Intranet and extranets for virtual project management

Working Together, Apart
The Web as Project Infrastructure

by Gordon Benett, Managing Editor, IDM
Part I of a two-part series (go to Part II)

One of the more effective methods of organizing and tracking work is management by walking around: the simple act of popping your head in a team member's office and shouting, "Hey James! How's it going?" Do this across the team a few times a month and your project will either perform, or you'll know you need a new team.
Trouble is, today's "teams" often have upwards of the half-dozen people it's feasible to visit in a stroll, and these folks may well be scattered across your city, state or continent. The solution is to visit project resources virtually rather than physically, a variation that might be called management by flying around -- except that travel takes place in cyberspace, and you need not leave your office to do it.
Virtual project management (VPM) is the Information Age equivalent of management by walking around. Most recently, the rise to dominance within organizations of Internet-based collaboration tools offers new possibilities for web-based project management.
In this article I'll discuss the value proposition for web-based VPM, focusing on a couple of software products that illustrate both the potential and current limitations of the medium. Interestingly, some of the best real-world Java applications implemented today support collaboration.
Doing, sharing, measuring

"A virtual project is a collaborative effort towards a specific goal or accomplishment which is based on 'collective yet remote' performance," according to a seminal paper on the topic [1]. Another source sets "working together, apart" as the goal of enterprise networking [2]. These modes of work share a need for management tools that enable communication and coordination at a distance.
In addition, many projects require the concerted effort of several individuals sharing a common set of tools. For example, an engineering team might use a computer-aided design (CAD) program to develop and compare design alternatives without holding a physical meeting. Look at the kind of project management activities associated with this process:

A task must be defined to develop alternative designs based on project requirements
Resources -- people, time, expenses if any -- must be allocated to the task
The team members involved must communicate before and during the task, both with each other (design issues) and with the PM (administrative status reporting)
The PM needs to track the task, and based on performance relative to allocated resources, administer course corrections.

There is room in these activities for several layers of information system support:

Communication implies e-mail, phone calls, memoranda (hopefully as e-mail attachments but possibly as paper), and other media.
Collaboration goes beyond basic communicating to sharing design information, which for all but the simplest projects will reside in specialized repositories such as CAD programs, CASE tools, simulation software, etc.
Tracking and leveling resources are functions performed by traditional PM products.

In addition, some organizations are required by regulation or committment to a specific methodology (e.g., ISO 9000) to maintain complete configuration control over project artifacts. A pharmaceutical firm, for instance, might need to store not only the final specification for a new drug but all alternatives and iterations leading up to it. In such cases the dimension of process management can consume more resources than the projects themselves.
Now do it virtually

Drug manufacturers and bridge builders weren't exactly on hold until the advent of distributed computing. All of the activities mentioned so far have been handled for years -- since the start of the Industrial Revolution, in a sense -- with pencil and paper and human ingenuity. How do electronic information systems change this, and how do web-based applications in particular add value?
Communication

This is networking's quick hit. E-mail allows ideas to flow asynchronously (i.e., without parties online at both ends), enabling work to flow across holidays and time zones. E-mail also creates with no incremental labor a searchable audit trail, key to many formal processes.
Taking this idea a step further, consider how products like Microsoft® Outlook™ support and extend project communication. Outlook integrates a multi-protocol e-mail client with directory, scheduling, and journaling functions. Through journaling, the process of keeping a record of work performed, Outlook extends the concept of automatic audit trail creation to include phone calls, faxes and other non-integrated communications.
Unfortunately, Outlook97 happens to be painful to use and miserably insular when it comes to sharing project info. But the integration potential is there, and hopefully will be better realized in future releases. Meanwhile, similar functionality is on tap in competing Web-based messaging clients, such as Netscape Communicator™ and Lotus Development Corp.'s Notes 5.0 client.
Remote collaboration

The ability to "work together, apart" is hardly possible without shared storage and concurrency control -- solved problems, thanks to client/server database technology. A good example of a product that enables web-based collaboration is NetObjects TeamFusion, reviewed in this issue of IDM [3]. TeamFusion facilitates the construction and maintenance of complex web sites by multi-developer teams.
In addition, TeamFusion allows contributors not directly involved in web development to add content through a form-based Java applet, accessible with any browser. Browser-based project collaboration is going to be one of Java's "killer apps," you betcha, and a theme you'll see more of in Part II of this article.
Of course, Java isn't the only distributed computing platform on the block. Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM), lately folded into a new marketecture called DNA (Distributed interNet Architecture), holds out much the same prospect as Java for providing remote access to shared workspaces and applications.
CORBA, on the other hand, does not. While the Common Object Request Broker Architecture standard is arguably more mature and better integrated than DNA, it lacks the the visual control elements present in both Microsoft's ActiveX and Java's AWT. This relegates CORBA to adding value behind the scenes while Java and DNA duke it out on your desktop.
Project management

Integrated messaging tools like Lotus Notes and design collaboration tools like TeamFusion do a good job within their respective domains. When a project manager needs to lay out tasks, assign resources and track performance, however, she must look elsewhere -- specifically, to project management software. PM software adds value by facilitating the administrative chores associated with teamwork, from schedule production and cost estimation to critical path analysis.
"Is the project on target?" PM software's agenda is to answer this question, and as anyone familiar with tools like Microsoft Project, Primavera Systems SureTrak Project Manager or Scitor Inc.'s PS6 can attest, they do little else. These products are intended for use by professional managers, not by the members of a project team. They add no value as task collaboration tools because they don't understand the vertical knowledge of specific problem domains.
This kind of tool is, of course, indispensable within a narrow administrative domain. Some products, like SureTrak Project Manager from Primavera Systems Inc. and Microsoft Project 98, can publish current project data to a web server, making status information and associated files available to all comers through a standard issue browser. Web publishing is much more efficient from both a cost and client configuration standpoint than the per-seat licensing model of older PM products, which required every user who might conceivably need access to install a full copy of the client software.
Both SureTrak and Project 98 also feature extensive e-mail integration. In SureTrak's case, users can send messages about project data, screen captures, and selected activities through a gateway called Primavera Post Office to team members who can then review, approve and merge updates back into the project schedule. Microsoft Project 98 goes these workgroup capabilities one better by giving users a choice between e-mail and web-based communications [4].
These features bring aspects of "management by walking around" to the virtual project realm. It's important to remember, though, that collaboration in PM software remains strictly limited to project management functions. Even best-in-class products like Project 98 and SureTrak Project Manager can't "reach out and touch" vertical applications, for instance a drafting tool such as AutoCAD for construction projects, or Rational Rose, Rational Software Corp.'s system modeling tool, for software development projects.
As a result, teams have had to turn to a hodgepodge of non-integrated tools, each of which supports a facet of virtual work -- project/process management, project communication, or collaboration on project tasks. Only recently have tools capable of providing a complete process management framework for virtual work begun to appear.
Web-based project infrastructures

Let's recap. Virtual projects -- "working together, apart" -- require communication, collaboration and project management. The present generation of software aims to support work within each of these domains by leveraging client/server technologies such as shared data access, standards-based messaging and browser economies.
But not until now, with the impending rise of web application technologies such as Java, ActiveX and XML, have project teams had access to integrated environments that bridge project domains. The goal of integrated process management through a suite of cooperating tools seems at hand.
Next issue I'll describe how corporate webs are becoming project infrastructure. In particular, I'll profile two web-based products that support virtual project teams. One is Mesa/Vista Project Manager by Mesa Systems Guild, Inc., a high-end offering that provides comprehensive process management through a rich mix of Java, JavaScript and XML technologies. The other, WebProject by WebProject, Inc., offers a more traditional PM feature set enhanced by an all-Java implementation.
Citations

Terry Krile & Dr. Paul Juell, Proceedings of the Small College Computing Symposium (SCCS'97), "Virtual Project Management," North Dakota State University, March 1997.
R. Grenier and G. Metes, Enterprise Networking: Working Together Apart. Digital Press, 1992.
In late 1998 NetObjects replaced TeamFusion 1.0 with Authoring Server 3.0, reviewed here.
Microsoft Project 98 Product Enhancements Guide, article on "Web-based Workgroup Features."
Go to Part II

The Author
Gordon Benett is an IT strategist with 15 years experience architecting and analyzing information systems. In addition to founding and operating Intranet Design Magazine he is a regular columnist for LAN Times magazine and author of Introducing Intranets: A Decisionmaker's Guide. Gordon welcomes your comments at gbenett@innergy.com.