The Foundation of Good Choices: Measure Thrice and Cut Once
. How do you know that the option you’re going to choose is the best one? In such big decisions, you can’t rely on flipping a coin. Here is a well-known solution valued by millions of decision-makers: Compare different alternatives. Even if you have a favorite variant, it doesn’t hurt to take a look at other options just to confirm your decision. So for your convenience, we’ve prepared a list of Wrike’s competitors with a feature-by-feature comparison table. Take a look and make your choice: Wrike vs. LiquidPlanner Wrike vs. Huddle Wrike vs. 5pm Wrike vs. Clarizen Wrike vs. Central Desktop Wrike vs. Zoho Projects Wrike vs. Basecamp Wrike vs. Attask
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Remote Work: Why Reddit and Yahoo! Banned It
When an internal memo from Yahoo! leaked to the public back in February 2013, there was a collective groan not just from people working in the company, but also from supporters of remote work in general. The memo banned remote work for all Yahoo! staff and cited that more effective collaboration would happen face-to-face — that it all begins with being physically present in the office. A Yahoo! spokesperson clarified that banning work from home was not a blanket repudiation of remote work, rather, it was a move that was right for the company's individual situation. They were not the last ones to try to put an end to the practice of remote work. Best Buy followed suit in March 2013 by getting rid of their flexible work program and making employees hold to a more traditional 40-hour work week. Even more recently, Reddit announced the closing of two branch offices in Utah and New York, giving employees two months to relocate to the San Francisco Bay Area; then-CEO Yishan Wong cited that while remote work was good for some workers, in the macro scheme of things, the company just wasn't able to collaborate and coordinate efficiently. Why Ban Remote Work? So what has been prompting this about-face regarding work-at-home policies? Why are top technology companies pulling the plug on one of the hottest perks for today's workers? Some clues can be found in the Yahoo! memo. It claimed: "Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home." The implication being that remote work slows down overall productivity and lowers quality of output. The memo also positioned the policy as a way to unify the forces physically, stating that the best ideas usually come from face-to-face interaction around hallways and office water coolers. The truth is that there are many challenges with remote work, we can't pretend otherwise. We blogged about the 8 biggest challenges for leading virtual teams and found that according to our survey, the top two challenges were (1) poor communication, and (2) a lack of access to expertise needed to support the work. Jennifer Owens of Working Mother Media says that the move stems from fear: “Fear that if I can’t see you, I don’t know what you’re working on. It’s a distrust of your own workforce.” What it boils down to is that these companies decided against remote work because they believe virtual collaboration is inefficient. Instead of overhauling their work-from-home policies and investing in better collaboration technology, they'd rather herd their people back into a single physical location to enhance teamwork. But... People Love Remote Work! Even though companies like Yahoo!, HP, Best Buy, and Reddit have returned to more traditional work schedules from centralized locations, a thousand more startups and technology companies continue to fly the flag for remote work. Allowing remote work means teams can take advantage of the resources brought by distributed team members who do not want to pack up and move to company headquarters. And people value the perk! According to our remote collaboration survey of over 1,000 respondents, 25% of workers value remote work so much that they’re willing to accept a reduction in salary in order to enjoy it. Other sacrifices they're ready to make include: free meals, reduction in vacation, and paid cellphone plans. How to Make Remote Work Work So what do we say to the companies who have given up on remote work? How can a company successfully implement their work-from-home policy and avoid possible negative repercussions? You have to weigh up the working from home benefits and drawbacks. Terri Griffith, Professor of Management at Santa Clara University and author of The Plugged-In Manager, says: “It takes a thoughtful combination of people, technology, and process to gain the value of virtual work.” We've put together a free eBook on the reasons you should embrace remote work, and the entire second chapter deals with how to successfully implement the policy at your company. We included relevant case studies from companies that have thrived on distributed teamwork, including Johnson & Johnson and Zappos. Want to find out more about how Wrike can help your organization make working remotely work for them? Read more about our flexible work management platform here. Photo Credit: Asher Isbrucker on Flickr. Some rights reserved. Photo edited.
The Greatest Productivity Tip: Get More Sleep (Infographic)
The infographic below lists some important reminders and crucial stats about how sleep can positively affect the way we work on a daily basis. Read the tips and put them into practice to start catching some quality Zzzs!
Wrike Goes Tablet with the Release of iPad App
We’re dedicated to making your project management and collaboration in Wrike as comfortable as possible, and we’re taking another major step to achieve that. We’re happy to announce the news that many of you were looking forward to. Wrike’s FREE project management app for iPad is available on iTunes now! So, if you rely on Apple gadgets in your business, this might be a very special update for you. The interface of Wrike’s native iPad app is neatly adjusted for your favorite tablet. You can view, create and edit tasks as easily as you do using Wrike on your PC or Mac. Whenever a change occurs in your project plans and priorities, you can make the necessary edits to your plans with just a few taps in the fast and friendly interface of the app. For instance, your client calls you and says he needs some documents a.s.a.p., not next week as planned. Even though you’re in a café at this moment, you can adjust your schedule in Wrike and communicate the changes to your peers right way. With Wrike project management software on iPad, it will take seconds. You can simultaneously reschedule several tasks for today! So, before you even get back to your office, the team is working on the assignment. Download Wrike’s iPad app on iTunes now to always stay on track and save time managing your projects anywhere you are! We’ll be glad to know your impressions, so if you have any feedback, comment on this post.
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Conduct Lessons Learned Throughout the Engagement
A June 2010 survey that I personally conducted of project managers and project personnel showed that 57% of responders indicated that they conducted lessons learned sessions either not at all or less than 10% of the time. Now consider that more than 50% of all projects fail (as much as 76% fail as noted in one PMI survey discussed on LinkedIn) and that’s a lot of lessons that could be learned and shared. Think about all of the project dollars spent on those failed projects that could be more productively spent on successful projects if we were all learning from our mistakes and sharing those learning moments with other project managers. We have good intentions, but the problem is we’re all very busy in our professional world. By the time a project engagement is over either the customer is moving on to other things or the PM and team is or all of the above. We try, but it doesn’t always happen. Because I came to the revelation that it likely would be helpful to learn in mid-stream on a project and because so many of us have to immediately move on to the next project once we’ve completed the present engagement (not to mention continue to manage the other projects we also have going at the moment) - I’ve begun to think of lessons learned as an ongoing activity that needs to happen during the project. I’m not certain if this happens often or if I’m offering a ground-breaking idea here, but it seems to be working for me and my teams and customers as I’ve begun to incorporate it into my projects. Here is my process… Planning the lessons learned sessions into the project During the creation of the initial project schedule, I look at the statement of work and the tasks we need to accomplish and consider whether we’re performing a long project or one that is basically a phased approach broken into several sub-projects. If we’re performing a phased approach implementation – which is more common in the projects I generally lead - then it’s relatively easy to incorporate multiple lessons learned session into one project. At the end of each phase, schedule a lessons learned session – it’s that simple. If there are no such obvious stopping points in a given project, then it becomes more difficult to find appropriate places in the schedule to plan lessons learned sessions to discuss the issues we’ve encountered so far and the lessons we’ve learned along the way. On these types of projects, I look at key deliverables as the break point to insert lessons learned discussions. This could be the delivery of a functional design document for an IT project, or a draft of major marketing materials for a marketing campaign, etc. The important thing is to get them into the schedule and plan for them and to space them far enough apart so as to make them valuable sessions and not just re-dos of a session that happened two weeks ago. And be sure to actually conduct them…being lazy and having people communicate their ideas through a series of emails won’t suffice. Conducting the lessons learned sessions The actual sessions themselves should not be really any different than the post-deployment lessons learned discussions most people are used to. The big difference may be that you actually still have to work with all of these individuals and keep their cooperation and motivation going for the rest of the project. So be honest and constructive, but also be careful. Make the information you share and discuss useful – not just a waste of time. Commend individuals personally for accomplishments, but also provide critical feedback – in the proper manner of course – when necessary because you still must maintain the project momentum. The takeaway here must be to improve project performance as a whole – whether that’s on the next phase or next deliverable. The project-ending lessons learned session does provide the project delivery team and the customer with a nice platform to really dig deep into what was good and what was bad about the engagement. And that should still happen – it’s just not always possible. But incorporating several mid-project reviews can help keep the project on track and eliminate problem areas from continuing throughout the engagement. Summary As much as we’d all like to say we incorporate best practices all the way through a project and we never skip critical steps along the way, we know that’s just not true of all engagements. When the project is encountering issues or the project timeline is in jeopardy, the fundamentals are sometimes the first thing to go. It’s a bad idea because the information you can gain from lessons learned sessions could be invaluable to both your team and to other project teams in your organization. By breaking these sessions down and conducting them in shorter and more frequent meetings throughout the project you can both keep them momentum going and learn along the way to help you deliver even better right now…not just in the future. It may really make a difference in the overall success of the engagement.
Build Extended Reports in Wrike
It has become possible, thanks to the new field that allows you to specify the date filtering criteria. Now you can filter tasks not only by the due date, but also by the creation date, start date, completion date and the date when last changes have been made. Remember that you can combine such sorting criteria as dates, responsible party, task status and priority to get clear visibility of a particular part of your plans. In other words, you can create a report that tells you what high-importance tasks John Smith has completed by today, tomorrow or any other date. Or what tasks Mary Brown has completed since the beginning of the week. Or what tasks created by you start on the next Monday. Your partial reports can be created in each folder, as well as overall reports across all your projects can be created in the special “Reports” area. The “Reports” area has one more advantage: you can select tasks by the author. Now it’s your turn to benefit from Wrike’s easy-to-customize reports and evaluate your organizational productivity. There is always room for improvement in successful businesses. Very likely, you will be pleased with the opportunities for growth of your team's overall performance.
Print These Valentine's Day Cards for Your Favorite Coworkers
Ready for Valentines? Here's a way to show appreciation for your team. Just print one (or all!) of these PDFs on regular 8.5” x 11” copy paper, fold or cut them out, and give them to your work buddies and office crushes this February 14th. ;)
Wrike's iPhone App Available on iTunes!
“I love Wrike’s iPhone app! It has a clean and logical user interface. I really like the favorites folder feature, since I have hundreds of folders!” This is what John Burry, an independent mobile consultant and a user of Wrike project management software, told us about Wrike’s iPhone app after he tried it in action. John, thank you for your kind words! Want to see what made John so happy? You’ve been waiting for this to happen, and the day has come – Wrike’s iPhone app is now available on iTunes! You can get it right now FOR FREE and run the app on your iPhone or iPod touch with iOS of version 3.1.2 and higher. Get the project management app now and collaborate on your projects in a train, an exhibition hall or even your car, stuck in traffic jam, as efficiently as you do when you use Wrike in the office!
The Ultimate Creative Process Checklist
Creativity is no mystery, rather it is a series of stages. This ultimate creative process checklist is a step-by-step procedure for engaging in creative work. And is based on the 4 stages of the creative process outlined by English social psychologist Graham Wallas, namely: preparation, incubation, illumination, & verification.
10 Skills Required for Great Digital Marketers (Infographic)
"Great men are not born great, they grow great." —Mario Puzo, The Godfather Being a great digital marketer is partially intuition and the ability to speak the language of your audience; but a larger part is continually studying and learning new skills to make sure your marketing team is evolving at an equal pace with the ever-changing digital world. Below are 10 skills you need today to go above and beyond in digital marketing. Take a look, and see what you can improve. Follow a project management methodology Understand SEO best practices Communicate with technical staff and upper management Be able to create or provide direction on creating a digital marketing strategy Understand email marketing best practices Manage your marketing staff and the costs incurred to provide the best outcomes Evaluate your social media options Be able to continually provide business justification of your projects Understand Google Analytics to interpret and communicate data, metrics and marketing analytics Know and drive the entire team toward your project goals Source: Premium IT Solutions What else does it take to be great at digital marketing? If you've worked with great marketers, or you've honed your own skills year after year, share your wisdom in the comments. What does a great digital marketer need these days?
UK Survey says: Older Workers Less Stressed Than Millennials (Infographic)
Digging deeper into the data from the Wrike Digital Work Report 2016, we found something unexpected: the suggestion that with age not only comes wisdom, but also — potentially — greater resilience to the stress of extra work demands while maintaining higher levels of productivity.
Welcome Wrike's Native Apps for iPhone, iPad and BlackBerry!
You’ve already had a quick spy preview of Wrike’s native apps for your favorite mobile devices – iPhone, iPad and BlackBerry. Now we’re happy to reveal the apps in full glory – smart, pretty and FREE! The apps enable you to stay on top of your projects, regardless of your location. When you have access to your tasks while you’re on the move, you are able to quickly respond to the changes that arise in your schedule. Using Wrike on your iPhone, iPad or BlackBerry, you can create and delegate new assignments, manage them, easily adjust your schedule and discuss issues with your colleagues. All of this in a fast and handy interface, so you just need a couple of taps to access all the necessary project data. Today, Wrike’s project management apps for iPhone and iPad are already available for FREE download on iTunes. Wrike’s BlackBerry app will appear at BlackBerry App World shortly. Meanwhile, you can download it from our Web site by following these links from your device: OS versions 4.5-4.7, OS versions 4.7 and higher.
Checklists Make Your Tasks as Easy as 1-2-3
When tasks have multiple components, it can be challenging to track what has been completed versus what is still in progress, especially when different segments must be completed by different people. To help you make these tasks more structured and easier to track, Wrike added a new, useful feature. Now you can further break down your tasks into to-do lists or step-by-step instructions with the help of checklists in your task description. To take advantage of checklists, find the new checkbox button in the task description's formatting panel. This feature will add another level of depth to keep your tasks organized and clean. When listing the task's components in the description, it's up to you to order your list to suit your preference, whether that be by due date, assignees, importance, or simply as ideas come to mind. Once a component is completed and you check its box, the item turns grey to fade out of focus. With checklists, all collaborators can easily see what has been finished and what needs to be done before the entire task is completed. One of the cool things about the checklists is that they can help you avoid confusing scenarios when a task is assigned to several employees. Before, one employee would mark an entire task as completed when only his or her individual contribution was done. Now, when you create one task and assign that task to five different people, add a checklist to your task description for clearer workload distribution. Use this feature and kindly remind John to go to the checklist within the task to indicate that he has finished only his portion. When everyone has checked off their separate line items, the last contributor or task author knows to mark the entire task as completed. Have you heard of small wins? Psychologists say that completing several smaller tasks one after another has a powerful motivating effect when you're in the middle of a large assignment. See how that works for you and your team with the new feature! And for additional benefit, we hope checklists can serve as your convenient alternative while we continue working hard to bring subtasks to your workspace.