Project Management

Project management is a key point of project communication providing best user experience, development, testing, risks and release management. It is important to have a clear understanding of the goals and objectives for the project or process. Projects must meet the needs of customers in order to be successful. Thus there must be a clear distinction and requirements analysis for the success factors for both parties. Only then the responsibilities of setting and meeting the expectations can be assigned to the appropriate function areas.

Project management can be carried out on either our side or on the side of the client (or on both sides) depending on the project complexity, size, cooperation model or the client’s company structure. For instance in case of T&M project where the project is developed according to Agile methodology it would be optimal to have project manager (or perhaps project coordinator) on the customer’s side and at least Lead Developer on our side.

Project Team Structure

Project team is the group of people who perform some tasks to achieve project goals. It can consist of sub-teams – each of them consists of people with different roles. Team structure provided below is general and can be customized for every project separately according to project needs.

Project Coordination and Communication

This point will cover the most common approach to coordinating the project.

There will be two levels of communication: Administrative and Development. Customer’s Coordinator and OnCleverSoft Account Manager at the administrative level manage all the issues related to contracts, payments, and other document flow issues.

OnCleverSoft can assign an additional team member who will assist in overall project communication and coordination – a project coordinator. His duties are to collect information about the project, check project status, review and approve project plans, manage project risks and resolve all inconsistencies which can appear in the project, check whether project follows development process determined at company and invoke corrective actions when it is necessary. In addition, project coordinator manages resources, facilitates team communication, and helps drive critical decisions. From another side the project coordinator acts as the customer’s advocate to the team. Part of project coordinator’s responsibility is to ensure that key project decisions are based on a sound business understanding. The key goal of the project coordinator’s role is satisfied customers.

Communication will be conducted by both email and phone. Any emails will be answered within 24 hours maximum, i.e. the same or next working day. Besides this, team meetings can be scheduled via NetMeeting, MSN, Skype or similar tools to discuss the current development issues.

Additionally, OnCleverSoft proposes to use a web based bug tracking tool (such as JIRA), so that at any time the Customer coordinator could see the current progress and influence on the quality assurance process by submitting problem reports or inquires on-line. OnCleverSoft will establish a special project tracking database and accounts for all project members at OnCleverSoft development servers. OnCleverSoft has already got positive experience in using on-line collaboration tools.
OnCleverSoft has wide experience in working onsite. To improve communication between teams, core team members can visit customer’s premises on regular basis as well as customer’s representatives can visit OnCleverSoft office.

Project Progress Tracking and Reporting

Progress tracking will be performed by weekly deliverables supported by special delivery reports, containing progress reports for easy control. Deliverables normally include source code, documentation, and delivery reports if needed. Deliveries will be done by email and/or FTP or any other suggested by the Customer means.

Main tool which is used for project tracking and planning project tasks is MS Office Project. This tool is used for tasks maintaining and project planning as long as for time tracking OnCleverSoft Ltd. use JIRA tracking system. JIRA system is convenient for tracking most of all processes inside company including project tracking, internal tasks, risks and bugs tracking also.