Soft-spoken, right?

Our playground, so to speak, is the global market of productivity management software; a segment with immense growth potential, which according to reports reached a value of $62.90b in 2022 and is expected to grow to $105.60b in 2026 at a CAGR of 13.8%. The competition is fierce but we stand out in a crowded space with a clear differentiator, the Havelock Dynamic Planning Methodology. It’s precisely our methodology, in combination with our proprietary software, that solves the fundamental problems in companies with great operational intensity. We recently filed to patent our invention at the United States Patent and Trademark Office and wanted to use the occasion to share how Havelock’s approach to solves the five major problems in project management.

1. Wrong resources, at the wrong place, at the wrong time

The solution is simple: Concentrate on what can be done today, not on what should be done today. A slight difference in wording but with a great impact in reality. When you plan projects, you should build your initial plans, because they are your perfect scenario; a scenario that you can compare with what happens in reality. Once initial plans are ready, however, you should schedule your daily work dynamically, one step at a time. What does this mean? It means that you should plan for execution only actionable milestones. Steps whose start does not depend on other work to finish i.e. work on them can start immediately. In doing so, you reduce the number of milestones that distract you and focus only on those that require immediate assignment of resources.

2. Spotting problems too late

It’s a problem that everyone addresses but with questionable success. What is the solution? Dynamic reminders! Dynamic reminders is a concept at the heart of Havelock’s Dynamic Planning Methodology. It’s designed to trigger the assignment of actionable tasks, which in turn guarantee the execution of actionable milestones. If a delay occurs in the process of tasks’ execution, project managers (PM) cannot ignore it because they cannot continue scheduling milestones since they are not actionable yet. So, to continue their work, PMs are forced to find a solution to the problem (the delay) or escalate it to a third party. Before the task is executed, the project is “on hold” and the alarm keeps ringing, so to speak. We call this effect “The Bounce Back Effect”. The conventional method of scheduling non-actionable milestones and assigning non-actionable tasks belongs in the history museum.

3. Lack of company self-awareness

The solution to this problem hides in the definition of “self-awareness”. Here’s how we define it. If a company is “self-aware”, the level of transparency (nothing to do with the level of access to information) should allow access – in less than a minute and with no need for calls or meetings – to the following information:

1. Which projects have delays?
2. What was initially planned for each project?
3. What happened in reality?
4. When did the delay emerge?
5. Where?
6. Why?
7. What was communicated about it?
8. What steps were undertaken
9. What are we doing “today”?

We think that this is what makes a company self-aware; from a birds-eye-view to the “tree roots” in less than a minute!

4. Lack of direct benefits to contributors

In our experience, if a software solution doesn’t bring а direct benefit to all contributing users, it cannot be sustainable in the long run. However, the idea of “actionability” solves the problem. Working only with actionable tasks makes the life of all users easier. It removes shift-of-blame scenarios and questions such as, “When will you be ready so that I could start my task?” Clear and simple.

5. Lack of simplicity

Let’s admit it, adopting software with hundreds of menus and tabs, which takes months to learn half of its functionalities, is hard. That’s why we built Havelock based on a unique concept, while most solutions are built to align with different existing concepts. That’s why we are much simpler, minimalistic, and more efficient.