There are a multitude of great quotes and adages which should be beacons of truth for all project managers. One of my favorites is "failing to plan is planning to fail". It might be intuitively obvious to most of us, but not all project managers (or their managers or customers or their teams) seem to get it.

My name is Pat Gray, and I've been invited by Clarizen to share some of my irreverent views on project management. I've been in the computer business for over 25 years, writing code and documentation, managing systems and managing projects. For me, the best feeling in the world is hearing a customer's "thank you" at the end of the project, and knowing they really mean it.

Today is the day that we go live with Clarizen v4.8. It might sound, by its numbering, like a minor release but we have packed a lot of punch into this one. I will let Rachel, Clarizen VP of Products, and Dan, Clarizen’s Senior Product Manager get into the details of the features in their blog posts and in this post I will tell you about how we are rolling out this release and what it means for you.

In the world of project management, words such as risk, fallback and mitigation plan are the ABCs every project manager internalizes early on and uses on a daily if not hourly basis. It is the experienced project managers who know how to identify and manage these processes accurately and quickly leading to successful projects that are completed on time and within budget.

With the launch of Clarizen V4.8, I’m very excited to share with you some of our newly introduced features, giving you the “director’s cut” with built-in narration from the product manager’s point of view. Stressing the global picture and motivation that led us to focus on these features.

TopTenReviews, the leading comparison website that specializes in in-depth side by side reviews in the really competitive fields out there like in software, electronics, web services and more, just gave Clarizen a huge endorsement as the #1 Online Project Management Solution.

A while back, on a business trip to California I had an intriguing conversation with some friends and colleagues that, as it turns out, was way ahead of its time. We were discussing whether people not directly involved with the project should have complete access to a company’s infrastructure code, and possibly even be able to change it themselves. It was kind of an early open source discussion and it got into a heated debate about the pros and cons of allowing this sort of development or limiting it to viewing the infrastructure as APIs only.

Clarizen Version 4.8, being released early next month, takes a very significant step outside the confines of an enclosed website application, quite literally in fact. In this version we have taken one of our most powerful features – the roadmap view – enhanced it further by making it fully interactive and granting access to it as a widget from any other location. This means that an up-to-date roadmap view is can be added and accessed by your company’s intranet or portal without requiring login to Clarizen.

Gantthead’s CEO, Dave Garrett, just posted an interview he had with Jim Herries, Program Manager, Business Products at ESRI discussing ESRI’s adoption of Clarizen in their organization. In this excerpt from the full article, he focuses on user adoption and how Clarizen’s user interface, usability and functionality made the introduction and adoption within the organization seamless. 

Many Clarizen customers ask what the best approach to build a project work plan is.
There are many different methodologies to plan a project, such as Waterfall, Agile, Extreme, Rolling wave, Delivery Driven and etc. These methods use either top-down or bottom-up approaches to manage planning processes. Each methodology and approach can be the right choice for the organizational processes running in your company.

Clarizen has the vision of bringing the benefits of Work Management to every company to revolutionize the way they are running their organization

Regardless if you are an existing customer, current prospect or simply a devoted reader of these monthly newsletters, at some point or other you face the challenge of introducing a new solution, such as Clarizen, to your team. After all, it's not about technology, advanced features or a cool web 2.0 interface - it's about disrupting the status quo that each and every one of us gets nervous about, to some extent.