Project Management Hall of Fame: Great PM Tools

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation was established in 1983 and has been honoring the best-of-the-best musicians for decades with membership into its prestigious club. What does it take to be inducted? Nominees for the performer category are “...bands and solo artists who have created music in their careers with originality, impact and influence that has changed the course of rock ‘n’ roll.”  This year’s Induction Ceremony will be held on November 5, 2022 and includes Pat Benatar, Duran Duran, Eminem, Eurythmics, Dolly Parton, Lionel Richie, and Carly Simon in this prestigious category. 

In the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll, we would like to offer up 3 Hall of Fame categories ourselves this month. These of course are related to Project Management and include Great Project Management Tools, Excellent Resources for Project Professionals, and Top Project Manager Cliches! 

Let’s start with Great Project Management Tools. 

You have a room full of people who need to arrive at consensus on a topic. Heck, you may not even know what topics you need to arrive at consensus on. You could choose to start the meeting with a whiteboard, sticky notes, or hang huge pieces of paper on the walls … or you could use Poll Everywhere. 

Here’s a perfect use case for this tool. Let’s say there are 75 people in a room (or online) and you need to identify three top pain points to tackle. You set up a quick survey that asks everyone to list three issues on their mind. These results will start to be displayed on the screen and themes will quickly develop on what everyone thinks needs to be addressed. 

Now, which one do you tackle first? The audience can upvote or downvote each of these items, leaving you with what a room full of 75 people think is the most important issue to tackle. And, all of this can be done in less than 5 minutes. It’s very impressive! 

Let’s say you are assembling a group of volunteers across different companies to work on an industry project. The challenge is finding a weekly meeting time for the team to provide updates and make decisions to move things forward. Since you don’t have visibility into everyone’s calendar, you could throw out a meeting invite and hope it works for most people (spoiler alert: it won’t). Or, you could let everyone tell you what times are best for them ahead of time by using Xoyondo. 

Here’s how it works. You log into Xoyondo and set up meeting options that could work, which could include weekdays, weeknights, weekends, as well as different times of day. A link to this calendar is sent to the volunteers, who pick which times work for them and which times won’t. You will immediately see the best time that works for the majority and removes all guesswork. 

Sometimes you just have to get things off your mind, and the Coggle Mind Map tool will help you do just that. This tool is great for quickly capturing, categorizing, and relating information. You start with your central thought (a new project, plan, idea, or whatever) and then build branches and sub-branches off that central theme. The result is a flexible, spindly, color-coded mind map that can be shared with others, serve as the foundation for project plans, identify gaps, and a host of other uses. 

These are not project management tools in the truest sense of Microsoft Project or Trello, but if you have experienced any of the above problems when it comes to managing projects, ideas, and calendars, these three inductees into the Project Management Hall of Fame are real winners!