On Services for Collaborative Project Management

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Management

Martin Ollus, Kim Jansson, Iris Karvonen, Mikko Uoti, Heli Riikonen Vuorimiehentie 5, Espoo P.O. Box 1000, FI-02044 VTT, Finland [email protected]

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2 On Services for Collaborative Project Management

ProVe09, Thessaloniki, 9th Oct, 2009

Content of presentation

1. Collaborative Project Management; some concepts

2. Features of management

3. Intangible assets for management

4. IT for Collaborative Project Management

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(Project) Management

Management

"the art of getting things done through people"

(Mary Parker Follett , early definition)

“directing and controlling a group of one or more people or entities for the purpose of

coordinating and harmonizing them towards accomplishing a goal”

Project Management

“discipline of planning, organizing, and managing resources to bring a successful

completion of specific project goals and objectives”

(Global project management handbook )

Challenges for Project Management

1. achieve all project goals and objectives while adhering to project constraints

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Collaborative Project management

• Discipline of project management is well established

• Much good support available

•PMI: Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®, PMBOK® Guide)

•Project Management Association, IPMA

•focus is mainly on the management of project within a single enterprise

• Collaborative Project Management

Collaboration: “a process in which entities share information, resources and responsibilities to jointly plan, implement, and evaluate a program of activities to achieve a common goal”

(Camarinha-Matos & Afsarmanesh)

•Management of Collaborative Projects

•networked and distributed environments

•participants and organizations in different locations, countries and cultures

•management either central or collaborative

•Collaborative Management of Projects

•shared project management

•delegation of management responsibility

•some extent of self organization

•management may in many cases be non-hierarchical and participative

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Project topology

Non-distributed (single organization) Collaborative/distributed (virtual organization) Collaborative (democrat ic) manage ment Ce ntralized (top-down) manage ment

Management approach

• Central project responsibility • Command structures unclear (independent organizations) • Monoitoring at organizations boarders • Project hiererachy • Clear chain of command • Internal monitoring within the organization

• Nogotiation & self- organization • Collaboration, trust, communication based • Distributed progress monitoring • Delegation of responsibility • Self organisation • Progress assessment Collaborative Management of Projects Management of Collaborative Projects

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Aspects on project management

Also the

• So far, project management has mainly focused on monitoring the

• progress of activities

• performance

• Management assumed to know needed measure for coordinating the activities

BUT

• Management of inter-organizational activities a complex task

• could be supported formally and systematically

• Management of inter-organizational activities mainly considered as transactions at

the interfaces between the participating organizations

• focus has been on standardization of the information exchange

• communication even between enterprise systems

• Very little emphasis on the interactions between people and business processes

BUT

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Interaction level Communication Performance, collaboration, trust Management Integration platforms, ERP -integration Data formats, standards

Info from many different systems Understanding & modelling of behaviour & relationships Data acquisition (PMBOK, SCM, …) Intelligent decision support systems Coordinated actions over company borders Transaction System Business process, People Information exchange Monitoring Active management

Dimensions of collaborative management

Transaction based integration Supported active management Collaboration focused management

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Collaborative organization culture means community

•

Consists of relationships between people

• Knowledge sharing

• Understanding and monitoring of intangible assets

• Communication

• Collaboration performance

• Trust

• ……

•Management focusing on business processes and relationships

• Creating trust and a collaborative atmosphere

• Considering risks

• Still relying on incomplete information

Active management for collaboration support

So far

• Coordinated actions over company borders

• Supported by efficient information collection from participating organizations

• including monitoring of past events

• Decision support to aid decision making

• proactive alarms on emerging or occurred problems

• simulation based evaluation of different possible management actions

• Focus has been on the management aspects

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Manage-ment COST TIME QUALITY Communication Collaboration Trust Individual attributes OTHERS PEOPLE Project organization

Work break down, Task allocation

Management , Monitoring

approach

Incentive system

Management structure, set-up Collaborative real-time status analysis

Implementation of needed actions

Management is about dealing with people

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Some intangible assets in collaborative project management

Mutual trust

• Critical factor for

• Communication

• Collaboration and knowledge creation

• Creation of competitive advantage

• Reducing governance costs

• Conflict management

• Includes rational dimensions

• Keeps relationship together & reduces their complexity

• Provides flexibility & lower transaction costs

Leadership

• Many definitions

• Emphasize support of others in the accomplishment of common objectives

• Define aims and to create a collaborative and inspiring atmosphere

• Decentralized management style usually adopted

• Engagement of all participants vital

• Monitoring achievements and performance

• Performance in collaborative activities is ability to

• Forge relationships

• Communicate networking

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IT: Social media and project management

• Project management a social effort involving all relevant actors

• Social aspect to be emphasized in collaborative project management

• Social capable IT tools and software could support the project work and management

Enterprise 2.0

• Used to describe the collaborative nature of an enterprise

• Introduction and implementation of Web 2.0 technologies within the enterprise

• Rich internet applications

• Provide software as a service

• Web used as a general platform

• Six fundamental components, using the acronym SLATES

• Can help organizations in capturing unstructured tacit knowledge

• Challenge: how to differentiate meaningful and re-usable knowledge from other content

• Blogs, wikis, etc useful for sharing unstructured information on active projects and processes

• Not good for structured informational retrieval

• Business processes often rely on access to structured but distributed data and documents

• Several positive outcomes in adapting Enterprise 2.0 technologies

• Remaining threats

• Employees may not use the adapted technologies

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Social media and project management (cont.)

Agile Project Management (APM)

• For compact and lightweight projects

• Created mainly for software development projects

• Expected to respond to the needs of an agile and volatile business environment

• Lighter than traditional (long term) project management approaches

• Less complicated

• Iterative and incremental processes

• All project stakeholders actively work together

• Projects are conducted collaboratively, in small teams

• Series of sessions

• Documentation minimized

• Project team relies almost exclusively on informal internal communication

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Social media and project management (cont.)

Project Management 2.0 (PM2.0), or Social Project Management

• Project management practices and software built on Web 2.0

• Applications include blogs, wikis and other collaborative and social software

• Share characteristics like

• Open APIs (Application Programming Interface)

• Service oriented design

• Ability to upload data and media

• Ability to collaborate, share and communicate

• PM2.0 often associated with Agile Project Management

• Collaborative style of project management

• PM2.0 is more about the collaborative tools

• APM is more about lightweight project management practices

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Comparison of project management approaches

•Traditional project management places the manager in the centre of the project work

• Collects all the information from the team

• Processes it

• Communicates to the upper management

• All the information on the project is passing a single person – the project manager

• PM2.0 tools enables the creation of a collaborative space

• Full access to project information for each team member

• Project progress is also visible to everyone

• Project manager has a visionary role choosing the direction for the project development

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Traditional Project Management Project Management 2.0

Centralization of control Decentralization of control

Top-down planning Bottom-up planning

Authoritarian, strictly controlled environment Collaborative environment

Implied structure, pre-defined structure and tasks Emergent structures, tasking

Limited / restricted access to the plan Organized / unlimited access to the plan

Local access to information, strict user restrictions Universal access to information, very few restrictions

Limited communications within team, separate tools Enhanced communications within team, e.g. shared project

e-mails, chats

Separate projects Holistic approach, resource pools

Often complex tools Easy to use tools

Rigidity of tools Flexibility of tools

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Software Solutions for Project Management

Traditional PM solutions

• Focused on scheduling and resource management

• Functions for both planning and follow-up

• In some cases also for multi-project management

• Enterprise software suites usually have such functionalities among their functions

• Common commercial alternatives for project management software

• Microsoft Project

• dotProject

• For viable collaborative project management, further innovations needed

• “Web 2.0” applications for collaborative Project Management with e.g. ability to

• Build on project partners distributed contribution to learning

• Collect rich user experience and shared intelligence

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Application case

•Global market leader in the process industry providing

• Engineering and project implementation services for investment projects worldwide

• Maintenance engineering

• Local services to process plants

• Future success will build on the combination of two paradigms:

•Fully automated and IT supported engineering process

•Totally networked and efficient global operation

• Second one (networked global operations)

• Takes full advantage of using core competencies in networked organizations

• Work distributed between the most competent and most cost-efficient project partners

• Topics selected for further development:

•Shared working practices – Project Alignment

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Project alignment

Process of ensuring that key stakeholders share a common understanding of the project work processes, operational procedures, objectives and plans

• Good level of alignment often requires participation in a learning process

• Need to analyze and measure the working and experience level at the project partners

• Based on the alignment capabilities a suitable learning environment can be established

• Building blocks in boosting project alignment

• Measurement of partner’s alignment status

• Interactive learning environment

Participating Project Alignment Booster to be implemented as web-services

and currently under development

Services:

• Definition of maturity model and best practices

• Project specific work process and operating instructions

• Identification of alignment training needs

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Communication through tasks

Tools under development

• Support for delegated and participating project execution

• Agreed and shared operational procedure to support social and participative execution

• Basic underlying principle

• Work broken down to a detailed task level

• Task planning on the lowest level

• Accomplished by the person actually performing the work

• Aim: realistic and fully understood

• Task sizes

• Work content

• Task duration

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[email protected]

Further information

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