eManagr Concepts

eManagr is a lightweight project management solution that uses some simple ideas to help keep your project on schedule while keeping out of your way and letting you do your work.

If you already understand the eManagr approach or don't really care about the underlying concepts, you might want to take a look at our walk-through (in progress), which will show you the major features and how to use them.

Profile

Your first interaction with eManagr is creating a user profile. We think of the profile a business résumé, and (as we add information) you may direct potential employers to your profile as evidence of participation in projects and your ability to hold to a schedule.

Skills

The skills you list are search terms to project owners. There are a handful of points to consider:

Be specific enough so that each skill skill you bring to the table is obvious.
Be general enough so that owners can still find you.
Be honest in rating your skills; getting your foot in the door won't help much if you embarrass yourself. Also, the accuracy of your estimates will suggest that you're not being honest.

Teams

Naturally, teams are the driving force of eManagr, since members of the team take and handle assignments. However, we don't know what your real-world team looks like. It might be:

Co-workers who share an office with you,
Co-workers spread across the planet who work for the same corporate entity,
Friends or classmates working on one or more one-off projects,
Unaffiliated people with common interests working on a single project or set of projects, or
Anything else.

Our solution is to use the so-called Hollywood Model: In much of the entertainment industry, a project starts with an idea. That person brings the idea to a producer. One of the two may know people to handle specific jobs, and they are brought on board if they're available. The remainder are hired through reputation, unions, or interviews, depending on the job.

The advantage of the Hollywood Model is its flexibility. If you already know who's on your team, then hire them directly. If you need other teams, if you need other members, or if you have no idea who you want on the project, you can find people by skill (reputation coming soon) and check out their profiles before hiring them.

If it doesn't work out? Fire them. The show must go on.

Estimates

If the teams are the driving force of eManagr, then estimates are the building blocks. Every project is made from tasks, and every task must come with an approximate amount of time it should take to finish. eManagr pays attention to these estimates over time to make sure you have the best chance of finishing work before any deadlines.

Initial Estimate

When each task is created, eManagr requires an initial estimate. Nobody expects the first estimate to be correct, but we want to make sure that someone has thought about each task. To help plan the tasks, any task that might take more than four hours must be broken down into smaller (sub)tasks. The more and simpler subtasks you have, the easier it will be to estimate each piece, leading to a better estimate overall.

Updates

The same rules apply to updated estimates. When work is assigned to a member of the team, that member may change the estimate. The worker may update the estimate again at any time until the task is complete. In both cases, the same rules apply as to the initial estimates.

Tracking

When estimates change (and they will), eManagr keeps track of the differences between old and new estimates and how late in the process the change is made. Combined, this information tells us how good eManagr users are at estimation.

Use the feedback to improve your estimates. Use the summary to determine how seriously to take the estimates of your teammates.

And yes. Recent estimates carry more weight. Older estimates are less important.