PROJECT Management explored

 So we have seen loads of snow and freezing weather over the past few days and advisories not to travel so does that give us a reason not to work?  For some of us it certainly does because either our job is mechanical in nature and our equipment is at work or because we have to look after our kids after all the schools have closed.

But as so many of us work in the service economy just how much can we do from home with a laptop or a home PC and broadband?  The answer is surprisingly much.  Many of our PROJECT in a box customers enable their users to access the system over the web that means that their project information is available to them from anywhere, securely transmitted via web services.  Often a work laptop will allow some form of VPN/secure tunnel into the office but if all you have is your home PC or even just a smart phone you can access the browser interface for PROJECT in a box in your companies website and even choose to do a temporary deployment of the software client for even more complete interaction.

What about meetings?  Well for many the idea of less meetings is a boon and a chance to get actual work done, but if the want to meet you can now do this well on-line.  We use these tools all year round for remote customer support, for demonstrations and meetings and to deliver customer training to remote sites.  There are so many around but it is definitely worth trying a few trials before committing to expense.  Go To Meeting is excellent and has a full feature 30 day trial so that should get you through this cold snap at least.

Of course most of us are familiar with Skype and MSN messenger for voice and text keeping us in touch with our colleagues and using a combination of these tools should help you keep functioning as long as the power stays on ;-)