Operations

Project Roles and Responsibility in an Enterprise

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I worked a long time in a financial company (one of Fortune 200) in the US.  It’s quite a complex process to start a project, or you can say, make some changes or create something new.  Once I had an idea of a new project which I was very excited about, and I pitched it to our team’s VP at a gathering, he was very excited about it as well.  However, to my surprise, his first question was: “does your project have a customer?”  Since I clearly did not, he explained: “every project has to have a customer”.   That’s quite an interesting learning experience.  It turns out that in addition to customer, there are a number of other roles in a typical project in an enterprise, the table below lists out their roles and responsibilities.

Role Expectations
Program Sponsor •Influence strategic direction
•Serve as tie breaker for major decisions
Steering Committee •Set strategic direction•Approve major decisions

•Review progress of program

•Provide guidance and feedback on plans
Program Customer •Set conditions of satisfaction•Approve decisions not requiring executive review

•Review progress of program

•Provide guidance and feedback on plans
Program Manager •Ensure program governance (Project Management SME)•Program status updates

•Impact Assessment/Process Navigation
Leads •Provide LOB requirements & timelines•Provide resources for Core Team activities

•Resolve cross-functional and cross-organizational issues

•
Informed Stakeholders •Review & provide feedback on program scope and delivery plan
Google Chrome Extensions, Release Notes

Chrome Add-on: BookmarkMatic for Shoppers Version 5.0.2013.1207 Released

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BookmarkMatic for Shoppers (BMfS) extension was created with one mission in mind: to save online shoppers’ effort and time spent on saving and organizing favorite shopping links as bookmarks.  So far BMfS was able to automatically sorts and categorizes shopping sites from browsing history, but that’s not enough.   We understand that shoppers needs capability to drill down into any shopping site and be able sort the links by visit frequency or visit time, we just released this feature in the version 5.0.2013.1207.

site drill down menu of Amazon.com
site drill down menu of Amazon.com

Please stay tuned for upcoming versions.

This is a new version release note of  BookmarkMatic for Shoppers, the extension is available for download now.

For a complete user manual of this add-on, please visit here.

Google Chrome Extensions, Release Notes

Chrome Add-on: BookmarkMatic for Shoppers (aka Shopping Button) Version 3.3.2013.1123 Released

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Here comes another release packed with exciting changes: new name, new logo and exciting new features added to site menu.  Starting from this version, this tool has adopted a new name: BookmarkMatic for Shoppers.  As the key value of this tool is to automatically create bookmark for shoppers, we feel BookmarkMatic for Shoppers name reflects that feature in a more direct and easy-to-understand way than the previous name.  Hopefully it’s not too difficult to pronounce for you.  We are also adopting a beautiful black bookmark icon, thank you VisualPharm for the great design.

new look of the app
new look of the app

New features

Automatically categorized shopping sites.  Manually created browser bookmarks are usually organized and categorized.   In this version, BookmarkMatic is making the first step of categorizing sites automatically.  All shopping sites you visited can be either viewed in 1 list or filtered from 1 of 7 pre-set major categories: Online Shopping, Local Shopping, Shopping Guide, Travel, Online Betting, Real Estate and Cars.

filter sites by shopping categories
filter sites by shopping categories

Sort sites in 1 of 3 ways.  How links are sorted is important in manually created bookmarks since it determines how convenient each link can be accessed.  In this version, BookmarkMatic introduces 3 sorting orders to automatically sort any list of sites: Visit Frequency, Visit Time or Site Names (alphabetic A-Z).

sites sorted by visit frequency, visit time or alphabet
sort sites by visit frequency, time or alphabet

Please stay tuned for upcoming versions.

This is a new version release note of  BookmarkMatic for Shoppers, the extension is available for download now.

For a complete user manual of this add-on, please visit here.

Firefox Add-ons, Google Chrome Extensions

Changes On Amazon Related Browser Extensions and Apps

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As some of you might know, the browser apps we develop are offered to users for free because we are financially supported by affiliate programs from online merchants.  One of the affiliate programs that used to support us, especially all of our Amazon related browser apps, is Amazon Affiliate Program.

TO be compliant with Amazon Affiliate Program’s Participation Requirement, we are no longer able to use Amazon as the name of our browser apps, and as a result, we are taking down Amazon Extension (for Google Chrome) and Amazon Deal Button (for Firefox) at this time from Google Chrome Web Store and Firefox Addon Marketplace respectively and discontinue our development for these apps for now.  What does this mean to you, our users?  The biggest impact is that you will not find and install these apps from both Chrome and Firefox addon stores.

However, we are open to questions and technical support needs from each user of these products, you may connect with us on Twitter @linked8 or email us at info@linked8.com.

As part of the requirements, Amazon also prohibits us from using “Ama” part in our AmaBay app, we are happy to cooperate and so we are currently in the process of changing name for AmaBay and all its related browser extensions.  Please stay tuned.

Google Chrome Extensions, Release Notes

Chrome Add-on: Shopping Button Version 3.2.2013.1030 Released

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7% of top Alexa 10,000 sites supported.  This version has expanded site coverage from 400+ to 1000+, not only the number of sites more than doubled, but the quality of sites got improved significantly as all newly added sites are top-tier sites in the Alexa top 10,000 club.  In addition, geographical coverage expanded from 7 countries to 43 countries worldwide.  From shopping needs perspective, this upgrade also represent an expansion: now the 1000+ sites cover end-to-end shopping needs including online shopping, offline shopping, shopping guide, automobile, real estate, travel, and even betting and gambling.

We realize that this is still an experimental stage product, we are working hard to add cool features to this product in order to make it ready prime-time coverage, please stay tuned.

This is a new version release note of  Shopping Button, the extension is available for download now.

For a complete user manual of this add-on, please visit here.