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Distributed Project Management Teams

  
       

Introduction

  

There are a number of approaches to distributed project management and I will use the basic time and space grid to briefly discuss them and provide a few examples.  There is considerable documentation on project management from a wide variety of sources found elsewhere.

The table below covers some of the more common approaches to project management.

The same time and place quadrant is synchronous project management and the typical approach used in business -- face-to-face project teams.

The same time and different place quadrant is project management conducted in real time.  An example would be a situation wherein the project team members are distributed in space but link in at the same time for team meetings..

The different time and place quadrant is project management conducted at varying times and locations.  An example would be a project team whose members are distributed in both time and space and interact via asynchronous means.

 Time and Space Grid

  Same Place Different Place
Same Time Synchronous project management Synchronous project management
Different Time  
  •  
    Asynchronous project management
    		•
    		 
           

    Technologies Supporting Distributed Project Management

    		  

    Some technologies that support project management are listed in the table below.  Some examples of products include Dell, HP, and Apple laptops: Microsoft Office application software; NetMeeting, LiveMeeting, WebEx, and InterWise conferencing software; Groove Virtual Office; MSN and Yahoo! Groups, and Microsoft Project.  Note: these are just examples of products the author has had some experience with -- there are many more -- this is not to be considered an endorsement of any specific product. Essentially most of these products support working or learning together on an anytime, anywhere basis regardless of the type of information work.

    Project Management Time and Space Grid

      Same Place Different Place
    Same Time FTF Team

    (Laptop computers, projectors, wireless routers, Internet, application software, Project)

    		 Same time, distributed team in space

    (Laptop computers, projectors, wireless routers, Internet, conferencing software, application software, Project)
    Different Time  
  •  
    Distributed team in time and space

    (laptop computers, wireless routers, Internet, application software, conferencing software, newsgroups, electronic mail, Project)

    		•
    		 
           

    Reasons for Distributed Project Management

     

    		  

    Reasons for distributed project management center around the differences in time and space for team members.

    • Team members  may not be physically collocated.
    • It may not be practical to travel to meet face-to-face (some city traffic is so bad, for example, that online work may be more desirable).
    • Team members  may work different shifts
    • There is a larger market of talented people outside a smaller geographic area

     

    		  
           
    Date last revised:
    June 05, 2006
    		      
    David Gould, Ed.D.
    daveg@seanet.com
    		 © 1999-2006 All Rights Reserved