The principal aim of this article is to identify and explore multiple dimensions of project failures during the entire life of project execution.

Many projects fail. The only way that companies can get better at performing projects is by learning from projects they have carried out. There are small things that can decide the fate of the project.

These all in project management practice and research has been to see it as a threat and as something that should, if possible, be neutralized, reduced and followed.

Question – “Did the project deliver the results and quality we expected?“

Answers to this question could be different from a different perspective. There is no single method or organizational structure that can be used to manage projects to success.

Project failure can happen in any organization.

There are many reasons why projects (both simple and complex) fail; the number of reasons can be infinite and can fit into a different phase of SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle), initiation through go live.

Sometimes it’s out of the control of a project manager and/or the team members. Sometimes failure is controllable. Failed projects and people involved with the failure have some things in common.

From an outside view, it could be that all reason will roll up to the manager’s responsibility and accountability however from my perspective it should be a collective responsibility.

Here are some of the common reasons why the project fails.

1. Incompetent Project Manager

The first possible cause of project failure is the manager. A manager who helps steer the project in a timely fashion and provides sound, inspiring leadership can go a long way toward bringing about a successful project.

Reasons like “an incompetent manager” “project manager unwilling to make decisions,” “problems ignored”, “poor management by the leader,” “loss of control by the manager,” and “the failure of the manager to delegate”, “working as only as coordinator” are the most important reason given for project failure.

2. Less Involvement of Project Managers

This is always a topic of debate for managers: Should they just focus on pure management activities such as reporting, cost and issue tracking, or should they also dive into ground-level review and design?

There is no correct answer. Even the biggest project depends on the success of the smallest components. Every detail contains a seed that can mean the difference between success and failure.

On relatively inexperienced teams, managers must be involved in the details for key activities. This will help them have better control of the effort as well as provide the true status of the project to stakeholders.

3. Unavailability to Skilled Resources

Every project has some resource estimations before starting the project and even every vendor submits key personnel details and profiles as part of the bidding process to acquire the project.

However, the picture is always opposite once the project is awarded. Initial resource estimations and loading sheet handed over to project managers as part of sales hand over process

but I have seen that managers always struggle for the right skilled resources hence it is necessary that the leadership team should understand the criticality and provide planned/skilled resources on time to avoid project delay or failure.

4. Lack of Proper Planning

Project managers should have clear outcomes visibility and should involve himself./herself right from sales hand over as this phase is critical for project success.

If you don’t have a clear focus at the earliest stage of the process/project, you are making things harder on yourself. This would lead to inappropriate estimations and half-cooked planning.

5. Lack of Management Support/Leadership Alignment

It is important to ensure that senior management remains fully engaged throughout the project life cycle. The involvement e.g. through project update sessions imply that they are willing to take appropriate actions to address issues raised by the project team, mitigate the project risks, provide leadership, thus contributing to the project’s success.

6. Missing Communication

The communication plan plays a very substantial role in project success or failure. The plan should contain stakeholder details I.e name, role, contact no. and email, project team details, escalation matrix and other dependent groups.

Information distribution details (stakeholder, information detail, distribution methods, format and frequency) should be clearly defined in the plan. To save your project from failure, the project manager needs to establish a clear communication channel.

Effective communication within any organization is important to keep all your team members on the same page, avoid confusion and keep them motivated.

By communicating with your team, managers can develop an environment of trust, proactively kill conflicts, which would bring the best out of your team and eventually lead to the successful delivery of the project.

7. Ignoring Change Management Process

Take a second before your project starts to undergo significant changes, or even before you look for a technology solution. It’s critical to define your change management process steps.

A firm understanding of change management principles will serve as a strong backbone for any change management plan. Change is inevitable, irrespective of the size of your project.

Whether good or bad, it must be managed well to ensure the project continues without disruption. Every project must have a change control process, and every change request, however small, must go through it.

The change’s impact should be documented, approved and presented to key stakeholders so that everyone understands its effect on quality, cost and schedule. The focal point of any leader tasked with change must be to align their team with the vision.

Communication is a crucial component in ensuring every team member is on the same page.

8. No-Risk Management Process

Many projects fail because there is no risk management process as an integral part of the management process.

Then guess what – a perfectly predictable situation arises which no one knows how to react to.

It was in the risk log but no risk response was created so the predictable outcome is a less than an optimal project.

9. Inadequate Quality Assurance

Now, this is where the technicality comes in. Software projects often fail when no quality assurance activities are planned and no systematic activities are performed to evaluate the quality of the development process or ultimate deliverables.

This is because managers often fail to project appropriate reviews tests or checkpoints where quality can be verified. Code review is part of this (as defined in #20).

10. Missing Management Tools/Framework

Successful projects are based on a methodology or framework that includes management tools. The right approach can help managers to stay on top of it and by using some reliable management tools;

managers can enhance the team’s productivity, can increase accuracy and save time by automating activities like task tracking and managing dependencies.

A great number of unsuccessful project results from missing methodology and framework, which leads to inaccuracy and wasted time. There are numerous management frameworks and methodologies (like Agile, Iterative) and they can support efficient delivery.

11. Company/Culture

The company or culture should not be supported by the political environment. It should support competency, skill, professionalism and transparency.

If it isn’t, team members will not be motivated to do their best. Basically, everyone involved must participate in their part of the project to successfully complete it.

Any actions which project managers take to move project execution from the political arena into an objective and analytical one will improve the project’s success. This involves managing and retaining the most highly skilled and productive people. Knowledge is money.

It is the job of managers to manage and motivate so that project efforts will experience a zone of optimal performance throughout its life.

12. Inappropriate Prioritization

While some work best on a small number of requirements, others are better suited to very complex projects with many decision-makers.

But regardless of when it is done before a requirement can be prioritized, managers must consider why the requirement is most important from a business standpoint and what would be the impact of this on the overall system whether the new requirement would add value to the overall system or it will be overhead.

Managers should lead prioritization exercises along with all relevant stakeholders.

There are a number of possible business considerations, including value, cost, risk, and improve customer experience, stakeholder agreement and urgency variables.

13. Inaccurate Stakeholder Analysis

Stakeholder Analysis is the first step and an important process that successful managers use to win support from others. Managing stakeholders helps them to ensure that their projects succeed where others might fail.

There are three steps to follow in Stakeholder Analysis. First, identify who your stakeholders are. Next, work out their power, influence and interest, so that you know who you should focus on.

Finally, develop a good understanding of the most important stakeholders based on the Power/Interest grid, so that you know how they are likely to respond, and how you can win their support which can lead to project success.

14. Use of Unfamiliar Tools

Tools are definitely needed for project execution and success but unfamiliar tools may lead to chances of failure as well. Sometimes, it can cause many severe problems during the project life cycle as the team has to deal with the learning curve of new tools along with usual project tasks and duties.

Managers should ensure that tools are not enforced on team members, just to utilize for the fulfillment of audit compliance unless tools adding some products and save some efforts.

15. Change – Always saying “Yes’ to the Customer

Many behaviours can cause a project to fail, but accepting whatever the client says is sure to spell doom. Initially, a stakeholder might appreciate your flexibility – but that will be overshadowed later by the impact of possible schedule slippage and unmet objectives.

Change is a major cause of project failure. Project specifications can be changed for several reasons: initial planning was not complete or thorough; Senior-level management changed the scope of the work; the client (if not upper-level management) changed the scope of the work; this isn’t to say that you should always tell customers “no.” If you do that, they’ll feel their concerns are not being addressed. Before you commit to something, perform due diligence and analyze the pros and cons of your decision.

16. Bonding between Team Members

It is the prime responsibility of managers to unite the team members to achieve a common goal. The stages a team generally goes through are: forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning.

As a manager, a good understanding of these stages would help in guiding a team from infancy to maturity which creates needed bonding.

Things can easily go from good to bad very quickly if there is no unity between your team members. Consider a scenario in which all team members are moving in different directions.

Could you expect a positive result to come out of this situation? There could be many reasons from personality differences to conflicting interests. All of them contribute towards taking you one step closer to project failure.

17. Unrealistic Expectations

At the beginning of a project, it’s important to set realistic expectations for every member or stakeholders who are a part of the project. If it kicks off without setting goals for individual team members, they are most likely to lose clarity and focus somewhere in the middle.

Managers must have one on one session with individual team members and help them understand their role. If goals are set before the project is in full swing, the members would have a roadmap to follow that prevents them from derailing it.

18. Talking Through Problems

Condensing bad news internally for long enough will only seed the explosion later on. It’s is fine to do for a limited period, but you will need to take some time to pull it out, examine it, feel it, and study it so you can find a way to re-channel it or transmute it into another kind of energy.

Quite often we face the dilemma of whether or not to deliver bad news to stakeholders. And too often we forget this truth: Clients have a vested interest in the success of it.

They have every right to know any development impacting the outcome of the initiative. You will end up having this heavy thing on your chest that will never move.

You will never understand what it is about. The problem is that we believe that sharing problems will make us weak and that stakeholders will start to judge us for our short-comings. Maybe they do.

But stakeholders having higher interest who genuinely care about the project and you very well know these people, will come out and help.

Sharing helps you feel less burdened because you now have fewer things on your mind. This will also allow you more space to put new thoughts, planning things better.

19. Guesstimates – Efforts

A “guess estimate,” also referred to as a “gut feel,” is based on personal intuition and past experience. But even the most strongly held conviction could be faulty. An inaccurate estimate can leave a project team slogging day and night to meet a deadline.

The project might finally be delivered on time-but with a huge effort overrun. If time is pressing, use the Function Point technique, Function Points are units of measure for functional size as defined within the IFPUG Functional Size Measurement (FSM) Method and it is the major global functional sizing methodology.

The manager is responsible for the accurate and re-estimation post-sales handover. If efforts guesstimated or not correctly estimated with the appropriate tool then it definitely impacts one of all three critical project parameters- Cost, Scope, schedule.

20. Avoiding Code Reviews

Assuming that testing will catch bugs or that defects are fixed faster when you know where code is breaking. You’ll only end up increasing the risk of schedule slippage as the inflow of defects rises during testing and the turnaround time for code fixes increases.

Code review helps produce a stable, quality deliverable. Its focus is not only to catch code defects but also to look at critical dimensions that may not get caught during testing, such as code optimization and requirement coverage.

21. Skipping Prototyping

Defects can result from a misunderstanding of requirements and a misinterpretation of stated requirements. Even if requirements are well-documented, they must be validated for correct understanding.

Only by a visual walkthrough can users spot the differences in what they expect and what’s being built. Feedback must be planned at various stages throughout a project to reduce risks.

These feedback loops will help you spot gaps early and provide enough time for correction. A sketch, wireframe, mockup, and prototype are all unique ways to visually display the requirements of your project with varying levels of detail.

Understanding that level of polished output each of these presentations will keep expectations aligned and communication clear between all the stakeholders.

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Finding New Keywords and Putting Them in Naturally

As the year progresses, new trends suddenly pop up, giving the whole world some new things, and some new words. For website owners, this gives them some new keywords. One must remember that keywords are probably the most integral part of one’s SEO, and finding new, useful keywords needs some good research and focus. Once you find them, use them in your website’s content as if they are naturally being integrated in it. In simple words, do not make it look as if you are grinding the keywords in your website’s content.

Linking Your Website Properly

Strong backlinks (wherein you link your website’s links in other websites) are still at the forefront of off-page SEO. This helps you get more viewers into your website and make your website get a better Google ranking. Try and get your website backlinked on websites that have a stronger authority to make a better impact. Secondly, do not keep a lot of outbound links because too much of the impact your ranking negatively. Also, concentrate on keeping relevant inter-web site links in relevant articles. Try to get links from a website such as:

– Yellow pages: Google for finding your business on local business.

– TripAdvisor: Wonderful website to get local customers for hotels, restaurants, guest houses etc.

– Canadian To Grow: Awesome web directory to promote your website for free. Select your niche and submit your website.

Content and Readability

Content is the main driving force behind getting people interested in your website. This time around, you should remember to make your content longer. The average words for the top Google searches is about 1900, keep that in mind. But remember, do not go for duplicate content just because you want to keep your word limit maintained. That does not bode well with Google apparently. Use Google Search Console to determine problems of such kind. Adding multimedia to your content helps a lot according to research. Finally, remember to check the feasibility of your website. Install Toast SEO on your WordPress website. It comes with a readability checker. Otherwise, use other such checkers available on the internet.

Healthier Website Performance

There are various things you can inculcate to improve your website’s performance. First and foremost check your website’s page loading speed. For that, use PageSpeed Insights for checking your website’s speed. Secondly, if you manually install any plugins, always check for malware as that might reduce your website’s loading speed by a lot. Thirdly, the optimization of your website’s visual content is also important. It is necessary that you place them on your website in such a way that every viewer of yours gets to see it. It also bodes well with Google.

SEO Plan for 2020 – That is how you can improve your SEO efforts for 2020, keeping them in line with the newest Google algorithm.

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AntiVirus Software

A computer virus is a self-replicating program that installs itself on your computer without your consent. It does so by inserting itself into other programs, data files, or the boot sector of your hard drive.

Once this happens, the affected areas are said to be ‘infected’.

The vast majority of viruses perform some sort of harmful activity on their hosts. A virus may access your confidential information (such as your banking details),

corrupt data or steal hard disk space or processing power, log your key-strokes and spam your contacts. If you are extra lucky, however, it might only display humorous, scatological or political messages on your screen.

Anti-virus software is used to detect and remove computer viruses. It consists of two basic types: signature scanners and heuristic detectors.

Signature scanning is used to identify known threats, while heuristics are used to find unknown viruses.

Infected files

In the old days… less than a decade ago… most viruses were contained in executable (or program) files, ie files with extensions such as.exe or.com, so anti-virus software only had to check these kinds of files. Nowadays anti-virus software has to check a greater variety of files, including Microsoft Word documents and other non-executable (and seemingly harmless) files.

In MS Word, a macro is a set of instructions you record and associate with a shortcut or name.

You can use a macro, for example, to save the text of a legal disclaimer. You can then add the text to any document you are writing (without having to retype the disclaimer)

by just pressing the particular shortcut key combination or clicking the macro name.

Despite the time they can save, macros present a risk. Rogue programmers can use them to hide viruses within documents that they send as email attachments to unsuspecting victims.

Once they open the attachments, the victim’s computer is infected.

Nasty little programs can also be embedded in other non-executable files, so that opening these files can result in infections.

Some email programs, such as MS Outlook Express and Outlook, in particular, are vulnerable to viruses embedded in the body of an email.

You can infect your computer just by opening or previewing a message.

Identifying viruses

There are several methods that antivirus software can use to identify files containing viruses: signature scanning, heuristic detection, and file emulation.

Signature scanners

Signature-based detection is the most common method of identifying viruses. It involves searching the contents of a computer’s boot record, programs, and macros for known patterns of code that match known viruses.

Because viruses can embed themselves anywhere in existing files, the files have to be searched in their entirety.

The creators of the anti-virus software maintain the characteristics of known viruses in tables called dictionaries of virus signatures.

Because thousands of new viruses are being created every day, the tables of virus signatures have to be updated regularly if the anti-virus software is to be effective when it checks files against these lists.

To avoid detection, rogue programmers can create viruses that encrypt parts of themselves or that modify themselves so that they do not match the virus signatures in the dictionary.

In practice, the signature-based approach has proved very effective against most viruses. However, it cannot be used to find unknown viruses or viruses that have been modified.

To counter these threats, heuristics need to be used.

Heuristic detectors

Heuristic-based detection involves trial-and-error guided by past experience. Heuristic detectors will, for example, look for sections of code that are characteristic of viruses, such as being programmed to launch on a particular date.

The use of generic signatures is a type of heuristic approach that can identify variants of known viruses by looking for slight variations of known malicious code in files. This makes it possible to detect known viruses that have been modified.

File emulation

File emulation is another heuristic approach. It involves running a file in a sandbox, an isolated part of a computer in which untrusted programs can be run safely, to see what it does.

The actions the program performs are logged and if any of these are deemed to be malicious, the anti-virus software can carry out appropriate actions to disinfect the computer.

Memory-resident anti-virus software

Memory-resident anti-virus software installs programs in RAM that continue to operate in the background while other applications are running.

A computer’s hard disk is where computer programs and files are stored, while RAM (random access memory) is the memory that programs use when they are running.

When starting, a program is first loaded into RAM. Once programs have finished running they exit RAM. In addition, RAM is volatile, ie when the power is turned off everything in RAM is wiped out. By contrast, the programs and files on your hard disk remain when your computer is powered off.

Memory-resident anti-virus programs monitor a computer’s operations for any action associated with viruses, such as downloading files, running programs directly from an internet site, copying or unzipping files, or attempting to modify program code. It will also be on the lookout for programs that try to remain in memory after they’ve been executed.

When they detect suspicious activity, memory-resident programs halt operations, display a warning message, and wait for the user’s OK before allowing operations to resume.

Drawbacks

Despite its undoubted benefits, antivirus software has a few drawbacks. Because it uses computer resources, it may slow your computer down a bit, though this is not usually very significant.

No anti-virus software can provide full protection against all viruses, known and unknown. Once installed, however, it can lull you into a false sense of security.

You may also find it difficult to comprehend the prompts and decisions the software throws up on your screen now and then. An incorrect decision may result in an infection.

Most anti-virus software uses heuristic detection. This must be fine-tuned in order to minimize false positives, ie the misidentification of non-malicious files as viruses.

False positives can cause serious problems. If an antivirus program is configured to immediately delete or quarantine infected files, a false positive on an essential file can render the operating system or some applications unusable. This has happened several times in recent years, even with major anti-virus service providers such as Symantec, Norton AntiVirus, McAfee, AVG and Microsoft.

Anti-virus software can also pose its own threat, because it usually runs at the highly trusted kernel level of the operating system, thus creating a potential avenue of attack. It needs to do this in order to have access to all potential malicious processes and files. There have been cases where anti-virus software has itself been infected with a virus.

Finally, it’s best to remember that not all heuristic methods can detect new viruses. This is because the rogue programmers, before booting their new viruses into cyberspace, will test them on the major anti-virus applications to make sure that they are not detectable!

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Unfortunately, that’s not really practical for most people. So instead, we snooped around for what measures computer security professionals use to secure their own machines. (Obviously, one of the best measures is not to release all of your security methods, so we got the cream of the crop.) The skills and knowledge of being an expert computer security professional can take years to learn, but it’s always possible to glean a few tidbits of knowledge from the pros.

Take online security seriously and respond quickly

News outlets were buzzing after an article published on medium.com nailed Panera Bread to the wall for failing to address a massive user data breach for eight months. That breach allowed anyone to view customers’ full names, addresses, dietary preferences, and email addresses. Their IT team didn’t fix it and their leadership didn’t handle it when it was brought to their attention. That’s not exactly the example to follow.

Whether you’re speaking in terms of public relations, data security, or loss of productivity, there’s never been a more important time to take digital security seriously. You wouldn’t leave your car running in a parking lot while you went inside for half an hour, so don’t leave your (and potentially your customers’) data vulnerable online.

Update your software — now, not later!

We were actually surprised by this consensus opinion. It’s so simple, yet, we’ve all been guilty of clicking “Remind me Later” when some program wants to update. There’s a reason that software is updating: Its team of dedicated, expert programmers have patched something. Many times, it’s a security loophole or some part of the program that allows a vulnerability into your system.

With that said, do something you might never have done — read the release notes. Figure out exactly what the update intends to fix, and then head to the forums. See what other people are saying about the risks involved with the update. If you’re already behind a version, then take a moment to weigh whether or not to update to, yes, yet, another version that might also have holes. That’s what the pros do.

Remember when security experts found a flaw in High Sierra? That’s the perfect example. You might have dodged a bullet by not updating, but not without checking the news.

It may be hard to believe that one of the most important lessons of online and network security is performing software updates as soon as possible, but it’s one of the best ways to keep your computer and network safe. It’s almost always a hassle, but it’s definitely always worth it.

Be miserly with your permission!

Every CompSec pro is privy to the basic, fundamental rule of network security: The Principle of Least Privilege, which basically asks “how few permissions can you give each user?” Yeah, needing to ask your IT team to turn on your speakers because of insufficient permissions is incredibly annoying — no one knows better than the IT team. But by keeping everyone’s permissions as restricted as possible, you minimize potential problems, including your own.

Imagine your network like a house and a hack like a break-in.

Example 1: You have valuables in every room of the house, but there are no doors to those rooms. Whether a thief breaks in through the window, the garage, or by picking the front door, they can get at everything by breaking in once.

Example 2: Every room in the house has a locked door, and all valuables are placed inside safes. If our thief gets into one room, they can’t get to the hallway and into another room, and they might not even get anything out of that room.

Obviously, it seems a little paranoid to live that way. But, let’s face it, CompSec pros are a little paranoid. Keep your “rooms” locked, put your valuables in a safe place, and when you throw a party, close it all up. In other words, administer your network with multiple user permission levels and restrict accesses carefully, based on how few permissions can be doled out.

Prepare for the worst: Do your backups

Do you know what the scariest part of working in 2018 is? It’s entirely possible that next time you turn on your computer, every file on it could be lost. There are hacks that hold your hard drive irretrievably hostage, there are environmental disasters that ruin your servers… even a simple burglary can make accessing your data impossible. Are you prepared for that?

Performing a backup of essential files and storing that backup somewhere geographically different from your hard drive could mitigate most security failures. There’s a lot to learn about how to keep computers and networks safe, but knowing how to retrieve stolen, lost or hacked files could be a lot easier and maybe just as important.

Update software, backup your data, and restrict user accesses – those three steps alone could potentially save you and your company hundreds of hours and millions of dollars. But in all of these examples, what you and your network security team should be asking is, “Do we even know what our company’s policy is?” These tips don’t even scratch the surface of everything there is to learn about computer and network security, but good security starts by asking questions and finding out the answers.

Last tip: With all that said, don’t feel bad if you’re doubting your company or team is doing enough with security measures. When asked, “What do security professionals do to secure their personal computers?,” almost all network security professionals have the same answer: Not enough. You can always do more, so get started today!

Via: CBTNuggets

It’s working is simple I.e it helps you to increase the visibility of your website, web-page, product, services thought organic search results also called as earned results. It may target different kinds of search, including image search, video search, academic search, news search and industry-specific vertical search engines.

The browser and the language in which a web-page or website is generated plays a vital role as the more the web-page, the website is readable the easier or better chance is of that page or site is to get a top rank in search results.

SEO service is one of the technology through which a single or team of people can make a product or a service visible to users in today’s world. It is a new and optimal way to market or promote products, services, a cause, an article, new tech, a campaign and many other things. It is a new and growing way to make people aware of the things or objects the world is offering today.

It is kind of a service that is used by a single man to optimize its page to small businesses to rank its business to multi-national companies to generate more business and gain more potential clients, but to that, you should have proper knowledge of SEO.

Many people don’t understand of SEO as they don’t have the proper skills or knowledge they try it but there product or page don’t get properly ranked as it requires skills, time it is too technical, getting the traffic but not getting any business or less business from expected perception and many other factors, but through proper skills, time and resources you to can get the benefits of SEO.

In today’s era on the firms that operate online or have a major online business knows that it is vital part of there business as without it they won’t be able to list there product or services in the up-growing market and humongous completion that is why they use SEO as a resource to target audience to get the things done.

A person with the correct skills can present its brand or services in its market or international market without spending a whole lot of money on marketing and any other resources.

So to get a better chance of success in this market you should consider SEO as a tool that when used properly can get the things done easily without any hassle. With it, you also require other tools as well. So you can’t get professional help from different service providers or experts who can help you achieve your target.

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Due to the pandemic, all non-essential businesses have continued to close their doors – a situation that could extend for several more weeks. If these recent developments have taught us anything, it’s that we should be prepared for any eventuality.

If you own a business, what steps are you taking to transition your employees to work from the home environment?

Remote network access is critical – pandemic or not — especially if most or all of your workforce is conducting business from their homes. In order to keep your company afloat, customers happy and productivity at a consistent level, and workers employed, you have to enable remote network access for your employees.

What You Need to Know: Remote Access Solutions
Telecommuting not only helps companies cut overhead costs and allows employees to juggle work with personal engagements at their own pace, it facilitates a more productive “work at your own schedule” situation.

There are several ways you can establish remote work opportunities for your company. You could:

• Choose a complete Virtual Private Network.
• Deploy remote desktop access.
• Set up a cloud computing network and share files between home offices to develop a virtual office setup.

Virtual Private Network

Pros

• A good option for companies that want to offer either intermittent access or full-time access to remote work solutions; however, remote devices must be properly secured and protocols must be followed.
• Encryption protocols make the transfer of information between the VPN and the end-users quite secure.
• The VPN itself isn’t vulnerable to direct attack.

Cons

• PCs that aren’t protected could transfer viruses and malware to the VPN if not secure. Connection to a VPN can make the system vulnerable if employees do not disconnect when finished.
• These are more difficult to set up than remote desktop access.

Remote Desktop Access Solutions

You can enable remote desktop access in one of three ways:

• Remote access software
• Enterprise remote desktop
• Direct remote access

Remote access software solutions are less secure at their most basic level, with limited centralized control of employee log-in and remote access. This solution has a higher cost, while direct remote access is free. Still, this is a solid choice for smaller companies with intermittent work-from-home needs.

Enterprise remote desktop solutions are more scalable but tougher to set up. They offer a seamless experience and operate through hosted solutions, which comes at an increased cost; however, the ease of setup is better than having to establish this infrastructure on your own.

Direct remote access requires proper security protocols are followed to ensure the system is not vulnerable to attack. It can be difficult to remotely restart a computer that has frozen. Also, many hardware issues will have to be addressed on-site.

Cloud Network Remote Work
This is a good choice if you are opting to work from a complete virtual office, as these solutions offer additional flexibility and cost benefits. They do hold some risks because it’s difficult to control what employees are doing with their hardware at home.

What to Consider
Check out these factors to consider when deciding on a type and provider of remote access and work solutions:

• Ease-of-Installation: How much time is involved? How much effort? Will it cause downtime in operations as the transition happens?
• Ease-of-Use: Can your employees and IT department easily use this solution?
• Cost: How much does each solution cost vs. how much will it save your company?
• Security: How secure is the option you’re considering? How dependent is it on users’ ability to follow stated protocols?

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• Google always like Unique content. The website has unique content compared to others, it will get rank soon than others. That is why Google is putting such a high value on unique content. Creating content that begs to be shared such as videos, blog posts and eBooks also has a big side benefit. That benefit is that people will link to your website, hence Google ticks you in its search engine calculations the more often back-links are created to the website from other websites.
• This is where the tactic of “off-page optimization” starts to make its importance and presence felt and should be included in your SEO strategy. This is the final stage of getting Google to tick you.

Off-page Optimization

• Generally, SEO Experts Agree that Off-page optimization such as link building techniques can get an 80% contribution to any SEO campaign. This is the Most important activity from us to getting our website well ranked in search engines. The key driving force is “Backlinks”.

The Importance of “Back Links”
A back-link or a link is the factor that you use to be brought to another page. These links are Most Important because it is like vote for our page which will tell search engines than other web pages utilize your page for information.

The more website you link is like more voting for your webpage, that higher your ranking as well. Though not all websites are weighted as well, so we need to link some valuable pages which have good page rank and domain authority.

So here are 5 tips for easy link building:

1: Analyse Competitor

This is one of the ways where you can start your link building activities. First of all, you need to find your competitors in your Niche. And analyze their backlinks from various Backlink checker website and take the links.

You don’t need to link all the links to your website from competitor links, just take the major website links. It will help you to exceed your competitor from backlinks. Just keep this as a routine work.

2.Content, content and content

Always, the best way to encourage people to link to your website, providing consistency, new, compelling and useful content, content and content.

Creating relevant and useful content; such as about your products, industry, current market information with keyword oriented useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors discussed here. After the Google Penguin update, regularly posted quality content is the recommended method for getting more traffic to your website.

And you should post at least 2 new articles per week, more being better, as Google will favour websites with a frequent update that contains unique content. And if your website offers good content, other websites will naturally want to link to you as well.

While posting articles, don’t forget to write Title tag and Meta Description to your articles with principles, and don’t forget to include your desired keywords or phrases.

3: Join web 2.0

Joining a web 2.0 site is an suerb method of developing search engine friendly links. If you are not familiar with the name, web 2.0 is the term used to describe websites that have a social networking component to them.

Sites like StumbleUpon, Squidoo, and Tumblr generate most of their content from the site users themselves.

These pages contain interactive information sharing as well as collaboration. Even you can add articles that include up to 9 free backlinks per article to your website.

The best way to build links and create strong SEO benefits through Squidoo.com is by creating unique content that focuses on your keywords. Always try to incorporate multimedia, such as videos or images to gain more trust and authority quickly.

4: Testimonials

Always give online testimonials to your Clients, business partners or anyone else you can give a testimonial to, as it is a great way to get free backlinks from legitimate websites.

Don’t forget to include your strategic keywords into your testimonials and hyperlink it back to the webpage from your website.

5: Link request to your connections

And finally, source your own networks for possible opportunities to build more links. Business contacts, distributors, family members, friends, suppliers, even your children’s school, all have the potential for providing you with a backlink.

If they like you and you have been nice to them and, ask for a free backlink on their website.

If you can manage to obtain powerful and valuable links from websites like edu.com, that would be highly beneficial to your SEO efforts.

There are a lot more techniques are there to suppress your competitor. These is just initial strategies that help you to start with a stronger foundation.
Hope These steps will give you an idea of how to climb to the first position…

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• Creating and managing workgroups
• Communicating through chat/instant messaging
• Connecting with audio calling
• Launching impromptu or scheduled video meetings
• Sharing files and links
• Documenting work and resources
• Simplifying access to other Office apps

With Teams, workgroups within an organization can collaborate on content across different devices (laptops, tablets, and smartphones), and across multiple platforms including Windows and Mac. In addition, with Microsoft Teams, a team can also invite outside partners such as vendors, service providers, and consultants to participate in the collaboration and conversations as well as the sharing of resources. This is a big plus to productivity and project management.

Better Than Slack & Google Hangouts

At its core, Teams is a chat-based workspace that features group and private/instant messaging, with threaded and persistent conversations. Although Teams competes with similar products like Slack and Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams is more robust, is included with Office 365, and connects with other Office 365 applications including Excel, Word, OneNote, Planner, and SharePoint. This integration with other Microsoft Office programs creates a more fluid, seamless portal and experience.

Note: If your organization is currently using Skype for Business for instant messaging, it’s likely you will see a move to Teams as Skype for Business has a sunset date (end of life) in 2020.

Customize with Channels

Teams are made up of channels that can be organized by topic, projects, or departments. Channels are quite flexible as they store meeting history, chat, shared files or resources, and other communications that can be easily searched. In addition, each channel can be customized with tabs for apps such as SharePoint, Planner, OneNote, as well as files and other shared resources. The planner is an easy-to-use Office 365 application to create to-do or action items for members of a workgroup and then track the progress of each action for a project or team.

Communicating with a specific channel member or even the entire team is also easy with @ mentions. Fortunately, the Activity tab in Teams makes it simple to catch up on all your unread messages, @mentions, replies, and more. Like other messaging services, Teams communications can also include emojis and GIFs, an essential part of any business communication <grin>.

Video & Voice Meetings

Within a team-based messaging thread, you can easily schedule voice and video meetings or launch a quick impromptu meeting with little effort. Teams meetings can even be scheduled from Microsoft Outlook. Regardless of the method used for scheduling meetings, these are be synced with Outlook to keep you on track. Video meetings can be launched with specific contacts or within a channel and it’s easy to create a recording of the meeting. Microsoft Teams includes a cool artificial intelligence (AI) feature called blur background. With such a mobile and remote workforce, this tool lets you eliminate a cluttered or unprofessional background of a call while still engaging with each participant on the call.

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Like you, I’ve greatly increased my Zoom meetings, and I’ve been disturbed by what I’ve seen. There has been a surprising lack of professionalism, lack of preparation, and in general an unorganized and ineffective approach to conducting Zoom meetings.

As you know, first impressions are everything, and if you’re meeting with a prospect or client over Zoom there are some things you definitely don’t want to do, and others that you do want to do.

Follow this quick list of 5 tips to insure you not only make a great impression, but that you also easily place yourself above your competition.

Zoom Tip #1: Clear away any and all unprofessional distractions. Oh, I know, everyone is working from home so a dog barking or kids screaming in the background should be O.K., right?

Wrong. You are a representative of your company, and you are a professional. I wouldn’t bring my dog to the office, would you? How about your kids? Of course not. It’s key for you to present a professional, confident, and competent image, and that means one free of distractions.

So, get your wife or husband to mind the kids-they are probably at home with you-take the dog outside and shut the door. Create an environment of professionalism.

Zoom Tip #2: Speaking of professionalism, what are you wearing to your Zoom meetings? Because you’re confined at home, are you showing up in a tee-shirt or sweatshirt? Or are you wearing business casual and at least wearing a nice button-down shirt?

And if you’re a man, have you shaved? Combed your hair? Or do you look like you’ve just gotten off the couch? If you’re a woman, is your hair looking neat? How about make-up, if you wear it?

How you appear makes a huge impression on your clients and prospects. You want to look your best, and it doesn’t take much effort. Make it.

Zoom Tip #3: Lighting. Now I know you’re not in the film industry, but lighting is crucial to any type of filming. I was on a meeting with someone just the other day and it appeared as if they were calling from a cave. It was so dark, I could barely see them.

And then I’ve been in meetings with people sitting in front of a sunlit window. Same thing: I couldn’t see their face because they were drowned out in shadow.

When considering where to film, make sure you’re not too backlit that your face will be dark, and if you’re in a dark study or den, then turn the lights on or open your blinds.

You all know how much difference a well shot, well lit film looks compared to a B-film. Remember: Image is everything in front of a camera.

Zoom Tip #4: Background is important as well. Have you ever been on a Zoom meeting with someone and thought, “Ewe, that guy/gal is a slob! Look at that messy couch and bookcase and those crooked pictures. Yuck!”

Ladies and gentlemen, we know your home is your kingdom, and that you’ll live any way you choose. And you should. But we don’t need to see it all.

If you don’t have a professional background, then the solution is simple: Use one of Zoom’s greenscreen backgrounds. There are plenty to choose from and you can find even more by Googling “Zoom Background Images.”

Oh, I know-if you move too fast then the background blurs. Two things about that: 1) Don’t move so much. In fact, if you look at any professional newscaster, they move very little. You should practice that. 2) Everybody expects them to move so you’ve got some leeway there. Regardless, a background image is almost always better than what you’ve got going on now…

Zoom Tip #5: Be professional and respectful at all times. That includes:

• Being on time.
• Not speaking over someone.
• Sending an email afterwards thanking them for their time.

You know, all the things you would normally do if you were back at the office.

Incorporate these 5 Zoom tips and separate yourself from everyone else calling from their bedrooms, patios, and elsewhere. Remember: You want to present your best during every interaction with a client or prospect.

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What are IT managed services?

“Managed services” is a term used to describe the new model of IT management, which has replaced the traditional IT support. In Managed Services, Managed Service Provider (a team of people having expertise in networks, computers and other IT needs) handles the risk and responsibility associated with managing your IT systems. It brings a level of expertise and experience to the business that can take care of the entire IT needs of your company.

What are the benefits of managed IT services?

Managed IT services provide multiple benefits that can lead to increased performance, reliability and security of your company without exceeding the costs of hiring a full-time staff. The most important advantage of hiring a network monitoring service provider is that it prevents expensive network disasters by taking proactive maintenance steps. A planned approach to provide data back-up, system security and disaster recovery is taken so that your business runs smoothly and reliably for your clients. As the IT service provider has deep knowledge of the products, tools and software, it can provide better and quicker technology solutions. Hiring a network maintenance service provider is a cost-effective way to manage your business IT requirements.

By outsourcing IT support, you can focus on increasing the productivity and efficiency of your business, rather than wasting time and money on solving IT problems.

What are the services offered by a managed IT service provider?

The technical staff at the network provider performs remote maintenance and support to your computer network. They provide 24×7 world-class IT service and network availability to ensure your network keeps running at maximum speed and performance. They maintain the virus protection system, regularly monitor the back-ups and software patches are updated and maintained. They also take preventive and proactive maintenance steps to keep your network as stable as possible and to maximize optimal network stability. The highly efficient technical staff can handle any IT problems as they arise. Other services include routine desktop management, firewall management, updating software installation, spyware detection and elimination and hardware and software auditing.

It is important to find a managed service provider that understands your company’s IT requirements and helps your company achieve its goals. Research several companies and look beyond savvy marketing to find the right company that helps you grow your business. Review each company on the basis of their services offered in the contract, customer service, availability and reputation.

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