PMO Zone

Links and information about building a PMO and running an effective PMO.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Support your customers better with voice notes

For the last couple of years I have been using some free services that allow me to make a note to myself with a quick phone call. It is very convenient in the car for example, when Im going over the day's events and want to make a reminder, but getting to my notebook would be dangerous. And if you're the kind of person like me that is always thinking of people I should contact, or things I need/want to do, it's nice to press a button and speak my thoughts (such as, "send John the link to the whitepaper about EPM and Performance Point Server") and have them emailed right to me within a minute or two (thus, keeping the note in my inbox instead of my head.)

The benfit of some of these services (and once again, they are free) is that they transcribe the messages for you, and then email you the transcript. They are easy to try(takes just a minute), and I have never received spam from them, so I recommend you try it. Obviously, you can also heave them transcribe your voice mails, if that's what you want to do. Here are the three I have used.

Jott was the first service I heard of in this space, and I used it for nearly two years, until they started asking for a subscription. You can leave up to 15 seconds of audio (more than you think), but you have to go to the site to see the transcription in the free version. Plans start at $4/month, and they have a number of discounts to get that down further. The notes are usually transcribed within a minute. It also allows you to send the notes to other people, and to many, many services, including your calendar and task list services.

Dial2Do is what I'm using now. It is 100% free, and you can set it to email ot text you the transcription. It can take 2-3 minutes to recieve the transcription. Only issue I have with it is that if you integrate it with something like RememberTheMilk (which I do) you dont get the email, instead the note goes straight to the service (although you can still see the duplicated notes on the Dial2Do site too).

ReQall is the last one I tried. It is as reliable as Dial2Do. My only issue with it is that it doesn't integrate natively with many other services. You can hack it with emails that forward to the sites, but I don't find it as reliable as the native API integrations. If I only needed the email transcript (which is all I used it for for a long time) it would be more than up to the task.

I'd recommend these to anyone - once you start using them you can't stop, because it is a way to never forget that fleeting thought again.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

2007 I.T. Budget Check

2007 I.T. Budget Check: "Much more interesting than quibbling over percentage points, though, is what technology executives plan to do with their money. Several chief information officers told Baseline that security and streamlining infrastructure to cut technology operating costs are the two biggest priorities."

Monday, February 05, 2007

Blogarithms » Amazon for Infrastructure-on-Demand

Anyone who reads this blog know how cool I think Amazon web services are... here is a detailed, yet very cool example, with a diagram, of a website using all three.

Spend time on this if you want to know some of the future of computing...

Blogarithms » Amazon for Infrastructure-on-Demand: "The buzz is building around Amazon Web Services as an application platform. Don MacAskill has been using AWS’ S3 storage service for SmugMug, and according to Jeremy Zawodny, will be talking about it at this year’s ETech conference. Jeremy and others have been experimenting with S3 as storage backup for desktop and laptop systems. Even Dave Winer is experimenting with S3."

Sunday, February 04, 2007

Microsoft Office Project 2007 : So many blogs, so little time...

Microsoft Office Project 2007 : So many blogs, so little time...: "There's so much being published on Project related blogs, its hard to keep up with it all. So, attached is an OPML file which contains the RSS feeds for the a number of Project related blogs. "

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Enterprise Project Management (EPM) | Google Groups

Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Google Groups: "Today's PM PrepCast PMP(r) Exam Tip is: *What if you get audited?*

By applying to take the PMP exam you also automatically agree to comply with
the PMI's audit terms. The PMI writes about this in the credentials handbook
as follows: "

PMToolbox.com - Tools and Resources for Project Management - Visiting Gantt Again

PMToolbox.com - Tools and Resources for Project Management - Visiting Gantt Again: "Hal Macomber provided an interesting post again about the topic of Gantt Charts. He asks the following questions:
How is the project going?
When will we be done?
Some other important questions might be:
How much will it cost when we're done?
What is the confidence interval for the cost and completion date?"

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

The ABCs of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) - ITIL - CIO

This is important.... it will impact the life of a PM and will greatly increase you opportunities for advncement if you learn the lingo! ITIL is not going away...

The ABCs of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) - ITIL - CIO: "ITIL is a framework of best practices for delivering IT services. What's the big deal about it, and why is it considered so important in corporate computing? We explain the basics before you hunker down with the books."

Monday, January 29, 2007

Microsoft Office Project 2007 : SQL Server Reporting Services Report Pack for Project Server 2007

Microsoft Office Project 2007 : SQL Server Reporting Services Report Pack for Project Server 2007: "This post contains a zip file attachment which is the SQL Server Reporting Services(SSRS) 2005 report pack for Project Server 2007.
This attachment contains 9 items total:
One overview document describing the setup for each report as well as any new custom fields/lookup tables that are required to make these reports function.
Seven PDFs which are sample output for each report
One zip file of the Visual Studio project with report source code.
This VS project file can be used within the SSRS Business Intelligence Development Studio to deploy and modify these reports to your own needs."