Ever tried to build and maintain a project plan across multiple sites by emailing copies of MS Project? I have and it’s not pretty.

Liquid Planner is one of  growing number of online services that allow collaboration on projects across the internet. Unlike  many of these services, this one comes with a strong planning tool and uses this as focus for its structure.  Basically this solves the problem above; managing a complex plan between several sites. It brings other features as well, but is it just too clever?

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I have just given a course in facilitation. Most people on the course were either Business Analysts or Project Managers.

I might be a bit slow, but I have just connected the dots……this is an important, perhaps critical, skill for  Project Managers. How often do we lead wokshops  for planning, risk analysis, problem solving etc? If you count up all the person hours, workshops can be expensive and we need to make them as effective as possible.

Facilitation is about setting clear objectives, selecting the right processes and using the combined intelligence and experience of the group to reach those objectives. If done well, it is hugely powerful in solving problems, creating ownership and building the team. If done badly, it will lead to frustration, disunity and poor problem solving.

There is a lot out there written about good facilitation but how many Project Managers know that is exists?

This is the process we use at Project Laneways. We lso use it as the basis for our training in facilitation.