Parking Lot Software

So your boss has put you in charge of a special project, and it has to be done by a certain date.  Everybody’s counting on you.  “Great,” you think, “I know parking and what we do, but I don’t know anything about Project Management.  What am I getting into?  Why me!?”

Fear not!  Even if you’ve never officially managed a project, you probably know more about project management than you think.  While every project is different, there are several constants in Project Management.

First thing that every project has is a triangle of three items.  Think of the statement “We can provide products that are good, fast and cheap.  You can pick any two.”   If you want it Good and Fast, it won’t be cheap – you’ll have to pay overtime or throw more resources at the project.  If you want it Good and Cheap – well, it won’t be fast.  As people have time to work on it, they’ll get around to it, eventually.  And finally, if you want it Fast and Cheap, it won’t be any good – corners will get cut, etc.  Finding the right balance is the key.

In project management, we use a similar triangle – but we call it Cost, Scope and Schedule.  If any of these sides of the triangle change, there is an effect on the overall quality of the project.  Let’s say your boss has given you a task of painting lines in a parking lot.  The Scope is painting the lines, a budget that covers the cost of the paint, labor, materials, etc, is the Cost, and the Schedule is when it’s supposed to be done.  Now if your boss says “I expect 2 coats of paint” and you were planning on 1, that’s a Scope change.  It’s going to affect both the cost (more paint needed) and the schedule (as it will take longer to paint, and you’ll have to wait for paint to dry in between coats).  Now be forewarned of a truth in Project Management – all good projects include some Scope Creep! 

“Who, or What, is this Scope Creep?”  Here’s where I always have an image of a crazy old guy in a trench-coat, chugging mouth-wash, but that’s not Scope Creep.  Scope Creep is when a customer realizes that they want more than what was originally decided upon.  You’re building a house, and you decide that yes, it would be nice to add a ½ bath off the bonus room.  That’s Scope Creep.  It’s going to require more time, money and effort, and your builder is going to request a change order to cover the costs – and he’s going to charge more for this than had been in the plan all along.  Back to our painting stripes on the parking lot, things look so good your boss wants you to go ahead and paint the gates too.  Maybe you have to adjust the schedule, or maybe you have to hire a temporary worker to help, but at least one of the other two parts of the triangle have to change.

“Okay, I understand the scope, cost and schedule, but how do I get started?”  If somebody else has done a similar project, by all means get their help and learn from them.   Let’s say you are blazing new trails here.  There’s no way we can cover everything related to Project Management in one article, but here’s a start:
 

·        Document the scope of the project.  Write it down and make sure you’re in agreement with your customer (or your boss) of what is included.  In Project Management, a verbal discussion without documentation is a bad thing.  If nothing else, write an email or text message saying “Here’s my understanding of the project.”  If things go bad later on, you have something to fall back on.

·        Document when you can start on the project, when it has to be done, and dates that you can’t be working on it.  If your lot is used for Sunday football parking, you certainly don’t want to try to work on it during a football game!

·        Determine what has to be done and in what order.  If you’re not sure, start a list and list everything you can think of related to the project.  Some items can be done simultaneously, some have to be done in a certain order, some items just have to be done at before the project is complete.  Think about “wait time” – let’s say you’re project’s scope creeped into patching potholes.  You’d have to patch them early in the project and wait for them to set up prior to painting – and this is exactly the kind of thing that causes trouble in meeting a deadline – there’s nothing you can do (realistically) to speed up concrete or paint drying.  Plan ahead!

·        In Project Management we identify the Critical Path.  This is the longest path through the project that defines the minimum amount of time a project can take.  Sounds confusing, but it will make sense.  What’s on the critical path?  The items that have to be done, in order and cannot be done at the same time as something else.  Generally, critical path items cannot be sped up by throwing more resources at them, but, resource limitation may put an item on the critical path that could be sped up if more resources were available.  Let’s say you’re painting the lines and you have to do it by yourself.  The time it takes you to prepare, paint and cleanup are on the critical path to completion.  If you can add a part-time helper, you can “dual-process” during the time you have help and speed things along.  But, let’s say you order the paint today, and it takes two weeks for the order to be approved, shipped and delivered.  There’s likely nothing you can do to speed up that process.  A good test to see if something should be on the critical path is to ask yourself “If this didn’t get started on time, what would the affect be on completion?”

·        Share your timeline with your resources.  In Project Management, we tend to call anyone that works on a project a “resource”.  The best project plan in the world is no good if your resources aren’t aware of their commitment and agree to it.

·        Document deadlines and action items.  People forget things, even those with the best intentions.  It’s better to remind people of upcoming deadlines and commitments than to have them not complete their tasks.  A simple action item list is a great tool – list the person’s name, what their task is, and the due date.  Share it with the entire group throughout the project.  It’s better to over-communicate than to just expect someone to do their part.  If someone fails to meet their deadline, ask them “What’s your recovery plan?”  or, “How do you plan to get this back on schedule?”  Then wait for their answer.  Many times, people will put more of a deadline on themselves than you would have asked for.  If they don’t have an answer, you may have to escalate the situation to a superior, and this is where your documentation is critical.

·        Learn from your mistakes!  Every project has something that could have gone better.  I deal with projects regularly that have more than 100 tasks that have to be done.  Do I truly expect every one of those to go perfectly?  No – but, I do learn to recognize patterns, repeat offenders, etc. and I make adjustments accordingly.

This should get you started on your project.  Clearly there’s no way to cover everything in Project Management in one short article, but this should get you thinking.   If it’s your first project, it’s okay to be nervous and not know what to say to people.  Being prepared with solid data and a plan helps. 

If you have questions or comments, please let us know – I’d be happy to go into further details, answer questions, or give advice.   Thanks for reading!

Hello!

Since many of you are smack dab in the middle of permit season, I thought it would be approporiate to re-post something our own Maggie Vercoe, Director of Client Engagement wrote last year:

We are in the thick of Parking Permit Season!  It requires capitalization because of the sheer craziness of it.  Universities especially across the country are bracing themselves for the onslaught of students, staff, faculty, etc to hit their offices and their web pages to get their prime parking permits.

If you are just reading this, and haven't begun your planning, you might be in trouble.  Grab the bottle of Jack and hide under your desk until it blows over.

In seriousness, there are a lot of things that you can do to get through the season with little pain. 

1. Plan, Plan, and Plan.  Run reports over the last year in this date range to see what sales you did, by customer type, by permit location, permit type, and location of purchase.  This will help you to plan your communications to your customer.  For example, if you had more purchases in your office than online, now is the time to communicate to your customers what a great web page you have and how easy it is to purchase a parking permit online!

2. Map it out!  Consider laying out all of your parking permit configuration in a spreadsheet, for example.  This will help you identify all of your pricing structures, rules around your permits, and keep you organized.  It will make configuring them in your database easier every year if you maintain the copy.

3. Plan out what the week will look like.  Staff accordingly.  If possible, over-staff.  There could be lines out the door.  It may be useful to have someone handing out materials while you wait.  Rutgers University used to have a tent set up to shield the heat and cold beverages while people waited.  If you have to allow people to purchase in your office, this is fantastic customer service for a Department that is not always so liked by its customers!

4. If you do online parking permit sales, make sure that you have tested out everything with your new rules, permits, and pricing in a test environment.  This includes test transactions through to your payment gateway and file transfers to payroll or the bursar.  If any of your rules or software has changed, testing is key! 

These are just a handful of tips.  Make sure you plan early and involve all of your key players.  Good luck!

I started at T2 Systems 11 years ago as an Application Consultant.  This is similar to what the Implementation Consultants do now, but with a few more components.  PowerPark had less moving pieces and parts, so it took less people to implement.

I worked with the University of Virgina, and the energetic Rebecca White, in 2000.  This was one of the hardest and most rewarding parking software installs I have had the pleasure to be a part of.  Every install has its challenges, but the sheer volume of their data meant we would be running conversion programs for hours through the night.

Becca knows how to make things fun.  We started the conversions running at the end of the day, and a shopping cart ride (oh yes, there are pictures, Kendall), one large beer, several BBQ chicken wings later, we were back in the office at 11 PM to get the next round going.

We stayed pretty late, got a couple of hours of sleep and went back to it.  A LOT of work, but always easier to do when you work with a group that knows how to pull the fun into it.

I don't do installations anymore, but when I think back to the early years here at T2 Systems (okay and last year at Portland State), these are some of my favorite memories.

Don't think the rest of you I worked with in the past are exempt.  I will be blogging about you in the future! 

 

Being in T2 Systems support I talk to a *lot* of people over the phone.  I have heard a lot of things said but rarely does anything actually leave me truly…  speechless.

Several years ago I had scheduled a call with a customer several hours earlier then I would normally start my shift. 

Now I am a night owl and so not a morning person, and at the time I was working the perfect shift, 12PM to 8PM ET.  Since I worked at home, that meant my alarm didn’t go off until 11:45.  Perfect…  utterly perfect.  As such I detested calls I was forced to schedule earlier then when I started. 

So I call the customer a few minutes after 8AM to help troubleshoot some parking software problem that I have long since forgotten.  As we were working thru the issue the customer out of the blue tells me:

“Your voice sounds different in the morning”.   

I immediately know what the customer is referring to.  Being that it was hours before I would normally be talking to any customers my tone was a little more curt and rough then my normal nice and friendly tone.  I immediately apologize and try to explain that the coffee just hasn’t reached my bloodstream yet, but the customer interrupts with this gem:

“It’s sexy”

…

So after a couple minutes of me staring silently at my phone I finally mutter a thank you.  I then proceeded as quickly as possible thru the rest of the call.

Apparently, despite what my wife says, my morning voice is sexy.

JB

For a girl who purposely chose a career in marketing and communications – not just because I’ve been writing since I was way young and everyone said I was good at it - but because I’m not AT ALL technical (just ask my IT husband or IT buddies here at T2), I’ve managed to build a career working for high-tech companies in high-tech industries. 

It’s funny to me that I’ve gone from working in the cable-TV and wireless phone test and measurement industry to working in the parking industry…who knew? All of this without a technical or engineering degree! I never figured I’d be getting paid to make the installation and network monitoring equipment for CATV networks and test equipment for cell phones and wireless networks sound and look cool. And now I’m doing the same for software for parking: permit management, PARCS solutions, citation management and citation collections, etc. Wow! Isn’t that exciting (can you hear it in my voice?).  Actually, it is kind of cool.

Yes, although most don’t know it, parking is actually a technical industry. Sure, it’s not the same as NASA or computers and servers, but there’s a lot of technology behind parking – and it is exciting.

And now that Spring is here (the couple of 70-degree days we have had here in Indiana have been teasing us), it’s also officially tradeshow season. In addition to Spring Break, I’m also counting down the days until the International Parking Institute (IPI) annual conference and tradeshow (no, not just because it’s in Vegas). For those of you looking to find more information about municipal or city parking solutions, campus parking solutions, access and revenue control, software for parking and parking technology, Spring brings many opportunities to meet with vendors and network with other parking professionals. From Chicago to New England, to Texas to Las Vegas – no matter what geographic area - there are many conferences planned in the coming months and now’s the time to go and see what’s happening in our industry! And of course come see T2 – we’re either exhibiting or sponsoring (and attending) most of these events. We have some new news to share about our PARCS and event parking management solutions. Learn how technology (and T2 of course) can be your friend as you try to improve your parking operations.

When you stop and think about it, even us non-techies watch cable TV, have a computer, use a cell phone, and sometime or another have to park our car. And there’s a whole lot of technology behind getting those parking gates to go up and down  – “things that make the world go ‘round” I say!

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

In the event you haven’t heard the 2010 Olympics are about to start from Vancouver BC, Canada.  One of T2 Systems customers, The Resort Municipality of Whistler, is a host city.  I was given the incredible opportunity to come to Whistler and will be your roving blog reporter from the games.   Most importantly, I am here to assist with the parking operation and support of handheld ticket writers throughout the Olympics.

I arrived in Whistler on Wednesday morning and was picked up by Sandra Smith, Supervisor of By-Law Services.  For those of you that don’t know Sandra, she is one of the most fantastic people you could ever want to meet!   She immediately introduced me around to all the staff in the office, got me settled into my own work space and equipped me with all my Olympic gear! I got a chance to visit with all the By-Law Officers as well.  The excitement over the Motorola MC75  handhelds was evident. They absolutely love them!

Whistler currently has four of the new Motorola MC75/Oneil Printer combinations that they hav­e been using for about a month. In anticipation of the extra manpower and work needed throughout the Olympics, an additional ten units have been brought up to increase their fleet to a total of fourteen.

They are expecting parking to get complicated. Simply put, there is not enough parking to go around. The eight municipal parking lots in Whistler will be used to support the 2010 Winter Games, leaving limited parking around the Village. This alone will create very limited parking, considering the enormous influx of people and vehicles that will begin arriving in the next few days.   Like chain reactions, the By-Law officers are expecting considerably more work while enforcing the limited parking and keeping the spaces available for much needed short term parking. There has been numerous additional staff deployed to the By-Law office to assist with the operation. They will be out in full force in a twenty-four hour presence to insure parking is being enforced.

So my part for the first couple of days prior to the Opening Ceremony are complete, the fourteen handhelds are setup and ready for deployment. The additional staff has been trained and ready to go.  Let’s see where the next couple of days take us as the parkers converge here in Whistler. I will keep you posted and up to date, so stay tuned! And again, Let the Games Begin!

So when I first joined T2 systems nearly three years ago, I knew very little about parking or parking management systems. My only real exposure was as a parker on a college campus. And even with that, my experience with the Campus Parking Solution was only in the form of paying for my permit once a year.

So here I am running a data center full of Software for Parking. Just three years ago we had only a few dozen hosted customers. As of this week we're up to 135 and we're using all sorts of cool technology to keep all of these advanced parking solutions running well.

Just last week we passed the 1.3 BILLION record mark in our production databases. Three years ago I would never have guessed that parking software could generate that much data this quickly. It has been a fun experience growing this environment.

Keep those parkers parking. We've got plenty of room for billions and billions more rows. Maybe we need to invest in a sign that says "billions and billions parked". Hmmmm...