Author Archive

Hi,

I thought you might be interested in a very interesting article that I came across. I visit this gentleman’s blog frequently as I find his posts informative and educational. His latest post is quite interesting in that it discusses Working Smarter and not Harder

Kevin

Hi,

I’ve just posted a new release the web-site. You should be notified of the update when you run the MissingLink dashboard.

This is a rather major update that includes a number of new features. The major new feature that this update includes is a reporting module and a time management module. You can now use MissingLink to manage the time that you spend on each of your projects. Along with the time module is a new reporting module that will allow you to create reports for your time and project based information.

If you have any question, please drop me an email at Support at MissingLinkProjectCenter dot com

Here is a link to the download The easiest Microsoft Outlook Project Management Software

Kevin

Hi,

I’ve just posted a new article on the site entitled, my Top 10 Successful Project Management Tips.

This article discusses a top 10 list of tips that I learned in my 19 years experience in IT. You can find it here:

Successful Project Management Tips

I’d appreciate any feedback you have.

Kevin

Hi,

I’ve just put a new release on the server. You should be prompted to download and install this update to MissingLink Project Management.

This update includes the following:
- resolves some minor bugs
- changes the interface to the appointments and adds a Today button and Next/Prev buttons

Please let me know if you have any problems with this update.

Hi,

I’ve just added a new article to our web-site. The title of this article is “What is Microsoft Outlook” and it explores the difference between Outlook as an application and a platform.

Let me know what you think.

I wanted to point out an independent review of MissingLink Project Center.

This review was done by Dwayne Melancon on his site www.GenuineCuriosity.com.

I really like Dwayne’s writing style and I think he was able to convey some of the great benefits of using MissingLink.

He has a great site on personal productivity, GettingsThingsDone and focus, I’d definately suggest you have a look.

Hi,

I am a regular visitor to a software business forum found on the www.JoelOnSoftware.com web-site. I generally read most of the posts because I am always learning about software, business and well just about everything else. In the current business I am promoting, MissingLink Project Center, The Easiest Project Management Tool for Microsoft Outlook, I am learning about a variety of different topics.

One topic that I frequently find myself working on is marketing. A post was made on the forum that upon first reading I was very excited to see. The poster commented that he was also a small mISV (micro-Independent Software Vendor) and that recently the sales for his product had increased dramaticaly, from $1000/Month to $3000/month to over $5000/month.

Seeing as hitting those number is ultimately my goal, I jumped right in to see what he had to say. He described his results without really posting how he obtained those results. (Red Flag #1) I kept reading though hoping that I might be able to learn something. He then went on to say that he was selling his marketing idea for $20 in the form of an eBook. (Red Flag #2)

I thought to myself, maybe it might be a good investment, $20 is only $20 and if I can recoup any of that investment with even one sale, it would make it worthwhile. So against my own better judgement, I plopped down my $20 and paid for his book.

Well ofcourse I was seriously disappointed. He describes the method in which he made his sales and my first thought was how dishonest and un-ethically he was promoting his product. His solution was to create 30 fake accounts on Yahoo!Answers and by a variety of posting a question, an answer and a vote-up he was able to raise the visibility of his product and ofcourse, the number of sales.

I thought about it quite a bit more and came to the conclusion that for me, that was too dishonest and immoral a way to create sales. I chalked up the $20 to a lesson learned that if sounds to good to be true, it probably is.

I will continue with my marketing efforts in a more honest and ethical way. I hope that actual users of my product will provide feedback and reinforce that what I’ve created is beneficial to others, this will hopefully drive more sales, but in a way that I am proud of, not something that I’d be embarrassed to talk with my family about!

Hi,

Earlier today I uploaded a new version of MissingLink to the server. Unbeknownst to me, that ZIP file was damaged and I didn’t hear about it until later in the afternoon. At approximately 3:50 PM PST on the 14th, I re-uploaded another version and I verified that it is ok. So if you downloaded an update and have a damaged ZIP file, please re-download the update from the server and all should be ok.

John, thanks for the email letting me know what happened.

Kevin

Hi,

I’ve just put an release on the server. This release updates the version number to 1.0.0.32 and includes a series of internal bug fixes. To maintain the bi-monthly release strategy I had to back out a couple of major changes that I had hoped to get out with this release. I expect to have those changes complete over the next few days and will definately include them in the next scheduled release for July 31.

In the next version you can expect to see a Time Management tab that allows you to record the time you’ve spent on your projects, a reporting component for that Time Management. Something you won’t see in the next release is an internal compression strategy. This will hopefully reduce the size of any new items added to MissingLink.

As always you should be notified of the latest release.

Please let me know if you have any issues.

Kevin

Over the course of the last few days, I’ve been thinking about what I do for a living, actually more to the point, what I tell people that I do for a living. As I thought more and more about that topic, it occurred to me that some people might not have a clear idea what a I, as a Project Manager, do and thus the idea for this article was born.

I was trying to come up with a clear description of what I do for a living and it seemed to me that the best way to explain what I do was to present a clear analogy that people can relate to. I think that one of the clearest representation of what a Project Manager does would be the Captain of a ship.

A Captain you see is ultimately responsible for the boat and all of its contents. Similarly a Project Manager is ultimately responsible for the successful completion of the project. A ship’s Captain must know how every aspect of the ship operates, he or she, doesn’t need to be an expert in everything but the Captain must have a clear understanding of how things work together. A Project Manager needs to understand the various inter-dependencies of the project they are working on. This point, I feel, is critical and often overlooked.

There is a large range of ship Captains, from small pleasure boats to large ocean faring cruise ships and there is also a large range of Project Managers from small one-man shop to large 100+ person teams.

A point I’d like to make also is that I believe a Project Manager must have experience in niche that he or she is managing. It would be similar in that you wouldn’t expect someone with experience taking their pleasure boat out for the weekend to captain a large ocean faring cruise ship. The skill set isn’t appropriate and I think it is set up for failure. You must have relevant experience to the project at hand.

At the heart of what you need for an accomplished Captain or Project Manager is the ability to organize and communicate, those two characteristics are critical for the successful completion of a voyage or the successful delivery of a project.

I hope you’ve found this article interesting, even if you haven’t I’d like to hear from you!

Kevin

PS. I’ve written a tool that helps with the organization aspect of Project Management, MissingLink Project Center is the Easiest Project Management Tool for Microsoft Outlook