Vicky Stamatopoulou

Merlin Projects on iPhone

Vicky Stamatopoulou on 11. March 2010

We have submitted the next update for Merlin on the iPhone to the App Store and wait for its approval.

It will carry the version number 1.0.4 and includes the following issue fixes:

The iPhone app has now a new icon and a new title. Its former title “Merlin” is now part of the icon and the application itself is called “Projects”; so it reads “Merlin Projects”.
The navigation view is now properly positioned even after cancelling the image picker in the file elements view.
Under some circumstances it was not possible to enter the completion percentage.
Added a workaround for a bug in the 3.2 beta version of the iPhone SDK.
The Gantt view wasn’t refreshed after a sync operation.
Under some circumstances Merlin iPhone did crash on start.
The stability in general is improved.

We hope Apple approves the new update of Merlin iPhone quickly, and it is soon available in the App Store for download.

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Performance, Productivity and Efficiency

Vicky Stamatopoulou on 10. March 2010

KeynoteSchnappschuss002 How one can manage to accomplish in a project best possible performance, productivity and efficiency at once? Is it a realistic goal in a real world, on real life conditions? Is it better to transit as times change from efficiency to productivity? Which PM methods help the most while trying to do so? Is it Agile? Questions over questions…

We would love to read your answers in the comments.

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Tags: Efficiency, Performance, Productivity

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Ch-cha-changes; News in our blog

Vicky Stamatopoulou on 9. March 2010

Ch-cha-changes… This is to inform you that the name of our blog ‘MacPM.net‘ as shown in the navigation menus of our website http://www.projectwizards.net/en is now ‘News’. Please note that only the name changes, the URL remains the same. The contents of our MacPM.net blog for Project Management with Merlin on Mac OS X remain. We will keep you posted in the usual frequency.

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Merlin at the CeBit: An interview with Frank Blome, ProjectWizards’ CEO

Vicky Stamatopoulou on 9. March 2010

Frank Blome, our CEO, was interviewed by Richard Joerges at the CeBit, on the second day of the trade show.
He was asked for a resumé to the CeBIT so far and whether he sees any current trends in the Project Management.

Frank talks about Windows based PMs thinking about switching to the Mac platform, traditional project management, Agile and Scrum. Enjoy the interview

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Tags: Agile, CeBit, Scrum, Traditional Project Management

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Merlin: resources utilization dynamically adjusted

Vicky Stamatopoulou on 8. March 2010

This is a tip of our CEO, Frank Blome, as discussed at the CeBIT 2010 and published on our German MacPM blog:

Supposedly you plan an activity of 5 days work to be accomplished in the duration of 10 days. As an experienced PM and Merlin user you create the activity in your project as follows:

This results to a 50% utilization for the assigned resource

(more…)

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Tags: Actuals, Documenting actual work, Merlin, Merlin 101, Utilization

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Merlin on a web browser

Vicky Stamatopoulou on 5. March 2010

The other day we received the following question in support:

We are testing Merlin for project management on the Mac and are very interested to use your solution but there is one functionality which seems to be not covered in the web access; we are not able to add elements (risk, issue, or files)

That’s correct. Merlin in the web module allows users working on other platforms to collaborate on Merlin files using a web browser*. It is not just another implementation of the Merlin Mac OS X application for the web.
While behaving similarly to the native Merlin application, its functionality and graphical user interface is deliberately minimalized** to insure better usability from web users not having deeper Merlin knowledge.

*) Supported web browser: IE7, IE8 in compatibility mode, Safari 4, Firefox 3

**) All differences between Merlin on Mac OS X and in the Web module: here

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Tags: Elements, Merlin, Merlin Web

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Quote of the day

Vicky Stamatopoulou on 4. March 2010

homePageImage

Under a quality system, if it wasn’t documented (according to your own rules), IT NEVER HAPPENED!

Found in a post about Managing Projects in the Medical Device Marketplace

My thoughts in random order:

It pays to document things as you do them, it’s a horror to catch up later on
There is no such thing as over-documentation
Next team meeting ToDo: Suggest to develop dietary supplements additionally to our Mac OS X project management software; Merlin
When documenting don’t forget localisation aspects