Status of FECT Trello Boards

For the Trello Boards, we have boards for

FECT Tasks

which is now current

and I have been cleaning out the boards for

Maldives
FECT-IT
Re-Org
FECT-Inc
FECT-HR

and added a board for

Tropical Climate


We already have boards for

Data

Finance
AWWA web

and of these, I shall try to get the Data board updated.

Online Collaboration Tools

In the absence of a dedicated collaboration software, and institutional archive, we need to try to do better with what we have. Eventually, we shall get there.  Something like basecamp.

For a calendar - FS is tasked with setting up a google calendar eventually.

For file storage we had used dropbox and gdrive - which we have not organized that well lately - and we shall continue to work on that incrementally.

For work management, we have Trello and we need to have a way to do Gantt Charts online.

For knowledge management, we have internal blogs and OSF/wikis to which I have invited some of you. The purpose of this along with the OSF boards (that is for research projects and also maybe a way for us to have wiki pages) is to move the discussions out of email - so that we can organize things effectively so that information contained can be useful for us as we forget about old topics and for any new person to come along.

Internal Blogging at FECT

After thinking about it quite a bit, I am proposing the following ways to get the Blogs working again and expanded. The internal blogs we already have are for

fecthr.blogspot.com

fectit.blogspot.com
fectorg.blogspot.com
These three blogs are intended to capture discussions around HR issues, IT, and organizational issues. 



The recent changes are to introduce two new blogs for

1. SOP  - fectsop.blogger.com

which shall be populated with our Standard Operating Procedures - this is something that AN is in charge of.

She already has several postings ready to go and she shall put this up. The advantage of doing this via blogger is that we can all contribute and edit and update and later we can convert.

2. Strategy - fectstrat.blogger.com

which shall be populated with Strategic Planning Matters (Recall this is one of our categories in the Re-Org).

This can have such longer term things as envisaged in the FECT re-org for this category = about plans for FECT accreditation, organizing new offices, work overseas



and a blog for

3. Tropical Climate called

tropclim.blogspot.com


which shall be used for Tropical Climate matters yet to be determined.

4 Disciplines (4DX) Infographic on the Organizational Monitoring Methodology

Link to the 1st Chapter of the  Book in our Internal Page 

Free Customizable Forms - Calendars - Graphics

https://www.worksheetworks.com/miscellanea.html

Open Source Project Collaboration Tools

These are open source collaboration tools -  links are from 2016

https://opensource.com/business/16/3/top-project-management-tools-2016

How does these compare with basecamp.com and freedcamp.com ?

Using Trello and Alternatives

TRELLO
Trello Started as an Internal Board for a software company and was spun off on its own.

Polis Center uses it but was not sure that it would last free as it was due to be bought  in early 2017.

Infographic of short cuts for Trello use.

ALTERNATIVES
Here are some open source alternatives to Trello or longer discussion on quora and perhaps a more neutral evaluation.

Open Access Book - Principles of Management

This management book is coming from three academics put together by the University of Minnesota who sort of say they want to remain anonymous but the information given is enough to pin them down. It seems up to date and gives an overview of strategic planning in chapter 6.  We can download the pdf and keep on our internal page.

The book seems to lead towards the balanced score card methodology. Are the authours benefitting in some way? Anyway the book is a good resource.

There are other  organization and management oriented textbooks there that could be useful on writing, IT, HRM, project management, sociology, strategic management as well.

Objectives and Key Results - OKR - Organizational Methods

There seem to be some convergence around strategic management, performance measurement and organizational engagement. One of the measures that is sold as what was developed at Intel and is used by Google in OKR - Objectives and Key Results. Seems this is used in Silicon Valley widely.  Two websites that help understand this are beterworks.com and in relation to okr which seems to steer us to future payments and weekdone.com which may have offline free templates such as in excel or google docs to monitor progress.

The difference between WIGs, Balanced Scorecard and OKR seems to lie in the number of Goals/Objectives and Number of Target Measures. We shall have to develop what works for us.

Work Planning Calendars and Much Work Sheets

Someone who advises on personal productivity recommended worksheetworks.com to me as a simple way to have planning calendars. This seems a non-profit type site with no ads, so it suits us.  There are monthly, weekly, daily calendars to put down your tasks.

Looking into the site, there is more you can do such as customizing maps in b&w and colour, charts, and graphics.

Purpose of the Blog

This is a place to share IT, administration, management and organizational information and thoughts that we can share. It shall be kept private to FECT staff and selected advisers for now.