I firmly believe that the key to an awesome website is simplicity, whilst protoshare certainly keeps things simple, it’s almost too simplistic in conveying a finished product.

My real world example is like being asked if you think a room will look good in a particular colour from a small painted patch of wall. You simply need to see the big picture. Why? Because only approximatey 60% of the population are visual thinkers. That is to say, 60% of the world prefer a visual demonstration, articulation of the thing (in my case a web app) that you are talking about. The remainder either respond better to listening or lists or an emotional response.

Protoshare, does not do your prototype justice to any of these groups. It’s a nice idea, it simply doesn’t execute far enough down my development path. If I was developing a simpler web app I think it would be great.

Therefore I have answered my own question, time to check out the hosting solutions that are out there. Dreamhost and Webcity are two that will be reviewed next blog.

I would suggest that the tools used here, outside of basecamp are the most mature out of all the tools I have used. Predominantly, I have created documents using the writeboards within basecamp, these can be shared and permit collaboration on a single document whilst the changes are tracked as different versions. I can then compare versions to see what has changed. Very nice and erradicates the numerous softcopy versions of the same document that often fly around.

There are other ways of sharing and collaborating on work Adobe have Acrobat and Google’s product is also worth mentioning Google docs. The aim here is a more souped up version of a writeboard, almost a Word replacement. I didn’t like the fact that my docs wouldn’t be centralised in my basecamp account therefore stayed with the basecamp writeboards.

If I wanted to communicate more quickly then I also checked out voip telephony and, to my dismay found the offerings too clunky. They overpromise their service. The providers I tried out were Freshtel and Pennytel. The freshtel service is really light on features such as e-mail voicemail (unified messaging) and the pennytel service is just poor, especially after it promised an iPhone app, it dodn’t work.

Skype is the way forward. Most people seem to be on Skype (a consideration with any IM tool). The service transcends most firewalls and OS issues. If you need to communicate something quickly and it can’t be posted on the writeboard or the message board in basecamp, I recommend Skype – you can always save the transcript to basecamp later.

Finally, a product that I was exposed to and hope to never be exposed to ever again is Microsoft’s Livemeeting. I was given a demo of a product from a chap in London. Before the event I logged into the livemeeting site, ensured my settings were all configured and then on the eve of the demo attempted to log back in….well not-so-Livemeeting – it was like being stuck in a timewarp except the “page loading” (the equivalent of hold music) graphics were slightly better…never again. I much prefer Dim Dim.

One of the fundamental ways of working that I have embraced has been visual thinking. Well there are some alternatives to MS Visio and Concept Draw out there. First up, pen and paper – yes I’m a fan of Moleskine.

However, when the going gets digital there are a number of options. As I write this I am sat at my archaic Win 2k work laptop. At home, I have my gorgeous MacBook Air. I needed a solution that would cross the boundaries, indeed time travel in the case of this scenario.

My first activity was mindmapping, I used Mindomo, it was quick, easy and free. There are other solutions out there but for the purpose of creating a Buzan mindmap this worked perfectly. It also enabled me to work on my ideas when they came to me, rather than wait until I got home.

The next step was to rework my intial thoughts into something more robust that would lead to tangible outcomes. I found I needed this step, it prevented me from lurching into something that “seemed right at the time”. I transposed my intial thoughts into something more robust, for this I used mindmanger for the mac. (if I didn’t already have the this software I would look to use something like XMind.) Take a look at Xmind, there’s a Win version a Mac version and a version you can run from a USB stick. oh, and it’s free.

Having rationalised the intial brain dump, I found that tasks, actions, events call them what you will, started falling out of the high level plan and I simply updated the milestones and to-dos in my basecamp. Simple really.

There you have it, how to go from zero to a basic project plan using free software…more or less.

Where did I start?

Project Management Idea Management

Well like all the books on entreprenership say, start with the end in mind. The goal here is therefore to plan the exit strategy first and work backwards. Identifying the concept, building the concept and then orchestrating the many moving parts is often done using MS Project in large corporations. Frequently the large corporation hasn’t rolled MS Project out to all employees (to save cost!) therefore the project tool becomes disparate excel spreadsheets, e-mails, powerpoints and the lone operator of MS Project.

No fear. For free, I have used the all -in-one tool basecamp, just one of a suite of products from 37 Signals. It is an awesome tool, you do need to be a project heretic to use it though. Manage by outcome and you’ll reap the rewards. Look for the lack of gant chart and you will ditch it instantly. Who uses those gants anyway?

Within basecamp there are six main areas:

• Dashboard
• Message Boards
• Files
• Writeboards (my favourite)
• To Do Lists and
• Milestones

Coupled to the fact that this becomes the project central repository for project information it becomes and invaluable asset to the project team, be it a three person show, or a much larger programme of works as Basecamp can handle multiple projects with multiple resources.

Next time, building a prototype…

Once in the distant past I used to play rugby, union that is. I recall that during a period of four years we were lucky enough to have one coach, an ex-services hooker, whose favourite command when we were performing drills was ‘focus’.

Sounds like the usual rugby babble. It’s actually the key to getting exactly what you want in whatever you do. He never said what to focus upon, we all knew what we wanted to focus on and that’s why this post is here and now. We all have our own goals and dreams and we all need to focus. Focus on achieving those goals. 

It’s often when we shift focus that we drop the ball. My focus this week as discussed in the previous post is critical mass. I have a vast range of other activities happening around me right now but my main focus is getting my product bought into by enough people that I have a compelling argument to continue developing my product. I am focussed on how that success will look, sound and feel and also on the intermediary steps and tasks that will happen along the way. 

So how do we maintain focus? I personally believe that focus is relatively easy to maintain over short sprints and much more difficult over a longer distance. Therefore establishing short term goals, chunking down a task is vital to me in succeeding in any project. What are the steps required in order to achieve your goal? What do they look like? If you don’t know, come closer towards right now. What do you need to do right now in order to discover the next step! Get off the couch? Go and ask an expert? Google-it?

Does this mean that I only work on one thing at a time? I wish. It means I only focus on one thing at a time.

So one user gets more users, who get more users still. We’re all suckers for the get rich quick pyramid aren’t we! There was an intersting programme on ABC the other evening, spookily it was looking at this phenomenon that Viral Expansion Loops use as a founding premise, the network.

The link to the programme can be found here. The six degrees of Kevin Bacon! Is finding a common, replicable link between strangers the key to business growth nirvana?

Given these constraints. I feel I am perfectly positioned to make major inroads to my initial industry of choice…finance.

My background in process improvement within financial services, not for profit and local government is nothing compared to the learnings I have absorbed as a customer of banks.

There are some interesting/innovative web apps out there. I plan to play the game on a different curve.

David