Page 338 - Global Project Management Handbook

SUCCESS FACTORS IN VIRTUAL GLOBAL SOFTWARE PROJECTS 16-25

The milestone prediction chart
Days Risk days and pilot build
Remaining days: xx yy
Days planned @ DP: xx yy

2/18/2002
2/4/2002
1/21/2002
1/7/2002
Target dates 12/24/2001
12/10/2001
11/26/2001
11/12/2001
10/29/2001
10/15/2001
10/1/2001
4/6/01 5/6/01 6/6/01 7/6/01 8/6/01 9/6/01 10/6/0111/6/0112/6/01 1/6/02 2/6/02
Weekly updates
Likely B B B
A C
(w/risk days) Target Limit
Note: Milestones are marked as A, B, and C because of the company confidential information.
FIGURE 16.6 The milestone prediction chart.

has a one-day lag. A Romanian person is going to send us e-mail, and we are going to
read it the next morning. By the time we send back the reply, we have wasted a day on
that.”
For this, help can come from exchanging instant messages, as in the case of another
VGS team: “We use instant messenging very heavily. It is installed on all our laptops and
desktops. It will show you who is online and who is not. Obviously, during the day we do
not expect the Russian team to be online, but a lot of times they are.” If more information
richness is needed, companies use phone conference calls such as weekly teleconferences
(e.g., to report progress status). When even richer information is to be communicated,
VGS teams use teleconferences and net meetings. Before even thinking about specific
collaborative technologies, however, companies first resolve the issue of the infrastruc-
ture, as one project manager pointed out: “I’ve made sure that everyone on the team both
in India and in the United States has the right office setup at home, so everyone has DSL
or cable modem access; mobile headsets so they don’t have to have a phone cradled to
their ear for three hours if they’re working on a long call; and we’ll pay for such an
office.” While these issues do occupy the attention of VGS teams, other issues are also
addressed. For example, one collaborative technology helps with a very important issue
of documentation sharing, as in this example: “We have a public drive on one of our
servers where all the minutes of all the meetings are kept. Also, we use a document stor-
age solution where we can share documents.”