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Inch-Pebble Project Scheduling: Managing Concerns
September 7, 2008
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Governance Thinking - Structure of Program Management Governance
September 6, 2008
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Effects of Project Risks on Organization
September 6, 2008
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Risk Management Process
September 6, 2008
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Initiating Phase - Feasibility Study Request and Report
September 6, 2008
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Build Training Time Into The Schedule
September 5, 2008
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Powering Past the Post-PMP® Syndrome
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Definition of Crashing (In Project Management Terms)
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Project Resource Requirements
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Initiating Phase - Project Specifications Request
September 5, 2008
Managing Multicultural Projects with Complementary Practices - Using Common Tools
May 28, 2008 | Author: admin | Filed under: Quality Management, HR Management, Project Lifecycle Phases, Techniques, Project Management Best Practices
Managing Multicultural Projects with Complementary Practices - Using Common Tools (#9 in the series Managing Multicultural Projects with Complementary Practices)
By Johanna Rothman
What’s the point of defining and buying common tools if they’re not common? The entire project needs to use a common defect tracking system, and configuration management system. Make sure you have an intranet that everyone can access at equal speeds, so the entire project team uses it. Make sure any tools you have are easy to use over the network and have adequate response time.
Sometimes, the tools appear to require people to track defects, build, or to track requirements in a specific way. Every tool I’ve used has been sufficiently flexible to allow various uses. When the project staff tells me the tool is defining their process, and they don’t like that definition, I ask them to tell me what they do want. I help verify the problem they want to solve is the same problem I want them to solve. Once I understand the problem they’re trying to solve, we jointly determine how to make the tool do that.
One way to make sure everyone understands how to use the tools is to have people in different groups visit one another to show how they use the tool back at their office. The in-person visit helps people see new ways to use the tools and also how others in the project use them. Such sharing builds camaraderie as well as reduce some jealousy that might develop as one group learns that another really knows how to use a tool that they do not know how to use.
I run into the tools problems most frequently with defect-tracking and configuration management tools. On one project, the Boston team used the defect tracking system to track everything they had to get done after the “initial code complete” handoff to formal system test. The San Francisco team only wanted to put problems with known solutions into the system, and the German team wanted to put only true defects into the system. I asked the team leads to discuss the problems they were each trying to solve. I wanted to track defects the same way over the whole project, and I could have lived with either the Boston or German team’s solution (the San Francisco team’s solution was not adequate), and after I explained why, the groups jointly agreed on a solution.
Original article can be found at: http://www.jrothman.com/Papers/Multiculturalprojects.html
Johanna Rothman consults, speaks, and writes on managing high-technology product development. Johanna is the author of Manage It!’Your Guide to Modern Pragmatic Project Management’. She is the coauthor of the pragmatic Behind Closed Doors, Secrets of Great Management, and author of the highly acclaimed Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets and Science of Hiring Technical People. And, Johanna is a host and session leader at the Amplifying Your Effectiveness (AYE) conference (http://www.ayeconference.com). You can see Johanna’s other writings at http://www.jrothman.com.
Related Articles
- Managing Multicultural Projects with Complementary Practices - Introduction
- Problems of Multicultural Projects
- Managing Multicultural Projects with Complementary Practices - Summary
- Break Down Departmental Barriers in Pursuit of a Common Goal
- Managing Project Risks (Part 1): Don't Be Snared by These 6 Common Traps
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