Managing Project Teams: Tools & Techniques

“Managing software project teams is a complex task further complicated by a continued increase in the size and complexity of software-intensive systems and the distribution of project teams.”(Smith, Bohner, & McCrickard, 2005) Many tools and techniques were devised/proposed for this purpose, and became available assisting project managers in managing their project teams.

In the following excerpt, we will summarize these tools and techniques and further discuss the challenges that project managers face when dealing with virtual teams.

Managing teams, be it in the field of IT or other fields, requires many skills and knowledge of the several available management techniques. Some techniques are related to human communication and interaction while others are related to technical skills, planning, scheduling and team organization, and finally others are related to psychological status of team members.

Effective planning and scheduling techniques aid both project manager and team to develop better understanding of the scope, time, budget, and requirements of the project. Some techniques used in this regard include: Gantt and Pert charts, critical paths and general project plans that incorporate scope charters and budget estimation amongst others. These techniques, by organizing the team and assigning tasks, help each of the members to organize their own tasks and prioritize accordingly.

An increasing number of software is being used as tools that assist project managers in using such techniques. These include: SOPPTS, TeamSpace, TeamSCOPE, SoftRisk, LINK-UP (Smith, Bohner, & McCrickard, 2005), MS Project, MS Visio, and Open Workbench.

Project managers, moreover, need to use different approaches in order to achieve better communication and interaction between the team members. Listening to their team’s opinions highlights the cooperation and team spirit that should be emphasized by the project manager. Encouraging active collaboration and sharing of expertise will further enhance the team building efforts and surely reflect positively on the project success. Many collaboration software and tools are being used such as wikis.

Moreover, team management involves resolving conflicts whenever they arise. Conflicts can be beneficial to the project if well-directed and kept professional allowing each to defend his/her ideas resulting in better judgment of the situation.

“In organizing and managing the project, you can emphasize the organization (structural) or you can emphasize the people. You cannot afford to ignore either.” (Culp & Smith, 1992)

Investing in people is one of the most important techniques that a project manager can use. For instance, enhanced training and investment in productivity tools and methods surely intrigues employees to perform better by meeting, and in some cases exceeding, their expectations.

Further investments in people techniques include providing professional development and career progression opportunities, recognizing achievements using rewarding incentives. These techniques will also help provide psychological relief and stability for the team.
Managing the work environment elevates team morale. Adopting egoless programming techniques, constant motivation, and team balancing are all techniques that will increase the level of productivity of the team.

However, most of these techniques, practices, and tools are not applicable when a virtual team is working on the project (or part of it). “Multi-national projects face many challenges, such as finding and coordinating resources, managing logistics in different countries, defining research methodology, controlling project cost, and dealing with cross-cultural issues.”(Gorlenko & Krause, 2006) Indeed, “globally distributed teams require special skills in system design and project management.” (Cusumano, 2008)
For this purpose, many researches have suggested different approaches. While different software tried to overcome such difficulties.

Donker and Blumberg tackled virtual team management tools issues: “In general, we see an essential necessity in creating a symbiosis between project management tools and collaborative tools, as these two areas are both crucial for virtual project management.” (Donker & Blumberg, 2008)

While Cusumano was interested in the development style when faced with a virtual team experience: “One of the biggest challenges is to apply an iterative (or more popularly called “agile”) style of development when teams are large and not co-located.” (Cusumano, 2008)

Gorlenko and Krause elaborated most on the techniques and tools that could assist in managing virtual teams. They discussed in-depth their experience from different viewpoints including strategies, choice of participating countries, methodology for multi-national data analysis, challenges, and lessons learned of which I choose to mention a particular one: “The number of problems in a multi-national project is proportional to the number of participating segments. Always plan for it.” (Gorlenko & Krause, 2006)

What all the above researches yielded, however, was to stress on the collaborative end of virtual project management. In other words, project managers should work harder on creating a fully collaborative system in order to control and manage virtual teams efficiently. Collaboration techniques and tools became widely available nowadays with the internet revolution that added video-conferencing, instant chatting, cheap voice-calls and many other tools to allow better communication and involvement of team members even if they were working virtually.


Finally, different techniques and tools were devised for project managers allowing them better control and management over their teams whether local or virtual the trick is to know how and when to use them.


Reference:

1. Jamie L. Smith, Shawn A. Bohner, D. Scott McCrickard (March 18, 2005) Center for Human-Computer Interaction and Department of Computer Science Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA 24061-0106 USA: Project Management for the 21st Century: Supporting Collaborative Design through Risk Analysis [Research Paper] Available from: ACM digital library.

2. Gordon Culp, Anne Smith (1992) Managing People (including Yourself) for Project Success - Published by John Wiley and Sons, ISBN 0471290181, 9780471290186 [online] available from: Google Scholars: http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=NO5sGrYZTisC&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&dq=project+management+managing+people&ots=zaH0K38gOh&sig=qks4xXsCf5ldsmWuDVVMNJ0upHQ#PPP1,M1

3. Lada Gorlenko, Sven Krause (April 22-27, 2006) Managing International Usability Projects: Cooperative Strategy [Research Paper] Available from: ACM digital library.

4. Michael A. Cusumano (February 2008) Technology Strategy and Management: Managing Software Development in Globally Distributed Teams: Surveying the basic elements needed for globally distributed teams to function smoothly and efficiently. – [article] Communications of The ACM February 2008/Vol. 51, No. 2. Available from: ACM digital library.

5. Hilko Donker, Malte Blumberg (May 13, 2008) Dresden University of Technology, Faculty of Computer Science: Collaborative Process Management and Virtual Teams - CHASE’08 [Research Paper]. Available from: ACM digital library.