This is one of the chapters in my e-book, Trello-PM. I want to give you a glimpse at how you might develop a Project Master Template. It is a great Competitive Advantage using a tool like Trello™. See what you think... Cardflow+ by Qrayon: Beyond Index CardsWhen I am not screwing around on my phone, I am using my iPad. 80% of what I do with Architekwiki is done with my iPad. The app I am describing is for the iPad.
I use the hell out of Trello; but for some things I've found another visual planning tool that works really well. Cardflow. Cardflow mimics index cards on a tack board - but lots better. Here Is How I Use Cardflow I don’t know what it is about accounting. It is really boring. And yet I am repeatedly drawn to the challenge of finding a system that works for architects.
This past week I revisited two services that I hadn’t looked at for over five years - LessAccounting and FreeAgent. I have already put LessAccounting aside for the time being. You would probably need a better timekeeping system than LessAccounting’s app, LessTimeSpent. And other aspects just weren’t falling into place. FreeAgent on the other hand has me digging in. My Interview With Business Of Architecture / Enoch SearsA guy who knew me from my Corbu adventure mentioned me to Enoch Sears. Enoch has a website called The Business Of Architecture. Part of what Enoch offers is a podcast that interviews people in the architecture industry. He invited me to be interviewed. I said, 'Yes'. And here we are.
The interview is broken into two parts below. We got our first email system when we moved into a building where an IT consultant was also a tenant. He wired us into his system and we used his domain name. The monthly cost was affordable and there were no maintenance headaches or costs. It was 1993 and Al Gore had just invented the Internet two years before. We were ’on it’.
Over time all those drawing attachments started clogging up his email server, so we got our own email server with our own domain name. The cool factor balanced out the costs and hid the fact that we were stepping out on a slippery slope. During my career we saw a wide range of projects. They ranged from really small and simple to really big (for us) and complicated. On the small end of the spectrum was a two-car garage addition to the side of a house. On the opposite end of the spectrum was a new high school. I will show you how the five fee tables of a fee schedule can span that kind of range. Let's take a closer look at the five tables that make up the fee schedule.
The chicken or the egg
If you specialize in one project type, your past experiences give you a solid basis for determining fees. But what do you do until you have past experiences to draw on? When you don't have a comparable project to use for gauging the right fee, a fee schedule gives you a way to arrive at an appropriate fee for your project. Even where you have a similar project, the size or some other aspect of the new project might be significantly different.
During my career we used a true accounting package designed for architects. You would think that everything worked great. You would be wrong. When it came to checking on the status of a project's budget, you rarely got an answer in the time frame that you were expecting.
Why wasn't a Project Status readily available?
The point is that getting a timely project status was a lot of work to keep up with. I am happy to report that bookkeeping solutions don't require all of that. Here's all you do... If you have been following along with my description of how to develop your own customized project management system using Trello, you know it's time to start implementing the idea. Implementing Trello in your firm is pretty simple.
Here are the steps I suggest.
We all have used Street View in Google Maps. Google has just about photographed the entire built-environment. It's kind of cool or creepy depending on your point of view. I was preparing a post last week and wished I had a picture of the spire pictured here. I planned to go take a picture or two for the post. While I was looking up the address in Google Maps, I found that Google had taken care of the picture-taking for me - and at a much nicer time of year. So in half the time it would have taken to drive to the site and back, I had grabbed a few screenshots, cropped and re-sized them, and placed them in the blog post. So far this isn't too creepy, it's just a helpful marketing tool. Especially helpful when you are working against a deadline. The creepiness factor was just around the corner... I have been promoting Trello for a while now. I think Trello is a good tool for planning and managing just about anything, but especially design projects. Here’s why I like Trello for Project Management.
It used to be real simple - floppy disks carried from computer to computer, a sneaker-net.
Then came a hard drive for your computer, but you still used a sneaker-net with floppies. Next came ethernet wiring for a real network. When modems arrived you could access files and even programs remotely with Citrix over telephone lines. The Internet changed everything again, making it possible for your server to be in the cloud using Dropbox. Now all my stuff is in the Cloud, and storage via Dropbox has been joined by my three Google Drive accounts, plus an iCloud Drive, plus the special cases of photo and music storage. Things were simple; then they got complicated; then simple again; and now they are complicated again. It's time for a reset. It has been over a year since the Best Of page has been updated. Every quarter I take a look. This is the first time in a year that there has been any significant change.
Kind of. Specification Notes should have a role in every project. By Specification Notes [SpecNotes] I mean a section by section listing of the key requirements of every type of work, arranged by CSI Division and Section Number. The SpecNotes are placed on the drawings. We usually place the General Requirements on a G-series sheet right behind the Cover Sheet. The Architectural Technical Specs are placed on sheet A001, A002 (if needed) per the National CAD Standards. Take a look at the embedded document to download our 30+ page master SpecNotes to start your own. After 18 months I have decided to begin posting to the BLOG once again. If you are new to Architekwiki, you might have missed this source of riveting information. After all, it wasn't even listed in the menu until recently.
Take a look. Why not subscribe to all the blogs and get them by email? Or if you already subscribe, click the "update your preferences" link in the footer of this email. Architecture is not known, at least to those involved, as the most profitable of businesses. Salaries aren't commensurate with responsibility. We all need to work on this. Here's my first shot. #1 ’PLANNED’ LOSES The number one way to lose money, or at least limit your profitability, is to inadvertently plan for that outcome. (See Architectural Economics.) Many firms ignore the facts of their own operation and use industry rules of thumb instead. Know your costs and ratios; and run your firm based on facts. Over the past year I have spent a lot of time looking into how architects do bookkeeping. My focus was on small firms of less than 15 people. I have interviewed about 75 firms and received almost 1500 survey responses. For most of my career, my firm was seven people or smaller. For about 20 years we used Deltek Advantage and liked it. It is only in hindsight that I realized what gross overkill that software was. That is the problem that everyone in the small firm category has: Finding a bookkeeping solution that doesn't cost too much money and TIME. After a year I know that solution does not exist. I continue to look for programs that could be the solution - even if it means "tricking" them into being what is needed. Along the way I have learned a lot about what small firm architects use and how things could be better, even if perfection remains elusive. These six articles describe what I have discovered. I’ve read recently that organizations are starting to recognize that they no longer function like a hierarchy, which comes to us from a military model that is probably 10,000 years old. Instead they recognize that a network is closer to reality. In a network each node (person) is connected to several others. Sometimes there is a client-vendor relationship. I would include boss-employee relationships under client-vendor for the sake of simplicity. Simplicity might be at odds with clarity, though. Other times the relationship is more peer-to-peer or even resource-researcher. What nodes do you see in a smallish design firm?
It's kind of odd that you can't easily draw a network because there are very few tools that can handle it. CAD is the handiest (lucky for us), but outside the design field what would you use? Lucidchart, mind mapping, drawing tools like the Inkflow app? Because until you draw the network, it's pretty hard to think about it. That’s one reason hierarchies have worked so well - just assign people to roles: soldier, squad leader, platoon leader, company commander, etc. No need to draw it. Mind mapping doesn't work unless your program allows interconnections - this one (iBlueSky app) doesn't. Fig 1. Lucidchart works pretty well. Fig 2. A Lucidchart network diagram lets you use shape, color, line types, and arrow heads to convey information about your network. This might be better than CAD. Lucidchart’s toolbox makes it pretty easy to recognize all the subtle relationships in a network. (In Fig 2 I used their ’Flowchart’ shapes with one of the simple themes.) I tried Inkflow, too, but I didn't see any benefits of drawing the network by hand, even if you can cut and paste easily to re-arrange nodes. Fig 3. I think we are in for some really big changes when you combine this management concept, the prevalence of contract workers and the move to embrace more telecommuting. Design firms don't seem to be in a leadership position on these changes except maybe contract workers, thanks to the Great Recession. Not being a leader, though, doesn't mean you won't be affected. I tried for years to sketch our organization; now I see that I wasn't using the right concept/tool to tackle the job. Here is an article with an interesting comparison. http://www.digitalinnovation.pwc.com.au/hierarchy-vs-network-business-models/ I have been dragging my feet on this update. Partly because the chore is getting tedious. It used to be exciting to see the changes. Partly because the results are about 90% predictable now after 2-1/2 years. Enough whining. Here are the top 25 pages based on number of page views over the past three months. SHARING CONTACTS - THE SOLUTIONLast week a reader asked me for a recommendation on Contact Management software. (Thanks for the idea, Michele.) She uses Outlook, but doesn't have access to group (shared) contact lists. I can relate because I had the same issue when we moved away from Outlook Exchange with public/shared folders to Google Apps. The loss of access to a shared contact list was THE ONLY thing I missed. Our solution was to import all 1,500 contacts into everyone's email account and then use blind copies on emails and other tricks to keep the lists up to date.
So I did a search of products out there. The problem I found is that many solutions aren't designed for sharing; and the ones that are have a per user cost that makes them pretty pricey for what they do. And then I found ZOHO CRM. When I started my firm, I didn't have much experience with business. In particular I felt unsure about money matters. Luckily I stumbled upon a business attitude that partly made up for my lack of experience. Word Clouds For You. Merry Christmas!I have been playing with Wordle again. This time to get into the Holiday Spirit. See what you think. The Word Clouds are downloadable, and feel free to decorate your holiday email, etc. with them.
Are you spending too much time on accounting? One of the late realizations that I had after 20 years of using a powerful accounting program is that it was costing much more per year than it should. It wasn't the $1,000 per year subscription that cost too much; it was the time required to USE the accounting program. A true accounting program, like we were using, is very fussy. If it were a person, it would be considered “high maintenance”. In our case, the time spent on accounting was time that could have been spent on billable tasks. We could have easily afforded to farm out every accounting chore for what we were “spending” in lost opportunity. Here is how I look at time allocation for accounting now. |
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