With the infusion of AI into digital platforms, the role of the project professional is expanding yet again. But technology does not deliver transformation; disciplined project and product management does. This PM shares five lessons learned.
Join us on 4 June as we come together with project professionals, sustainability leaders, and volunteer voices from around the world for a special World Environment Day event focused on the future of project leadership.
“Done” is one of the most powerful words in agile. It brings closure. It marks progress. It gives us the satisfaction of checking a box and moving on. But what happens when “done” becomes hollow, and the value is nowhere in sight?
Back in March 2006, Google startled many--including Microsoft--when it gobbled up one-and-half year old Upstartle, the maker of online word processor called Writely. The team of four had initially considered building collaboration and document management software for corporate intranets before settling down on document editing over the Internet that fitted so well in Google’s strategy of putting together a suite of applications accessed over the Internet.
A year earlier, Microsoft itself had bought Groove Networks, a provider of collaboration software for the virtual office. The idea was to acquire real-time, server-based and peer-to-peer collaboration capabilities and get a leg up on IBM’s Lotus Notes, which was created in 1989 by the founder of Groove, Ray Ozzie. The Groove acquisition added so many features to Sharepoint in just over a year that Bill Gates called it Microsoft’s collaboration future and said that it would reshape the way people think about information sharing.
Not to be outdone, IBM announced in spring 2006 that the next version of Notes, codenamed Hanover, will include editors for word processing, spreadsheets and a presentation for a better collaborative workplace. Later in the year, IBM also revamped its Rational tool set, which it had acquired in 2003, with enhanced features for collaborative development. Danny Sabbah, the GM of Rational business unit, said in an interview to eWeek that the features will add not only to individual developer’s productivity, but also to organizational productivity.
If you think that the collaborative technologies area is heating up, then you wouldn’t be wrong. Collaborative technologies have been looming on the horizon for some time, and now with fresh impetus from Web 2.0 and other developments they are playing a greater role in the planning and execution of various business initiatives across the isle.
Pressure to be More Productive: Collaborative Software Development to Rescue
Organizations have been continuously under pressure to be more productive, agile and responsive to market dynamics. To address these pressures they have been implementing strategies that are increasingly utilizing resources which are geographically dispersed. This means that there is a higher need for greater collaboration and knowledge sharing amongst various teams to realize their full potential that is locked and isolated in different organizational silos.
In the area of application development, geographically dispersed teams are making global projects more a norm than an aberration. Companies are building competitive advantages by using global project teams to address the growing complexities of application development and the need for more skilled staff. Effective collaboration amongst these teams is necessary to alleviate the issues of time, distance, space and culture.
Application development teams, especially distributed development teams, have been wrangling with collaboration and communication for a long time. With the increased use of a wide range of tools for project management, requirement analysis, simulation, etc., the complexities of managing application development have only amplified. Development teams are employing various methods to address them.
Open Source initiatives routinely coordinate the activities and contributions of thousands of remotely located developers. O’Reilly Media analyzed the collaborative efforts of some of these projects--W3C, OASIS, Linux, Mozilla, and OpenOffice.org--and found that they relied upon tight communication, mostly through asynchronous methods like mailing lists to keep members informed about the progress, questions and concerns of others.
Using tools like the Internet-accessible revision control system, they tracked all collaboratively built units--specifications, designs, source code, test results etc.--and made them available to all participants. They also used workflows--either through processes or through tracking software--to allow participants to keep track of tasks, requests, enhancements, activity-ownership and other things topical to the project.
Individual collaboration tools like change and configuration management and tracking software bring geographically dispersed teams together, but they are limited due to fact that they are suited more for sequential processes and for individuals rather than for concurrent processes and teams. To some extent this is beginning to change.
Bundling of Collaboration Tools with Development Platforms
In 2005, many development tools started to include collaboration features. The trend is continuing with more vendors incorporating collaboration into their products’ platform and framework. Microsoft is touting enhanced Sharepoint’s collaboration infrastructure as a reason to upgrade. Office and VisalStudio also offer collaboration features.
Oracle offers enterprise-class real-time collaboration through its Collaboration Suite, which is an assembly of many components including content services for content management, contextual collaboration for managing team and project, calendar, Web conferencing, mail and messenger capabilities, voicemail, fax, mobile access and discussions.
IBM is peddling its WorkplaceTM as collaboration simplified within a single, integrated environment. A portfolio of new and existing products, IBM Workplace includes Lotus brand products. IBM is also offering group coordination through Rational brand--a set of development tools, services and best-practices that help organizations develop and deploy software for the internet and other platforms. The new enhancement to the Rational platform focuses on the team development and collaboration. IBM is hoping that the collaboration will become an integral element of individual development tools.
Similarly, NetBeans--the open-source project that provides software development products--has a collaboration feature that allows developers to connect to each other through a collaboration server.
Web 2.0 Revolution
Internet technologies are intuitively suited to enhance collaboration. Open source development is driven by Internet enabled collaboration. Instant messaging and collaborative workspaces are helping many startup and established companies to expedite software development. Web 2.0, a concept conceived by O’Reilly Media, is also giving more momentum to the collaborative application development.
O’Reilly explains Web 2.0 as a set of principles and practices that tie together a veritable solar system of sites that demonstrate some or all of those principles. Many of these sites are conducive to collaboration. Not only techies--but many non-techies--are also able to collaborate and share information using Internet based services like social-networking, wikis, folksonomies and other communication tools.
The bellwether of Web 2.0, Google, is stringing together a variety of Internet-based services to offer enterprise-wide collaboration solutions. Starting from a search engine, Google has acquired and released a number of applications that are beginning to challenge many established software companies. Google’s set of applications--Google Calendar, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Gmail and Google Talk--is enabling it to offer collaboration services over the Internet. Only a Web browser is needed to access the collaborative power of Google Apps. Users can use Google API framework to integrate its infrastructure and applications. By the end of 2006, Google plans to introduce an enterprise version of Google Apps.
Hosted service providers are also playing a big part in the proliferation of collaborative services. Many big corporations have implemented hosted applications from the likes of Salesforce.com, NetSuite and SAP. This has made it easier for many smaller companies to provide hosted Web 2.0 applications. One such company, 37Signals, is offering a suite of hosted application for collaboration. Its current assembly of five applications enables project collaboration, group chat, information organization, collaborative writing/editing and to-do list management. Projects with teams spread over multiple time zones are finding it very useful. 37Signals’ clients have found that before using Campfire and Basecamp applications, they were having trouble finding meeting times when all their team members were online. With 37Signals’ applications, these teams do not have to wait for all members to come online rather they can use asynchronous capabilities of Campfire to communicate. The result is better collaboration.
More Things to Come
Web-based and desktop-based collaboration tool sets are helping application development teams to harness the potential of distributed teams and individuals. Many types of technologies are facilitating better coordination during various stages of software development. Collaborative modeling tools--CASE tools--enable several system designers to work in real time.
With collaborative writing tools--collaborative editors--many developers can simultaneously work on code and documentations. Discussion tools like e-mail, newsgroup, RSS, IM, etc., help teams to communicate synchronously and asynchronously and transmit textual and visual information. Video and virtual meeting tools facilitate interaction between people who are in different locations. Version control tools allow for managing project artifacts. Collaborative management tools make it easier to manage group activities. Time management software improves scheduling, notification and reminders. Project management systems help in tracking and managing a project. Workflow and knowledge management systems allow for collaborative management of tasks and documents. Social software systems enable better social interaction amongst team members.
Many of these tools and practices have been in use for a long time. However, the difference is that earlier they were used individually. The current trend is that they are now being built into the development tool platforms. This is giving more power to the application development teams. Experts like Adam Gartenberg of IBM and Elliott Masie of The Masie Center, a Saratoga Springs, New York-based think tank focused on how organizations can support learning and knowledge within the workforce, say that the trends of continuous evolution of collaboration tools will go on in the future, too.
More integration of VOIP (Voice Over IP) into core applications will allow for collaboration from within an application rather than jumping to a collaboration site. New pricing models will result in increased use of collaborative tools. Enterprise-wide collaboration servers will address the needs for the convergence of conferencing, document and workflow management. The convergence of audio and instant messaging will allow for seamless transition between e-mail, instant messaging and VOIP.
The bottom line is that application development requires many entities to coordinate their activities and collaboration--whether virtual or otherwise--and has become a ubiquitous way of software development.
"I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near."
