By Irina Lubenskaya, CBDO at New Line Technologies

We should have thought twice before tightening the project’s belt at the expense of a Project Manager (PM). Let’s seriously weigh why it is not an option.

A full-time developers team that are co-located in one place is used to be the preferred way of building digital products. Despite many advantages of this model that is not going to happen time after time.

In today’s world, we have to understand that outsourcing a team in different locations does not stop the development process.

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The reason for hiring people remotely could be various. On-site IT specialists might not be available, accessible, and moreover very high dollar. These restrictions are not meant to be the main blockers in launching the project.

When we are realizing that local staff is unlikely to happen, we have to be able to move into either part-time teams, where we bring people when they are needed, or we actually go to a virtual world where we have the team remotely connected.

In this case, working with teams over the distance, everyone has to be “on the same page” and accurate with up-to-date documentation.

In this context, the role of PM becomes vital importance as never.

Initially, some companies tried to cut cost by not including an on-site PM to the project, but virtually all of them changed their approach over time.

They were supposed to save money but found that communication suffered too much. We can not deny the fact that having on-site liaison is definitely the way to go.

Vital issues of the project which PM covers

• Most methodologies assume single site development. Global, collaborative, multi-site development requires augmented processes, communications, and technologies.

• Furthermore, each location uses its own methodology. For instance, companies from one location use Waterfall while companies from other location use agile. In this case, weekly and monthly builds are used to synchronize the results of the development. Since each team uses a methodology in which they were trained and practiced, the work flows smoothly.

• Considerable thought should be put into building cooperation and communications processes and unite continents, time zones, and cultures. Business processes, development methodology, and company culture all need to be taken into account.

Adequate project management is a key predictor of overall project success.

Both a client-company and its outsourcing partner should supply a PM, one of whom should work on site at the other’s location.

Having a PM is not to worry about day-to-day operations. The daily tasks are assigned, they are put in charge, and going to get completed.

PM’s responsibilities include:

• scheduling compression
• putting  buffers
• managing risks
• composing plan-do-check-act
• verifying and validating the right specialists for the right operations
• meeting deadlines

Literally, PM determines what is to be done, who will be involved and when activities will be done. Using multiple techniques he or she identifies assumptions and constraints for the project.

Through the use of global collaboration for product development, companies must decide whether to use a single product development methodology or allow their IT service provider to use their own in-house methodology with which they have the most experience.

For simple projects, companies often found it easiest to adopt their technology partners in-house methodology.

At NLT we consider a client-team as a part of our company organization and always aim toward the project’s success.