Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Virtual Project Management ...








Virtual Project Management: Via BusinessWeek: Management Virtues in a Virtual Office

Karen E. Klein interviews MediaThink COO John Piccirillo and discusses his approach to management of a virtual company ...

... "We have a software system that does project management for us -- it's called Groove Networks. You have to have a system to manage different versions of documents for various projects and keep all the e-mails relating to that project together. If you don't, working online can be a hellish experience. We also use instant messaging. " ...

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posted by Frank M @ 9:56 PM, Read More...  
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2 Comments:

At 10:28 PM, Anonymous Garry L. Booker said...

Frank,

I have used Groove Virtual Office, and their flagship PM tool TeamDirection for a full year. By far the most interesting and useful feature of Groove/TeamDirection is the ability to notify all users when anything changes in the project workspace. This includes the ability be notified automatically, and in near real time, any updates of percent completion on any task. Sweet!

As Ms. Klein writes, another advantage is the ability to group files and e-mails in the context of the project workspace, but that isn't unique to Groove.

There are two significant drawbacks, however. First, Groove/TeamDirection is basically Gantt chart management. (I am currently drafting an essay at www.projectfrontier.com that assails Gantt charts). The second drawback is the lack of any cost integration.

Still, there is probably no better way today than Groove/TeamDirection to make simple projects highly collaborative.

Since Microsoft has purchased Groove (announced last March), I am very curious what will happen with Groove technology.

/Garry Booker
www.projectfrontier.com

 
At 8:26 PM, Blogger Frank M said...

Thanks, Garry. Your insights are appreciated.

I did not do a lot of research, but here's an interesting anecdote ...

... "followed the first wave of groundbreakers like Arthur Little, Frederick Taylor, and Henry Gannt, the founders of the tradition who worked largely as loners, building theory and practice rather than building up bank accounts. " ...

Maybe the intersection of gannt and collaboration is null...

 

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