Project Management Use Case

The term ‘project’ is defined as “[…] a sequence of unique, complex and connected activities that have one goal or purpose and that must be completed by a specific time, within budget, and according to specification” (Wysocki 2011, p. 10; Guide 2001). A project therefore combines resources and skills for a defined timeline in order to achieve certain business goals. Typical examples of popular project types are constructions projects, innovation projects, sourcing projects, software development projects and research projects.

‘Project management’ is the “[…] application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements” (Heagney 2011, p. 4). Project management therefore enables, coordinates and controls all project activities. It seems to be a common consensus that the project management process follows through subsequent project phases with defined results or deliverables after each phase (e.g., Meredith and Mantel 2011; Gido and Clements 2012). In the literature, there are

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various terminologies and definitions for these main project phases. Common denominators are used here for the terms of the phases, definitions and actions within each phase.

Figure 38 shows the sequence of project management phases on a time interval on the x-axis and the relative effort on the y-axis, typically related to the project phases in terms of sophistication and extents of collaboration, resource investment and person days effort to accomplish the specific activities in the various phases.

Figure 38. Project Management Life Cycle29

A project normally start with an ‘initialization phase’, where the mission, the sponsorship, goals, tools, resources and roles are defined in accordance with the overarching business goals, and are finally codified in a project charter.

In the following ‘planning phase’ of a project, the detailed timelines with milestones, critical activities and deliverables are laid out, key performance indicators (KPI) for continuous project controlling are defined, people and skills are staffed to roles and tasks, and resources and tools are allocated (buildings, rooms, file shares, software tools etc.) in order to start the execution of the project. The project planning is often also performed iteratively in accordance with the state of the project execution or the KPI status. It is therefore necessary to allow for a certain amount of flexibility between project planning, execution and control. The result of the planning phase is one or many consolidated project plans.

During the ‘execution phase’, the actual transformation processes take place along the defined timelines, activities, input and target output factors. During execution, the output, the consumed input factors and any other success critical factors are continuously measured and monitored in the control system (such as KPI dashboards),

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indicate impediments for in-time and quality delivery against the project goals. The results of the execution phase are quality ensured and accepted deliverables by business stakeholders (e.g., customers, partners, management, dependent lines of business). Already, the initialization, planning and in particular the execution phase are typically characterized by intensive and sophisticated people collaboration along the execution of the defined tasks. In some industries, these phases are often performed following agile project management methods where certain work packages are executed by a defined scrum team in short time intervals (a few days for example). This emphasizes once again the interactive and iterative character of project management.

Finally, the projects are formally closed by summarization of the results, handover of the deliverables, lessons learned, and finalization and archiving of the project documentations.

Mapped to the design principles of this research and first related to unstructured data and interactions in project management, the procedure would follow the similar flow as depicted in Figure 13, from initialization, negotiation to concrete decisions towards project charters, project plan, accepted deliverables and project closing. The people integration related activities, like people interaction and collaboration would primarily be covered by DP2 in integrated IT-supported social interaction capabilities, such as collaborative project rooms, instant messaging and news feeds if certain project developments require attention or action, or if KPIs reach critical thresholds.

These people integration aspects in project management would be tightly connected with the data and process integration dimensions by using pre-defined and extendable project templates from the business template pool to define and maintain related structured data (e.g., project plan or status information) and to store it in the underlying n-BO of type PROJECT.

The people assigned to the project, with the appropriate authorization would also have the same common view via the n-BO design principle on project charters, plan, KPIs, documents etc.

Interlinked to the people integration dimension, the structured data status evolution of a project would be initialized by the creation of a n-BO of type PROJECT with status ‘project charter’, carrying one unique identification (project ID) for the complete life cycle of a project. Figure 39 illustrates the mapping of the project management phases of Figure 38 to the state evolution model of the n-BO of type PROJECT (DP1).

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Figure 39. N-BO of Type PROJECT

Just like the flow of subsequent project management phases, the n-BO concept would make it possible to process all project management steps in a harmonized project collaboration environment, with one single source of truth on structured as well of unstructured data for all effected business partners of a project. By definition, this avoids the dispersal of data sources and un-harmonized document statuses, and allows for the best possible transparency within the project.

Following the ‘charter state’ of the n-BO, in the next state of ‘project plan’ the corresponding structured and unstructured activities related to project planning as described above would be performed and documented, for example the complete history of project plans until the final version would be preserved in the underlying n-BO. In the ‘execution and control’ state, the transformation related project collaboration activities could be performed in the B-Zone project interaction environment, including all relevant resources, from internal and external the project owner organization. Relevant documents (requirements documentations, specifications and designs for example) could be discussed in the social augmented collaboration environment and retained in the underlying n-BO. Additional methods or capabilities could also be provided to the project community, for instance for project controlling, action item tracking or prototyping.

Finally, in the ‘closing’ state, the overall project results can be discussed in light of the complete project history available in the n-BO, further conclusions could be drawn, and the project finally documented and closed, including lessons learned. Additional functions could also be provided for stakeholders’ project sigh-off (by automatically triggering a workflow with a link to the project collaboration room and documents for example), and freezing and archiving of the project.

design, a flexible iteration from successor to predecessor state (moving back to re- planning after certain resources are not available as expected for example) and back would be supported as well.

In a project, certain documents are normally created, discussed and agreed upon, and certain requirements of deliverables are defined, the solution is specified, prototypes built, and the final item to deliver signed-off. Consequently, the evolutionary status flow in project management of the n-BO type PROJECT is interlinked with the evolvement or related n-BOs of type ITEM and type DOCUMENT.

During all n-BO PROJECT states for example, documents are drafted, negotiated and finally agreed with stakeholders. Therefore the n-BO status handling of documents, from initial drafts to a final state, including collaborative editing and decisions making in the socially augmented collaboration environment would most likely be beneficial. In particular in the execution and control state the interrelation to the n-BO type ITEM is very relevant. With that, all related definitions of requirements, design specifications, prototypes and items are covered. Also here, the interoperability of n-BO states from requirements to final item (product), and the social augmented collaboration capabilities, would most likely add value to the project execution and control.

The interlinkage of the n-BO types PROJECT, DOCUMENT and ITEM is visualized in Figure 40.

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Summarizing the discussion of the applicability of the design principles to the project management use case, it can be stated that the complete project management life cycle could be covered from the conceptual perspective. Because of the close interaction of data and process and people integration dimensions that is required in project management, it is also highly probable that the design principles bring potential for improvement during all phases of project management.