Civil XLR8 Extra: Captaining the Enterprise
Civil XLR8 Extra: Captaining the Enterprise
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Project Management's Primary ChallengeThe primary challenge to effective project management is communication. Note: this only applies when the total number of personnel involved in the project including staff, clients, vendors, and collaborators exceeds one person. Challenges in CommunicationClose GroupsProjects where an entire functional group is within earshot are able to collaborate with less formal communication methods. Extended CollaborationCollaborators separated geographically have communication issues which inhibit productivity and efficiency. Ineffective ApproachesPaperOther than legal archives and spontaneous napkin sketches paper is perhaps the slowest and least efficient medium to communicate still in widespread use in business. Email is a great, distributed, close to real-time communicator. It has the advantage and disadvantage of leaving a paper trail. The primary challenge of email is that ineffective email management by any of the recipients can lead to individual or mass confusion. The recipients bear some responsibility for distinguishing between active and obsolete information. A project web is one tool that can provide universally accessible information managed by the project manager. Shared Drives and FTP SitesShared Drives and FTP Sites are good for transferring files and are decent data repositories. Tools that increase the usability and clarity of these systems include good file system structure; good, intuitive, explicit (long) file naming conventions, and a good system of "readme.txt" in every folder. This approach requires some savvy and conscientiousness on the part of the end-user and still requires a consistent communication effort from the "site" owner. With little additional effort the "site" manager could more effectively manage the visitor's experience using connected web pages. An effective and misunderstood solution: |
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