I work in a Publishing co. in the UK where PMs have been employed in the last few years to manage software-based product development, created by external development houses. The role is quite a 'soft' one compared to many PMs, due to the traditional nature of Publishing and the organisations lack of very experienced PMs. We're now looking at using formal PMs to manage our print-based product development too, and I've been asked to consider how such a wider role might work. Would you call managing a range of product development projects in two different media - all driven by the same market change - Programme Management or something else? What new principles and issues should I be considering now that my role is moving beyond a set of software projects linked to a common product release? I'm really up for making it work, but feel I lack the awareness of how the experts might do it. Saving Changes...
As I understand, your organization would like to have formal PMs to manage the 'system development projects'. Software is now going to be a sub-system to be managed in the whole project. Currently, the formal PMs are managing the 'software projects' and they need to retrain themselves in understanding the system perspective - the systems requirements, allocating these to software and print-based, the scheduling aspects to bring the various sub-systems together for integration, the various testing aspects - unit, integration, system etc. Personally I believe more in non-model based approach to project management & process improvement. However, you may wish to refer CMMI model from SEI. Saving Changes...
