SharedPlan Connect, January 15, 2005
“We don't
accomplish anything in this world alone ... and whatever happens is the result
of the whole tapestry of one's life and all the weavings of individual threads
from one to another that creates something.”
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor
Happy New Year to You All!
Last month I discussed our beta effort for SharedPlan
Professional Edition. We are making
terrific progress, both because we are receiving thoughtful, honest feedback
from our beta participants and because the product was fairly robust as we
started the process. We can now see the
light at the end of the beta tunnel, so we plan to launch the product in
mid-February. Look for an announcement
in this space in the next newsletter.
International
Flavor
One of the things that I find fascinating about our business
is how it has grown internationally. Because we sell via the Internet and are able to complete transactions
in many different currencies, we have sold SharedPlan around the world. A third of our sales are in countries
outside the United States, including one copy sold to a customer in Fiji! (I am intensely curious as to what projects
our Fiji customer is planning and managing. Fiji customer, if you are reading this and would like to entertain our
readers and me, please share!) However, we do need to improve our
penetration into the continents of Africa, South America, and Antarctica.
Of course, with this international success comes some
responsibility to make the product as useful as possible to those in other
countries. It’s like the old man who
wanders through my neighborhood. He is
very old and moves very slowly, and mutters to himself as he walks. I had seen him for weeks and said hello to
him a few times, but never received much response. One of my neighbors mentioned that she thought he sounded like he
was speaking Italian to himself. I
married into an Italian-American family with several members fluent in the
language, so they took it upon themselves to strike up a conversation next time
they saw him. They ended up having a
wonderful conversation with him regarding how he recently moved here from Italy
to live with his daughter and how he misses his old amici. Now when I see him, I give him a hearty “Ciao!” (I always feel a little foolish when he
looks at me expectantly, waiting for me to speak more Italian, but that’s all
I’ve got!)
I guess this is my way of saying that we’re trying to do the
little things to establish the connections to your countries. For instance, in both the current Personal
and the upcoming Professional Editions, you can now define your location on the
preferences screen. By defining the
location, SharedPlan automatically applies the appropriate date and number
formats and local currency. If you
downloaded an earlier version of Personal and were disappointed that this
feature was not included, please download a new copy and
check it out. We would also love to
hear if you have any additional suggestions, so please
let us know.
Favorite Project
Resources and Articles
There is an astounding number of websites out there
dedicated to the advancement of the project management craft. In keeping with my international focus, here
is a sampling of project management associations from overseas:
Australian Institute of Project Management (www.aipm.com.au)
Hong Kong Institute of Project Management (www.hkipm.org.hk)
Swedish Project Management Society (www.projforum.se)
Not only have we failed to penetrate the Antarctic market,
but we also have not done well in Latvia, either. This is not because Latvia does not have a robust project
management profession:
The Latvian National Project Management Association (www.lnpva.lv)
As always, please feel free to suggest
your favorite so I can share it with our readers.
New article:
This month’s recommended article is by William Duncan, a
distinguished authority on project management. In this brief article, Mr. Duncan provides some things to think about
when defining the criteria by which to judge a project’s success: http://www.pmpartners.com/resources/defmeas_success.html
Thanks for reading,
Tracy
tracy@sharedplan.com
