mean completely abandoning desktops in favor of tablets, however, as the sheer overwhelming variety of devices brings about its own challenges. Converting files to compatible formats, for example. What is does mean is that team members will choose to work on personal mobile devices even when they're in the office, just for the convenience of accessing familiar tools and apps. As a result, mobile collaboration apps will continue to be a priority for team collaboration. Software companies creating collaboration tools will have to continue investing in mobile applications, especially with the sheer number of customer teams clamoring for a way to work together via their smartphones. Desktop UIs will continue to take a backseat to the growing demand for mobile collaboration tools. And companies will have to adapt. Over the past six years, the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend has been steadily reaching critical mass, giving CTOs and IT departments their fair share of security concerns. But with cloud storage now more accessible and the benefits of allowing people to work from the familiarity of their personal devices clear, expect 2015 to be the year when BYOD goes mainstream. 2. Increased Need for Systems (and Products) that Work Together Alongside the dominance of mobile and upward trend of BYOD, there will be an increased focus on interoperability: the ability of a system or a product to work with other systems or products without extra effort. Think about it: various new work devices coupled with the need to leverage new technologies that answer customers changing needs equals...? A big challenge. A team member using an iPad needs to participate in the same video conference as someone attending via webcam on a Linux laptop, for example, and it all has to work seamlessly. Work is already being done to make these integrations customizable by end users. Services like IFTTT (If This Then That) and Zapier have made automation between social collaboration tools and the larger ecosystem of work apps possible. For example, the Wrike and Zapier integration gives users the chance to create tasks from their choice of apps — anything from Evernote to Zendesk to Marketo. 3. Email Superseded by Social Collaboration Tools As early as 2010, Gartner was predicting that 20% of business users would choose social networking solutions over email as the main channel for communication and collaboration by 2014. With modern business growing more social in nature, that transition has come, and many companies are introducing cloud-based or internal social collaboration solutions. Here at Wrike, we've long said that managing projects via email is not ideal; there's a loss of context when information is consumed in fragmentary replies. There's a tendency for duplicated information as multiple people respond to one email thread. There's a lack of visibility into how a project is faring, forcing managers to spend time manually gather status updates from each contributor. Project management and social collaboration software solves the email problem by giving users tools to stay on top of projects and make communication more efficient between team members. That's not to say email is dead. Rather, it will go back to being used as a direct communication tool instead of a platform for project management and collaboration. 4. The Rise of Users Helping Users But possibly the biggest trend to watch out for is the rise of the community-led knowledge base. More companies will encourage super users and customer evangelists to take an active role in helping other users in the community, sharing tips and tricks in a common knowledge base. Alongside this, expect customer help desks to dwindle as crowdsourced support steps up to fill the need. Users still expect service in real time, so there will still be a need for live operators. But for the more reactive customer service desks, fully fleshed-out wikis and forums will be key to providing critical information that's contributed by fellow users. Where do you see collaboration going? Agree with our predictions, or do you have a different idea of how we'll collaborate this coming year? Share the post or our collaboration trends Slideshare and see what your colleagues think. We'd love to hear everyone's thoughts. Read Next: 6 Digital Marketing Trends to Watch in 2015 Image Credit: Crystal Ball by Christian Schnettelker on Flickr. Some rights reserved. Edits made.

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Lionel Valdellon