Project teams strictures changed

Today I met an interesting statistical information about the project teams stricture. The results of a survey of one European IT company stated that only 31% of all the teams are co-located (all the team members sit in one room or at least in one office building). The other 33% of the teams are co-located teams with off-site project management and product owners. This is a common practice for the projects first appearing in the USA or Western Europe countries (like the UK, France or Germany) and being outsourced to so-called development centers in such countries as India, Mexico, Ukraine, Belarus and so on. It means that project management and business analysis will be done in the outsourcer company and the software development and testing will be performed by the outsourcing team. For example, Florida web development company creates a development center in the Eastern Europe to do custom website development and mobile apps development for them.

And the rest 36% will go to distributed teams. According to Wikipedia - "a virtual team (also known as a geographically dispersed team or distributed team) is a group of individuals who work across time, space and organizational boundaries with links strengthened by webs of communication technology". It means that more than one third of all the teams are geographically dispersed and they need to have some means of special communication. This may be a huge market share for different tools and solutions helping such teams to organize their every day routine.

But what really do they need to operate effectively?

1. If the project is performed by a distributed team the role of the communication plan increases. The PMO or project manager should create clear and easy rules of delegating tasks, sending e-mails, responsibilities and the system of reporting.

2. The next important step is creating the set of workflows. It's closely connected with the previous factor. Processes help people to stay focused on their tasks. In distributed teams there is often a problem of time-zone difference and it's not always possible to ask questions and get answers on a real time basis. So, good processes may help to organize the work the most productive way.

3. Find a tool or a combination of solutions that will help to organize the work of distributed team. The choice will depend on the team size, type of project and methodology used. For example, for traditional software development projects Basecamp may be a very good choice. It allows to set tasks, add documents, use white boards for tough tasks and to track time. But for Agile projects one may want to have something more flexible. Google Drive Spreadsheets maybe a perfect solution for the small projects and small teams. But for the projects that last more than 1 month and involve more than 5 geographically dispersed people it's good to try Jira GreenHopper, Pivotal Tracker and Comindware Tracker.

4. Create a list of possible risks and the ways how to avoid them or mitigate. The list may include cultural differences, language problems, time-zone differences and so on.

So, the statistics says that distributes teams are increased by number during the last 10 years. So, if you plan a career in IT you need to increase your skills in distributed teams management.

Fashionista Must-Haves (Part I)

It’s far from being a secret that year after year fashionistas are mercilessly exploited by fashion designers laying down ever new laws in the world of high fashion. Men and women squander vast sums of money to obey these laws and keep in step with the fashion.

However, there are some eternal things that can hardly been discarded by changing fashion. The things that attract envious glances of people around and are true must-haves for all fashionistas no matter how expensive they are. Let’s have go over the dearest dream of each and every woman.

Trench Coat
The first trench coat was designed in 1890 by Burberry brand and for more than 100 years it has not lost its chic and attractiveness. This double-breasted, belted garment with metal buttons has incorporated a rare combination of style and comfort.

Black Little Dress
Another item that has always been an essential part of any wardrobe and is more than likely to continue its triumphal march in the fashion world is a black little dress. Its origin goes as far back as 1920’s when the little black dress was created by Coco Chanel. Nowadays many designers offer little black dresses in their collections, however Dolce&Gabbana corset black dress is an attire you will not do without.

Fashionista Must-Haves (Part II)

Let’s go further and see what other items of clothes are not within control of changing fashion for women and has not lost its chic over years.

Chanel 2.55 Quilted Bag
One more cult article that has never left indifferent women hooked on fashion is Chanel 2.55 Quilted Bag created by Coco Chanel in 1955 and taking its name from the date of creation – the February of 1955. Tired of carrying purses in her hands, Coco added a thin chain strap. The bag instantly became a true icon of fashion and style and one of the most thought after accessories among fashionistas all over the world.

Christian Louboutin Shoes
Louboutin designer shoes are a masterpiece craved for by every woman. Any fashionista is ready without a twinge of conscience to pay a fortune and own a pair from Louboutin collections. Even despite extremely high heels, shoes women do not loose their lust for this luxury bit.

How to make your diet work

Those, who have ever tried keeping to a weight reduction diet for an extensive period of time, know that it’s not a pleasant thing to do. You are constantly tired and hungry and you are ready to bite someone’s head off if they do as much as offer you a candy bar or a soda. And at the top of all that you usually don’t see the results you were hoping for, because the arrow on the scales either moves to the left really slow or doesn’t move at all.
If you are no stranger to all these “symptoms” then you have tried all the wrong diets, because healthy weight reduction diet shouldn’t leave you exhausted, on the contrary, you should feel like you are full of strength and energy. If you don’t think that there is a way to lose belly fat without fainting every now and then, our advices will definitely help you to change your mind.
The first thing you have to do to achieve stable weigh loss is to stop starving yourself. You should understand that while you are keeping to a low-calorie restrictive diet your body feels threatened and it keeps saving all the calories you consume. In order to provide your body with all the nutrients it needs you should consider taking natural supplements. By giving your body all the vitamins, minerals, fibers, amino acids it needs dietary supplements help you to get through weight loss without mood swings and feeling of exhaustion.
In order to feel active during the day you should eat at least 5 times a day in small servings. Small amounts of food will digest much better and it will heighten your metabolism.
So, as you see, you don’t have to chew on carrots whole day long in order to lose belly fat, you just have to find a way to balance your diet.

How to lose fat

As you may probably know the thing that can really help you to lose weight and stay healthy is a combination of a balanced diet and a reasonable exercise routine. If you have no idea how to rearrange your nutrition, you may start with reading these recommendations. The tips provided on the page will help you to understand what and when you should eat and what products to cut from your diet. Once your new diet is balanced, you can start looking for a workout routine. It’s extremely important for you to enjoy your exercises, so if you like to dance, go ahead, join dance class or buy some DVD’s if you are too shy to dance in front of people. And don’t overload yourself at first, that won’t help you to achieve results faster but will only cool you down. Although it is possible for you to maximize your workout routine by taking pre-workout supplement.
So if you want to know more about how to lose fat in a healthy way, you can start your research here. On this website you will find some tips on how to make your diet and exercise routines effective. And here you will be able to find dietary and pre-workout supplement that will make the process of weight reduction much more effective.

Task Management for Housewives

Even if you have never made any plans in your life, still you have managed projects. Here is a short list of such projects:

• preparing a wedding or birthday party
• travelling to the sea or abroad
• entering an institute
• building a house
• purchasing a car
• flat redecorating

And these projects are big enough but every day we perform many other smaller projects – from daily shopping to cooking supper. Why don’t we consider them projects? We call them ‘everyday routine’. But if we think carefully, we’ll realize that all these ‘daily tasks’ are chains of tasks and sometimes require some kind of task tracker. 

In order to cook dinner, one has to decide who will go shopping and what should be bought, who will cook dinner and how long and, finally, who will wash the dishes after the dinner. And now tell me, please, how often you have to run to the shop if the list of the necessary products hasn’t been made correctly or hasn’t been made at all.

If you have invited very important guests, your dinner not prepared in time can derail negotiations or embarrass your guests and the evening will be wholly bad. And who doesn’t know the consequences of prolonged repair works? In these cases quarrels and scandals in the family are guaranteed.

By definition, every project has an aim, beginning and deadline. Thus, cooking dinner is not only a task but already a project. Consequently, each of us is a project leader. In many ways our life depends on the fact how we can manage our projects. Can we meet the deadline and fit the agreed budget? I don’t insist on making flowcharts and Gantt charts before starting a sweep-up of your flat. I just wanted to show that even such simple projects which are repeated many times in our usual life very often exceed the appointed schedule and can even fail. So while performing most projects having only experience and common sense is not enough, the suitable task management approach is also necessary, and task management software.

Thus, any housewife can be a real project manager and, who knows, maybe in the course of time this common housewife will decide to start his own career. The better she manages her everyday household chores, the better project manager she is likely to become. 

The Key Plusses of Surfacing

At the present time progressive techniques of surfacing have been successfully developed for successful resolution of circle of objectives. Such tasks are generally related to the nonfunctional arrangement on the modern city landscape. There is a large amount of productive variants for architects and designers which are provided by such present-day technologies . Currently it is accomplishable to make use of a kind of coverage for the land that and this kind of coverage is long-lived and simultaneously is simple to care about. Moreover, contemporary coverage looks truly attractive and is widely used nowadays. Working with decorative surfacing for varied purposes and kinds of premises has some definite advantages versus several other materials for coverage. Among the positive characteristics of the surface systems generally are:
1. Lastingness of playground surface gives the opportunity to dispose of incessant disturbing about the quality of surfacing if it will be used in the premises for dynamic types of sport;
2. Moderate price of this innovative surfacing makes it beneficial variant;
3. Really beautiful arrangement of pool surfacing makes it one of the most appropriate material for swimming baths;
4. Largest amount of color and tint decisions which appears due to the possibility to compound various colours of the materials of surface solutions in same texture in concordance with to your subjective choice;
5. Sport surfaces provide traumatic safeness compared with many other kinds of coverage for instance asphalt. This indicator becomes peculiarly essential in case if the surface is used for dynamic sport games such as basketball game just because the partners of the activity go about the exaggerated hazard of personal injury during the game;
6. Modern play surfaces have excellent sound-absorbing and also orthopedic characteristics. Consequently these surfaces may assure safeness for well-being and superior grade of utilizing;
7. Such surfacing is usually easy to preserve;
8. Minimal danger of mechanical disturbance of coverage;
Those plusses make it really axiomatic that innovative surfacing is a beneficial alternative i versus some other sort of coverage.