Page 325 - Global Project Management Handbook

16-12 MANAGEMENT OF GLOBAL PROGRAMS AND PROJECTS

The project strategy also will drive the type of project people, probably the single
most important strategic success factor for a project. Typically, the project will need its
project manager and other team members to provide true leadership, overcoming all
obstacles set by an environment of geographic, organizational, temporal, and cultural sep-
aration, and to rely, when possible, on face-to-face meetings. In this process, a VGS team
needs to build a smooth communication flow, supported by trust among team members.
The project-strategy factor also sets the direction for what sort of project organization
is needed to make the strategy work. The size and nature of the project determined by the
strategy may well determine that a well-oiled matrix framework on the organizational
level is needed to support all VGS projects. That the project relies on the matrix is very
likely, considering that the rapid-release cycle favors small projects. Within the matrix,
the cross-functional team structure is shaped, with clear avenues to identify and manage
stakeholder expectations, primarily those of customers and the project sponsor, and fed
by the matrix resources.
The factors of project culture, people, and organization transfer the message of project
strategy and add their influence into the project process, shaping it to support them. This sup-
port will be offered through molding a process that is standard, to some degree, and flexible,
to some degree, one that is able to produce the desired deliverables over project phases and at
requested milestones. For this, the process needs planning but also a strong control to detect
plan-versus-actual variances in performance targets and to identify corrective actions.
Project process dictates what project tools and metrics to employ. To begin with, the
role of project tools is to support the process by providing procedures and techniques to
solve the problems of the technical process of VGS development. This is what product
management tools help to do. A second group of tools—project management tools—
supports the managerial process of VGS development. Considering that team members in
VGS projects are truly virtual, there is a vital need to share project information and deliv-
erables and generally problem-solve across geographic and time separations. The third
group of tools, the collaborative technology tools, facilitates this. It is important to under-
stand that project process really has a decisive influence on the choice and nature of
project tools. For example, if the project process is directed toward support of the project
strategy of a speed-to-market nature, the major emphasis is on project tools that help to
manage the VGS project schedule in a fast way.
Project metrics measure products of the project process. Therefore, the nature of the
process dictates the metrics that are used. In essence, what is wanted is to control project
efficiencies—Are we meeting our project schedule? for example—but also whether the

process delivers to the customer what the customer expects. While these two might seem to
be enough, the picture of project health metrics, as some call the metrics, is not complete
unless we measure how well the project helps us to prepare for the future, that is, new VGS
projects.
In the next section we will dissect each individual strategic success factor in order to
uncover the substance of each: the individual tactical success factors (see Fig. 16.3).

TACTICAL SUCCESS FACTORS

Strategic Alignment

Two tactical factors are part of the strategic alignment, a key strategic success factor. The
first one—defining a clear business strategy—is fundamental to sustaining competitive
advantage over rivals in the global software business. For such a strategy to be executed,
an alignment process—the second factor—should be established to help align priorities