Project
Management and Communication
By Tom Chenault
Managing a
systems project is never easy.
Direction, mission, people resources, financing, time and technology can
all be there, but the project can still fail if there is not sufficient
communication and organization. This
applies to any project, not just software development.
To borrow
a story from the book “The Mythical Man-Month”, by Frederick Brooks, we can go
back to the first historically recorded large construction project of mankind,
the Tower of Babel.
There was
a clear (a little under estimated, but straightforward) mission to build a
tower to reach heaven. With the
exception of God, which later proved to be a problem, it was a politically
popular idea. There was plenty of
manpower in terms of involuntary local laborers – with the additional benefit
of not having to worry about payroll deductions, workman’s compensation or
health insurance. There were plenty of
materials – clay and asphalt were abundant in the region. There was no time limitation or deadline –
they literally had all the time in the world.
The pyramidal design was good.
Masonry construction was well understood. The project started at an excellent pace.
God, who
should have been consulted in the first place, intervened and rendered
different languages (babble) to the different groups building the tower. Lack of communication caused a lack of
coordination. Arguments and fights broke
out. Distrust arose between different
groups, along with the usual blame games and politics. The project was abandoned.
One of the
first engineering projects of all time was a failure – not because of economic
considerations, technical limitations, or a changing political climate, but
because of poor communication. Poor
communication will kill a endeavor. In
the end, that’s exactly what happened; the Tower of Babel failed because the
leaders were unable to talk understandably to each other.
Large
software projects have the same issues.
The design and good analysis are key ingredients to a successful
project; however, communication is a must.
A plan showing how individuals and groups will coordinate with each
other through formal and informal meetings is needed. Regularly scheduled meetings are necessary,
with the understanding that everyone will be on time. These encounters are invaluable in terms of
eliminating misunderstandings. System
prototypes are presented with suggested changes documented and made. The budget and schedule should reflect
unanticipated changes. When the
unanticipated occurs, immediate communication must be made to the appropriate
parties, who must in turn understand that can cause the budget and schedule to
change. Superiors must be
accessible. All this should be
communicated and understood up-front before the project begins.
Adapt Update
For
the past two years, along with Hanley-Wood Expositions, we have been
introducing a demographics database product, named ADAPT. This product applies to organizations
connected to events (trades shows, conferences, seminars, etc.) and direct
marketing campaigns.
The link to the
6-minute demo is www.adaptdb.com/adapt_demo2.html.
The
product won "Trade Show Innovation of the Year" in 2003.
"ADAPT has changed the way we market
to our prospects. A few of the many ways the system has helped make our marketing
efforts more successful: we can pull very targeted lists within seconds,
allowing us to tailor our marketing messages to different segments quickly and
easily; our lists are clean and deduped against the rest of our prospects,
saving us thousands of dollars on printing and mailing; we rent our attendee
lists to exhibiting companies in our shows, generating revenue for our company.
As a marketing manager, I can do my job faster and, at the same time, create a
much more effective marketing campaign using the tools in ADAPT. At this point,
I can’t imagine how I would do my job without it." -- Nicole Buraglio, Senior Marketing
Manager, Hanley Wood Exhibitions
Plain English
As always, and back by popular demand, we
are asked to translate language from large technology firm web sites into plain
language.
Marketing Pitch from a Web site: As part of a global network of technology
campuses, our world-class facilities in India offer customers state-of-the-art
software solutions strategically designed to their unique business needs and
goals, and cost-effective business processes that employ proven methodologies
and industry best practices. Our highly
trained and skilled associates draw on deep technical expertise to create
solutions that maximize returns on IT investments. And through collaborative, long-term
relationships, we enable customers to achieve and sustain measurable results.
Translation: We develop systems with people from foreign
countries who appear to cost less.
Is
the offshoring fad coming to a close?
Please
see recent article in the Dallas Business Journal, by Chenault Systems,
on why software development is returning to the United States.
Chenault
Systems offshoring articles from 2006 and 2004:
http://dallas.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2006/12/11/editorial4.html
http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2004/03/22/editorial3.html
Quotes Worth Noting
“Whoever could make two ears of corn or
two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before
would deserve better of mankind and do more essential service to his country
than the whole race of politicians put together.” – Jonathan Swift
“Once
the Invisible Hand has taken all the historical inequities and smeared them out
into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker
would consider to be prosperity -- y'know what?
There's only four things we do better than anyone
else: music, movies, microcode (software), and high-speed pizza delivery.” --
Neal Stephenson
“In
questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble
reasoning of a single individual.” -- Galileo