Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Proactive with Dependencies

I use the Getting Things Done Outlook Add-In from NetCentrics (http://gtdsupport.netcentrics.com/learn/ ) for time management and I depend on it for project management because it allows me to set email reminders for follow-up email interactions with other team members I require a response from, especially the sometimes goal-disconnected client team members because they are not in our office.

A tool I would like to have in order to be proactive about dependencies is a network resource monitor. In consulting, too often we have tasks that we get tripped up because someone changed something on us without notifying us. When it comes time to perform the task, we find that we have lost privileges to the client’s VPN, or SQL Admin rights to a database or local machine admin privileges on a test server. The delay in getting these resolved can impact deadlines.

If I could set up a monitor app to check these resources, using accounts the client has given us, I could know immediately when access has changed. I could then quickly put in a request to resolve it, and have the problem worked in parallel and fixed before it impacts project deadlines down the line.

If anyone knows of an application that can do this, please let me know.