Management of Virtual Projects

Virtual Project Mgmt @ work

I'm in the midst of a project at work in which we're trying to implement (maybe better described as 'rein in') SharePoint across the organization.   The biggest push for this project came from the need for better management of projects across time and space.  Even projects in which resources are wholly onshore, in the same building, stand to gain immensely from the implementation of a collaboration tool such as SharePoint.  However, the biggest push is to get our offshore resources hooked up with SharePoint.  We have people in multiple locations in India.  The time difference is one issue we must deal with when working on projects with them, so we're looking forward to SharePoint being a space for them to get everything they need to do their work, while we sleep.  We've run into many situations where the offshore resources don't know which version of the functional specs is the correct one, causing problems down the line when they've developed off of a version that's 5 iterations old...  We aim to fix this problem.

We've put a lot of effort into defining a governance model for our SharePoint implementation so that things don't get out of hand.  A big part of what we're trying to achieve is security.  When our offshore resources get to work every morning, they leave everything at the door - no cell phones, no flash drives, nothing that could jeopardize our proprietary information.  At their computers, their workspaces are highly restricted - only the applications and websites they need for their work are made available to them.  Making SharePoint available to these offshore resources has become somewhat of a challenge in itself.  How do we lock down the environment enough to conform to the strict requirements our Information Security team imposes on us while maintaining the kind of flexibility that must exist to make a collaboration environment such as SharePoint effective?

Where to begin when discussing Management of Virtual Projects?

I decided for this initial entry to focus on what is common for all types of projects, the interactive dynamics of the team albeit that the members are located in one location or spread across the world.  How the team members will interact is based on the various factors such as the size of the project team, their position within the overall organization, the familiarity of the team members with each other, and the personalities of the individual members.  However the most telling factor is the established social network that exist prior to the project and the social network that is formed throughout the life of the project.  Social Networking existed long before the current social-networking web sites were made popular.  In this case we are referring to the study of the relationship between individuals within an organization or team and how this affects the communication channels.  This has become to known as Social Networking Analysis (SNA). There are many books, articles and posting available regarding SNA such as Social Network Analysis, A Brief Introduction.

   

A manager of a virtual project has to be especially aware of the communication links between individuals and / or groups as the interactive dynamics within a virtual team is more complex as its members might be comprised from different organizations such as clients, vendors and /or business partners. Although the typical project manager will not have the time and the skills to conduct a formalize Social Network Analysis, it is imperative that they identify the various roles and groupings within the network.  It is especially critical to indentify the potential road blocks or “gate keepers” within an organization that could restrict the information flow and work flow resulting in a detrimental impact on the outcome of the project. 

   

More to come later…..