New Custom Field Formats for More Accurate Project Tracking
Today we're introducing six new Custom Field formats so you can more effectively track the information you need for your projects. Now in addition to the original dropdown list and text formats, you can select from 6 new formats: 1. Checkbox. Use this Field for yes/no criteria such as "Critical mission" to mark important tasks that require executive review. 2. Number. To make it easier to work with numerical values, we've added separate fields for text and number values. 3. Percentage. The Percentage Field enables you to track progress and build more detailed financial reports. 4. Currency. Standardize your budget reports into a single format with new options such as adding currency symbols and decimal places. 5. Duration. Together with the new Time Spent column that displays time tracked with the timer, this field helps you compare estimated vs. actual time spent side-by-side. 6. Date. Set dates for internal milestones, reviews or updates. Software development teams that work with Backlog stories may use this field for time-sensitive requirements. We hope these improvements make your project management and project tracking system in Wrike even more convenient. Don't forget to check out Table view enhancements and new Custom Fields functionality, if you haven't seen it yet. Please share how you use new types of Custom Fields with us and other Wrike users in comments! Not using Wrike Enterprise yet? Start your free 2-week trial today.
![Set due dates assigning tasks via e-mail: [yyyy-mm-dd]](https://web-static.wrike.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=900,format=auto/blog/content/themes/blog-v4-theme/dist/img/featured-image-placeholder.png?av=1e59a781eae484feae8c711131bb7991)
Set due dates assigning tasks via e-mail: [yyyy-mm-dd]
When creating tasks via e-mail you may have a question about how to indicate the due date to make it understandable for the system. The best way is to write it in this format: [yyyy-mm-dd]. Nevertheless Wrike supports another format: [mm-dd-yyyy]. You may separate the year, month and day with the help of any of following symbols: . - /. So if you really like, you can type something like the following: [yyyy/mm/dd]. Update: Wrike now supports the international date format where the day goes first and the month goes second, like 31/12/2008.
Announcing Wrike Integration with Microsoft Teams
Today, we’re proud to announce Wrike's integration with Teams. We’ve worked with Microsoft to deliver powerful Wrike features and functions through the Teams chat interface. Teams users can now create tasks and manage projects, which keeps communication within the context of work and collaboration within Office 365.
Secure access over https
We pay a lot of attention to the privacy and security of data and use every progressive method in this area. Obviously the quality in this area is vitally important for the success of our product. At the current stage of Wrike’s development we plan to introduce the paid version with advanced features by the summer. As for the channel encryption, access over https will be provided with the premium version (SSL).
Enhancements in Wrike’s Timeline
Besides working on the tasks that need to be done, many of our users wanted to easily see what tasks are already done. We added this feature, so now you can get a full picture of your project plan. Completed tasks, as well as active ones, can be now displayed on a timeline. We also added more distinctive visuals on a timeline view to help you quickly get a clear project picture. Completed tasks are grey now, active tasks are blue, and overdue tasks are red.
Export Your Data at Any Time
Today we are glad to tell you that we have implemented the ability to export your data. At any time, you can export all your tasks with their statuses, priorities, responsible parties, start dates and due dates to Excel (xls) format. Your exported tasks will be structured the same way as in your workspace, so you will have a hierarchy of tasks in your Excel file. To export all your tasks from all folders and subfolders, you need to click on “My Folders” in the left pane; then click on the “Export” link. Go ahead and plan your projects in Wrike, at any time, you can export your data. It is risk-free, and a FREE 14-day subscription to Wrike's professional version is included.
Wrike Opens Doors in La Jolla, Creates 150 Jobs for San Diego
It’s a great time to be a San Diegan! Last week, Wrike officially opened an office in La Jolla and announced plans to create 150 jobs in San Diego over the next three years. San Diego Mayor Kevin L. Faulconer and Regional EDC Senior Vice President Sean Barr joined our San Diego team for a press conference to mark Wrike’s entrance into the San Diego market. “Wrike’s expansion represents exactly the kind of innovation startup the city is working to attract,” Mayor Faulconer said in his address. “San Diego has the talent for high-tech and infrastructure for high-growth businesses. Wrike recognizes the possibilities of building a business in San Diego, and I’m excited for the opportunities and jobs that will be available to San Diego residents in the years to come.” The Regional EDC’s Sean Barr spoke to why Wrike chose San Diego for its local expansion over U.S. cities like Austin, Raleigh and Pheonix. San Diego’s rich talent pool was a major factor for the company. With high caliber universities just around the corner, the city offers a great opportunity to attract talented employees as Wrike continues to grow. Six of San Diego’s major broadcast TV stations reported on the press conference, including ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CW, KUSI, and Univision. San Diego ABC reporter Jon Horn interviewed Wrike employee Martin Sohikish and featured an in-depth look at the new office and the vibrant startup culture Wrike brings to San Diego. San Diego Union Tribune and San Diego Business Journal ran online stories with commentary from Seth Shaw, Wrike's CRO and the head of San Diego operations. Named one of North America’s fastest growing companies by Deloitte in 2015, Wrike continues to expand at a rapid pace. We view the La Jolla office as a launch pad for continued growth in the region and place high priority on building a dynamic culture in San Diego. Thanks to the city for welcoming Wrike and supporting our grand opening. It was a great day for Wrike and San Diego! Supporting innovative, fast-growing companies help build our better economy. Welcome to San Diego, @wrike. https://t.co/9lag73Fhib — Kevin Faulconer (@Kevin_Faulconer) February 29, 2016 It all comes down to talent. Congrats to #startup @wrike, creating another SD success story pic.twitter.com/qaHLnelYza — Sarah Lubeck (@S_Lubeck) February 29, 2016 .@Wrike represents exactly the kind of innovative startup #SD is working to attract. -Mayor @Kevin_Faulconer https://t.co/dEOttFqZ1n — Daichi Pantaleon (@Dai_Sqrd) February 29, 2016
Level 5 Leadership with Project Management 2.0
In my last post, I raised the question of how a new type of leader that emerges with the development of collective intelligence looks like and what his/her role is. We concluded that Project 2.0 leader’s role is to motivate his/her team and make the team members more productive, in order to complete the project on time and on budget. He or she needs to be able to guide the collective intelligence of his or her team and leverage it to the benefit of the whole company. Now I hope to enrich my initial idea with thoughts taken from a well-known Level 5 Leadership concept, introduced by Jim Collins in his “Good to Great” book. . Read on and you’ll see why. According to Collins, a Level 5 leader utilizes several simple, but powerful, strategies. Here I’d like to highlight only three of them: Confront the brutal facts: A Level 5 leader must create a culture wherein people have a tremendous opportunity to be heard. Culture of discipline: Level 5 leaders rely on: Disciplined people – you don’t need hierarchy, Disciplined thought – you don’t need bureaucracy, Disciplined action – you don’t need excessive controls. Technology Accelerators: Level 5 leaders avoid technology fads and bandwagons, yet they often become pioneers in using carefully selected technologies that help them to gather momentum. All these concepts are reflected in the idea of Project Management 2.0: Opportunity to be heard The collaborative environment provided and maintained by Project Management 2.0 tools lets everyone on the team share knowledge and relevant information. Thus everyone on the team can be heard and can introduce ideas about the development of the project. Culture of discipline In Project Management 2.0, the collaborative environment is a perfect incubator for the culture of discipline. Project Management 2.0 relies on emergent structures, not on a hierarchy. In Project Management 2.0, people can update their parts of the project plans by themselves. Thus, superfluous reports and documentation are eliminated. That means less bureaucracy. Project Management 2.0 supports free-form collaboration; at the same time, it lets managers keep control of what is happening on the project and who is busy with what. Still, the control is not excessive, and it does not damage the collective work. Gathering momentum Project Management 2.0 can be executed only with the help of special tools -- Web-based technologies that provide rapid and agile collaboration, information-sharing, emergence and integration capabilities for the team. These technologies include linking, tagging, building project views and tasks hierarchies. Project Management 2.0 tools are empowered by collective intelligence and emergent structures. Thanks to these two powerful practices, Project Management 2.0 tools can make companies more agile, projects more controllable and people more productive. As a conclusion, I’d like to say that Level 5 leadership and Project Management 2.0 are two great concepts that can be followed simultaneously. Project Management 2.0 amplifies with Level 5 in many ways, some of which I tried to explore in this post. In both concepts, the team and its collective effort and efficiency are the focus, not the leader. A Level 5 leader, as well as Project 2.0 leader, aims at success and creates superb results, while inspiring and motivating his/her team. A Project 2.0 leader’s role, just like a Level 5 leader’s role, is to empower his/her people and guide them toward achieving a common goal, be it successful project completion or greatness of the whole company.
Wrike Joins the Top 25 Great Places To Work
Ping-pong tables are great, and snacks are nice to have. Competitive salaries and comprehensive benefits packages are wonderful. But what really makes a workplace great? There’s no one tried and true recipe, but there are a few commonalities that great places to work share. One is a mission you can get behind. Another is being surrounded by people who bring out the best in you, and you from them. For short we’ll call this, culture. The value of culture can’t be overstated and for many of us, a good cultural fit is a driving factor in whether or not we’d like to bring our talents to a particular organization. Once you join an organization, feel part of the team, and enjoy the work, you want to tell others so they can enjoy the benefits, too. That’s where the Great Places To Work index comes in handy. And, by the way, Wrike recently received its top 25 Great Places To Work®! Wrike is one of the top 25 Great Places To Work® for 2021 Great Places To Work® is the definitive source to gauge company culture and employee engagement. Their annual survey uses the Emprising™ employee experience software, trusted by thousands of the World’s Best Workplaces™. The results of an independent survey determined which companies made it to the list. Here’s what Wrike employees say: When compared to the typical U.S.-based company, the survey results tell the story: Wrike is a great place to work and to start or advance your career: We’ve come a long way, and our team and product have grown tremendously since our founding in 2006. This year is already on pace to be our best yet as we accelerate our mission to be the leading platform for the enterprise, bringing all departments together into a single digital workspace. On a bit of a winning streak Along with the Great Places To Work® certification, last December, Forrester honored Wrike as a Leader in collaborative work management (CWM) for the third year in a row. Then, 2021 went off to a roaring start with GetApp naming Wrike a category leader for CWM. Next, Capterra put us on the shortlist for project management software, followed by Software Advice tabbing Wrike as one of the five most popular project planning tools. Everything capped off last week in the biggest moment of our company’s history with Citrix completing its acquisition of Wrike! Why work at Wrike? Lots of reasons! Our team continues to innovate and push the boundaries of what’s possible in collaborative work management, and that passion starts with having a cohesive, global team focused on shaping the future of work. To begin, this year’s survey showed that 93% of employees felt welcomed when joining Wrike: Wrike employees’ comments summarize what it’s like to work with our fast-growing team. Culture, people, fun, and leadership all top the list: Aside from the high marks and team members’ pride in their work, Wrike offers a comprehensive benefits package plus the following items to those who join the team: Welcome box with company swag Monthly social events (even during the pandemic) including movie nights, chocolate tasting, virtual escape rooms, virtual cooking and mixology classes, fitness classes, trivia night, and many more Monthly snack box deliveries 401k with company match Department swag boxes Beyond the perks, Wrike celebrates diversity. Within our offices, we’re committed to celebrating the various identities and cultures of our staff through dedicated groups and events. We’re committed to creating and maintaining a diverse and inclusive space where our employees can thrive. For example, we’ve hosted events to celebrate Black History Month and International Women’s Week, and established a community titled “Wrikers of Color.” At the end of the day, we aim to make work fun and continue to push the industry forward as the leader in collaborative work management. Join Wrike and help shape the future of work Our team has an aggressive, ambitious product roadmap and we’re excited at what lies ahead. That’s where you come in! Wrike is hiring across the board in all locations — Prague, Dublin, Tokyo, Dallas, San Diego, and our company headquarters in San Jose, California. Of course we’re open to remote team members, too, especially in this hybrid work environment. Open opportunities range from customer success to sales to marketing, engineering, and many more. Check out all of Wrike’s open positions here.
Looking forward to MLab Roundtable on Evolution of Management Innovation
. Today the discipline of management is pressed by numerous factors, like globalization and shortening strategic lifecycles. Management is developing and embracing the benefits of openness, emergence, adaptability, and many other principles countering those of the management status quo (e.g., hierarchies, command control, bureaucracy) that companies have institutionalized over the past century. Organizations like Management Innovation Lab help to create “tomorrow’s best practices” today. I’ll be happy to add my 2 cents.
Wrike's Founder Contributes to Creating "Tomorrow's Best Practices Today"
Andrew McAfee - HBS Professor, Enterprise 2.0 Thought Leader Gary Hamel - author of "Future of Management," "Competing for the Future" and many other books and articles Lenny Mendonca - Co-leader of McKinsey's Strategy Practice The participants will discuss the management innovation evolution and the challenges of changing the existing practices for greater benefits for individuals and organizations. Andrew is invited to share his ideas on innovating project management in organizations and to prove his words by demonstrating how Wrike can make project teams more productive. After March 7, the Roundtable video will be published on the official site of The McKinsey Quarterly business journal and/or on the MLab site. You are very welcome to watch it! You will always find some thought-provoking posts on bringing innovation to project management in Andrew Filev’s professional blog.
How to Complete Your Student Projects on Time with Wrike's Timeline
If you're a university undergraduate or graduate student, you should know that we recently announced our Wrike for Students program. We want to give you a Wrike account to keep track of all of your assignments, group projects, and random to-dos completely free — because you're already spending enough on your education. Student projects, especially group projects, have unique requirements. You have to figure out how to collaborate effectively, which is even harder when you can't meet in person every day. Using the Timeline in Wrike is one way to make sure you're getting all your work done on time. Basic Organization for Your Group Project To get started, create a new Project and share it with all the members of your team in Wrike. Inside that project, create individual tasks for every piece of work required to reach your end goal. Assign each of those tasks to the responsible group member(s) in your Wrike account, and set the durations and due date for that piece of work. For example, say your project is to write a group report. If you want to finish basic research six weeks before your final deadline, your task called "Complete basic research" should be due six weeks before the task, "Print & submit the final report." Check the Timeline to Review Your Project Schedule Once your group project is in Wrike, with due dates set and individual assignments doled out, everyone can use the Wrike Timeline to view and track the overall progress. The Timeline will show you what tasks are completed (green), overdue (red), and what deadlines are coming up (blue). Set Key Dates as Milestones Any project-related date that absolutely cannot be shifted should be set up as a task with a milestone date. Examples include final deadlines from your professors and presentation dates. Once you set a milestone, that date cannot be automatically adjusted by the rescheduling of other tasks. Create Dependencies to Automate Task Rescheduling If you have a series of tasks for your project that depend on one another (e.g. You can't start "Write first draft of paper" until "Complete basic research" is done), set them up as dependencies on your timeline. There are four common types of dependencies: Task B can't start until Task A is completed. (Most common scenario.) Task B can't start until Task A has started. Task B can't be completed until Task A is completed. Task B can't be completed until Task A has started. By linking all your tasks together as dependencies, you'll be able to reschedule everything (except milestones) with one drag-and-drop movement on the Timeline. This is helpful if work gets pushed back or moved forward. When you drag one task three days either direction, every dependent task will be shifted accordingly. Add Missing Tasks in the Schedule If you've built your project but missed a key step, you can create a new task right from the Timeline to set the due date and dependencies immediately. Then, click to open your task and you can assign the new task to a group member. More on How to Use Wrike for Student Projects If you want to learn more about how to use Wrike for your student projects, check out these other helpful articles: The In-Depth Guide to Using Wrike’s Online Gantt Chart Maker Achieve fast, easy, efficient project management using Gantt charts 4 Common Mistakes New Wrike Users Make, and Tips to Avoid Doing the Same If you're a student and you'd like to take advantage of Wrike to manage your classwork, sign up for your free student account now.
Vote for Wrike as the Best Online Collaboration Tool!
Your active voting in the first stage of this competition has driven Wrike to the finals. If we keep up the pace, all the readers of About.com will know that Wrike is the tool that helps teams to collaborate easily and efficiently like no other software does! Every vote will take your favorite project collaboration software a step closer to winning this award. The poll is open through March 8, 2011, and the system allows voting once per day in each category. Thank you for your invaluable support!
Citrix Completes Acquisition of Wrike
Last month, I had the pleasure of announcing exciting news related to the next phase in our company’s journey — one that would see a strong partnership between Wrike and unified digital workspace leader, Citrix. Today, I am pleased to share that Citrix has completed its acquisition of Wrike, and we are now shaping the future of work, together. Wrike joins the Citrix family under a common mission to remove the complexity of today’s hybrid and distributed work environments so employees and organizations can perform at their best. By bringing together the power of Citrix’s unified workspace infrastructure and our collaborative work management platform, organizations can enable employees to focus on the work that matters and accelerate business results. For an Orderly, Rapid Digital Transformation Our partnership with Citrix comes at a critical time for companies worldwide, as business leaders continue to grapple with the challenges presented by the recent pandemic. The pace of the Digital Transformation was accelerated last year, with a McKinsey Global Survey reporting that companies moved up the digitization of their customer and supply-chain interactions and of their internal operations by three to four years and the share of digital or digitally enabled products in their portfolios by seven years. Additionally, executives said their companies moved 40X more quickly than they thought possible before the pandemic regarding remote working. What would have taken more than a year to implement took an average of 11 days to find workable solutions. The fast pace of change in 2020 presents a new challenge in 2021, though. Now, employees are dealing with complex, distributed work environments and a heterogeneous array of applications, communication channels, and devices. Rather than enabling teams to work as one, these technologies get in the way of efficient and meaningful work. And organizations are dealing with the next big question - stay remote, return to office, or transition to a hybrid environment? According to PwC’s US Remote Work Survey, less than one in five executives say they want to return to the office as it was pre-pandemic. That means another change is on the horizon, and we’re anticipating it. Together, with Citrix, we recognized the time has come for a simplified, secure digital workplace that will enable organizations to transition to “anywhere working” by keeping employees engaged and productive, no matter where they are. To accomplish this, organizations need to move beyond the basic infrastructure they put in place last year just to survive and roll out more comprehensive solutions that will give them the competitive edge and help them thrive. We’re guiding organizations through this new transition by joining forces with Citrix to bring together two powerful, complementary solutions that will power the workplace of the future, where employees are productive, creative, and collaborative regardless of location. The next step is to work closely with the CIO office to make sure IT has what they need to architect their future workplace. Rising Above the “New Normal” The events of last year put CIOs in the hot seat, as organizations depended on IT to enable the transition to remote work environments, all while continuing operations and staying afloat. There may have been bumps in the road, but many organizations completed a decade’s worth of work in a matter of months thanks to IT. This year, IT is on the hot seat again, as business leaders now look to the CIO to continue to develop the strategies and select the solutions needed to support a remote workforce and enable a secure, unified, on-brand online customer experience. As CIOs build out their 2021 strategy and architect the solutions to adapt to the next normal, Wrike will be a critical part of the workplace stack, enabling a smooth and non-disruptive move to the hybrid or long-lasting distributed workplace. And how do we do this? We’re fully customizable - Wrike is the only intelligent, versatile, and collaborative work management platform for the enterprise that can be fully customized for any department, team, or workflow. We offer automated, intelligent workflows - With Wrike, you can standardize your workflows to ensure cross-functional collaboration while adapting to your unique needs to maximize performance. We’re one platform where everyone can truly work as one - With the shift to digital, the old way of managing work, manually across dozens of tools, keeps your employees from focusing on work that really matters. We’re scalable - A wall-to-wall work management tool is not a nice-to-have anymore, it's mission critical. Wrike logs more than 10 million tasks and 1.5 million projects monthly and offers the reliability and power to support an enterprise-wide digital transformation. To find out how IT can leverage Wrike and Citrix Workspace to meet business demands faster, visit: https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2021/03/01/citrix-workspace-and-wrike-empower-it-for-a-better-employee-experience/ Welcome to the Citrix Family As we join the Citrix family, so do our customers. I mentioned in a recent blog post that this partnership presents many benefits to Wrike customers, and I would like to make it clear that all of our customers will continue to receive the same level of attention and support they’ve come to expect. This acquisition means that we will be able to quickly scale our product and accelerate our roadmap so customers get more from their investment, and the partnership with Citrix allows us to work more closely with IT departments. In doing so, we can enable cross-functional workflows, connecting with the systems across the organization and becoming the single digital workspace for all employees. We look forward to keeping you updated on progress as we, alongside Citrix, continue to build the workplace of the future where employees are productive, creative, and collaborative, no matter their location.
SayitRight Marketing Solutions Use Wrike To Manage Busy Marketing Office
Do you manage various projects for numerous clients? Do your projects imply a lot of time communicating with clients? Are you tired of e-mail mess in your inbox? SayitRight Marketing Solutions solved those problems with the help of Wrike. “No matter how many projects are active or on hold at the moment, Wrike lets me keep my fingers on the pulse of the business and see where we stand. Since the progress and requirements are tracked, there is no ground for miscommunication. Kudos, Wrike!” says Joseph Andrade, the owner of SayitRight. Read the full story “Seamless collaboration saves time and enhances working process.”
Wrike for Hangouts Chat: Get More Done in the Context of Conversations
With Wrike for Hangouts Chat, teams can quickly get work into Wrike, where it can be better managed, tracked, and reported on, as well as seamlessly collaborate on Wrike projects in Chat, enabling them to get more work done while staying in the context of conversations.
Letting Users Take the Lead in Choosing their Tools Can Benefit the Whole Business
Recently I came across an article about how hard it can be to introduce new enterprise business intelligence technologies to a company. This article reflects an important corporate phenomenon: “mandating and forcing users to adopt a standard practice or technology will often create resistance and political backlash.” The author underlines that transforming and changing the way people do business is never easy, and she advises the heads of IT departments on the best ways to implement the changes.Why is it so hard to make users adopt the new software introduced by IT departments? One of the reasons is that sometimes the choice of software is made levels above the actual users. In these cases software is adopted without taking users’ opinion into consideration. Often users have no budgets and little decision power, and that is why all software vendors’ marketing efforts are targeted at top management and heads of IT departments, who make the final choice of software. Many experts agree that this fact is convenient for the IT departments, because they get as much control as possible over users’ operations. Top management sometimes may not know the specific character of their employees’ work. That’s why the managers’ choice for software may become an additional barrier for effective collaboration, instead of being a helpful solution. As a result, people can be forced to adapt to the imposed tool that does not answer their requirements and can be hard to master. They may have to spend weeks or even months on training. Still, after all the training efforts, the IT-introduced solution might turn out to be ineffective for successful team work. Information can often be hard to find, as it is kept in disconnected files. Sometimes lack of built-in collaboration vehicles in an IT imposed solution can slow down the whole business. Change in enterprise management software adoption All these factors are making the top-management of many companies change their views on the IT department’s role in the adoption of a new business solution. Now there is a strong tendency of transformation in enterprise software adoption due to growing user sophistication. Social networks, blogs, wikis and other Web 2.0 technologies people use at home help them find similar tools for more effective work in the office. People find new ways to work together and collaborate without any help from IT departments. These ways are Enterprise 2.0 technologies, and they turn out to be more efficient. Why? An Enterprise 2.0 online collaboration platform can make team-work frictionless, as it is more flexible. Second-generation software is designed with user needs in mind. Team members can customize their collaborative space and make it specific to their own needs. The new-generation software is easy to use. Simplicity has become a key driver of technology adoption, especially in the last 10 years, as advanced technologies have developed simpler user interfaces. For example, blogging can be called a revolution of simplicity. To blog, all you need to do is write a title and, some content, and then click publish. It is that simple to share your ideas with the rest of the team and get their feedback in the comments. Collaboration software can do even more for business productivity. It may be the key for streamlining the work process and may help companies avoid unnecessary paper work and phone calls. Everything is kept in one place – a collaborative space that can be accessed by all the team members. Many companies today realize these benefits and take advantage of them by letting their employees choose the software, which will correspond to the end-users’ needs. As an example we can take SightLines Consulting – a consulting company where employees had lots of complaints on complexity of their CRM software. The application was chosen by the top-management. The tool was stable, but end-users kept saying that the application is inflexible and hard to use. The sales people - the end-users of the software – tend to spend most of their working time out of the office, on the road. The major inconvenience was that the application was impossible to access any other way than through their internal network. However, “sales people are motivated to produce” says SightLines Consulting president Thomas Foydel. This means, that they are motivated to find ways and tools to be more productive. The end-users turned to Enterprise 2.0 technologies. When they found a solution that adds actual value to their everyday job, they adopted it. The result was doubling the speed of sales team work and improved customer satisfaction. The whole business became more successful. The top executives at SightLines Consulting are now sure that they made the right decision by letting the sales team choose their tools. Enterprise 2.0 software brings new ways of collaboration and is adopted according to different standards. It’s easy to use, effective and flexible. This software is brought to the enterprise the bottom-up way, and very often is suggested by end-users themselves. It’s no surprise that the second-generation software adoption and usage are more thorough than those of traditional software. Peter Coffee, a recognized software-as-a-service advocate, said that the software that end-users had before might have been stable, mature and predictable, but “it was not transforming people's ideas of how they do business”. I would add that it was not giving them enough space for implementation of their ideas. IT-departments should not ignore this fact. Changing IT-staff altitude towards the new-generation technologies will benefit the whole organization. IT departments need to learn to evaluate the new opportunities. In particular, IT needs additional competency in evaluating and administering service agreements. Enterprise 2.0 is not just software. It represents another way of managing IT. This means that IT departments should now shift their focus toward managing Enterprise 2.0 vendor relationships, as operational responsibility over the actual hardware and software moves to vendors. Some CIOs have already begun to move in this direction. For example, Alastair Behenna, CIO of Harvey Nash, says that their IT staff is looking into emerging technologies and trying to stay in the loop. “We have a lab where our team—from the help desk to the Web folks—is encouraged to spend as much as 10 percent of its time figuring out if there is commercial benefit to something [new] and doing a proof of concept if so,” - Behenna confirms. Of cause transformation of the software adoption process will be different in various companies. Some enterprises will still preserve the old ways of choosing software without taking the end-users’ opinion into consideration. Others have already realized the benefits of letting their employees take the lead in selecting their tools and making teams more productive. Examples of companies like Shell, Harvey Nash and many others, prove that allowing end-users choose the software according to their needs can make the whole business performance better.
In Case You Missed It
Strategy First impressions on Wrike - really like the structure. Far easier to use than Basecamp or 5pm. stoner43 @dawnbierschwal awesome, thank you! that wrike.com looks pretty cool hymseo https://bit.ly/aIm1aA - Wrike.com's Project Management meets Google Wave rubycut @wrike This is what I was looking for. WalterNaeslund Here comes usefulness! RT @ydring: Wrike integrates Google Wave into their PM-tool. Seems like a good idea: https://bit.ly/dAkFHk TheGoogleNinja Wrike.com’s Project Management meets Google Wave https://bit.ly/d2s3es #google laurenkuhlman I considered giving basecamp a try but I am back to wrike. TechSauce New Project Management in Google Wave from Wrike.com https://bit.ly/9tQWUJ #wave #google GoogleAppsNews Google Wave Gets Project Management Via Wrike.com https://bit.ly/cnZyRZ JohnFontana #Wrike releases project management that integrates with Google Wave platform. Projects, tasks, due dates, scheduling, comments. lkr @DuaneStorey We use wrike, like it better kolcoo Tools: Wrike (Project Management Software) converts your e-mails into shared plans on the Web https://bit.ly/REdL And one more from our French-speaking followers : isa2886 Wrike application de gestion de projet en ligne. Planning, temps passés,... https://bit.ly/9KILKX By the way, we’re happy to notice that Wrike has been listed 25 times! Is Wrike a part of your faves list yet? List it right now!
Our CEO's Guest Post on Inc.: Why Collaboration is Integral to Success
Do you follow Inc.? Make sure you haven't missed our fearless CEO's latest contributed article on the site! Just to tease your tastebuds: Andrew shares his thoughts on why collaboration, crowdsourcing, and collective wisdom are integral to any organization's success. He also describes how companies that successfully introduce collaboration into their culture ultimately produce successful — if not groundbreaking — results. Andrew's guest article can give you some insight into how everyone from 3-D printing hobbyists to amateur DJs, and Kickstarter companies to large corporations, have thrived using collaboration as a key ingredient to craft their success. "Is collaboration essential to growth? Yes, now more than ever. The lack of recent hype merely suggests that the concept of collaboration has been absorbed into the philosophy of many organizations. And if yours hasn't done it yet, make the change. It should be an integral part of every company's DNA in order to survive and thrive. There are two reasons for this..." To learn more about those two reasons and the companies "doing it right," read the full article on Inc.com.
Wrike on BlackBerry: Your Projects in Your Pocket
The compact dashboard in Wrike’s BlackBerry app gives you a short summary of your most important tasks. Using the “Favorite folders” button, you can access your priority projects and make the necessary changes to them within seconds: create a new task and assign it to a certain team member, reschedule, reassign or complete a task, post a comment to a task, view the attachments. Now, with Wrike’s BlackBerry app, you can literally keep your project data in your pocket! With instant access to your project data though your smartphones, you and your peers don’t have any barriers to collaboration when you’re out of the office. You can collaborate on your projects wherever you are – waiting for your flight in an airport lounge, driving in a taxi to a meeting or having a quick meal in a café. Would you like to get Wrike’s app for your BlackBerry FOR FREE? You can download it from BlackBerry App World right away! If you have any questions or some feedback to share, don’t hesitate to contact our Support team or leave a comment to this post.
Wrike as Event Management Software
Wrike can help you manage events very successfully. You are welcome to view a demo in which our users, Darren and Lisa, tell you how easily they manage call for papers, organize their teams, control contractors and communicate with sponsors. They replaced heavy spreadsheets by Wriks’ easy-to-access online database. View a demo: How Wrike Helps a Conference Manager to Run Events Successfully
Leading Collective Intelligence
It’s been a long time since I wrote my last post. The end of the last year and beginning of this one were very busy and exciting. I was participating in several industry conferences, meeting new people, getting new ideas from them and picking up some interesting topics. One of them is leadership in project management. The development of collective intelligence and collaborative Web 2.0 solutions gives this topic a whole new angle. I thought of writing a couple of posts, reflecting on my perception of leadership in the age of collective intelligence. So here’s the first one. Every now and then I come across articles on the power of the collective brain. Analysts, bloggers, business consultants, and professors in business schools keep talking about the value of empowering your team and unleashing collective intelligence. A growing number of people are discovering through their own experience that wholes are indeed far more than the sum of their parts. If individuals are coming together with a shared intention in a conducive environment, then the result of their collective work will far transcend the work of the individuals involved. I support Andrew McAfee’s view that leveraging this collective brain can help an organization to deal with many financial challenges. McAfee suggests that the answers to a company's challenges reside in the minds of the employees dispersed across the organization. Each particular individual may not have the best answer, but technology can be used to pull together the bits and pieces of employees' knowledge to find the right solutions. In one of its reports, Forrester indicated that Web 2.0 is being broadly and rapidly brought into enterprises to enhance performance in different spheres. In this respect, project management is perhaps the most popular field for adopting a new technology. Indeed, various Project Management 2.0 technologies do a great job in giving team members more opportunities to communicate, share files, update each other on the latest project news, and work together in real time despite time differences and vast distances. Project Management 2.0 tools become a system that lets members contribute and modify content in a ‘freeform’ manner—with a minimum of imposed structure in the form of workflows, decision right allocations, interdependencies and data formats. The best tools in this field contain mechanisms to let the structure emerge over time. Such mechanisms include linking, tagging, building views and hierarchies. Using a project management system as an emergent social information environment, the team becomes more powerful. However, there are many concerns on the project managers’ side that this freeform team collaboration can turn into chaos. Does the growth of the collective power of a team decrease the power of a project manager? To find an answer to this question, we need to take a look at the team itself. With the next-generation technologies, people have more freedom of collaboration and access to more information. Yet, having more information, more new ideas and more choices can puzzle people. So people start looking for somebody to guide their actions and decisions. They are looking for project leaders. In the contemporary reality of growing collective power, teams need leaders more than ever. So collective intelligence and adoption of Project Management 2.0 tools and practices do not eliminate the need for project leaders. However, it looks like project leaders of the collaborative age cannot follow the old-fashioned command-and-control pattern anymore. Many experts agree that, project leadership is undergoing a radical redefinition. For example, Edward Marshall, president of The Marshall Group, Inc., writes: “We are at a turning point in organizational and leadership history. The 20th century command-and-control approach, which worked quite well in the manufacturing age, no longer works in the 21st century information age, which is global, high-tech and incredibly competitive. It’s time to catch up to current realities.” I couldn’t agree more. Project Management 2.0 transforms traditional perception of leadership. Well, what does the new Project 2.0 leader look like? Seth Godin addresses this question in his latest book “Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us.” “Tribes”, according to Seth, are groups of people with a shared interest and a way to communicate. Web 2.0 technologies facilitate the formation of such tribes. However, to be really effective, tribes need leaders. Leadership, as Seth puts it, “is about creating change you believe in.” What I like about this rather laconic definition is that it highlights the two important things. Leaders should: 1. “create change”, i.e. improve the existing state of things 2. “believe in” this change, i.e. they should join accountability with passion. And what’s the leader’s main role? According to Seth, it’s to “increase the effectiveness of the tribe and its members” by: • transforming the shared interest into a passionate goal and desire for change, • providing tools to allow members to tighten their communications, and • leveraging the tribe to allow it to grow and gain new members Seth speaks about tribes that are formed on the web, not in the corporate environment. Still I think that this leadership concept can be applied to Project Management 2.0. Indeed, the Project 2.0 leader’s role is to motivate his team and make the team members more productive, in order to complete the project on time and on budget. He can do it by: • setting a goal that his team will be aspiring to and make this goal clear to every team member • providing the tools that will make the team’s collaboration most efficient, and • leveraging his team’s collective brain and capabilities Let me underline that this type of leadership is more about empowering a team by helping it to collaborate than about telling people what they should do. Also, the emphasis is more about the effectiveness of the people on the team level in achieving the goal. While the leader is the one who has accountability and personal commitment, it’s really the team that is the focus. In many ways, this echoes the concepts of “Level 5 Leadership” as described in the book, "Good to Great" by Jim Collins. In addition, the point about setting a goal is very much aligned with Collins’ BHAG concept. In my next post, I’ll explore this concept in more detail and will try to present it from Project Management 2.0 point of view.
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.