Don’t worry, the InLoox Blog won’t digress into the world of zoology. Black swans are what the business consultancy McKinsey and the University of Oxford call major IT projects that exceed their time and financial scope. The researchers joined forces for a long-term study on IT projects.

Even if your official title is not project manager, chances are you will be called upon to lead a group at some point. Whether it is initiating procedural changes in your department, optimizing your website or launching a product in a new market, projects come in all shapes and sizes. 

More than 60 percent of the IT projects in companies are not delivered on time and budget. This is the result of a survey conducted by the market research institute Forrester on behalf of EffectiveUI among 474 business decision makers.

Things are not running smoothly in the team. An offer to a prospective customer has not been sent out, because Colleague A was sure that Colleague B had already done that. Colleague C has dedicated many hours of work to editing a PowerPoint presentation, until Colleague D is telling her that she is working on an old version and in the meantime, important data have changed.

With any project there are bound to be sticking points, and in general, the more complex a project is the more error-prone it is. Even with the most detailed project plan, project managers need to be prepared both for something unexpected to happen and something planned not to happen. An effective risk management alongside the regular project monitoring plan will help you minimize the impact of uncertain project events.

Since last summer, you can always take real-time project data with you – on your smartphone. The InLoox Mobile Apps for Android and iPhone enable you to manage projects on the go.

We are excited to welcome Jim and David to our InLoox consulting team in San Francisco. They both joined us in September 2013 and support our clients in finding the best project solution for them, implementation, technical support and training.

Meet our newest additions to the InLoox Team:

There are many misunderstandings when it comes to the definition of a project. Especially the time factor is often neglected and in many companies, ongoing tasks are defined as projects.

InLoox PM is project management software, at least that is the use it was designed for. But some InLoox customers use it for other purposes than that, thanks to the versatility of InLoox. An example is VIGC in Belgium.

The vacation season is nearly over and the recovery effect vanishes into thin air when project team members have a first look at their e-mail inboxes after returning. It’s not unusual that hundreds of mails pile up there. No question – project communication is essential for project success - but what can you do not to drown in the flood of e-mails?

Here are 10 tips to use e-mails in your project communication as efficiently as possible: