Page 337 - Global Project Management Handbook

16-24 MANAGEMENT OF GLOBAL PROGRAMS AND PROJECTS

CSF19: Develop and Deploy the Product Management Toolbox. Product manage-
ment tools include procedures and techniques by which a technical deliverable is pro-
duced. A typical example is a tool called a requirements document form, which supports
a deliverable termed software requirements defined. Product management tools may be
manual or in a software package format and also may be a success factor in a VGS project
when standardized, integrated, simple, and few in number.
The point of standardization and integration is illustrated in a comment of a project
manager in the Oregon-Iowa VSG project, “We finally decided to standardize Clear
Case, an enterprise configuration management tool, and use Clear Quest as a defect/issue-
tracking tool. That enabled all developers to look in Clear Quest, pick up the defects, fix
them, and then the actual QA person would then get an e-mail notifying him [of] what
build that fix was in, so we’d know what to retest then.”
The most frequently used product management tools are for development (e.g., Visual
Studio), a source control system (e.g., CVS), an enterprise-based configuration management
system, a defect/issue tracking, a test-case tracking spreadsheets (Excel), and a document
storage solution for sharing documents. While each tool has a specific function, the overall
purpose is to ensure a more efficient support of the software production, thus contributing
to success of the VGS project.

CSF20: Build and Deploy the Project Management Toolbox. Project management
tools include procedures and techniques by which a managerial deliverable is pro-
duced. For example, if the project management deliverable is project scope defined,
the tools that support it are a scope statement and a work-breakdown structure (WBS).
These tools may be manual or in a software package format. In whatever format, proj-
ect management tools are a success factor in VGS projects only if they are standard-
ized, integrated, simple, and few in number.
Standardized project management tools means the degree to which the tools used in a
project vary across the VGS team. To be successful, a VGS project needs very standard-
ized tools in the form of templates shared by team members. As one project manager put
it, “We have a complete process and the tools to support that process, and we have half of
our engineering team in Russia, half over here, and it works pretty well—one reason is
using templates.” Project management tools are integrated with the project management
process and metrics, and they are consistently used to enforce the project management
process on a daily basis.

Project management tools used by successful VGS teams are simple, and there are
only a few of them. For example, favorite tools are a WBS, a Gantt chart (with or without
dependencies), a probability-impact matrix (risk tool), a status scorecard (called dash-
board), a checklist, various types of the milestone charts, and postmortem review. An
example is the milestone prediction chart (Fig. 16.6) that predicts major project events:
milestones and project completion. The vertical axis shows the team’s predicted baseline
of milestones at the time of the finished planning. After the project work is kicked off, the
team reviews progress regularly (once a week, as shown in Fig. 16.6) and makes new
milestone predictions. The point is to be proactive in managing the schedule.

CSF21: Design and Deploy the Collaborative Technology Toolbox. Collaborative
technology tools are any tools used by VGS team members to communicate when
geographically and/or time separated. While they vary widely in complexity and information
richness and offer different grades of efficiency, the crucial point is to devise standard
communication guidelines for the tools’ use. In one company, for example, the rule is
to use mostly e-mail for daily communication, although it is an information-poor
medium that has its own problems, as this team member observed: “Sometimes e-mail