Let’s take a look at some of the biggest trends that are changing how companies get their work done in 2018:

It’s All About Agile

In recent years many companies have shifted from traditional project management styles, like waterfall, to what’s called ‘Agile.’ Agile processes call for a series of sprints with small, concrete milestones, which allows for quick turnaround of projects, with flexibility and iteration built into every stage.

Agile teams work collaboratively, without reliance on hierarchies, siloed teams, or massive project briefs. Designers, programmers, and testing teams are engaged in all phases of the project rather than doing each step as a stage of its own, as often happens with waterfall methods. Rather than starting with the final, complete project, work is broken down into smaller projects with independent milestones. This process leads to the quick development of an MVP (minimum viable product) that can be tested and improved upon, while creating short-term results that can be shown to management along the way.

On an Agile team, it’s the project manager’s job to make sure all team members remain in constant communication with one another and know what everyone is working on. This prevents issues like accidental duplication of work. Agile processes are iterative from start to finish, with flexible objectives that can change at each iteration.

The flexibility that comes with Agile means there can be a lot of moving parts that need to be tracked and monitored, which means that a team using it needs to use project management software that’s as flexible as the projects themselves. For a process like this, project management software has to do a lot more than help a PM plan project stages and timelines. It has to have communication and discussion capabilities built in, as well as be usable for everyone on the team.

Even if your company isn’t using Agile methods now, it’s the wave of the future. Small companies were the first to use Agile methodologies, but now it’s being adopted at the enterprise level. Moreover, while software development was one of the first industries to embrace Agile, it’s become more widely adopted recently, including across industries like construction, finance, and even marketing.

Younger Team Members & Project Managers

A closer look at the current workforce explains one of the reasons so many companies are trying out Agile methods: younger, more experimental team members.

As of 2016, millennials made up 38 percent of the workforce, a number that will increase every year as more enter the labor pool and baby boomers retire. Millennial employees—young adults, those born in the 1980s and 1990s—are tech-savvy, plugged into social media, and are on the hunt for fast-paced and meaningful places to work.

And they’re increasingly having an impact on their employers. In a recent article, The New York Times Magazine suggests that millennials “wield an incredible amount of economic and cultural power,” forcing companies to keep up with a significant cultural shift.

Younger employees’ style of working explains one of the reasons Agile has become so popular: millennials embrace technology. When it comes to teamwork, these employees often prefer online tools for communication over in-person meetings, phone calls, or email. They like working on collaborative teams m rather than in hierarchical structures or silos. And they’re looking for tools that are lightweight and high-performing, with a preference for those that bring a sense of humor into the workplace.

When it comes to software, you’ll be successful if you anticipate how your team works best. While a tried-and-true, one-size-fits-all project management tool might have worked in the past, it’s likely that such products will feel stodgy and bloated to younger employees.

Robots In Our Project Management?

Everyone’s talking about artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things (or IoT). What this means in the context of project management is that we should expect more from our software.

Project management benefits from artificial intelligence in all kinds of ways. With some tools, once a project manager enters data, the software can calculate anticipated timelines and deadlines. It can also help you determine individual workers’ productivity and efficiency. Automated calculations like this can help a team figure out what’s on track and what’s falling behind.

But today’s software can do more than simply review stages of a project. With IoT technology, you can build in reminders, automate tasks like invoicing, and even track physical assets. If your company deals in retail sales, your software can help you track how many of a specific product has sold, calculating inventory needs on the fly. You can also use sensors to track the movement of vehicles or machinery usage, record equipment replacement cycles and schedule regular maintenance, and send automatic messages to your employees as milestones are reached. Features like these can be used to enhance turnaround time on project development and limit downtime due to equipment malfunctions.

For some companies, artificial intelligence also means that workers typically not part of the project management system, such as those in receivables and distribution, or builders on construction sites, now can be looped directly into the overall project planning process.

Project management tools are also becoming more integrated. In addition to project tracking itself, more tools are building in other types of tracking and analysis. You can now find risk management, communication, ticket tracking, invoicing, timesheets, and other detailed data analysis all built into project management software.

Project Transparency

In the past, most project management software would be used only by team leaders and project managers themselves. Other members of the team were assigned tasks and project managers checked in with them on their progress, and as tasks were finished, the project managers marked stages as complete.

The combination of Agile workflows and small teams mean that it’s more common now for everyone on a project team to need access to the PM software. As noted above, Agile processes bring the entire team into the project management world, meaning it’s helpful to provide transparency to the entire project lifecycle. No longer do projects have a single designated project manager who’s in charge of the steps and communicates them in a one-way flow. Now everyone needs to view the stages of a project and offer input, often including company executives.

With so many people participating in the execution of a project, it’s imperative that everyone can use—and understand—the software you choose. Having multiple views (grids, Gantt charts, Kanban boards, and calendars, just for starters) allows people to access the information in ways that work for their different project roles and personal preferences.

Collaboration and the Cloud

More and more companies are choosing to hire remote workers or allowing employees to work from home for part of the work week. In fact, 55% of hiring managers agreeing that remote work is becoming more common, and 63% of companies having at least one remote worker.

The trend towards a more distributed, remote workforce means that a growing number of companies have different software needs than they would if they were managing onsite employees. In particular, distributed teams need a way to communicate as if they were all in the same office. Further complicating the process, with fully-remote teams, companies may have employees all over the world, which means that a lot of the workplace conversation is happening asynchronously, while one team member is asleep or out of office.

To address these needs, cloud-based software solutions address the needs of a distributed company. Such software needs to be operating-system agnostic, working on a variety of devices. Because information is transmitted over the Internet, it should also include security protocols to protect sensitive and proprietary data. Most of all, it needs to run fast without lagging, and allow for multiple people to view and interact with documents simultaneously.

Data is King

Project managers determine a project’s success by reviewing all the metrics. How long did everything take? Did they hit all their milestones? Did it stay within budget? If not, where did they fail to? Was it delivered on time or did they fall behind schedule? How many hours did a project take in total? And so on.

The best project management software takes all of the project data into account and provides easy-to-use reporting tools that can be used at all stages of the process. Even better are those tools that allow for enhanced data collection, customizable filters, and complex analytics.

This ties in with the above note about artificial intelligence and smart algorithms in project management tools. Increasingly, project management software can help visualize data and allow project managers to analyze a process on the fly, as well as forecast future issues based on past trends.

The Bottom Line in Project Management Software

There are a lot of project management apps to look at, but if you want to stay on the cutting-edge of software trends, here are a few things you should look for:

• Project planning and scheduling features that are easy for the entire team to use and understand
• Cloud-based rather than installed on individual computers or on an in-house network
• Mobile capabilities
• Integrated communication tools (including group chat, email or one-to-one messaging, and/or comments)
• Risk management, ticket tracking, time sheets, and other functionality
• Multiple view options, including grids (spreadsheet), Gantt charts, calendars, and cards/kanban boards
• Time tracking and/or estimating
• Reporting (with easy-to-export analytics)
• Budgeting and forecasting

When choosing your project management solution, make sure you’re taking into account both your company’s existing needs, as well as what may be coming around the corner.

The post Project Management Software Trends for 2018 appeared first on CMW Lab Blog.

• front office – departments, that come in to contact with clients (marketing, sales, service);
• back office – departments, responsible for running the company itself – for manufacturing or developing the products, for company administration, etc.

Back office departments are never in touch with the clients – they are the core of the company. They are invisible to you (as a customer), but they still exist in this small local shop on your street, in your bank and in huge international corporations. Even your high school had many back-office departments.

So, what is the specific of back-office software? Here, at CMW Lab, we think that back office software must have the following features:

1. Scalability. the software must be so functional, that it can be used by any back-office department. You can start using this software in a single back-office department (such as in HR), but in future you must be able to integrate the same software, with the same database into another department’s activities.


2. Unified working environment. A single software means that everyone is able use it – your employees across all departments could learn together in centralized sessions. A single database means that once data is in the software, it will always be there, available for anyone who is allowed to use it. When you hire an employee, you will input their ‘employee card’ in to your software and later you can update this ‘card’ with employee’ achievements, certifications, etc. that they have received working in your company.


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3. Reliable security system. The back office software should allow advanced security settings, so that secret information, will only be accessible to users you have selected. No excuses – some information in the hands of the wrong person can lead to company bankruptcy or even worse.


4. Rapid process design and automation. The software should be easily configurable for internal process architects – they must be able to design and update their processes easily, without reading a ton of manuals, and without specialized training. Process design must be both intuitive and functional.


5. Ease of use. The software must be simple to use. It should have a convenient and easy-to use interface, which works in the user’s familiar environment – in their browser, on their iPhone, in their Microsoft Outlook.


6. API and integrations. It should have the ability to integrate with existing back-office and front-office applications. Using single software and a single database is a perfect situation. However, more often, you have to integrate back-office software into existing infrastructure – you need it to pull data from different sources and you need to display its data on your web-site, in your front-office software, Microsoft Sharepoint integration, etc. It is very hard to achieve that if your software hasn’t provided you with developer-friendly API.

In my opinion CMW Tracker is the perfect back-office software. In designing and developing it, CMW Lab has followed the above principles. Even CMW Lab uses CMW Tracker in its back-office operations! And, although, it is also perfect as front-office software (yes – CMW Lab uses CMW Tracker as front-office software too), today and in my next articles I’m going to tell you only about its benefits as back-office software.

By the way, do you know that CMW Tracker has predesigned vertical solutions for different back-office departments? You can install these with one click and start using them immediately by going to the “Menu” tab in the CMW Tracker interface and clicking “One-click Solution Setup”. You can use our solutions in your financial department (“Finance and Administration”), IT department (“IT Help Desk”), HR department (“Human Resources”), software development department (“Software Development”).

The post Top 5 Features That Every Back Office Software Should Have appeared first on CMW Lab Blog.

Unfortunately, policies frequently bring an increase in bureaucracy, which is not always supported by the improvement of informational technologies used in the company. You cannot tap your boss on the shoulder, but sometimes you must write many papers or send lots of emails before you achieve any results.

Real-life contract lifecycle example

Let’s take an example from real-life – the company “Gold Bridges” (which, of course, builds bridges) decided to create a corporate web-site. This task is assigned to a single member of its IT department – Kurt Knoxville. He creates the site on his own machine, describes to his manager that the site also needs to be hosted on some Web-Hosting and gets his funding request approved. Do you think that’s all? No – “Gold Bridges” still needs to sign the contract with the “Silver Web Hosting” company.

So, Kurt chose the “Silver Web Hosting” company as the hosting provider. He comes to his direct manager – Helena Hudson and they both fill out the necessary paperwork. Then Helena goes to Abraham Rosenblum from the Legal Department – his duty is to check the contract from a legal point of view. Abraham checks it and tells his assistant, Johan Manderly, to give it to the CFO of “Gold Bridges” – Peter Thomas. Peter checks if the company has enough money for this contract. He also makes corrections to the current quarter budget and transfers the approved papers to the CEO – John Bernstain. John…Oh no – we believe you’ve got the point and there’s no need to continue this story.Signing of the contract isn’t an easy process. In addition to the contract with “Silver Web Hosting”, there’s also the consideration of VPS in Hong Kong for potential expansion.

Contract management isn’t easy

Contract processing involves many people from many departments. At each step, the contract must be discussed and anyone can make changes to it. Some contracts can even be rejected by the person in charge of it . Papers can just get lost on someone’s desk and stay there forever. Abraham can be on vacation and Helena won’t know who is covering his work. Even if you use email instead of paper, the problems do not go away – emails also can get lost in the ‘Spam’ folder or John can simply ignore Peter’s email because he is too busy with other activities.

The situation covered above highlights the most common contract management challenges every company or department faces – keeping tabs on content and work flow, time sinks. You should note that this list is far from being full as many companies also have such contract management struggles as protecting data, remaining compliant, and more. Your team likely puts a lot of energy energy to have their work done, maintain organizational speed and stay above the water. But these never ending contract management struggles can easily bring your team energy down and you are likely to take 20 minutes to step back and check for a possible solution that will make the near-term difference for your business.

How to Choose Contract Management Solution

• Remote access to contacts and contact approval tasks
• Notifications
• Secure document storage
• Custom reports
• User access permission management
• Easy scalability and adjustment
• Social collaboration

Contract approval app for consideration

One of the solutions for every company, which deals with contract approvals, contract management – is to use contract management software. Comindware Tracker is a streamlined web-based solution for this purpose. You can automate almost any process within your company, but some of the processes are already pre-designed by our professionals and are included in the current release. And, of course, it includes the “Contract approval” application that includes a template for the purchase request approval process. The template which includes contact approval workflow and the business rules for automated contract management, that can be changed in a snap by non-technical users. Here is how his workflow template looks like:

To install it, go to the “Menu” tab of Comindware Tracker UI and deploy Finance Management Solution by clicking “One-click Solution Setup”. This will create a workspace with several applications, including “Contracts”. How will this change the contract approval process? Instead of filling in the papers or sending an email, Kurt and Helena simply open the Comindware Tracker interface and single-click a special button to create the new “Contract Approval” process with the title “Web-hosting contract”. After saving it, they will delegate any future work on this contract to Abraham by simply clicking the “Next Step – Send for revision” button. Abraham is notified about this action with an email notification. He can also see that he has an active task in the Comindware Tracker interface in his “My Active Tasks” list, and in the list of his Outlook tasks (both lists are synchronized automatically). Helena and Kurt have now finished on this process and can continue their usual activities – if someone needs their response, they will be notified accordingly.

Comindware Tracker is the perfect software for tracking all your company activities. It is a perfect specialized contract management software tool as well with its Finance and Back Office Administration Solution. Install it and use the “Finance Management Solution” solution. Explore the other systems we have developed for you, adopt them to your company needs and create new ones. Do not hesitate to share your experience with Comindware Tracker with us. Please describe how you have automated everyday activities in your company with Comindware Tracker.

The post Contract Management Software appeared first on CMW Lab Blog.

From your part, as an HR professional, you need to organize training and assessment processes accordingly. Here at Comindware we decided to help you make it quicker, so we’ve crafted a training process template, and then automated it according to current +2017 employee development software trends. Read on and learn how training and development software can serve your talent management initiatives.

Process diagram: Training and development process diagram for Talent Management

Checklist for Training and Development:

• Training Schedule
• Training materials (texts, handouts)
• Assessment
• Training process: when automated with talent management software, it takes less time to schedule, manage and assess training.

Technically, a highly motivated and good worker can leave their job when they feel that their career and professional development is stagnating.

• most US companies claim that it’s hard to find the right professional
• consequently, it’s painful to see them go

That’s why talent management is an integral part of business strategy, along with human capital management. When properly set up, training and development programs not only help professional growth, they also bring a breath of fresh air and produce positive effects on the employee’s morale.

At the same time, as HR processes don’t add value to the product you sell, they shouldn’t be costly. So the less time you spend managing the training process the better. Here’s when training and development software come to the fore.

Comindware Tracker HR Solution has the training and assessment or, so called talent management process set up, along with other HR processes. It’s accessible online, so you don’t have to install heavy professional development tracking software on your desktop computer. Basically, the solution is ready to go: we tried to make what we expect to be an ideal HR working environment. You can try it out for free right away for 30 days. Get your credentials here.

The post Retain talent at work with the right training and development software appeared first on CMW Lab Blog.