Get yourself valued at WorkPlace

Making yourself valuable at work is not only important during times of layoffs and downsizing but during times of prosperity and abundance. It isn’t rocket science, it doesn’t involve going back to school, and it isn’t difficult. If you follow these simple steps, you will become the “go to person” at your job.
Some simple tips to make you valuable at your job:

•Focus on being the solution and not the problem. You need to be the person that people go to for the two “As”–answers and action.

•Anticipate what your boss wants and provide what he wants before he even asks for it. Remember, the old saying, “Be proactive.”

•Make yourself visible, speak out, generate ideas and participate.

•Volunteer for any new activity or assignment even if it directly does not fall in your KRA. Don’t try to be safe by focusing on just the expectations as per KRA. Remember – if you need the extra edge, you have to put in some extra effort as well.

•Have the facts and information at your fingertips. Be organized and prepared to present the facts via reports or charts on short notice.

•Build and develop relationships, with people across functions, with your bosses, senior colleagues. You never know, when a good word or reference can come to your rescue.

•Have a great attitude, learn to listen and to get along with everyone. This doesn’t mean you can’t have an opinion or that you can’t express your opinion. What it means is that you are a listener and that you are open to hearing opinions other than your own.

Weekly Status Report

Writing effective status report is as important as the actual work you did! How to write a effective status report of your weekly work at the end of each week?
Here I am going to give some tips. Weekly report is important to track the important project issues, accomplishments of the projects, pending work and milestone analysis. Even using these reports you can track the team performance to some extent. From this report prepare future actionables items according to the priorities and make the list of next weeks actionable.
So how to write weekly status report?
Follow the below template:
Prepared By:
Project:
Date of preparation:
Status:
A) Issues:

Issues holding the QA team from delivering on schedule:
Project:
Issue description:
Possible solution:
Issue resolution date:
You can mark these issues in red colour. These are the issues that requires managements help in resolving them.

Issues that management should be aware:
These are the issues that not hold the QA team from delivering on time but management should be aware of them. Mark these issues in Yellow colour. You can use above same template to report them.

Project accomplishments:
Mark them in Green colour. Use below template.
Project:
Accomplishment:
Accomplishment date:

B) Next week Priorities:
Actionable items next week list them in two categories:

1) Pending deliverables: Mark them in blue colour: These are previous weeks deliverables which should get released as soon as possible in this week.
Project:
Work update:
Scheduled date:
Reason for extending:

2) New tasks:
List all next weeks new task here. You can use black colour for this.
Project:
Scheduled Task:
Date of release:

C) Defect status:
Active defects:
List all active defects here with Reporter, Module, Severity, priority, assigned to.
Closed Defects:
List all closed defects with Reporter, Module, Severity, priority, assigned to.
Test cases:
List total number of test cases wrote, test cases passed, test cases failed, test cases to be executed.
This template should give you the overall idea of the status report. Don’t ignore the status report. Even if your managers are not forcing you to write these reports they are most important for your work assessment in future.
Try to follow report writing routine. Use this template or at least try to report it in your own words about the overall work of which you can keep some track.

Importance of multi tasking

I am mainly into Project management of Web Development industry and during my day, I have to switch to many tasks to take care / attend. Hence I have found that multi tasking is a must for my field but it has to be with some preplanning or else it can mess you up. Here are some tips to make multi tasking more effective.

1. Schedule Everything

After the initial "Yes" you need to send the contract. Did you remember that? Good… But before you send it over for the client to sign, you need to fill out the time frame that you'll take to complete the work. You should ask a simple but very important question: When do you need this project completed by?

Once you have that answer, pull up your calendar app (I'm an all Apple girl, so I use iCal, but you can use your favorite app or a desk calendar) and start looking at your next two working months. Mark the due dates for each project. Some of the projects may be able to wait a week or two, even a month. You'll be surprised on how one simple question makes things easier on you and your schedule.

2. Break them up into Tasks

You most likely have other projects already going on. So, instead of thinking big, try to break them into tasks and milestones. This will make it much easier to achieve success. Just like in my previous article, I have a suggestion of an app I use and find a perfect fit to keep track of it all. For breaking projects down into tasks,

3. Outsourcing / assign

Sometimes multitasking projects by yourself can be overwhelming. It is important to know your industry, network and find designers, coders, photographers who have the same idea of business that you have and connect with them. What should you do if you have more work than you can handle? Or something that is out of the range of your expertise? First, take a step back and figure out what you may need to have completed by some one else. Yes, you read right. Sometimes as freelancers we forget that we can go to other freelancers and collaborate to complete a project.

For example, I am not a flash animator, but I know some pretty cool designers that would give me great results if I sent a project their way. Make sure to network and get to know the industry professionals in your area, the strengths of each group and you'll have plenty of help when you need it. It goes both ways though.

Be ready to step up and help a fellow freelancer when the opportunity presents itself. Pay it forward. It is all about working together and helping each other.

4. Group them into Milestones

The entire purpose of breaking down big projects into smaller tasks is to create milestones. This is how you really know you are getting things done. So let's look at one of your 6 new clients. For this client it is actually 3 projects: Logo, Business Cards and a site.

You might think that everything is for next week but in reality it is not. You need to first develop a general understanding of the business so you can develop the logo, then create a "Coming soon" splash page on the site, followed by business cards and finally the site. See what I mean? This client has several steps or “Milestones” that need to be completed.

You need to date them all… Why? So you can keep a tight schedule and still be able to handle more than one client, not just more than one project.

5. Arrange and Meet the Deadline

The most important aspect of being a freelancer is meeting the deadlines you and your client set for each project. One of the most common mistakes of the Freelancing community is not meeting them, hence the client is dissatisfied and thinks all freelancers are unreliable. By meeting your deadlines and possibly beating them, you create a much better relationship with your client. This can lead to referrals and more work for you.

All around, the most important thing is that you set up everything on a calendar so you can keep track and still have balance time for family and friends. Writing things down makes them more real and it will help you to keep in mind what you need to do, even if you don't look at the calendar that often (though you should).

6. When You Miss the Deadline

Not everything goes as planned. The day will come and you will have to face it. You will miss a deadline. The most important thing here is that you keep your client updated on where you stand with meeting the milestones.

When something (big) gets off track, make sure you are upfront and honest with your client. You will be surprised at how understanding clients can be when something gets pushed back because of elements out of your control.

 

 

Online wireframe tools - FREE

During our project planning, we might need to have a tool to draw something and share with client. There are plenty of tools for this but what I am going to share is online i.e. no dependency or need to carry all files every time and FREE !!!

1. https://moqups.com/#!/, 
2. http://lumzy.com/app/, 
3. http://www.gliffy.com/gliffy/#templateId=blank&signup=1, 
4. Google Drive-Drawings
5. http://my.lovelycharts.com/
6. http://builds.balsamiq.com/b/mockups-web-demo/

Cheers,