Scrapping Sticky Notes for PM Tools

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Scrapping Sticky Notes for PM Tools
S.A. Scauzillo (July 26, 2007)

Looking to increase productivity and streamline operations, more companies outside the traditional IT realm are ditching spreadsheets and turning to project management tools that focus on metrics and team communication. In doing so, they’re differentiating themselves from competitors and better accommodating their distributed workforces.

In the toy business, project metrics can determine what gets loaded into Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve and what gets left behind in his workshop. John Meyer, CTO of Funrise Toy Corp., says the biggest project management challenge faced by his company’s designers and manufacturers is meeting the deadline for new toys to be made, ordered, shipped and sold in time for the Christmas shopping season.

Project managers in the toy-making industry often juggle 80 to 100 projects. Some of these initiatives last three weeks and others stretch out over a year or more, depending on project complexity. All this volume can make developers and project managers blind to bottlenecks. And when that happens, it means that new toys might not be ready for the annual tradeshow deadlines in January.

Project management software tools have “allowed us to look more carefully at those bottlenecks, including dates of completion,” says Meyer, whose company uses a project management office (PMO) to manage distributed projects involving designers in Los Angeles and manufacturers in China for the past three years.

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