Don’t get me wrong. . .   marketing is a valuable skill for any business, but it shouldn’t take the lead on key projects.

How can that happen? There are hundreds of people looking for roles at the moment, so how can a formal process fail to identify the right candidate?? I’m confident that the interim team that are reviewing the organisation did an excellent job with the initial selections – they must have done to get me… just kidding (but he is very good, really – Ed)… so how can the business then fail to take that on board and fail to select one of the candidates. Surely (and again I think of the current climate and pressing projects within the organisation that are ready to fly), taking someone on under a contract to let them prove their credentials before hiring (or firing) them properly would have been a better idea.

Take SEO – I agree that having a good digital marketeer on the books is a valuable asset, but the bulk of their work can be done relatively easily by most companies on their own – content can be written in search friendly ways, competitors can be studied, URLs can be nicely formatted, tags can be used effectively, etc. For most businesses, considering their SEO needs early as part of the overall web strategy (such as in their choice of CMS or editorial style) would prevent the need to resort to some of the ‘smoke, mirrors and snakeoil’.

If you are in the market for consultancy services, at least do your homework first and enter into knowledgeable discussions with third-parties. My approach is to always be very well prepared, but often to let the consultant assume that I know nothing – it’s normally in those first few minutes that a consultant or agency with questionable skills will quickly find themselves on the back-foot and struggling to justify their presence once they realise that you’re actually fairly expert in the subject already.

It’s actually very similar to managing a project – you need to look forward to identify the risks, issues and changes before they’re on top of you. Most project teams, given the right framework and support from stakeholders, will easily deal with their day jobs and deliver what you’ve asked them to do – your job is to protect them from distractions (issues and changes). Remember, it’s only a project, but it is about risk avoidance.

There will be times when you’re on your bike, when a hole opens up directly under you with no warning and that’s when your bike skills will kick in to help you through that immediate problem. The only thing you can do in this instance is use your experience to minimise the damage, before getting back on your bike to finish the ride. The same applies to projects – stay calm, lead the teams, work with the stakeholders and keep the project tracking forward.

One other biking analogy – don’t sit right behind someone when you’re racing along a rocky track. Because if they crash, then you won’t have time to react and you’ll go down as well – and that hurts. It’s the same with projects – work with your fellow Project managers to feel you way through business issues, share the experiences and help other projects to avoid pitfalls. Just don’t fall headlong into the same holes as your colleagues.

Don’t split the accountability for the business success for a delivery from the technical responsibility – aim to keep the teams working together, with accountability with one team and the other teams providing services as required. If you allow a multitude of teams to call the shots with regards the online strategy, all that happens is that the strategy gets fragmented and the resource gets stretched until it’s working in a purely reactive fashion. Not ideal or efficient.

With commercial websites it makes sense if a central ‘New Media’ team control the online strategy – working with the business on one side (who should be proposing new ideas, pushing marketing ideas, updating on the audience and competition) and the ‘raw’ technical teams on the other (who should provide technical support for all new development and changes, as well as ongoing support).

That central New Media team should work in parallel with a variety of support teams – although none of those should take the leading role in terms of the digital strategy – these teams include the operations team (who should monitor and maintain the host platforms), digital marketing (who should ensure that the sites are working efficiently and new propositions well thought through), sales and legal.

This approach doesn’t put the online teams at the centre of the business, but it does mean that the online strategy can be controlled, which in turns makes for a much leaner and proactive organisation.

Build a solid network on a service like LinkedIn.

Build a complete profile – you might not think that your degree in Plant Biology has any relevance in today’s high technology sectors, but it creates an extra link in the searches people are undertaking to find their perfect match.

Tag everything - if you have the option to add a tag [a descriptive link used on a website] then use it – it helps searches.

Add as many people as you can to the network – you need that network spread as wide as possible.

Trawl your memory for the names of people you’ve worked with previously, you never where they are now.

Remember that a good network will attract other contacts as people who have worked with you look to extend their networks – a bit self-perpetuating really.

Add contacts as you find them.

Don’t be shy about asking people to join your network and don’t turn down too many invites to join other peoples’ networks.

• Basecamp – This is my baseline (‘scuse the pun) for online tools. It’s pretty simple in terms of the ‘bells and whistles’ that some others bulk up their offerings with. But everything it does, it does really well. Free 30 day trial, then from $24 per month. $49 per month gets the solution that includes Time Tracking.

Basecamp Home

• ZoHo – Free for a single project, ideal to take a look, then from $12 per month for an extended solution.

ZoHo Home

• AceProject – a hosted solution is available free for a restricted service, then from $24 per month.

AceProject Home

• EasyProject – $119 for an in-house licence or £12 per month for a hosted solution. The appearance is clearly aimed at attracting bigger businesses, with a fairly ‘enterprise’ look. . . still looks pretty clean though.

EasyProject Home

• GoPlan – Has a free option for two projects, with a variety of upgraded flavours from $10/month. Clean site, straight-forward sign-up.

GoPlan Home

• Huddle – Nice easy sign-up.

Huddle Home

• CoMind – Clean site with a very easy sign-up. Once you sign-up a wizard leads you through the (simple) build of a single project.

CoMind Home

• Unfuddle – First impressions are that it looks quite light, although the collaboration elements look quite versatile.

Unfuddle Home

• LiquidPlanner – Offers a 30-day free trial, before it moves to a subscription. A little corporate for my tastes.

LiquidPlanner Home

• ProjectManager – Is this “world’s smartest Online Project Management Software” as they claim??

I looked at the following, but the initial look put me off. . . sorry guys, you may have a great product, but your shop-front didn’t give me a warm feeling:

• Wrike

• PlanProjects

If anyone wants to add some tools to the list, then please drop me a line.

If you don’t know Smashing Magazine then let me introduce to an excellent site that “delivers useful and innovative information for designers and Web developers“. It is aimed at web designers, but it is a fantastic of information if you’re working on any online project – their collations of tips and ideas are very accessible summaries to collections of useful links and documents.

The Project Management article is a perfect example of the breadth of information that Smashing Magazine – it brings together a selection of basic project management applications, Wiki-based applications, bug & ticket tracking systems, collaboration & conferencing systems, invoicing applications and time tracking applications. It’s a good article and indicative of the general quality of content on the site.

Since then I have worked in an increasingly Agile manner. So that’s good, clear, regular communication with a well defined development team (but also stakeholders, business representatives, legal, marketing, operations, etc, etc) – a well-supported and clearly defined breakdown of the likely tasks and the milestone breakpoints (‘Sprints’ at a high level) – good resource planning to allow continuity on my projects and other business functions – getting under the skin of the project to help the teams work together and to make best use of the resource and time available. . . etc, etc. . .

You can probably see where I’m going with this – I’m confident that I could walk the Scrum courses available, so why haven’t I? Well, time and cost up to this point is one factor – but more importantly a deeply entrenched cynicism about the whole Scrum training set-up. The problem lies in the following taken from the Scrum Alliance site:

1 – Prerequisites – Students are expected to attend the [] courses with a working knowledge of Scrum. This knowledge can be obtained by reading books, journal articles, and information about Scrum on the web.

2 – The Certification Process – Attend, participate in, and complete a Certified Scrum course.

So let’s get that straight to pass a Scrum course and gain a key management certificate, you can read some books (though that seems to be optional) and attend a course – bearing in mind that the Prince courses end in a three hour exam. That’s like passing your driving test by turning up on the day of the course and sitting in the waiting room. . . job done!

I’m being cynical, but the Agile certificates need to be more rigorously controlled, with Scrum Masters and Practitioners having to demonstrate their knowledge through some form of exam or practical demonstration.

I would love to take by better half and a stack of other Apprentice fans to some of my workplaces to meet people who make these Apprentice bods seem like charming and honest individuals. You really have to have worked with some utter gits to see the truth behind The Apprentice.

As the BBC News site says:

One thing that can be expected from this series – just like the previous four – is that the apprentices make lots of stupid decisions, which leaves them set for a vicious tongue-lashing from Sir Alan.

“You would have thought that with this being the fifth series, that they would come in well armed with knowing what not to do,” Sir Alan says.

The best part of each programme is the last ten minutes, where at least half of the candidates are horribly humilated at the hands of Alan Sugar and his team (Nick and Margaret). So if the BBC could arrange to reduce the whole series into twenty minutes of humiliation of egotistical middle-management bullies then I’d be delighted… you can keep the rest.